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Saturday, September 8, 10:00 A.M. - Oct. 27 Coalition Mass Meeting
474 Valencia Street, Near 16th Street in San Francisco.
After this meeting we will spread out over the city -- to the Power to the Peaceful concert in Golden Gate Park--and all corners of the city to build the Oct. 27 March and Rally to End the War Now! Bring the Troops Home Now! Flyers and posters will be available for pick-up and distribution. Everyone welcome!
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Defend the ILWU Local 10 Brothers ---
Assaulted by Cops on the Sacramento Docks!
Emergency Executive Board Meeting Tuesday September 4!
On August 23, West Sacramento police and private security guards viciously
attacked, maced and arrested two Local 10 brothers, Jason Ruffin #101168 and
Aaron Harrison #101167, coming back to work on the SSA terminal after lunch.
When the guards insisted on searching their car, the longshoremen questioned
their authority to do so and called the Local 10 business agent. While one
was talking on the phone to the BA and without provocation, they were
assaulted, dragged from the car, handcuffed, jailed and charged with
"trespassing" and "obstructing a police officer". How the hell can
longshoremen be "trespassing", returning to work after lunch, having already
shown their PMA ID cards to guards at the terminal. Was it racial profiling
because the two longshoremen were black? Authorities citing a new maritime
security regulation that permits vehicle inspection doesn't mean maritime
workers can't question it. It doesn't take away a union member's right to
call his union business agent, And it certainly doesn't give authorities,
private or government, the right to assault and arrest you without
provocation. This is the ugly face of the "war on terror" on the docks. And
it'll get worse unless we come together and take action to defend these
brothers. Their court date is set for October 4 at 8:30AM in Yolo County
Superior Court; 213 Third St.; Woodland, CA.
An injury to two is an injury to all!
We, Executive Board and Local 10 members, called for an Emergency Executive
Board meeting Tuesday September 4 to resolve this urgent matter.
Melvin McKay #9268 Trent Willis #9182
Lonnie Francis #9274 Lawrence Thibeaux #7541
Jahn Overstreet #9189 Jack Heyman #8780
Erick Wright #8946
AUG. 31, 2007
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September 15: A showdown march from the White House to Congress in Washington DC
North/Central California "End the War Now" March
Saturday, October 27, 2007, 11am, San Francisco Civic Center Plaza
Momentum is building for Oct. 27 and beyond.
Here is a schedule of coalition meetings coming up:
Tuesday, September 4, 7:00 P.M., - Outreach Committee - 2489 Mission St.
Wednesday, September 5, 6:30 P.M. - Program Committee - 2489 Mission St.
Saturday, September 8, 10:00 A.M. - Oct. 27 Coalition Mass Meeting
474 Valencia Street, Near 16th Street in San Francisco.
Tuesday, September 11, 6:30 P.M. - Oct. 27 Coalition Steering Committee
(Location to be announced.)
Wednesday, September 12, 7:00pm - Oct. 27 Coalition Youth and Student Organizing Meeting - 2489 Mission St., Rm. 28
Help build for a massive, united march and rally in San Francisco Oct. 27 to End the War NOW.
This action is sponsored by a broad coalition of groups in the Bay Area. A list will be forthcoming—we are all united on this one and, hopefully in the future.
Funds are urgently needed for all the material—posters, flyers, stickers and buttons, etc.—to get the word out! Make your tax-deductible donation to:
Progress Unity Fund/Oct. 27
and mail to:
Oct. 27th Coalition
3288 21st Street, Number 249
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-821-6545
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
To get more information call or drop into the ANSWER office:
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
415-821-6545
Here is a partial list of endorsers of the October 27 Coalition in alphabetical order:
A.N.S.W.E.R.
Al Awda SF, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Alameda County Central Labor Council
American Friends Service Committee
Barrio Unidos por Amnestia
Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice
Bay Area United Against War
Coalicion Primero de Mayo, SFBA
CODE PINK Women for Peace
Contra Costa County Central Labor Council
FMLN
Free Palestine Alliance
International Socialist Organization
Iraq Moratorium
Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at
Larry Everest, author
Monterey Bay Labor Council
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
National Council of Arab Americans
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Pride at Work
Revolutionary Workers Group
Sacramento Area Black Caucus
San Francisco Bay View Newspaper
San Francisco Labor Council
San Mateo County Central Labor Council
Scientific Socialist Collective
SF Bay View Newspaper
Socialist Action
Socialist Viewpoint
South Bay Labor Council
South Bay Mobilization
State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party
Stop Funding the War Coalition
U.S. Labor Against the War
United for Peace & Justice Bay Area
United for Peace and Justice
Vanguard Foundation
West County Toxics Coalition
Workers International League
Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R.
...a partial listing! we are gathering groups faster than we
can post them!
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Bay Area United Against War Activists
Save 20% on George Bernard Shaw’s anti-war masterpiece: HEARTBREAK HOUSE
August 31—September 8
Artist, socialist, feminist, anti-war activist, vegetarian, freethinker, street-corner orator, and all-around raconteur, if there’s one man who belongs in Berkeley, it’s George Bernard Shaw. Heartbreak House—his hilarious portrayal of a civilization on the edge of decline—was his response to the actions of World War I. And Berkeley Rep is thrilled to kick off its 40th birthday celebration with a timely take on this comic masterwork.
We’re celebrating our 40th birthday all season long with reduced prices from just $27—and Supporters of Bay Area United Against War save 20% on tickets for available performances August 31—September 8. Plus, save even more when you purchase three or more plays!
Purchase tickets online and use promo code 2746.
Click berkeleyrep.org/bayareaunited to learn about “Free Speech” events at the Theatre before your show, more about the play, and details about your discount.
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Labor Conference to Stop the War!
October 20, 2007
ILWU Local 10 400 North Point Street, San Francisco, California @ Fisherman's Wharf
As the war in Iraq and Afghanistan enters its seventh year, opposition to the war among working people in the United States and the world is massive and growing. The "surge" strategy of sending in more and more troops has become a -asco for the Pentagon generals, while thousands of Iraqis are killed every month. Before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, millions marched against the war in Britain, Italy and Spain as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in the U.S. to oppose it. But that didn't stop the invasion. In the U.S., this "war on terror" has meant wholesale assault on civil liberties and workers' rights, like the impending imposition of the hated TWIC card for port workers. And the war keeps going on and on, as Democrats and Republicans in Congress keep on voting for it.
As historian Isaac Deutscher said during the Vietnam War, a single strike would be more e-ective than all the peace marches. French dockworkers did strike in the port of Marseilles and helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. To put a stop to this bloody colonial occupation, labor must use its power.
The International Warehouse and Longshore Union has opposed the war on Iraq since the beginning. In the Bay Area, ILWU Local 10 has repeatedly warned that the so-called "war on terror" is really a war on working people and democratic rights. Around the country, hundreds of unions and labor councils have passed motions condemning the war, but that has not stopped the war. We need to use labor's muscle to stop the war by mobilizing union power in the streets, at the plant gates and on the docks to force the immediate and total withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The clock is ticking. It's time for labor action to bring the war machine to a grinding halt and end this slaughter. During longshore contract negotiations in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bush cited port security and imposed the slave-labor Taft-Hartley Law against the ILWU in collusion with the maritime employers group PMA and with the support of the Democrats. Yet, he did nothing when PMA shut down every port on the U.S. West Coast by locking out longshore workers just the week before!
In April 2003, when antiwar protesters picketed war cargo shippers, APL and SSA, in the Port of Oakland, police -red on picketers and longshoremen alike with their "less than lethal" ammo that left six ILWU members and many others seriously injured. We refused to let our rights be trampled on, sued the city and won. Democratic rights were reasserted a month later when antiwar protesters marched in the port and all shipping was stopped. This past May, when antiwar protesters and the Oakland Education Association again picketed war cargo shippers in Oakland, longshoremen honored the picket line. This is only the beginning.
Last year, Local 10 passed a resolution calling to "Strike Against the War ï¿∏ No Peace, No Work." The motion emphasized the ILWU's proud history in opposing wars for imperial domination, recalling how in 1978 Local 10 refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. In the 1980's, Bay Area dock workers highlighted opposition to South African apartheid slavery by boycotting ("hot cargoing") the Nedlloyd Kimberly, while South African workers waged militant strikes to bring down the white supremacist regime.
Now Locals 10 and 34 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have called for a "Labor Conference to Stop the War" to hammer out a program of action. We're saying: Enough! It's high time to use union power against the bosses' war, independent of the "bipartisan" war party. The ILWU can again take the lead, but action against the war should not be limited to the docks. We urge unions in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the country to attend the conference and plan workplace rallies, labor mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war.
For further information contact: Jack Heyman jackheyman@comcast.net
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Stop Government Attacks
Against the Anti-War Movement!
Take Action to Defend Free Speech
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr004=k763kwy604.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=205
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Victory! Kenneth Foster's Death Sentence Commuted!
SF Bay View
Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced that he is commuting Foster's death sentence to life in prison without parole. This is only the 2nd time that a Texas Governor has granted clemency since 1976. (The other case was Henry Lee Lucas in 1998.)
Thank you to everyone who helped draw attention to this case and to the horrors of the entire death penalty system, and thank you to all our members who took action.
To thank Governor Perry for his decision, please contact:
Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000
[office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST]
Citizen's Assistance Telecommunications Device
If you are using a telecommunication device for the deaf (TDD), call 711 to reach Relay Texas
Office of the Governor Fax: (512) 463-1849
The tide is turning in our favor! Click here to support Death Penalty Focus:
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/dpf/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2362&t=SupportTemplate.dwt
With much appreciation,
The Staff of Death Penalty Focus
(Lance, Stefanie, Alison, Yoko and John)
Governor Perry's Statement
Aug. 30, 2007
Perry Commutes Death Sentence
AUSTIN ? Gov. Rick Perry today commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Eugene Foster of San Antonio to life imprisonment after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (TBPP) recommended such action.
On May 6, 1997, Foster was sentenced to death for his role in the 1996 capital murder of Michael LaHood. Foster sought to have his death sentence commuted to a life sentence arguing that he did not shoot the victim, but merely drove the car in which that the actual killer was riding. In addition, Foster was tried along side the actual killer, Maurecio Brown, and the jury that convicted Foster also considered punishment for both him and his co-defendant in the same proceeding.
?After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster?s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,? Gov. Perry said. ?I am concerned about Texas law that allows capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously, and it is an issue I think the legislature should examine.?
The TBPP voted 6-1 to recommend commutation, and the governor signed the commutation papers Thursday morning.
The governor?s action means Foster?s sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment as soon as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice can process this change.
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) 14th Annual Labor Day ‘Executive Excess’ Report
Americans Pay a Staggering Cost
for Corporate Leadership
August 29, 2007
http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2007/staggering_cost_of_corp_leadership.html
2) The Vick Kick
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Prisonradio.org
3) Katrina All the Time
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
August 31, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?hp
4) More Realism, Less Spin
NYT Editorial
August 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/opinion/31fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
5) Brian De Palma's Anti-War Drama Stuns Audiences in Venice
By Adam Howard
AlterNet
Posted on August 31, 2007, Printed on September 1, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/howard/61323/
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/61323
6) Brian de Palma's Redacted shocks Venice
By David Gritten, at the Venice Film Festival
Last Updated: 1:57am BST 01/09/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/31/wvenice131.xml
7) The Way We Live Now
Not in Whose Backyard?
“‘It’s neither possible nor desirable in a free society to have all groups living equally close to everything — be it libraries or landfills,’ argues Michael Steinberg, a Washington lawyer with clients in the chemical industry. ‘Even the old Soviet Politburo would have a hard time pulling that one off.’ The mere fact of disparate impact, he says, is not evidence of intentional discrimination in the placement of polluting facilities — it’s just economics.”
By AMANDA GRISCOM LITTLE
September 2, 2007
Sunday Magazine
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02wwln-essay-t.html?ex=1189310400&en=3e9c0ba2cecdb465&ei=5070&emc=eta1
8) Anxious About Tomorrow
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 1, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
9) At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to Violence
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
September 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/world/middleeast/01haditha.html?ref=world
10) West Bank Boys Dig a Living From Trash
By STEVEN ERLANGER
September 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/middleeast/02westbank.html?ref=world
11) Democrats Try to Soften Bush’s Education Law
By SAM DILLON
September 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/washington/01child.html?ref=us
12) Insights: Racial Disparity Affirmed in Tobacco Advertising
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
August 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/health/28disp.html?ex=1189310400&en=c23aadb005fd3ecf&ei=5070&emc=eta1
13) U.S. Obsessed With Using Force
The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
30 August 2007
Posted to the web 30 August 2007
By Reason Wafawarova
Harare
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200708300301.html
14) Resolution passed by Washington State Labor Council
RESOLUTION ON IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
From: Carole Seligman
caroleseligman@sbcglobal.net
15) The War as We Saw It
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS;
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY AND JEREMY A. MURPHY
August 19, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F5071EFC385A0C7A8DDDA10894DF404482#
16) Snow Job in the Desert
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
September 3, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/opinion/03krugmancolumn.html?hp
17) Prison Medical Crisis Worsens - An Urgent Call to Rally in Sacramento
Dr. B. Cayenne Bird
September 2, 2007
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=36577
18) City as Predator
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 4, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/opinion/04herbert.html?hp
19) Strike Shuts Most of London’s Subway
By SARAH LYALL
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/world/europe/04london.html?ref=world
20) Bipolar Illness Soars as a Diagnosis for the Young
By BENEDICT CAREY
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/health/04psych.html?ref=us
21) A Challenge to New York City’s Homeless Policy
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/nyregion/04homeless.html?ref=nyregion
22) For U.A.W., a Year of Uncertainty
By NICK BUNKLEY and MICHELINE MAYNARD
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/business/04labors.html?ref=business
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1) 14th Annual Labor Day ‘Executive Excess’ Report
Americans Pay a Staggering Cost
for Corporate Leadership
August 29, 2007
http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2007/staggering_cost_of_corp_leadership.html
(Washington, D.C.) With leading Presidential candidates turning up the heat on overpaid CEOs, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy documents for the first time the extreme pay gaps that have opened up not just between U.S. business leaders and American workers, but between U.S. business leaders and leaders elsewhere in American — and European — society.
Download the complete report “Executive Excess 2007” at www.faireconomy.org/reports/2007/ExecutiveExcess2007.pdf (PDF, 1 MB).
KEY FINDINGS:
CEO-WORKER PAY GAP: CEOs of large U.S. companies last year averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, a calculation based on data from an Associated Press survey of 386 Fortune 500 companies.
The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, pocketed an average $657.5 million, Forbes magazine estimates. That’s 22,255 times the pay of an average U.S. worker.
Workers on the bottom rung of the economy have just received their first federal minimum wage increase in a decade. But the inflation-adjusted value of the new minimum, despite the hike, stands 7 percent below the minimum wage level a decade ago. CEO pay, in that decade, has increased over inflation by roughly 45 percent.
“The CEO-worker pay gap is finally getting some high-profile attention from Presidential candidates,” says report co-author Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies. “But lawmakers still aren’t doing nearly enough to tackle the gap.”
PENSION AND PERK GAPS: CEOs at major U.S. corporations enjoyed, on average, $1.3 million in pension gains last year. By contrast, only 58.5 percent of American households led by a 45-to-54-year-old even had a retirement account in 2004. Between 2001 and 2004, the retirement accounts of these households gained an average of only $3,775 in value per year.
CEOs of S&P 500 companies retire with an average $10.1 million in their special Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans, accounts not open to average workers. By contrast, only 36.3 percent of American households headed by an individual 65 or older held any type of retirement account in 2004. The accounts that did exist averaged only $173,552 per household.
The top 386 CEOs took in perks worth an average of $438,342 in 2006. A minimum wage worker would need to work 36 years to earn as much as CEOs obtained just in perks last year.
THE LEADERSHIP PAY GAP: Compensation for American business leaders now wildly dwarfs the pay that goes to leaders in other sectors of American society. The 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded corporations last year took home, on average, $36.4 million. That’s 38 times more than the 20 highest-paid leaders in the nonprofit sector and 204 times more than the 20 highest-paid generals in the U.S. military.
The 20 highest-paid figures in the private equity and hedge fund industry collected 3,315 times more in average annual compensation in 2006 than the top 20 officials of the federal government’s executive branch, a group that includes the President of the United States.
“Today’s soaring pay gap between business executives and elected leaders in government essentially makes corruption inevitable,” notes Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow. “With such huge windfalls at stake, business leaders have a powerful incentive to manipulate the political decisions that affect corporate earnings.”
THE US-EUROPEAN EXECUTIVE PAY GAP: In 2006, the 20 highest-paid European corporate managers made an average of $12.5 million, only one third as much as the 20 highest-earning U.S. executives took home last year. These 20 top European execs led companies that generated $19 billion more in sales revenue than the corporations led by their higher-paid American counterparts.
PROPOSALS FOR CHANGE: Executive Excess 2007 highlights six practical initiatives that can rein in runaway executive pay. Five involve eliminating perverse tax incentives for excessive pay, while one would use government contracting dollars to encourage more reasonable pay.
According to report co-author Chuck Collins, “Meaningful change could be on the horizon, as many political leaders are finally catching up to the public outcry to rein in excessive compensation.”
Authored by Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati, and Mike Lapham, Executive Excess 2007 is the 14th annual CEO pay study by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
The Institute for Policy Studies is an independent center for progressive research and education in Washington, D.C. United for a Fair Economy is a national organization based in Boston that spotlights growing economic inequality.
For hard copies or to set up interviews with the co-authors, call Debayani Kar (202) 246-8143, debi@ips-dc.org, or Bob Keener (617) 423-2148 ext 120, bkeener@faireconomy.org.
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2) The Vick Kick
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Prisonradio.org
NFL (National Football League) star, Michael Vick is the nation's latest bete noir (French: Black beast).
The venom and hatred directed at him for his off-field dog fighting connections is nothing short of remarkable.
Not since football great O. J. Simpson's murder trial, or perhaps Mike Tyson's rape trial, have we witnessed such an outpouring of outrage.
If you think it's got nothing to do with who he is, rather than what he is alleged to have done, then you're trippin'!
Vick signed a monster NFL contract several years ago that virtually guaranteed him a lifetime of wealth.
All of that, not to mention other product endorsement deals, is up in smoke.
Don't get it twisted. I'm not suggesting, in the least, that hurting animals is cool.
As a MOVE supporter, I recall the late Frank Africa (MOVE's Naturalist Minister) telling me about seeing guys fighting pit bulls in West Philly's Cobbs Creek Park. Frank would challenge them to fight him instead of the dogs. (He didn't find a lot of takers).
Frank was martyred by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (and the United States of America) on May 13th, 1985, along with ten other men, women and babies.
While we hear the sports world and the talk show pundits bay for Vick's blood for dog fighting, it's important to remember that if Vicks serves one day in jail that'll be one day more than the bombers, snipers and baby-killers who massacred 11 people on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia (Oh, yeah—come to think of it, several dogs were killed then, too!)
Football is the nations' weekly ritual of violence, where big guys pummel other big guys, with the intent of crushing the opponent. it was not for naught that an American president (and general!), Dwight Eisenhower once said, "Sports are perfect for preparing young men for war."
In the hyper-world of talk and sports radio, few things elicit more umbrage than the spectacle of a Black man, from an impoverished background, coming into great wealth.
That athlete (or artist, for that matter) is expected to smile, never address politics, and generally, shut up (especially regarding issues of race!)
Implicit in the sports contract is an unwritten agreement to be what one Black sportswriter called a “million dollar slave.”
Because many Black athletes come from poverty, and communities where life is cruel, brutish and short, they have acquired the tastes, modes and habits of their environs. In the South (and North as well), dog fighting is not a rarity.
If he were Mexican-American, he may have enjoyed cock fighting, or, if or another ethnicity, perhaps bull-fighting.
But, such sociological observations have no place in the hot house of media mouthpieces and hype artists.
I've seen more heat around Vick's treatment of dogs than American soldiers treatment of Iraqis!
For Michael Vicks, for now—the game is over.
*[Source: Zirin, Dave, What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States. (Chi. Haymarket Books, 2005,), p.129.)
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3) Katrina All the Time
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
August 31, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?hp
Two years ago today, Americans watched in horror as a great city drowned, and wondered what had happened to their country. Where was FEMA? Where was the National Guard? Why wasn’t the government of the world’s richest, most powerful nation coming to the aid of its own citizens?
What we mostly saw on TV was the nightmarish scene at the Superdome, but things were even worse at the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded without food or water. The levees were breached Monday morning — but as late as Thursday evening, The Washington Post reported, the convention center “still had no visible government presence,” while “corpses lay out in the open among wailing babies and other refugees.”
Meanwhile, federal officials were oblivious. “We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy,” declared Michael Chertoff, the secretary for Homeland Security, on Wednesday. When asked the next day about the situation at the convention center, he dismissed the reports as “a rumor” or “someone’s anecdotal version.”
Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.
On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama’s football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.
But why should we be surprised by any of this? The Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina — the mixture of neglect of those in need, obliviousness to their plight, and self-congratulation in the face of abject failure — has become standard operating procedure. These days, it’s Katrina all the time.
Consider the White House reaction to new Census data on income, poverty and health insurance. By any normal standard, this week’s report was a devastating indictment of the administration’s policies. After all, last year the administration insisted that the economy was booming — and whined that it wasn’t getting enough credit. What the data show, however, is that 2006, while a good year for the wealthy, brought only a slight decline in the poverty rate and a modest rise in median income, with most Americans still considerably worse off than they were before President Bush took office.
Most disturbing of all, the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal — “you just go to an emergency room” — but the reality is that if you’re uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.
Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was “pleased” with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!
Mr. Bush’s only concession that something might be amiss was to say that “challenges remain in reducing the number of uninsured Americans” — a statement reminiscent of Emperor Hirohito’s famous admission, in his surrender broadcast, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” And Mr. Bush’s solution — more tax cuts, of course — has about as much relevance to the real needs of the uninsured as subsidies for luxury condos in Tuscaloosa have to the needs of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward.
The question is whether any of this will change when Mr. Bush leaves office.
There’s a powerful political faction in this country that’s determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle — namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn’t even try. “I don’t want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system,” says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration’s practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform — did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? — were the way government always works.
And I’m not sure that faction is losing the argument. The thing about conservative governance is that it can succeed by failing: when conservative politicians mess up, they foster a cynicism about government that may actually help their cause.
Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way.
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4) More Realism, Less Spin
NYT Editorial
August 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/opinion/31fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
A new report from Congress’s investigative arm provides a powerful fresh dose of nonpartisan realism about Iraq as President Bush tries to spin people into thinking that significant — or at least sufficient — progress is being made. With a crucial debate on Iraq set for next month, the report should be read by members of Congress who may be wavering in the fight with the White House over withdrawing American troops.
The Government Accountability Office, in a draft assessment reported yesterday, determined that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for political and military progress mandated by Congress. Laws on constitutional reform, oil and permitting former Baathists back into the government have not been enacted. Among other failings, there has been unsatisfactory progress toward deploying three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad and reducing the level of sectarian violence.
These conclusions are in line with a recent National Intelligence Estimate that found that violence in Iraq remained high, terrorists could still mount formidable attacks and the country’s leaders “remain unable to govern effectively.”
Mr. Bush earlier this year ordered a massive buildup of American troops in Iraq in a desperate attempt to salvage his failed strategy and stave off Congressional moves to bring the forces home. Despite the cost of more American lives, he argued that he was buying a period of relative calm for Iraqi politicians to achieve national reconciliation.
The top American officials in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are to present their assessments on how calm things are at eagerly awaited Congressional hearings in mid-September. Their findings, and a White House report due Sept. 15, are seen as a potential trigger for a change in Iraq strategy.
Two things, however, are already clear. Iraq’s leaders have neither the intention nor the ability to take advantage of calm, relative or otherwise. And a change in strategy seems the farthest thing from Mr. Bush’s mind.
He used the August vacation — when lawmakers were largely laying low at home — to reassert his determination to stay the course. The White House also let it be known that it plans to ask Congress for more money — perhaps another $50 billion — beyond $600 billion already requested to maintain the counteroffensive in Iraq into spring 2008. Some people think the administration will get it.
The White House tried to discredit the ominous G.A.O. assessment by saying the standards set by Congressional investigators were too high. It may be unrealistic to expect that Iraq’s weak and dysfunctional government could meet all the targets by September, but a serious, conscientious effort across the board was needed, and would be apparent to all.
Mr. Bush has invoked Vietnam to argue against leaving Iraq. That argument is specious, but there is a chilling similarity between the two American foreign policy disasters. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, American presidents and military leaders went to great lengths to pretend that victory was at hand when nothing could be farther from the truth.
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5) Brian De Palma's Anti-War Drama Stuns Audiences in Venice
By Adam Howard
AlterNet
Posted on August 31, 2007, Printed on September 1, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/howard/61323/
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/61323
Brian DePalma's latest film is quite a departure from the over-the-top thrillers and gangster movies for which he is best known. "Redacted" which just made its debut at the Venice film festival tells the true story of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers, who also slaughtered her family in March of 2006.
DePalma told reporters after the movie screened that he hoped the film would help bring an end to our country's occupation of Iraq
"The pictures are what will stop the war," said De Palma.
DePalma has long been one of my favorite directors and I think one of the most underrated, overlooked and in some cases unfairly criticized filmmakerrs of all time. His dark sense of humor and politically incorrect satire has often been misunderstood. He's best known for gore filled romps like Scarface and Carrie, but he's also directed one of the little seen Vietnam War masterpiece, 1989's Casualties of War
That film also dramatized the true story of a Vietamese woman being kidnapped by American soldiers (the ringleader is played by Sean Penn), who gang rape her and murder her. One soldier (played by Michael J. Fox) refuses to participate and the second half of the film details his ordeal as a whistleblower. DePalma's gift in that film, and all of his films prior and since is his dexterity and incredible skills with the camera. His visual flair is beyond reproach and I'm excited to see him apply his talents to a film of real meaning as opposed to a generic Hollywood thriller.
"All the images we (currently) have of our war are completely constructed -- whitewashed, redacted," said De Palma, "One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war," he added.
According to the AP, "Redacted" hits hard with its dramatic reenactment of the conditions, attitudes and stresses that led up to the real-life crime.
One of the soldiers involved in the crime on which the film is based, Private First Class Jesse Spielman, was sentenced to 110 years in prison this month for his role in the rape and killings.
Shown through the imaginary video lens of one of the soldiers involved in the raid on the girl's home, De Palma's dramatization is interlaced with actual news clips, documentary footage and stills from the war.
The decision to use the device of the videocam arose from De Palma's research on the Internet. "The blogs, the use of language, it's all there," he said.
He explained that legal obstacles in dealing with real people and events meant he was "forced to fictionalise things" to get the movie made.
"Redacted" will initially be distributed nationwide by Magnolia Pictures and its producer Jason Kliot says. "If the response is strong one hopes the distribution will grow the film in a big way."
Adam Howard is the editor of PEEK.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/howard/61323/
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6) Brian de Palma's Redacted shocks Venice
By David Gritten, at the Venice Film Festival
Last Updated: 1:57am BST 01/09/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/31/wvenice131.xml
A wave of new American films about the Iraq war are due to arrive in cinemas over the next few months. Yet it's safe to say few could be more shocking or harrowing than the low-budget Redacted by veteran director Brian de Palma (Scarface, The Untouchables), which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival yesterday.
Shot with a cast of unknown actors on high-definition video cameras, it is about a small group of bored, restless US soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Samarra.
They are impatient with the war's progress, distrustful of all Iraqis (even the children) and eager to go home. Two of them concoct a plot for the group to revisit a household recently raided in a search for insurgents, and to rape the family's 15-year-old daughter. In a chilling finale they do the deed, but their mission also ends in multiple murder.
Intriguingly, one of the group (who harbours ambitions to go to film school) is compiling a video diary of life at the checkpoint. He takes his camera along on the raid and simply keeps shooting during the terrible events. Only later does he realize that this implicated him in the crimes.
To tell the story, de Palma boldly uses a variety of forms: blogs, YouTube posts, videologs on the internet and the video diary the soldier is shooting. There are several references to the shortcomings of the mainstream media in reporting the real horrors of the Iraq war; de Palma makes a telling point with these alternative narrative devices.
'Redacted' means 'edited' or 'blacked out,' and the film's first image is a written disclaimer on the screen, with more and more words gradually being deleted. The director calls the film 'a fictional story inspired by true events,' and insists everything depicted has really happened.
Whatever the truth of those claims, there's no doubt Redacted packs an extraordinary emotional punch. It ends with shocking still photos of Iraqis, dead, disfigured or in extreme distress because of the war. This montage left the audience at a Venice press screening stunned, silent and in a few cases tearful. The combination of De Palma's visceral style and the horrifying subject matter left me reeling.
Controversy will clearly rage around Redacted, especially when it opens in America. But for those who have seen it, the images of that awful appointment in Samarra will linger joltingly in the memory.
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7) The Way We Live Now
Not in Whose Backyard?
“‘It’s neither possible nor desirable in a free society to have all groups living equally close to everything — be it libraries or landfills,’ argues Michael Steinberg, a Washington lawyer with clients in the chemical industry. ‘Even the old Soviet Politburo would have a hard time pulling that one off.’ The mere fact of disparate impact, he says, is not evidence of intentional discrimination in the placement of polluting facilities — it’s just economics.”
By AMANDA GRISCOM LITTLE
September 2, 2007
Sunday Magazine
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02wwln-essay-t.html?ex=1189310400&en=3e9c0ba2cecdb465&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Consider this curiosity of United States environmental policy: Countless federal laws have been written to preserve far-flung wilderness that Americans rarely visit (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for instance) and endangered species that we scarcely see (from longhorn fairy shrimp to piping plovers). Yet no legislation has been tailored to protect a landscape that is perhaps the most vulnerable: the low-income communities that shelter most of America’s polluting facilities.
Later this month, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will introduce the Environmental Justice Renewal Act, which would direct additional federal funds to assisting environmentally beleaguered communities. The bill complements another proposal Clinton helped sponsor, which would require the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor and mitigate the health impacts of power plants, waste-transfer stations, truck fleets, refineries and other industrial infrastructure, which tend to be overwhelmingly concentrated in America’s poorest neighborhoods.
Both bills are expected to meet opposition in Congress. Nevertheless, their introduction suggests a coming of age for the environmental-justice movement. The movement — whose proponents hold that minority and low-income populations should not be subjected to more environmental burdens than others — has been growing at the grass-roots level for decades. Yet disproportionately high pollution levels continue to plague poor communities, and race often correlates with which populations are hit the hardest: African-Americans, for instance, are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in areas where air-pollution levels pose health risks, according to a 2005 Associated Press analysis of E.P.A. data. Lead-poisoning rates among Hispanic and black children are roughly double those among white children.
Environmental-justice advocates take pains to assert that they are neither antidevelopment nor anti-industry. “We can’t fight this battle at the expense of jobs,” says Majora Carter, a MacArthur fellow from the South Bronx, where children’s asthma rates are several times the national average. “We need to work; we also need to breathe — our goal is to find a way of doing both.” Carter and the organization she founded, Sustainable South Bronx, have fought dozens of proposals for new or expanded industrial sites, while simultaneously exhorting green businesses — like a high-tech recycling plant — to bring skilled jobs to the community. (The latter goal got a boost this summer when the House and Senate passed bills to put about $100 million toward training workers for jobs in green energy.)
But are environmental-justice goals always compatible with economic growth? There is a debate, says Daniel Doctoroff, New York City’s deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding: “On the one hand, environmental issues, versus having more jobs.” Real estate is scarce. No matter how clean and efficient industrial sites are, he says, “there will always be things that nobody wants, and we have to find places to put them.” And taxpayers will inevitably question why they should foot the bill for a sewage-treatment plant on the Upper East Side when it could be placed in a far less expensive neighborhood.
Some critics of the environmental-justice movement go further. It is not surprising, they say, that land near toxic sites is inexpensive and that the people who live there are poor. “It’s neither possible nor desirable in a free society to have all groups living equally close to everything — be it libraries or landfills,” argues Michael Steinberg, a Washington lawyer with clients in the chemical industry. “Even the old Soviet Politburo would have a hard time pulling that one off.” The mere fact of disparate impact, he says, is not evidence of intentional discrimination in the placement of polluting facilities — it’s just economics.
On the other side of the spectrum, some environmental-justice advocates say Clinton’s proposals don’t go far enough. Norris McDonald, president of the African American Environmentalist Association, calls the bills “a Band-Aid, nothing more.” He points out that they don’t give citizens the legal power to sue the industries polluting their backyards. McDonald sees Clinton’s recent efforts as a political move to secure the black vote.
Two years ago, Clinton and Barack Obama collaborated on a community-health bill. Now environmental-justice activists are waiting to see if Obama, who has been cautious on race-related issues, will respond to Clinton’s latest proposals with a countermeasure: “Okay, Barack,” McDonald taunts, “you gonna dance or let Hillary have the floor?”
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8) Anxious About Tomorrow
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 1, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
You know you’ve stepped into a different universe when you hear a major American labor leader saying matter-of-factly that employer-based health insurance and employer-based pensions are relics of a bygone industrial economy.
Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.9 million members and is the fastest-growing union in the country, is not your ordinary union leader. With Labor Day approaching, he was reflecting on some of the challenges facing workers in a post-20th-century globalized economy.
“I just don’t think that as a country we’ve conceptualized that this is not our father’s or our grandfather’s economy,” Mr. Stern said in an interview. “We’re going through profound change and we have no plan.”
The feeling that seems to override all others for workers is anxiety. American families, already saddled with enormous debt, are trying to make it in an environment in which employment is becoming increasingly contingent and subject to worldwide competition. Health insurance, unaffordable for millions, is a huge problem. And guaranteed pensions are going the way of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.
“We’re ending defined benefit pensions in front of our eyes,” said Mr. Stern. “I’d say today’s retirement plan for young workers is: ‘I’m going to work until I die.’ ”
The result of all of this — along with such problems as the mortgage and housing crisis, and a domestic economy that is doing nothing to improve living standards for ordinary Americans — is fear.
“Workers are incredibly, legitimately scared that the American dream, particularly the belief that their kids will do better, is ending,” said Mr. Stern. He is trying to get across the idea that in a period of such profound change, the old templates, the traditional ideas and policies of even the most progressive thinkers and officeholders, will not be sufficient to meet the new challenges.
“We can’t be the only country on earth that asks our employers to put the price of health care on its products when a lot of our competitors don’t,” he said. “And job security? Even if you want to stay with your employer, as in the old economic model, we’re seeing in many industries that your employer is not going to be around to stay with you.”
A comprehensive new approach is needed, but what should that approach be? Franklin Roosevelt always hoped to inject a measure of economic security into the lives of ordinary Americans. But the New Deal was seven decades ago. Workers are insecure now for a host of different reasons and Mr. Stern wants the labor movement to be part of a vast cooperative effort to develop the solutions appropriate to today’s environment.
He told me, “I’d like to say to the Democrats that we are as far today from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War.”
He wants more people to pay attention to the big issues that affect not just union workers but all working families: How do you bring health care to all? What do you do about retirement security? How will the jobs of the 21st century be created?
And what about schools, energy, global warming, the environment?
Mr. Stern tends to see the nation as a team and wants the team to pull together to develop a creative vision of what the U.S. should be about in the 21st century. A cornerstone of that vision, he said, should be adherence to the “primary value” of rewarding work.
“We’re a team in the 21st-century period of rapid change and competition,” he said. “And right now, we don’t have leadership, and we don’t have a plan. At the same time, a group of people are enriching themselves far beyond anything that’s reasonable.”
What he would like to see, he said, is a large group of thoughtful people from various walks of American life — business, labor, government, academia and so forth — convened to begin the serious work of cooperatively developing a real-world vision of a society that is fairer, healthier, better educated, better prepared to compete globally, and more economically secure.
“I think you’re already seeing the beginnings of odd formations of people who appreciate, issue by issue, that we have to do something different here,” he said.
The kind of effort Mr. Stern would like to see would logically be initiated at the highest levels of government, preferably the White House. But if that’s not in the cards, someone else should take up the challenge. And there should be a sense of urgency about it.
The fears of America’s workers are well founded. “There’s something wrong with the system right now,” said Mr. Stern, “and we can’t just say, ‘Well, it’s all going to work out.’ It’s not.”
[There is not a single word in here about just what Andy Stern IS for. Could it be that he supports one of the most reactionary healthcare plans:
"Executive Summary:
Comprehensive Health Care Reform for Colorado
http://www.ecape.net/
“… All Americans need financial security and quality health care they can afford. …The time is long overdue for America to address these problems. America needs a plan for the 21st century. Not a Democratic or Republican plan, or a business or labor plan. We need an American plan; a plan to insure that the American Dream endures for our children and grandchildren.” Andy Stern President, SEIU International January 16, 2007 The nurses and working families of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Colorado Association of Public Employees (CAPE) believe that health care is the most serious economic and social concern facing Coloradans today and that comprehensive health care reform is needed now. Approximately 770,000 Colorado residents lack health insurance.1 Businesses – particularly small businesses – find it increasingly difficult to provide their employees with even the most basic of health care, jeopardizing the ability to remain competitive in the state, national and global marketplace. Many working families, unable to afford the skyrocketing cost of coverage, take a huge risk with their family’s health and financial future, hoping that they will simply not get sick – often paying for it with their savings, their homes and their lives. Those who qualify for public programs receive care that could be more cost-effective and better managed. With projections that Colorado’s elderly population will increase by a staggering 59% during the next 15 years,2 we find ourselves inadequately prepared to address what can be the most expensive care of all – long term supports and services. SEIU and CAPE believe we need health care reform that puts us on a real path to universal coverage and delivers innovative, new ways to address the health care challenges ahead. At the same time, we need a pragmatic path – one that allows us to meet these goals while taking into account the financial realities facing our state...The SEIU and CAPE proposal is a comprehensive plan that will:
—Provide a path to universal health care coverage in Colorado. 1 U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Survey – 3 year average. Data collected in 2004 to 2006. 2 Ari Houser, Wendy Fox-Grage and Mary Jo Gibson. “Across The States: Profiles of Long-Term Care and Independent Living. Colorado.” AARP Public Policy Institute. Dec. 2006. http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/health/d18763_2006_ats_co.pdf 1
—Extend health care to low-income uninsured with Medicaid-funded premium subsidies to purchase insurance to protect and improve health.
—Ensure improved access to medically appropriate and cost-effective quality long term care services now and in the future.—Promote greater access, choice, personal responsibility and affordability for working families through the creation of a Health Insurance Exchange.
—Help Colorado’s small businesses purchase quality, affordable health plans for their employees.
—Ensure quality care and promote accountability in Colorado’s health care facilities to protect patients.
—Create incentives for preventive care, wellness, health education, quality outcomes and consumer empowerment.
—Adopt best practices, evidence-based medicine, and pay for performance to improve health care delivery.
—Ensure stable and sustainable funding that is fair, viable and cost-effective."...BW]
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9) At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to Violence
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
September 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/world/middleeast/01haditha.html?ref=world
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 31 — A Marine sergeant offered gruesome testimony on Friday against a former squad leader charged with killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Haditha nearly two years ago, suggesting that the defendant, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, was predisposed to the violence, carried it out ruthlessly and sought to cover it up.
The prosecution witness, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, was ordered to testify with immunity after murder charges against him for killing five of the men were dismissed in April.
On Thursday, prosecutors dropped one charge against Sergeant Wuterich in the killing of an 18th victim, a man in the last of four homes that the sergeant and other squad members searched on Nov. 19, 2005, after a bomb hit the marines’ convoy.
At Friday’s hearing, to determine whether the charges against Sergeant Wuterich should progress to a court-martial, Sergeant Dela Cruz testified that Sergeant Wuterich shot five unarmed men as they stood behind a car, some with their hands interlocked behind their heads in a surrender posture, in the moments after the bomb exploded.
He also said Sergeant Wuterich fired more rounds into the bodies of all five men as they lay dead or dying near a car a short distance from the attack.
Sergeant Wuterich has said he shot the five men, but only after they ran away, which he believed constituted a hostile act that allowed him to use deadly force.
Sergeant Dela Cruz told prosecutors that a week before the Haditha episode, Sergeant Wuterich had reacted to an earlier roadside bombing by telling him and other marines in the unit, “If we ever get hit again, we should kill everybody in that area.”
Sergeant Dela Cruz said that after killing the five men in Haditha, Sergeant Wuterich turned to him and said, “If anyone asks, say they were running away.”
It is unclear how much weight the hearing’s presiding officer will give to the testimony of Sergeant Dela Cruz, whose credibility has been an issue in hearings for other marines charged in the Haditha killings. The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, will recommend to a Marine Corps general whether to try Sergeant Wuterich in a full court-martial.
Sergeant Dela Cruz has admitted to lying to an Army colonel who initially investigated the Haditha episode, in which Marine riflemen killed 24 Iraqis, including at least 10 women and children, after a roadside bomb killed one of their comrades.
In a sworn statement, he told the colonel that Iraqi Army soldiers traveling with his unit had killed the five men near the car, and that he had yelled at them to stop, to no avail.
Sergeant Wuterich’s lawyers took pains to point out that Sergeant Dela Cruz’s immunity deal protected him from being charged in the Haditha episode, and they have said he lied about Sergeant Wuterich’s actions to cover up his own criminal behavior in Haditha.
Another witness on Friday, Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner, a member of a Marine intelligence unit that inspected the scene of the Haditha killings, said Sergeant Wuterich had told him the men had run from the car when they were shot.
Sergeant Laughner also said squad members had been worried that the car could have been carrying a bomb.
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10) West Bank Boys Dig a Living From Trash
By STEVEN ERLANGER
September 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/middleeast/02westbank.html?ref=world
AD DEIRAT, West Bank, Aug. 30 — As the truck unloads, the children pounce on the garbage like flies. Some swing aloft on the hydraulic pistons that open the back, then drop onto the mound of trash to grab a piece of metal, a crushed can, a soda bottle or a stinking T-shirt.
One boy slips and disappears for a moment beneath the garbage as the truck lumbers forward to dump more of its load. He scrambles up again, losing his footing on a pile of animal intestines, grabbing onto a thicket of shrubbery cut from someone’s garden.
Another boy finds a small nylon Israeli flag and tries to tear it with his teeth; yet another unearths a small lilac umbrella, which he holds over his head and shows off to his friends. Most dig diligently for metal, which they dump into the ripped nylon sacks they carry.
Nearby, on a hill of garbage 10 feet high, a boy sat alone. He had found a plastic pack of crackers; he chewed them slowly, almost thoughtfully.
The boys are part of a loose-knit colony of scavengers, nearly 250 people who scramble over fetid hills of other people’s trash to eke out a living for their families and themselves. Most are younger than 16; some sleep here during the week to maximize the hours they can hunt for goods to sell. Many are related, from a few large clans, and they have a kind of organization, with a 23-year-old bulldozer driver who settles disputes, and a code of conduct, so that every digger’s finds are respected.
For all the agonizing about nearby Hebron — how far Israel should go to resolve competing Jewish and Palestinian claims to the city — this desolate spot is a symbol of the impact of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and of the dire economic state of the Palestinian territories, where about a third of adults are without work. Many of the adults working the site have been unable to get jobs in Israel since 2000 and the second intifada, when Israel instituted stronger security measures to try to prevent suicide bombings.
This dump has become a lifeline, and informal workplace, for them and for the children helping to support poor families in the southern West Bank. The scene is reminiscent of the third world, of places like Manila’s notorious garbage mountain, but this desperate place is next door to a country with the highest per capita income in the Middle East: Israel.
For the moment, the diggers are disappointed — this truck carries Palestinian garbage, from Hebron. The real treasures, they say, come from the Israeli settlements in this area of the occupied West Bank. It is settler trash that keeps them alive — and, in an odd way, entertained.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, found a pair of angel’s wings, apparently from a costume party or a ballet performance. He wore them upside down but happily, flitting around the dump while the other boys applauded.
His brother, Muhammad, 11, who fancies himself a model from the magazines he salvages, wore a discarded suit, several sizes too large, that appeared to have been from a bar mitzvah. If you wiped away the grime, from both the suit and the boy, he would make a mother proud.
Youssef Rabai, 18, found a bright orange ribbon, the symbol of settler resistance to the Israeli pullout from Gaza, and wound it around his forehead; the ends flopped onto the grimy kaffiyeh around his neck. Asked if he knew what the orange meant, he shrugged. When told, he laughed. “I’m a settler here,” he said.
The dump, formally run by the Hebron municipality, is set in the rocky, dusty hills near the village of Ad Deirat; it is used both by Palestinian cities like Hebron and Yatta and by the Israeli settlements that mark the area, from Kiryat Arba to Karmel and Maon.
On a good day, working here from 5 a.m. until dusk, the boys make about $4.75.
Muhammad Rabai, 23, in salvaged camouflage pants and a dirty baseball cap with the gothic “D” of the Detroit Tigers, is the unacknowledged boss of the dump. He drives the bulldozer here and gets a small city salary, but he and three relatives also salvage trash, trying to feed a family of 25. “It’s a very difficult life,” he said. “But don’t call me the boss. We try to be friends here; we try to be equals.”
Rabah Rabai, from the same large clan, used to work in Israel as a builder, making more than $650 a month, but he can no longer get an entry permit. He is 48, with a grizzly gray beard, an asthma inhaler and thickly scarred arms. He sat in an old Ford tractor, once blue, pulling a small cart.
“It’s our taxi,” he said. “It’s our Jaguar.” He comes every morning before dawn with three children from a village eight miles away. Most of the other children walk, some of them 15 miles, then sleep here in makeshift shacks or blanket tents, before walking home again for the Muslim Sabbath.
He wore a stained cap bearing the symbol of Fatah. He said he found it in the trash. Muhammad Rabai interrupted, saying: “We don’t care for any of them, for Fatah or Hamas. We’re from the party of bread.”
Muhammad al-Ammour, 42, used to work in Israel as a painter, making $35 to $50 a day. Working here with two of his children, he brings home around $12. Most of the income is from scrap metal, sold for 2.2 cents a pound.
“If we don’t work, we can’t live,” he said. “Sad to say, but our life is the garbage. Our future is the garbage.”
Asked if the Palestinian Authority helps them, he laughed. “No one from the authority comes to check on us; no one really cares,” he said. “The Palestinian nation gets aid and help from abroad, but we never see any.”
Like all the men and boys here, only a few of whom have gloves, Mr. Ammour is covered with scars, especially on his hands, arms and legs, from sharp metal and broken glass. Many wear salvaged hats against the sun and scarves to cover their mouths from the fumes and acrid smoke of the nearly nightly fires that burn the picked-over garbage. Many of the boys seem malnourished, with filmy eyes staring from filthy faces.
Last week, Hijazi Rabai, 27, married with four children, died here when his old tractor fell over and crushed him. He was a sheik of his village, and everyone said he had a beautiful voice when he made the call for evening prayer.
“Even people close to me, my relatives, mock and humiliate my family,” Mr. Ammour said. “Whoever works in the garbage is garbage himself, that’s what they think. But some of those people work as spies, collaborators and thieves, but they consider us — the honest workers — less than them.”
Mr. Ammour has eight children. But he is known as Abu Fadi, the father of Fadi, 19, his eldest son, one of triplets.
Fadi, who has the bright green eyes of his clan, is trying to go to college. He has worked here since he was little, he said, along with his father and two brothers. He started college, then quit for lack of money. Now, he is taking courses in the evening, through Al Quds Open University in Yatta, along with his brother Tamer. Everyone in this little world is proud of them.
Halima, their triplet sister, is engaged to a cousin. Their mother, Sabah, 37, said: “She will not get married soon. They need to wait and establish themselves. It will be a long time until they manage to do that.”
The Ammour home in Yatta has two rooms for the family of 10 and no windows, just holes in the walls covered with yellow fabric that does little to block the sun.
The larger room is covered in mattresses. In the smaller room, set carefully on a green, sparkly cloth, is Fadi’s prized possession: a computer, which he patched together from parts salvaged from the dump. With a small boxy screen, and wires showing through cracks in the plastic, it functions.
Fadi, scrubbed clean, set the computer to play some music; his little brother, 5, did a break dance. Then Fadi and Tamer joined in. “You see?” Fadi said, smiling large. “Good things come out of the garbage.”
Reem Makhoul contributed reporting.
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11) Democrats Try to Soften Bush’s Education Law
By SAM DILLON
September 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/washington/01child.html?ref=us
As Congress returns next week, leading Democrats are struggling for the formula that can attract bipartisan support to extend the life of President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. In doing so, they are proposing to ease the pressure on suburban schools.
A draft proposal being floated by Representative George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, would soften many of the law’s accountability provisions while maintaining its overall strategic goal: to bring every student to proficiency by 2014 by requiring states to administer standardized tests and to punish schools where scores do not rise.
The changes, circulated this week by Mr. Miller, a California Democrat, and the committee’s ranking Republican, address the most persistent complaints against the law, by suburban districts, by middle-class parents, by states with large immigrant populations and by teachers unions who are crucial to Democrats’ 2008 electoral fortunes.
For the suburbs, for example, Mr. Miller’s draft would draw a distinction between schools failing across the board and those where only some student groups failed to meet annual testing goals. It would give a nod to teachers’ concerns by allowing states to consider not just annual math and reading scores in deciding whether a school passes muster but other measures, including tests in history, science and civics; graduation rates; and Advanced Placement tests.
For states with many immigrants, it would allow students not fluent in English to be tested in their native language for five years.
But in a sign of the difficult political calculus in extending a measure that has opponents on both the right and the left, for every supporter of the proposed changes there has emerged an opponent. .
Amy Wilkins, vice president of the Education Trust, a rights group, said the authors were succumbing to pressure from “well-financed and ill-informed defenders of the status quo.”
“The heart of the law has been hollowed out,” said Ms. Wilkins, who helped draft the original in 2001.
Michael J. Petrilli, a former Department of Education official who is a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has nicknamed the education committee’s draft “The Suburban Schools Relief Act of 2007” because he says it is intended to appease the middle class.
Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the education secretary, Margaret Spellings, said, “We have serious concerns that the draft creates loopholes in accountability measures, provides fewer options for parents, increases complexity and provides less transparency.”
“We will not support measures that water down the accountability provisions,” Ms. Yudof added.
On the other hand, Edward J. McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “This draft encourages a serious discussion of reauthorization.”
The National Education Association, the other national teachers union, which has been implacably critical of the law, said it would withhold comment on the draft until it finished polling its local delegates.
The House education committee posted the proposals on its Web site this week. Among the most important changes in the draft are those to the law’s accountability system, in which states judge whether schools have made “adequate yearly progress” and can avoid sanctions.
The draft would allow states to look beyond annual test scores and says bluntly that broader criteria “may increase the number of schools that make adequate yearly progress.”
Another change would distinguish schools where only one or two student groups fail to meet annualtesting goals from those where three or more groups fall short. The latter would face more rigorous sanctions; students at the former would no longer be eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools.
That change would be popular in many suburbs, where thousands of schools with sterling local reputations have faced federal sanctions because of one or two low-performing groups, but it has already drawn opposition from the tutoring industry and the Bush administration.
The draft bill would loosen the rules governing the testing of students with limited English, which have provoked disputes between federal officials and educators in some states, by allowing states to test students in their native language for five years, instead of the law’s three years.
“You can see where they’ve tried to satisfy education groups like the teachers unions and the school boards,” said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators.
Both Mr. Miller and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Senate education committee, have promised to draw up bills in September to rework the law. President Bush has repeatedly described the law as a major reform of American education. It passed in 2001 with overwhelming bipartisan support, but last November, dozens of Democrats who campaigned on promises to change the law were elected, and this year, there have already been significant Republican defections.
A bill allowing states to opt out of testing requirements without losing federal money, introduced this year by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, has attracted 50 conservative Republican co-sponsors, including the minority whip, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri.
Several groups have complained about the complexity of the draft proposals. The measures of schools’ academic progress, for instance, would be combined with the math and reading scores under a formula that has left even Department of Education officials puzzled.
[Note to readers: Not one mention of the fact that No Child Left Behind demands that the U.S. Military -- all branches -- get to send two representatives each to schools for the purpose of recruitment every time a college, university, trade or career training school comes to the school to offer their programs to students. It also means th at every time a scholarship is offered to students the military has the right to also have two representatives from each branch--in full dress uniform or fatigues--to offer the military alternative. In San Francisco, while the antiwar movement managed to rid the schools of JROTC, they were unable to prevent a motion to abide by the No Child Left Behind military recruitment policy. So, for instance, at a Career Day at George Washington High School, two recruiters from the United States Army, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy, United States Air Force and United States Coast Guard--10 military recruiters--showed up almost equaling all the rest of the rest together! They were placed all together handing out thousands of dollars worth of whips and jingles--pens, binders, key chains, hats, book covers, etc. and promising only two years of service and then full college benefits, etc.
They don't do very well in San Francisco but not for the want of trying. Now they are pushing the "DREAM Act" (The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) which promises citizenship to undocumented students who serve two years in the military--without getting killed first, of course...bw]
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12) Insights: Racial Disparity Affirmed in Tobacco Advertising
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
August 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/health/28disp.html?ex=1189310400&en=c23aadb005fd3ecf&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Correction Appended
The density of billboards advertising tobacco products is more than twice as high in black neighborhoods as in white, researchers have found in a review of studies.
The studies were selected from an original group of 131 papers if they were peer-reviewed and directly compared protobacco media messages in African-American and Caucasian markets. That left 11 studies of tobacco advertising, 7 of them involving billboards or other signs, and 4 on magazine advertising.
Five of the billboard studies reported enough data to figure out the density of tobacco advertising in different neighborhoods. Pooling this data, the researchers found that there were 4.5 tobacco billboards per 10,000 residents in white areas and 11.8 per 10,000, or 2.6 times the density, in black neighborhoods. The data also showed that a given billboard was 70 percent more likely to advertise tobacco in a black market compared with a white one. The review appears in the September/October issue of Public Health Reports.
“If these populations are more exposed, we should be thinking about making sure that we’re doing extra public health interventions to combat that exposure,” said Dr. Brian A. Primack, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh and the lead author of the review. “A specific method for that kind of intervention is the idea of media literacy — teaching people to consciously evaluate the advertising messages that are all around them.”
Correction: September 1, 2007
A brief report in Science Times on Tuesday about a review of studies of pro-tobacco media messages in black and white neighborhoods, including seven studies involving billboard advertising, omitted the dates for the studies, leaving the impression that the analysis included current outdoor advertising. The studies were conducted from 1985 to 1998; outdoor advertising was banned beginning in 1999.
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13) U.S. Obsessed With Using Force
The Herald (Harare)
OPINION
30 August 2007
Posted to the web 30 August 2007
By Reason Wafawarova
Harare
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200708300301.html
SINCE the United States assumed global leadership from Britain at the end of the Second World War; when it emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the war, a development that saw it declare the era of "the American century", Washington has been obsessed with using force to thwart small countries.
In fact, the US emerged as a superpower that is scared of small countries. While this statement might seem contradictory, political analyses of US behaviour over the past 62 years proves otherwise.
During this period the US, among many other invasions went into Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan.
It also sponsored and armed reactionary rebels in their CIA engineered proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Congo and Nicaragua, to mention just a few countries.
The Americans also led embargo campaigns on Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Zimbabwe.
The US portrays more concerns and worries about the behaviour of small states than it has about its more powerful rivals like India, China or the European Union.
When Ronald Reagan was asked to justify his administration's trade embargo against Nicaragua in 1985 he said, "the policies and actions of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
Does this quotation ring a bell to Zimbabweans?
It should, given that both Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush have almost repeated it verbatim in their attempt to justify the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (2001), a sanctions law that bars multilateral lending institutions, with dealings with the US, from extending lines of credit to Zimbabwe.
It also bars American companies from trading with Zimbabwe.
In 1985, people outside the US questioned how an underdeveloped peasant nation of three million people, as was Nicaragua then, could possibly constitute an "extraordinary threat" to the security of the US, then one of the two most powerful superpowers of the world.
Today, many outside the US still wonder how a largely peasant nation of 13 million people, Zimbabwe, can possibly constitute "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the foreign policy of the US.
This writer says many outside the US would question this kind of thinking because the mainstream US society has often believed its ruling elite whenever it speaks this way. This is precisely because the US and much of the western world; has some of the most indoctrinated and brainwashed people of this world as Noam Chomsky rightly pointed out in the book, Latin America: From Colonisation to Globalisation, 1999.
In 1982, the Reagan administration, through the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went on air to tell the American public that Grenada was a military threat to the US.
The mere fact that this was pronounced indicates the power of indoctrination and brainwashing contained in the two most powerful agents of imperialism, namely, western politicians and their mass media.
The fact that the American public could hear their chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly utter this ludicrous statement without exploding into raucous laughter, was yet another indication of the degree of indoctrination.
This "extraordinary" military threat led to the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and 6 000 American elite troops descended on 40 Cubans and a couple of hundred Grenadine military men, earning themselves a total 8 000 medals for the "valour" that led to this enormous victory. The American media went berserk, spewing euphoric pugnacious and jingoistic sentiments over the vainglorious accomplishment.
Noam Chomsky, in the fore-mentioned book, analysed why the US is so scared of small states, in particular, he evaluated the concepts of US national security and foreign policy.
He says the threat to the security of the US by these oft-quoted small nations is too ludicrous to warrant any discussion, but the threat to US foreign policy is quiet real. Chomsky argues that it is the small, weak states that actually pose the greatest threat to American foreign policy.
This, he says, is the only explanation that can be given for the extraordinary savagery the US has displayed against some of the weakest and most inconsequential countries like Laos and Grenada.
It is like this, the weaker the country, the greater the banditry and savagery. The logic behind this can only be understood in the context of the underlying basis upon which US foreign policy is formulated.
To understand this it may be necessary to revisit what George Kennan, head of the policy planning unit in the US State Department, 1948, said about American foreign policy.
Said Kennan: "We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6,3 percent of its population . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
"We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction . . . We should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation.
The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans the better."
Today, those very "unreal objectives" form the cornerstone of US foreign policy on Zimbabwe, Iraq and Afghanistan, that despite the fact that they remain nothing but "idealistic slogans".
The fundamental principles of American foreign policy and indeed that of all imperialist countries are to ensure what Kennan once called "the protection of our raw materials." One would think that he was referring to raw materials found within the United States but he was actually referring to the raw materials of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Kennan did not bother to explain from whom he intended to have those raw materials protected. The only plausible explanation he could give was that there was need to protect "our raw materials" against the Russians and other "communists". The Russians and communists were the two major factors that frightened the US and western communities the most between 1945 and 1990. Today, the major source of fear among the western communities is terrorism, ostensibly fronted by the face of Al-Quaeda and Osama bin Laden.
The real threats against whom the Americans want to protect "their" resources are indeed the indigenous people who are the bona fide owners of those raw materials. Some of these indigenous people have made the "mistake" of embarking on policies aimed at making indigenous populations use and benefit from their resources.
In the eyes of the US ruling elite, that kind of conspiracy is totally intolerable; for it poses an "unusual and extraordinary threat". It simply has to be stopped.
This kind of conspiracy is what makes little countries like Laos, Grenada, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe so significant as to warrant worldwide headlines in the western media.
The significance is derived from the fact that by embarking on social policies that are welfare based, these small countries may succeed in empowering their own populations and if this leads to successful economic and social development, it may constitute a model for others, thereby having an undesired domino effect.
This is precisely why Henry Kissinger said Salvador Allende's Chile had to be stopped as it stood a dangerously high chance of infecting other countries -- it would be a virus. In other words economic and social development for any other country other than the US and its western allies is a disease that might infect other countries to the detriment of US foreign policy. When they are not calling such development a disease they are calling it a "rotten apple", "rot", or, as they prefer these days, "a rogue state."
The thinking behind the US' savagery on smaller states is that the smaller the state the higher the chance of success for these social policies and therefore the smaller the state the greater the threat of the disease of social and economic development in poor countries. This is precisely why the US wants land reform in Zimbabwe to fail. If it succeeds in a small country like Zimbabwe, what will stop people of the much bigger South Africa from following suit?
Laos, a very small country next to Thailand became a target of US savage attacks in 1958 as the Americans overthrew its democratic government and installed its extremely brutal right-wing dictatorial regime. The small country was to later be a subject of ruthless US aerial attacks.
This was a small poor peasant country made up of isolated peasant villages, inhabited by villagers who hardly knew that there was an outside world until they began to see those bird-like metal things appearing up in the sky and dropping bombs on them.
The question is why would a sophisticated superpower controlling half of the world's wealth destroy the misery field life of a peasant society? Laos committed a grave "crime" under Pathet Lao, a mild revolutionary who led a low-level agrarian reform programme that began to yield results by expanding the health and educational sectors. In the eyes of the American ruling elite, the "stupid" peasants were using raw materials in Laos for their own purposes and such "insolence" had to be stopped.
The US would care nothing if a country like Grenada disappeared from the face of the earth today. It is so small and insignificant in terms of US material interests. Nevertheless, Grenada was invaded in 1983.
The US began to put Grenada on their hostile media radar as soon as Maurice Bishop's government came to power in 1979. The US administration began to demonstrate its extraordinary hostility by cutting off aid, carried out scaring military threats, established an embargo and finally invaded the tiny country in 1983.
Bishop's socialist government could not be allowed to succeed, lest neighbouring countries would follow suit and pose "unusual and extraordinary threats" to the foreign policy of the US.
The Nicaraguan Sandinista programmes created more sorrow than happiness for Nicaragua though they had a successful land reform programme, increased literacy, improved the health delivery system, reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy -- even earning an award from the World Health Organisation. While WHO saw social and economic development, the US ruling elite saw "an unusual and extraordinary threat" since the Sandinistas were "stealing" America's resources for their own purposes. And that is why the US trained, armed, nurtured and partnered the Contras in fighting the Sandinistas.
Of course, eventually the Sandinistas did fall just like Bishop's government in Grenada.
The same threat the Americans saw in Nicaragua, Laos and Grenada were also perceived in Angola, Congo, Ghana and Mozambique.
In Angola, the US sponsored Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebels for more than 20 years. In Congo, they organised the overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba before installing a ruthless dictatorial regime led by Mobutu Sese Seko. In Ghana, they sponsored and organised the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah while in Mozambique they sponsored and trained the murderous Renamo of Afonso Dhlakama.
In all these African countries, the excuse given by the US was that the governments were communist, a development that probably stood more threatening than terrorists in the eyes of the western community during the Cold War era. They even successfully assassinated Samora Machel, the then Mozambican president, in 1986.
Of course, both the US and apartheid South Africa, on whose soil the assassination was carried out, never admitted to any wrongdoing although the US acknowledged that they viewed Machel as the communist point-man in Southern Africa.
This analysis of historical events involving the US should help put into perspective, Washington's sanctions regime against Zimbabwe, which sanctions are supported by the western alliance.
It is an analysis relevant to the course and direction of the Third Chimurenga.
It is an analysis relevant to the relationship between the MDC and its partners in the so-called civic society, and the US led western alliance.
It is also an analysis of Zimbabwe's chances of standing its ground the way Cuba has done since 1958; the way Venezuela has done since 1999, about the same time Zimbabwe embarked on the agrarian reform programme.
The reality behind the US led western alliance's relationship with the Government as well as its opposition has nothing to do with the rhetoric of human rights, rule of law, democracy or freedom -- tenets the US generally views as idealistic slogans.
In fact the US, like any other imperial power, regards rule of law as a slogan to be used for three purposes, according to Chomsky.
Firstly, it is a slogan to pacify the domestic populations in the imperialists' own backyard. Secondly, it is a slogan so effectively used to denounce official enemies of the US's ruling elite.
Thirdly, it is a last resort in dealing with problems where all other covert means have proved ineffective. This is the extent to which the US and its western allies are committed to the doctrine of the rule of law, otherwise, apart from those three concerns all imperialists are sworn to the Rule of Force. It is high time all Zimbabweans reflected on and saw the real challenge before us in its perspective and decide the best way out of the prevailing challenges.
The US acts in the knowledge that it reversed agrarian reforms and installed puppet regimes in many countries and we, Zimbabweans, act in the knowledge that we have freed ourselves from foreign domination before and some agrarian reform programmes have succeeded elsewhere.
We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer
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14) Resolution passed by Washington State Labor Council
RESOLUTION ON IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
From: Carole Seligman
caroleseligman@sbcglobal.net
Resolution #5
WHEREAS, all of us who work for a living, regardless of country or region of origin, are dependent on job opportunities; and
WHEREAS, we are all dependent on each other to make our communities safe, enjoyable places in which to live and raise our children; and
WHEREAS, it is not the fault of any worker if there is an inadequate supply of living wage jobs in a community, region or nation; and
WHEREAS, immigrant workers across the country are waging heroic organizing campaigns to demand opportunities to make a living and live in such communities; and
WHEREAS, free trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA have opened the borders to the unfettered movement of corporations in search of profits while simultaneously depriving workers on both sides of the border of opportunities to make a living and increasing poverty, crime, drug abuse, and social unrest; and
WHEREAS, unrealistic and restrictive immigration policies combined with the effects of U.S. foreign policy and trade policy have helped create waves of political and economic refugees and a subsequent increase in undocumented workers in the United States; and
WHEREAS, a general atmosphere of racist scapegoating is being used to blame immigrants for joblessness and low wages while corporations plunder the globe causing poverty, unemployment, ecological catastrophes and wars, which drive immigrants to flee their homelands; and
WHEREAS, the 1996 Immigration Law militarized the border, increasing the repressive power of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, formerly known as the INS) and resulting in a rise of deaths and deportations of undocumented immigrants; and
WHEREAS, in December 2005 the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would make felons of the country‚s eleven million undocumented immigrants and anyone who assists them; and
WHEREAS, the equally racist „guest worker‰ bills in the Senate are designed to control the immigrant „threat‰ by new bracero programs that amount to indentured servitude, and by pouring millions of dollars into expanded militarization of the border; and
WHEREAS, while granting a pathway to citizenship is a necessity to protect the rights of current immigrants, only demilitarization of the border and comprehensive immigration reform will protect future immigrants from being exploited and criminalized; and
WHEREAS, in the streets and the schools across the country, immigrants and their defenders are rising up in protest movements against repressive laws, and demanding comprehensive reform, with profound potential to better the lives of all working people in the U.S.; and
WHEREAS, since the year 2000 the AFL-CIO has called for comprehensive immigration reform, which has included numerous town-hall meetings around the country, the Immigrant Workers‚ Freedom Ride, and extensive lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform; and
WHEREAS, the President of the United States and Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform this past Spring and instead got caught up in some very conservative anti-immigrant worker rhetoric, border security issues and an attempt by some to greatly expand unregulated guest worker programs (H2B programs) to the grocery, transportation, construction and service industries, which would have created real jeopardy for U.S. workers in these industries; and
WHEREAS, the Bush Administration‚s immigration policy is now devolving to one of using Social Security no-match letters to carry out mass workplace raids and deportations of immigrant workers, disrupting families, communities and local economies across the United States, furthering employment discrimination against immigrant workers and forcing more workers into the unregulated underground economy; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, that the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) work to repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, and the 1996 Immigration Law, and to defeat the regressive immigrant legislation pending before Congress, including the Hagel-Martinez bill, or any other bill which would institute guest worker programs that would displace local workers and/or put immigrant workers and their families at the mercy of employers; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the WSLC demand the billions of dollars being spent on the apprehension, detention, deportation and other immigrant enforcement activities be diverted to create living wage jobs and expand social programs in the U.S. and in other countries negatively impacted by „free trade‰ policies, thereby lessening the reasons for immigration; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, go on record supporting the four principles of comprehensive immigration reform as articulated during the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride that calls for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrant workers, an immigration policy that upholds family reunification, equal protection of workers‚ rights regardless of immigration status, and full civil liberty protections for immigrant workers; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the WSLC demand the Bush Administration drop all charges against humanitarian workers for providing aid to immigrants; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the WSLC shall call for an end to all ICE raids and deportations, including those based on Social Security no-match letters, and take the following actions; 1) work with immigrant rights groups to expose and stop ICE raids; 2) condemn ICE raids as racist and union-busting, and help organize protests to demand that immigrants are not punished, exploited or denied labor protections as a result of their undocumented status; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the WSLC shall forward this resolution to the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) for adoption and ask that our labor halls will be a sanctuary for immigrant workers facing persecution from ICE; and, be it further
RESOLVED, that the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, convey the above statement of principles to the President of the United States, the Governor of Washington State, and to Washington State‚s Congressional Delegation; and, be it finally
RESOLVED, that the WSLC begin networking with immigrant and community organizations to support and help build this growing workers‚ movement and to expand and initiate campaigns to organize immigrant workers into unions.
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15) The War as We Saw It
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS;
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY AND JEREMY A. MURPHY
August 19, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F5071EFC385A0C7A8DDDA10894DF404482#
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the ''battle space'' remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a ''time-sensitive target acquisition mission'' on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse -- namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made -- de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government -- places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict -- as we do now -- will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. ''Lucky'' Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, ''We need security, not free food.''
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
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16) Snow Job in the Desert
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
September 3, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/opinion/03krugmancolumn.html?hp
In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the United Nations Security Council, claimed to have proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He did not, in fact, present any actual evidence, just pictures of buildings with big arrows pointing at them saying things like “Chemical Munitions Bunker.” But many people in the political and media establishments swooned: they admired Mr. Powell, and because he said it, they believed it.
Mr. Powell’s masters got the war they wanted, and it soon became apparent that none of his assertions had been true.
Until recently I assumed that the failure to find W.M.D., followed by years of false claims of progress in Iraq, would make a repeat of the snow job that sold the war impossible. But I was wrong. The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the “surge” is succeeding, even though there’s not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is.
Thus Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution — the author of “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” — and his colleague Michael O’Hanlon, another longtime war booster, returned from a Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq and declared that the surge was working. They received enormous media coverage; most of that coverage accepted their ludicrous self-description as critics of the war who have been convinced by new evidence.
A third participant in the same tour, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reported that unlike his traveling companions, he saw little change in the Iraq situation and “did not see success for the strategy that President Bush announced in January.” But neither his dissent nor a courageous rebuttal of Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack by seven soldiers actually serving in Iraq, published in The New York Times, received much media attention.
Meanwhile, many news organizations have come out with misleading reports suggesting a sharp drop in U.S. casualties. The reality is that this year, as in previous years, there have been month-to-month fluctuations that tell us little: for example, July 2006 was a low-casualty month, with only 43 U.S. military fatalities, but it was also a month in which the Iraqi situation continued to deteriorate. And so far, every month of 2007 has seen more U.S. military fatalities than the same month in 2006.
What about civilian casualties? The Pentagon says they’re down, but it has neither released its numbers nor explained how they’re calculated. According to a draft report from the Government Accountability Office, which was leaked to the press because officials were afraid the office would be pressured into changing the report’s conclusions, U.S. government agencies “differ” on whether sectarian violence has been reduced. And independent attempts by news agencies to estimate civilian deaths from news reports, hospital records and other sources have not found any significant decline.
Now, there are parts of Baghdad where civilian deaths probably have fallen — but that’s not necessarily good news. “Some military officers,” reports Leila Fadel of McClatchy, “believe that it may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren’t as many people to kill.”
Above all, we should remember that the whole point of the surge was to create space for political progress in Iraq. And neither that leaked G.A.O. report nor the recent National Intelligence Estimate found any political progress worth mentioning. There has been no hint of sectarian reconciliation, and the Iraqi government, according to yet another leaked U.S. government report, is completely riddled with corruption.
But, say the usual suspects, General Petraeus is a fine, upstanding officer who wouldn’t participate in a campaign of deception — apparently forgetting that they said the same thing about Mr. Powell.
First of all, General Petraeus is now identified with the surge; if it fails, he fails. He has every incentive to find a way to keep it going, in the hope that somehow he can pull off something he can call success.
And General Petraeus’s history also suggests that he is much more of a political, and indeed partisan, animal than his press would have you believe. In particular, six weeks before the 2004 presidential election, General Petraeus published an op-ed article in The Washington Post in which he claimed — wrongly, of course — that there had been “tangible progress” in Iraq, and that “momentum has gathered in recent months.”
Is it normal for serving military officers to publish articles just before an election that clearly help an incumbent’s campaign? I don’t think so.
So here we go again. It appears that many influential people in this country have learned nothing from the last five years. And those who cannot learn from history are, indeed, doomed to repeat it.
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17) Prison Medical Crisis Worsens - An Urgent Call to Rally in Sacramento
Dr. B. Cayenne Bird
September 2, 2007
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=36577
The animal rights people would never allow abuse to happen to a chicken to the degree that people in California's prisons are suffering right now. As Americans, it is our choice whether we prefer to rally for animals or for the mostly mentally and medically ill people who are locked in cages in our name.
The caring about issues, people, and laws begins with each one of us, for if we do are too apathetic to raise cane with those in elected office, then who else will care, or even know the dangerous conditions that are taking place which affect every member of society, not just the outcasts? If not you, then who? If not now, when?
I have too many reports of suffering and dying inmates whose families are getting no help at all from any bureaucrat in power. They are akin to lambs to slaughter and cannot fathom how people could be so cruel as to deny medical care, information and access to their loved ones in what is often their final days. It is for this reason that I am calling out to everyone with a loved one who is incarcerated in prison or whose loved one works in a prison in any capacity to rally NOW. Please show up here with as many people as you can find.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Sacramento Capitol,
North Side of the building, facing L Street
9 a.m.
The legislators need to see that there are people who care about the prisoners as several critical bills are about to land on the Governor's desk that could ease the preventable suffering taking place at the hands of lawmakers elected by law enforcement labor unions who could care less about the inhumane conditions.
The lawmakers are trying to end this year's business by September 12. There was no other day that I could get a permit but when I saw the MRSA outbreak at Old Folsom, even though I am very busy with responsibilities at the college, I knew that I had to call an emergency rally since this potentially fatal bacteria is most likely everywhere by now. No one would know it due to the media ban. This notice is short so everyone needs to load up their cars and bring people if we are to have a prayer of being heard. A "voice" happens only when there are 500 or more people standing beneath the lawmakers' windows in support of bills that would instantly bring relief to thousands of prisoners and their families. They must see you to respect you, otherwise the assumption is that you are happy with everything. Silence is consent in a democracy and if we choose to be silent right now, more lives will predictably be lost, more families unnecessarily destroyed as the lawmakers climbing to fame on the backs of the poor.
No one is going to rescue us except ourselves through the actions that we take as many individuals united and appearing as a large enough crowd. Individuals do not matter in Sacramento. Only large, funded, groups of writing, suing, voting, protesting citizens who make a lot of noise at the right time for the right bills matter. If you have any doubt about how low lawmakers and prison officials are willing to stoop to hold inmates until their last dying breath even people who didn't have a death sentence, just come to listen to some of the desperate families who will be there to share current experiences with you about their total lack of voice. I assure you that it will be an unforgettable experience.
Please go to this web page, hit print and distribute the rally flyer widely in the prison line-ups this labor day week end, and via email, which is the last chance you have to get out the word to those less educated about what this all means before the medical crisis hits you or someone you know.
http://www.1union1.com/rally_flyer_sept7.html
Everyone in prison reform assumes our UNION will take care of all the problems. There is no doubt we have made a huge difference in getting the current reforms on the table through years of advocacy work, including the 28 lawsuits filed by our families for mostly wrongful deaths. However, we are only as strong as the NUMBER of people who write to editors and show up to Calls to Action.
The prisoners have no one else that cares about them enough to take real action in Sacramento where the war is located in masse except for us. For the past decade, there have only been two other rallies coordinated by someone else that cried out on the inmate's behalf. Both were within the past year and both were small since everyone thinks someone else is going to do their share of the fighting for survival in this crisis, which is a wrong notion that delays the reforms. Crowds are necessary to get attention to the problems and it is a provable fact that there is not one group that can or will call medical emergency rallies on behalf of prisoners except us.
Our UNION has consistently organized rallies at the Capitol and at several prisons since 1998 but only when conditions get too extreme. Our success to draw enough people to be heard on the issues is often diminished by divide-and-conquer agents who do not want media attention to be drawn to the deliberate causes of the problems. The message here is that nothing should be more important for you to do this coming Friday than to help prove that you, an intelligent voter, is indignant over continued neglect, maltreatment of the mentally ill, illegal use of SHU confinement and epidemics raging out of control.
You are the one needed to stand with others of a like mind beneath the windows of lawmakers who represent only the law enforcement agencies that put them into office to do their bidding to support the creation of a sentencing commission, even though the passage of the current bills won't make a difference until 2012. You are the person who is needed to notify and bring others that without enough voices, the Governor will not be influenced to sign the critical bills. It's only about the number of voters with the most dollars that bills are passed or not.
Please do not assume that on this short notice of an emergency that the UNION families who are as broke and broken as everyone else can all by themselves bring the size of the crowd it requires to see that there is a voting block who supports compassionate release, a sentencing commission and a prison cap. The legislators and media do not cover emergency rallies unless the crowd is large, and you are needed to make sure that happens, one car load at a time regardless of whether or not you are a UNION member or just participating in some email group that never even tries to be heard, even in life and death circumstances such as those we are all faced with now.
Here are some of the reasons I feel compelled to call everyone to attend this emergency rally around these human rights abuses which are way out of hand at a time when conditions should be getting better and not worse. When the crisis is on your own doorstep, it's too late to rally together to save yourself or a loved one.
One man at Salinas Valley Prison is facing amputation of his feet due to mismanaged diabetes within that prison and yet his family has not been allowed to visit him for five years, since he began to deteriorate. I cannot imagine anyone being in the predatory environment of prison with no feet. There is no excuse for not allowing his family to visit him during this nightmare probably caused by a system that routinely refuses to take care of diabetic prisoners, a pattern that I've witnessed many times over the past decade of reading letters from 33 prisons. The separation of families from their loved ones if they go into any sort of infirmary or outside hospital is cruel to everyone connected and we need to speak out strongly about this horrible practice.
The family of Jamel Walker, who was shot by a prison guard during the Susanville riot at High Desert Prison, was never even notified of the incident or his subsequent hospitalization. They are all still being denied visits to him, even though Walker's injuries are reportedly so serious from the "rubber bullet" that he may permanently lose the use of his leg. Walker's family members were notified of his injury via an inmate who called. His anxious mother reports that to this day, no one from the prison will give them any information or allow them access to visit him. This happens too often to be an isolated case of callousness, it's cover up and protecting themselves from legal exposure. There are grave questions about why this shooting was not reported right away.
In another case, the State does not have the ability to give Mark Grangetto the medical care that he needs, they refuse to put him in a long term care facility or to release him to his mother who has the financial means to pay for the treatment he needs. Rather than continue to watch her son suffering without proper medical care and barely hanging on in great pain, Nora Weber has asked that all forced medications be halted so that her son's torture of denied medical care will come to an end. It is simply outrageous that Hanford Judge LaPorte caved into special interests instead of getting Mark Grangetto the medical care that he needs. It is unfathomable that Judge LaPorte would not allow the trial to go forward when I witnessed solid documentation of ongoing abuse and neglect that one would never imagine could take place in an American prison, yet it continues. Nora Weber will be one of the speakers at the rally to tell this story in person.
Additionally, I was floored to see headlines screaming throughout California this week about an outbreak of MRSA at Old Folsom Prison. MRSA, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacteria which is right up there with Meningitis in seriousness, was reported to the health department in April, 2007 and had already infected a number of prisoners, medical workers and staff. Why in God's name did the families of the prisoners who contracted it never report it to the media so that lives could be saved and more infections prevented?
We know why the prison guards union CCPOA and the medical workers would want to keep something like this quiet. The current existence of a medical crisis so great that there are several life-threatening epidemics taking place in prisons such as Hepatitis, TB, AIDS and MRSA is one of the reasons why people do not want to work as nurses and guards. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCr) because rehab is non-existent, cannot have this type of news reaching the voters when empire-building is taking place for political reasons, which always trumps the importance of saving lives.
But for the family members of at least 40 prisoners who have contracted MRSA not to have made even one telephone call to alert the media that a deadly, volatile epidemic was flying under their radar just bewilders me beyond description.
We saw the Norovirus infect approximately 1500 prisoners in less than two weeks last summer, one of the many preventable filth diseases that are considered business as usual by the State and even Robert Sillen, the federal receiver. With the news media shut out of the prisons and the families not having the compassion for their loved ones and/or the common sense to notify the journalists to report cases, nobody can really tell how far it has already spread throughout the system and even via transfers to out-of-state prisons.
My educated guess is that since MRSA has also been spreading like wildfire at the jail levels, that people at every facility are already infected. 8500 cases have already been traced to the Los Angeles County Jail alone since 2002. I have always reiterated that knowledge is power, but today knowledge can mean survival of your loved one who lives, works or even visits prisons or jails. Please go to these links, read and print off some basic survival information and mail the information into at least one prisoner. We are all connected so whatever takes place behind the walls leaks out to the public.
http://www.tpchd.org/files/library/2357adf2a147d1aa.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a4.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/aresist/mrsa.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815163226.htm
There is much more to write about as the rally draws nearer, but I wanted to give you a chance to fight back by distributing the flyer at all the prisons and spreading the word to inmates to send their family members to show up on their behalf.
The prisoners cannot fight for themselves without terrible consequences. They have only the vote and the strong will of their family members to save them. Too many people are in denial until disaster hits their own loved one. I doubt that we will see the present bills on the table for consideration in the future.
Typically the legislators are not in their offices on Fridays but the risk of veto is more likely to come from the Governor and they all see what is in the media. Writing to legislators is almost a total waste of time, as it is not unusual for them to get 8,000 or more letters a day from other voters. They read the newspapers, and the newspapers respond to large crowds of voters who have problems with taxpayer-financed institutions. That's how it all works, but not without your active presence and participation, especially with short notice and in an emergency.
The California nurses will be speaking at the rally about their risks, the mother of Timothy Souders is flying out after her mentally ill son was killed in prison and the video was shown twice this year on 60 Minutes. UNION family members will describe their experiences and issue pleas for help and support via speechettes and they deserve an audience, they deserve for you to be there and to bring others to help us make An Urgent Call for Compassion and Common Sense in Corrections
Prisoners are People Not Political Pawns - Epidemics Are Spreading Everywhere
Rev. B. Cayenne Bird
UNION,
P.O. Box 340371
Sacramento, Ca. 95834
rightor1@yahoo.com
Subscribe to the Daily Newsletter so you can help to win reform
check the alerts page for ride information and rally updates
www.1union1.com/alerts.html
if you have a ride or need a ride email Stephanie Gooding at uniondatabase@aol.com
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18) City as Predator
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 4, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/opinion/04herbert.html?hp
Las Vegas
There is probably no city in America where women are treated worse than in Las Vegas.
The tone of systematic, institutionalized degradation is set by the mayor, Oscar Goodman, who told me in an interview that the city would reap “tremendous” benefits if a series of “magnificent brothels” could be established to cater to johns from across the country and around the world.
“I’ve said there should be the beginning of a discussion of that,” said Mr. Goodman, a former defense lawyer for mobsters who unabashedly describes his city as an adult playground where “anything goes — as long as you don’t go over the line.”
Most of the lines in Vegas have long since been erased. It is without a doubt, as the psychologist and researcher Melissa Farley, says, “the epicenter of North American prostitution and sex trafficking.”
Vegas is a place where women and girls by the tens of thousands are chewed up by the vast and astonishingly open sex trade. You can be sitting at a traffic light and a huge mobile billboard will drive past, promising, “Hot Babes — Direct to Your Room.”
I was drawn to this story by an advance copy of Ms. Farley’s book-length report, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections.” It’s being published online today.
The report explores what Oscar Goodman doesn’t appear to understand: the horrendous toll that prostitution, legal or illegal, takes on the women and girls involved. If you peel back the thin, supposedly sexy veneer of the commercial sex trade, you’ll quickly see the rotten inside, where females are bought, sold, raped, beaten, shamed and in many, many cases, physically and emotionally wrecked.
Start with the fact that so many of those who are pulled into the trade are so young — early-20s, late-teens and younger. Child prostitutes by the hundreds pass through the Family Division courtroom of Judge William Voy, who views the hapless, vulnerable girls as victims and tries to help them. The girls he sees are as young as 12, with the average age being 14.
He told me about a 14-year-old who was seven months pregnant by her pimp. She was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease, had a drug problem, was undernourished and still craved a relationship with the pimp. “These cases will tear your heart out,” the judge said.
Ms. Farley was asked to study the Nevada sex trade and its consequences 2 ½ years ago by John Miller, who at the time headed the U.S. State Department’s effort to fight human trafficking around the world. Prostitution is legal in some parts of Nevada but not in Vegas, where 90 percent of the state’s prostitution occurs. Vegas is a world-class embarrassment to any U.S. official attempting to reduce prostitution and trafficking in foreign countries.
“We did surveys of people on the street,” said Ms. Farley, “and nearly half thought prostitution was legal in Las Vegas. Guess why that is? Massive advertising.”
There are more than 150 pages of ads in the Las Vegas yellow pages for “college teens,” “mature women,” “mothers and daughters,” “petite Japanese women,” “Chinese teens in short skirts” and every other variation imaginable. I asked Mayor Goodman about that, and he said: “We’ve changed that a little bit. They used to have pictures.”
Sex clubs with teenage girls dancing nude and offering lap dances to johns are legal, ubiquitous and widely advertised. Many of those girls are either prostitutes or one short step away.
What is not widely understood is how coercive all aspects of the sex trade are. The average age of entry into prostitution is extremely young. The prostitutes are ruthlessly controlled by pimps, club owners and traffickers. In the case of legal prostitution, they are controlled by their own pimps and the brothel owners — pimps who have been legalized by the state.
The women are exploited in every way. Most of the money they receive from johns goes to the pimps, the brothel owners, the escort service managers and so forth. Strippers and lap dancers have to pay for the right to dance in the clubs, and the money they get in tips has to be shared with the club owners, bartenders, bouncers, etc.
Huge numbers of foreign women are trafficked into Vegas. The legions of Asian women in the massage parlors and escort services did not come flocking to Vegas from suburban U.S.A.
Mayor Goodman said that he is no fan of illegal prostitution, but is convinced the legal variety could be a boon. He is proud of his city’s tourist slogan: “What happens here, stays here.”
Back in the ’90s, Las Vegas tried hard to promote a family-friendly image.
“That ended when I became mayor,” said Mr. Goodman.
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19) Strike Shuts Most of London’s Subway
By SARAH LYALL
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/world/europe/04london.html?ref=world
LONDON, Sept. 3 — London’s subway network virtually shut down at the height of the rush hour on Monday evening when 2,300 maintenance workers walked off the job in what they said would be a three-day strike over pensions and security.
Transportation officials then closed nine subway lines, the bulk of the system. They said it was too dangerous to keep the network going without the workers, who are responsible for maintaining and repairing tracks, signals, trains and the like. Just three lines — the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, which are maintained by workers who belong to another union — were operating Monday night.
Commuters across London left work early in a rush to make it home before 6 p.m., when the strike began. Commuters arriving later found that their stations were locked or — in those stations still operating — that signs had been put up explaining that most of the lines had stopped operating.
Transport for London, the local agency that runs the subway system, predicted that the strike would cause “massive disruptions for millions of Londoners” and urged passengers to seek “alternative routes” — a difficult proposition in a city as large, sprawling and choked with road traffic as London.
The maintenance workers say that if their demands are not met, they will remain off work for three days, and strike again for another three-day stretch next week.
Adding to the general feeling of annoyance, the mayor, Ken Livingstone, said motorists driving into central London during business hours would still have to pay the congestion charge of 8 pounds a day, or more than $16, during the strike.
The strike has its roots in the debacle of Metronet, the company hired to carry out a more than $34 billion, 30-year program to refurbish and modernize the old and rundown Underground system. But the cost has been spinning out of control: one estimate said the program would be more than $4 billion over budget by 2010.
Metronet — part of a partnership that uses private-sector money to finance public projects — declared bankruptcy in July, saying it could not raise the money it needed, and went into receivership, known here as administration.
Transport for London, which is paying for the refurbishment program for the time being, maintains that mismanagement allowed costs to run out of control.
The striking workers, who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, are Metronet employees and are seeking job and pension security despite the demise of the company.
“We said from the start that our members were not prepared to pay for the collapse of Metronet with their jobs and pensions, and that remains the bottom line,” Bob Crow, general secretary of the union, said in a statement.
Transport for London said it had gone as far as it could in giving the workers what they wanted. “The administrator and Metronet have made clear that there will be no job cuts, no transfers and that pensions will be fully protected while the company is in administration,” a spokesman said, with the customary condition of anonymity.
But a spokesman for the union said the Metronet administrator’s offer was not good enough. “The period of administration could last a couple of months or a couple of years,” the spokesman said in an interview. “We haven’t had the unequivocal guarantees we’re seeking.”
Another union with 500 maintenance workers involved in the dispute, Unite, said it was satisfied with the Metronet administrator’s offer and had decided not to go on strike. A statement from Brian Harris, the union’s regional officer, also said, “We have received assurances on our members’ pensions now and into the future.”
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20) Bipolar Illness Soars as a Diagnosis for the Young
By BENEDICT CAREY
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/health/04psych.html?ref=us
The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, researchers report today in the most comprehensive study of the controversial diagnosis.
Experts say the number has almost certainly risen further since 2003.
Many experts theorize that the jump reflects that doctors are more aggressively applying the diagnosis to children, and not that the incidence of the disorder has increased.
But the magnitude of the increase surprises many psychiatrists. They say it is likely to intensify the debate over the validity of the diagnosis, which has shaken child psychiatry.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by extreme mood swings. Until relatively recently, it was thought to emerge almost exclusively in adulthood. But in the 1990s, psychiatrists began looking more closely for symptoms in younger patients.
Some experts say greater awareness, reflected in the increasing diagnoses, is letting youngsters with the disorder obtain the treatment they need.
Other experts say bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed. The term, the critics say, has become a catchall applied to almost any explosive, aggressive child.
After children are classified, the experts add, they are treated with powerful psychiatric drugs that have few proven benefits in children and potentially serious side effects like rapid weight gain.
In the study, researchers from New York, Maryland and Madrid analyzed a National Center for Health Statistics survey of office visits that focused on doctors in private or group practices. The researchers calculated the number of visits in which doctors recorded diagnoses of bipolar disorder and found that they increased, from 20,000 in 1994 to 800,000 in 2003, about 1 percent of the population under age 20.
The spread of the diagnosis is a boon to drug makers, some psychiatrists point out, because treatments typically include medications that can be three to five times more expensive than those for other disorders like depression or anxiety.
“I think the increase shows that the field is maturing when it comes to recognizing pediatric bipolar disorder, but the tremendous controversy reflects the fact that we haven’t matured enough,” said Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.
“From a developmental point of view,” Dr. March said, “we simply don’t know how accurately we can diagnose bipolar disorder or whether those diagnosed at age 5 or 6 or 7 will grow up to be adults with the illness. The label may or may not reflect reality.”
Most children who qualify for the diagnosis do not proceed to develop the classic features of adult bipolar disorder like mania, researchers have found. They are far more likely to become depressed.
Dr. Mani Pavuluri, director of the pediatric mood disorders program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the label was often better than any of the other diagnoses often given to difficult children.
“These are kids that have rage, anger, bubbling emotions that are just intolerable for them,” Dr. Pavuluri said, “and it is good that this is finally being recognized as part of a single disorder.”
The senior author of the study, Dr. Mark Olfson of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at the Columbia University Medical Center, said, “I have been studying trends in mental health services for some time, and this finding really stands out as one of the most striking increases in this short a time.”
The increase makes bipolar disorder more common among children than clinical depression, the authors said. Psychiatrists made almost 90 percent of the diagnoses, and two-thirds of the young patients were boys, said the study, published in the September issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.
About half the patients were identified as having other mental difficulties, mostly attention deficit disorder.
The children’s treatments almost always included medication. About half received antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal from Janssen or Seroquel from Astrazeneca, both developed to treat schizophrenia.
A third were prescribed so-called mood stabilizers, most often the epilepsy drug Depakote. Antidepressants and stimulants were also common.
Most children took a combination of two or more drugs, and 4 in 10 received psychotherapy.
The regimens were similar to those of a group of adults with bipolar diagnoses, the study found.
“You get the sense looking at the data that doctors are generalizing from the adult literature and applying the same principles to children,” Dr. Olfson said.
The increased children’s diagnoses reflect several factors, experts say. Symptoms appear earlier in life than previously thought, in teenagers and young children who later develop the full-scale disorder, recent studies suggest.
The label also gives doctors and desperate parents a quick way to try to manage children’s rages and outbursts in an era when long-term psychotherapy and hospital care are less accessible, they say.
In addition, drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for the disorder since several drugs were approved to treat it in adults.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of the medications, Risperdal, to treat bipolar in children. Experts say they expect that move will increase the use of Risperdal and similar drugs for young people.
“We are just inundated with stuff from drug companies, publications, throwaways, that tell us six ways from Sunday that, Oh my God, we’re missing bipolar,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine on Long Island. “And if you’re a parent with a difficult child, you go online, and there’s a Web site for bipolar, and you think: ‘Thank God, I’ve found a diagnosis. I’ve found a home.’ ”
Some parents whose children have received the diagnosis say that, with time, the label led to effective treatment.
“It’s been a godsend for us,” said Kelly Simons of Montrose, Colo., whose son Brit, 15, was prone to angry outbursts until given a combination of lithium, a mood stabilizer, and Risperdal, which was often given to children “off label,” several years ago. He now takes just lithium and is an honor roll student.
Other parents say their children have suffered side effects of drugs for bipolar disorder.
Ashley Ocampo, 40, of Tallahassee, Fla., whose 8-year-old son is being treated for bipolar, said that he had tried several antipsychotic drugs and mood stabilizers and that he had improved.
“He has gained weight,” Ms. Ocampo said, “to the point where we were struggling find clothes for him. He’s had tremors and still has some fine motor problems that he’s getting therapy for. But he’s a fabulous kid. And I think, I hope, that we’re close to finding the right combination of medications to help him.”
Related:
A Child's Death Has Raised Questions About Diagnosing And
Treating Bipolar Children
May 3, 2007) -- (CBS)
http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Bipolar/news_2007/children_06.asp
Study: Surge In Bipolar Diagnoses In Kids
CHICAGO, Sept. 3, 2007(CBS/AP)
"Researchers looked at the number of times children under 19 went to the doctor and were diagnosed with or treated for bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. They found a 40-fold increase, from an estimated 20,000 visits in 1994 to 800,000 in 2003. The jump coincided with children's rising use of antipsychotic medicine."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/03/health/main3229226.shtml
Healthcare for Profit is Sicko
By Bonnie Weinstein
"Few stories exposed the sickness of medical care under capitalism than a story entitled, “Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts,” by Gardner Harris, which appeared in the June 27, 2007 issue of the New York Times. This could have been part of the script of Michael Moore’s new documentary film, “Sicko.”
This article points out that not only do most doctors accept payments from drug companies for prescribing medications, but, “...a pattern has emerged: Psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty.” And further, “...the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved,” proving that in the U.S., the Hippocratic Oath has been abandoned and the almighty dollar rules."
July/August 2007
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_07/julaug_07_11.html
Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts
By GARDINER HARRIS
June 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/health/psychology/27doctors.html?ex=1189051200&en=83f83d1242f7c99f&ei=5070
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21) A Challenge to New York City’s Homeless Policy
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/nyregion/04homeless.html?ref=nyregion
A score of families gather daily in the courtyard of a city office in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. The parents spend time chatting at the picnic tables while children play tag on a few patches of grass. The scene is gentle. But it poses a growing challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s strategy for reducing homelessness.
Each of the families first came here to apply for a place in the city’s homeless shelters, a first step toward getting housing subsidies. They have all been evaluated and told they do not qualify because they have homes they can return to — most often the crowded apartments of relatives.
That was supposed to be the end of the story. But these families have not taken no for an answer. Instead, after the office stops taking shelter applications at 5 p.m., they stay and ask the after-hours staff for emergency shelter, which the city says is for families in a one-time crisis only.
Then sometime between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., they and their children take all their belongings — shopping carts and strollers laden with televisions, toothpaste, fans — to board buses for a city shelter. Sometimes they are taken to a shelter in the Bronx; sometimes they go to Brooklyn or Queens. It is different every night.
They unpack, shower and sleep until 6 a.m., when they are awakened by the shelter staff. At 7 they are bused back to the city office in the Bronx, where they wait in the courtyard until the office closes at 5 p.m. and their nightly routine begins again.
It is a brutal existence.
Until recently the number of families willing to undergo such hardship was small. Officials say that families were given emergency late-night shelter, and did not reapply during office hours the next day, fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006.
But the number erupted over the summer. In July, such families checked in for emergency overnight stays nearly 800 times. City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps dozens, stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer.
Some much, much longer.
Liset DeJesus says that she and her husband and two daughters, with the Bronx center their base, have been moving from shelter to shelter every night since June. She says that the girls, who are 10 and 15, have been out of school for a year.
Victor Pellot, who says he gets a military pension for an injured shoulder, says he and his son, 14, have been living this way for seven months.
The families say they have no choice, nowhere else to go.
City officials view the tenacity of these families with alarm. They say these are largely families who do not want to return to overcrowded situations, like doubling up in relatives’ apartments, that are less than ideal, but adequate.
And they worry that the families are reinforcing one another’s behavior in defying the city’s rules, and undermining the reforms made in recent years to make the shelter assignment process faster and less subject to abuse.
So serious are these concerns that the officials are considering denying even a single overnight shelter stay to families who have been evaluated repeatedly and told to return to the homes of relatives or friends.
“We cannot allow this subculture of ineligible families to cast a shadow on the entire process,” said Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of homeless services. “We need to get to the point where ‘no’ really means no.”
The question of who is really homeless has been an issue since 1986, when a state court ruled that the city is required to provide free shelter to needy families.
For a while, the city essentially took in all people who sought lodging at homeless shelters. Then, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the city began a 10-day review of applicant families.
Although the city found that many families could return to their relatives, many of the rejected families were simply allowed to reapply and stay in a shelter for a 10-day grace period.
One-night-only placements existed, but usually only while families were in the application phase of the cycle, which could last two or three days.
The entire process was revised under Mayor Bloomberg. The city opened a new intake center at the end of 2004, with new procedures for applying.
Long processing times were reduced by three-fourths, and social services assistance for families found ineligible for shelter, including counseling and one-time rent aid, was offered.
Finally, in the fall of 2005, the city won the explicit right from the court and from the state to deny shelter to families who had been through the application process and found to have a suitable alternative.
The city has been tentative in exercising the new right, recognizing that it could cause a public relations debacle. But with record numbers of families filling the shelter system, more than 28,000 people at last count, city officials say they are forced to separate the miserably overcrowded from those in dire need.
“Overwhelmingly these are young moms who don’t like being doubled up,” Mr. Hess said. “They are using staff and other resources that are slowing the whole system down, and it could have a very detrimental effect on families truly in need. We can’t allow that to happen.”
Advocates for the homeless see it differently. They believe that the city’s evaluation process is still rife with errors. They point to the hundreds of families who have been found eligible for permanent shelter on second, third and fourth applications even in the last year.
The city says most of those cases involved changing family circumstances, but the advocates say the idea that a family would agree to such a crushing daily existence if they had options is ridiculous.
“The city is caught between publicly claiming everything is fine and the brutal realities of families and their children having nowhere else to go,” said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who has filed a pending court complaint about the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “It is a ticking time bomb.”
The families say they are willing to put up with the single-night stays without real hope that they will ever persuade the city to approve their applications.
Iatia Mabry, 19, says that she, her year-old daughter and her husband have been in the overnight cycle since the end of July. She had been living with a friend in Virginia, but when that woman’s boyfriend got out of prison and moved back in, living there became untenable. A high school dropout on public assistance, Ms. Mabry has not worked for a year. She says that she cannot work until she gets housing and that she cannot afford it on her own.
She says she was bused to a shelter as late as 3 a.m. Like most other families at the Mott Haven office, she has to carry basics like towels and toilet paper with her. Like most others, she says that in general the shelters are clean, but that a few are horrific — and full of mold, which has aggravated her daughter’s asthma.
Still, Ms. Mabry says she cannot return to her mother, with whom she has never gotten along. She ran away at 17. Neither will she live with her mother-in-law, who has an apartment just blocks away from the office in the Bronx and is holding some of their personal belongings. “I am the head of my own household,” Ms. Mabry explained, “and she doesn’t understand that.”
Besides, Ms. Mabry says, that apartment is already full, housing her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law’s husband, the woman’s daughter, and the wife and two children of another of the woman’s sons.
Although Ms. Mabry says she “cries every night,” she says she will not stop seeking the city’s help. The growing group of families at the Bronx office has become a source of comfort for her.
During the long days there, they use sheets from the shelters to make beds in nearby St. Mary’s Park. They take turns holding one another’s children. They share food. And they watch the others’ backs.
The group has “become like a family,” Ms. Mabry said, “and we are not giving up.”
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22) For U.A.W., a Year of Uncertainty
By NICK BUNKLEY and MICHELINE MAYNARD
September 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/business/04labors.html?ref=business
DETROIT, Sept. 3 — Detroit’s traditional Labor Day parade took place on Woodward Avenue on Monday with the biggest questions in contract negotiations between the United Automobile Workers union and the Detroit automakers yet to be answered, less than two weeks before the pacts expire.
One question is whether the U.A.W. will agree to the health care overhaul sought by the carmakers — and its corollary is how much General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler will be willing to pay to make that happen.
Contracts expire at midnight on Sept. 14, so talks are expected to pick up this week and accelerate toward the deadline. For now, however, the ball is in the U.A.W.’s court, according to people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.
The union, they said, must signal that it is willing to discuss the creation of a giant health care trust, which it would administer and which would provide benefits for active and retired workers.
Creation of the trust, a voluntary employees’ beneficiary association, would take up to $100 billion in health care liabilities off the automakers’ books. In return, the companies would contribute tens of millions of dollars to create the trust.
Given the complexity of transferring responsibility for health care from company hands to the union’s, some analysts predict it will be handled in stages. That would give the U.A.W. time to get used to administering the trust and would allow the struggling carmakers to pay for it over the next few years rather than all at once.
The U.A.W. is being advised in the matter by a financial consultant, Lazard, which it has used in past negotiations on health care. It also is seeking help from consulting firms that specialize in health care matters, these people said.
If the union rejects the idea of creating a trust to shift the burden for health care, the companies are likely to ask for significant concessions in other aspects of the contract, including wages, benefits and work rules, said these people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were supposed to be private.
On Monday, the U.A.W.’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, marched with union members but did not address a rally held at the end of the parade. “This is an opportunity to come together as working men and women,” he said as he left the parade, according to The Associated Press. “Negotiations are best done if they’re handled at the bargaining table, not in the media.”
Union workers are awaiting the outcome with little guidance from their leaders. Mark and Dawn Lemerand, who both work at Chrysler’s truck plant in Warren, Mich., said they had spent as little money as possible in recent months, fearing that the new contract could lower wages, make health care more expensive and reduce job security.
“Life’s been on hold. We’re saving every dime we can,” said Mrs. Lemerand, 38, who joined thousands of union workers at the parade. The crowd included not only automotive workers but also bus drivers and tuxedo-clad members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who were at an impasse in their own contract talks.
Mrs. Lemerand and her colleagues at U.A.W. Local 140, who build the Dodge Ram and Dakota trucks, wore green T-shirts warning, “Will strike if provoked.” Late last month, a number of U.A.W. local chapters voted to authorize a strike if talks broke down, a common move aimed at giving union leaders more leverage. At her local, 98 percent voted in favor of authorizing a strike, she said.
But industry experts say there is almost no possibility of a strike, as the car companies are in such fragile financial shape that a shutdown could force at least one of them into bankruptcy.
“It would be really remarkable if there was a strike. You’d need a complete collapse of negotiations,” said David L. Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s University in Queens. “A strike this time around could be absolutely lethal for the company being struck.”
But more than a month after negotiations opened in mid-July, U.A.W. members say they have heard almost nothing from their negotiators. Unlike in past contract talks, the union does not have a toll-free number for chapter presidents to call for updates to pass along to members, nor have negotiators faxed or sent by e-mail any material to print in local newsletters or post on Web sites.
“It’s been very quiet,” said Jim Stoufer, president of Local 249, which represents workers at the Ford assembly plant in Kansas City, Mo. “We seem to be a little more in the dark than normal, and I think it’s because of the tough times.”
The lack of news is not necessarily a sign that talks are at a standstill, though, said Professor Gregory: “If there was a meltdown, we’d have heard about it.”
Sean McAlinden, a labor economist with the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said he expected the carmakers to offer workers one-time “signing bonuses” in exchange for long-term wage and benefit reductions to increase the likelihood of ratification.
A similar bonus was offered at the bankrupt Delphi, the country’s largest parts maker, whose workers approved cuts this year.
Officials from the carmakers declined to comment.
Mr. Stoufer said he had heard rumors about wage cuts of 20 to 30 percent for U.A.W. members, who earn about $29 an hour on average. But Ralph Mayer, president of U.A.W. Local 898 in Ypsilanti, Mich., said, “I’d put money on the fact that a huge pay cut is not going to happen.”
The proposal to create a union-run health care trust seems particularly unsettling to many workers. A U.A.W. faction that opposes concessions has distributed fliers that equate the voluntary employees’ beneficiary association proposal, known as V.E.B.A., with “Vandalizing Employee Benefits Again.”
Workers at G.M. and Ford agreed in 2005 to pay part of their medical costs. Workers at Chrysler did not make a similar deal, so analysts say the U.A.W. may have to grant the company’s request for similar cuts in medical costs as part of any overall package.
In past years, the U.A.W. has chosen one of the car companies as its negotiating target around Labor Day. The union’s pattern-bargaining philosophy involved reaching a deal with the target company, then persuading the other two carmakers to accept similar terms.
But in the 2003 talks, the union did not choose a target, instead conducting talks simultaneously with all three. There has been no word on which company may be chosen this year, although Mr. Gettelfinger has said he is striving for a pattern agreement.
If a target is chosen, experts say, G.M. stands the best chance, because it is healthier than Ford and the most intent on creating a V.E.B.A. fund, given that its future medical costs are estimated at about $55 billion. But Ford could be selected because Mr. Gettelfinger, who came up through the Ford ranks, has the longest-standing relationships there.
Chrysler, which was sold to Cerberus Capital Management last month, seems to be the least likely target, since it has new owners and must still resolve its health care situation, experts say.
Mary M. Chapman contributed reporting.
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23) Children Starved of Childhood
Inter Press Service
By Ahmed Ali*
From: "Dahr Jamail's dispatches"
dahr_jamail_dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
BAQUBA, Sep 2 (IPS) - The violence around the continuing U.S. military operations in this city has robbed children of their childhood.
Only two provincial schools and one private kindergarten school are functioning in this city of 280,000, located 50 km north of Baghdad. Most children know neither school nor play.
Or even the food they want. "We parents can hardly meet the basic requirements of food," Mahdi Hassan, a father of four, told IPS.
"Nobody even mentions chocolate or pastries or anything else because Iraqis know they are not important," Baquba resident Wissam Jafar told IPS. "Children eat what the other members of the family eat. Toys and games are offered only at festivals and on special occasions."
Baquba city, capital of Diyala province, has been at the centre of major U.S. military operations to fight al-Qaeda like forces. People have suffered from the violence from both sides.
By now Iraq has seen a generation of children pass with just survival a major issue. During the period of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, more than half a million children died, according to the United Nations.
In 1996, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on the CBS ? Minutes' show if she thought the price of half a million dead children was worth it. She replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."
One in eight children in Iraq died during that period of malnutrition, disease, and lack of medicine.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq during March 2003 brought hope that things might change, but that change has only been for the worse.
"During the nineties, they were malnourished but they could find a place to play in the streets," Khalid Ali, a local economist, told IPS. "Nowadays, they cannot even get out of their home because of the violence. And a large number of children have been killed through the violence."
There is one park in Baquba with some basic swings for children; another was recently renovated by an Iraqi NGO. Both get overcrowded on festivals and holidays. Parents feel obliged to take their children out on these days, despite the risk.
On other days, no more than two or three families visit the parks.
Sajid Asim who earns 175 dollars a month from his job in the water department says the money is barely enough for food for the family. "Surely, there won't be any extra money to bring the children special food or clothes, or games, or even taking them to picnics." For those without work -- and there are many -- the situation is worse.
Schoolteachers and managers spoke to IPS of the problems facing children who do manage to go to school.
"Teaching has been hit by the political situation in Iraq," said Salma Majid, manager of a local primary school. "Children can often not get to the school, and we may have more than three days off in a week. The whole academic year may be delayed because the violence has been so extreme this year."
Schools can provide children a chance to play but sometimes it is not safe," she said. "A number of school buildings have been hit by mortar."
According to an Oxfam report on Iraq released Jul. 30, "92 percent of children had learning impediments that are largely attributable to the current climate of fear. Schools are regularly closed as teachers and pupils are too fearful to attend. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to a recent estimate by Save the Children UK -- up from 600,000 in 2004."
The Oxfam report also said that child malnutrition rates in Iraq have risen from 19 percent before the invasion in 2003, to 28 percent. "More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003."
Scarcity has brought all sorts of difficulties for children. "I put a sandwich in the bag for my son to take to school," said a mother who declined to give her name. "When he got back home, he said he could not have it because his classmates do not bring their own sandwiches; their parents do not give them sandwiches."
A local primary school teacher, Ali Abbas, said it is common now for students to arrive at school without breakfast.
"One day, one of the children suddenly passed out," Abbas said. "We immediately took her to the administration room. When she regained consciousness, I asked her why she fainted. She told me that she did not have breakfast because there was no breakfast at home."
(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
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Suicide rate increases among U.S. soldiers
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- A new U.S. Army report reveals the suicide rate among soldiers is on the rise, CNN reported Thursday.
The study said failed relationships, legal woes, financial problems and occupational/operational issues are the main reasons why an increasing number of soldiers are taking their own lives.
While 79 soldiers committed suicide in 2003, 88 killed themselves in 2005 and 99 died at their own hands last year.
Another two suspected suicides from 2006 are under investigation.
The only year that saw a drop was 2004, in which 67 soldiers committed suicide.
Most of the dead were members of infantry units who killed themselves with firearms.
CNN said demographic differences and varying stress factors make it difficult to compare the military suicide rate to that of civilians.
In 2006, the overall suicide rate for the United States was 13.4 per 100,000 people. It was 21.1 per 100,000 people for all men aged 17 to 45, compared to a rate of 17.8 for men in the Army.
The overall rate was 5.46 per 100,000 for women, compared to an Army rate of 11.3 women soldiers per 100,000.
August 16, 2007
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/08/16/suicide_rate_increases_among_us_soldiers/5656/
Illinois: Illegal Immigrant Leaving Sanctuary
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church a year ago to escape deportation said she planned to leave her sanctuary soon to lobby Congress for immigration changes, even if that means risking arrest. The immigrant, Elvira Arellano, 32, has said she feared being separated from her 8-year-old son, Saul, when she asked the Adalberto United Methodist Church for help, but she said she planned to leave on Sept. 12 to travel to Washington. Ms. Arellano came to the United States illegally from Mexico in 1997, was deported, but then returned. She moved to Illinois in 2000.
August 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/us/16brfs-ILLEGALIMMIG_BRF.html?ref=us
Bolivia: Coca Leaves Predict Castro Recovery
By SIMON ROMERO
A consultation of coca leaves by Aymara Indian shamans presages the recovery of Fidel Castro, according to Cuba’s ambassador to Bolivia. “The Comandante is enjoying a recovery,” Rafael Dausá, the ambassador, told Bolivia’s state news agency after attending the ceremony in El Alto, the heavily indigenous city near the capital, La Paz. Pointing to Cuba’s warming ties to Bolivia, as the leftist president, Evo Morales, settles into his second year in power, Mr. Dausá said, “Being in Bolivia today means being in the leading trench in the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America.” Bolivia and Cuba, together with Venezuela, have forged a political and economic alliance called the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas.
August 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/world/americas/16briefs-coca.html?ref=world
Long-Studied Giant Star Displays Huge Cometlike Tail
By WARREN E. LEARY
August 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/science/space/16star.html?ref=us
Storm Victims Sue Over Trailers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 8 (AP) — More than 500 hurricane survivors living in government-issued trailers and mobile homes are taking the manufacturers of the structures to court.
In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in New Orleans, the hurricane survivors accused the makers of using inferior materials in a profit-driven rush to build the temporary homes. The lawsuit asserts that thousands of Louisiana residents displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 were exposed to dangerous levels of formaldehyde by living in the government-issued trailers and mobile homes.
And, it accuses 14 manufacturers that supplied the Federal Emergency Management Agency with trailers of cutting corners in order to quickly fill the shortage after the storms.
Messages left with several of those companies were not immediately returned.
FEMA, which is not named as a defendant in this suit, has agreed to have the air quality tested in some of the trailers.
August 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/us/09trailers.html?ref=us
British Criticize U.S. Air Attacks in Afghan Region
By CARLOTTA GALL
August 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/world/asia/09casualties.html?hp
Army Expected to Meet Recruiting Goal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
After failing to meet its recruiting goal for two consecutive months, the Army is expected to announce that it met its target for July. Officials are offering a new $20,000 bonus to recruits who sign up by the end of September. A preliminary tally shows that the Army most likely met its goal of 9,750 recruits for last month, a military official said on the condition of anonymity because the numbers will not be announced for several more days. The Army expects to meet its recruiting goal of 80,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the official said.
August 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/washington/08brfs-ARMYEXPECTED_BRF.html
Beach Closings and Advisories
By REUTERS
The number of United States beaches declared unsafe for swimming reached a record last year, with more than 25,000 cases where shorelines were closed or health advisories issued, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported, using data from the Environmental Protection Agency. The group said the likely culprit was sewage and contaminated runoff from water treatment systems. “Aging and poorly designed sewage and storm water systems hold much of the blame for beach water pollution,” it said. The number of no-swim days at 3,500 beaches along the oceans, bays and Great Lakes doubled from 2005. The report is online at www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/titinx.asp.
August 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/science/earth/08brfs-BEACHCLOSING_BRF.html
Finland: 780-Year-Old Pine Tree Found
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Scientists have discovered a 780-year-old Scots pine, the oldest living forest pine known in Finland, the Finnish Forest Research Institute said. The tree was found last year in Lapland during a study mission on forest fires, the institute said, and scientists analyzed a section of the trunk to determine its age. “The pine is living, but it is not in the best shape,” said Tuomo Wallenius, a researcher. “It’s quite difficult to say how long it will survive.” The tree is inside the strip of land on the eastern border with Russia where access is strictly prohibited.
August 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/world/europe/08briefs-tree.html
The Bloody Failure of ‘The Surge’: A Special Report
by Patrick Cockburn
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3029/
Sean Penn applauds as Venezuela's Chavez rails against Bush
The Associated Press
August 2, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/03/arts/LA-A-E-CEL-Venezuela-Sean-Penn.php
California: Gore’s Son Pleads Guilty to Drug Charges
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Al Gore III, son of the former vice president, pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana and other drugs, but a judge said the plea could be withdrawn and the charges dropped if Mr. Gore, left, completed a drug program. The authorities have said they found drugs in Mr. Gore’s car after he was pulled over on July 4 for driving 100 miles an hour. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of drug possession, two misdemeanor counts of drug possession without a prescription and one misdemeanor count of marijuana possession, the district attorney’s office said. Mr. Gore, 24, has been at a live-in treatment center since his arrest, said Allan Stokke, his lawyer.
July 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/us/31brfs-gore.html
United Parcel Service Agrees to Benefits in Civil Unions
By KAREEM FAHIM
July 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/nyregion/31civil.html?ref=nyregion
John Stewart demands the Bay View retract the truth, Editorial by Willie Ratcliff, http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=278&Itemid=14
Minister to Supervisors: Stop Lennar, assess the people’s health by Minister Christopher Muhammad, http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=306&Itemid=18
OPD shoots unarmed 15-year-old in the back in East Oakland by Minister of Information JR, http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=308&Itemid=18
California: Raids on Marijuana Clinics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided 10 medical marijuana clinics in Los Angles County just as Los Angeles city leaders backed a measure calling for an end to the federal government’s crackdown on the dispensaries. Federal officials made five arrests and seized large quantities of marijuana and cash after serving clinics with search warrants, said a spokeswoman, Sarah Pullen. Ms. Pullen refused to disclose other details. The raid, the agency’s second largest on marijuana dispensaries, came the same day the Los Angeles City Council introduced an interim ordinance calling on federal authorities to stop singling out marijuana clinics allowed under state law.
July 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/us/26brfs-RAIDSONMARIJ_BRF.html
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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USLAW Endorses September 15 Antiwar Demonstration in Washington, DC
USLAW Leadership Urges Labor Turnout
to Demand End to Occupation in Iraq, Hands Off Iraqi Oil
By a referendum ballot of members of the Steering Committee of U.S. Labor Against the War, USLAW is now officially on record endorsing and encouraging participation in the antiwar demonstration called by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in Washington, DC on September 15. The demonstration is timed to coincide with a Congressional vote scheduled in late September on a new Defense Department appropriation that will fund the Iraq War through the end of Bush's term in office.
U.S. Labor Against the War
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/
Stop the Iraq Oil Law
http://www.petitiononline.com/iraqoil/petition.html
2007 Iraq Labor Solidarity Tour
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?list=type&type=103
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FREE THE JENA SIX
http://www.mmmhouston.net/loc/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=66
This is a modern day lynching"--Marcus Jones, father of Mychal Bell
WRITE LETTERS TO:
JUDGE J.P. MAUFFRAY
P.O. BOX 1890
JENA, LOUISIANA 71342
FAX: (318) 992-8701
WE NEED 400 LETTERS SENT BEFORE MYCHAL BELL'S SENTENCING DATE ON JULY 31ST. THEY ARE ALL INNOCENT!
Sign the NAACP's Online Petition to the Governor of Louisiana and Attorney General
http://www.naacp.org/get-involved/activism/petitions/jena-6/index.php
JOIN THE MASS PROTEST IN SUPPORT OF
MYCHAL BELL & THE JENA 6
WHERE: JENA COURTHOUSE in Louisiana
WHEN: TUESDAY, JULY 31ST
TIME: 9:00AM
THE HOUSTON MMM MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IS ORGANIZING A CARAVAN TO JOIN FORCES WITH THE JENA 6 FAMILIES, THE COLOR OF CHANGE, LOCs, AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS ON THE STEPS OF THE COURTHOUSE THAT DAY TO DEMAND JUSTICE!
ALL INTERESTED IN GOING TO THE RALLY CALL:
HOUSTON RESIDENTS: 832.258.2480
ministryofjustice@mmmhouston.net
BATON ROUGE RESIDENTS: 225.806.3326
MONROE RESIDENTS: 318.801.0513
JENA RESIDENTS: 318.419.6441
Send Donations to the Jena 6 Defense Fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, Louisiana 71342
BACKGROUND TO THE JENA SIX:
Young Black males the target of small-town racism
By Jesse Muhammad
Staff Writer
"JENA, La. (FinalCall.com) - Marcus Jones, the father of 16-year-old Jena High School football star Mychal Bell, pulls out a box full of letters from countless major colleges and universities in America who are trying to recruit his son. Mr. Jones, with hurt in his voice, says, “He had so much going for him. My son is innocent and they have done him wrong.”
An all-White jury convicted Mr. Bell of two felonies—aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery—and faces up to 22 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 31. Five other young Black males are also awaiting their day in court for alleged attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder charges evolving from a school fight: Robert Bailey, 17; Theo Shaw, 17; Carwin Jones, 18; Bryant Purvis, 17; and Jesse Beard, 15. Together, this group has come to be known as the “Jena 6.”
Updated Jul 22, 2007
FOR FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3753.shtml
My Letter to Judge Mauffray:
JUDGE J.P. MAUFFRAY
P.O. BOX 1890
JENA, LOUISIANA 71342
RE: THE JENA SIX
Dear Judge Mauffray,
I am appalled to learn of the conviction of 16-year-old Jena High School football star Mychal Bell and the arrest of five other young Black men who are awaiting their day in court for alleged attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder charges evolving from a school fight. These young men, Mychal Bell, 16; Robert Bailey, 17; Theo Shaw, 17; Carwin Jones, 18; Bryant Purvis, 17; and Jesse Beard, 15, who have come to be known as the “Jena 6” have the support of thousands of people around the country who want to see them free and back in school.
Clearly, two different standards are in place in Jena—one standard for white students who go free even though they did, indeed, make a death threat against Black students—the hanging of nooses from a tree that only white students are allowed to sit under—and another set of rules for those that defended themselves against these threats. The nooses were hung after Black students dared to sit in the shade of that “white only” tree!
If the court is sincerely interested in justice, it will drop the charges against all of these six students, reinstate them back into school and insist that the school teach the white students how wrong they were and still are for their racist attitudes and violent threats! It is the duty of the schools to uphold the constitution and the bill of rights. A hanging noose or burning cross is just like a punch in the face or worse so says the Supreme Court! Further, it is an act of vigilantism and has no place in a “democracy”.
The criminal here is white racism, not a few young men involved in a fistfight!
I am a 62-year-old white woman who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Fistfights among teenagers—as you certainly must know yourself—are a right of passage. Please don’t tell me you have never gotten into one. Even I picked a few fights with a few girls outside of school for no good reason. (We soon, in fact, became fast friends.) Children are not just smaller sized adults. They are children and go through this. The fistfight is normal and expected behavior that adults can use to educate children about the negative effect of the use of violence to solve disputes. That is what adults are supposed to do.
Hanging nooses in a tree because you hate Black people is not normal at all! It is a deep sickness that our schools and courts are responsible for unless they educate and act against it. This means you must overturn the conviction of Mychal Bell and drop the cases against Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, and Jesse Beard.
It also means you must take responsibility to educate white teachers, administrators, students and their families against racism and order them to refrain from their racist behavior from here on out—and make sure it is carried out!
You are supposed to defend the students who want to share the shade of a leafy green tree not persecute them—that is the real crime that has been committed here!
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
www.bauaw.org
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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Youtube interview with the DuPage County Activists Who Were Arrested for Bannering
You can watch an interview with the two DuPage County antiwar activists
who arrested after bannering over the expressway online at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DuPageFight4Freedom
Please help spread the word about this interview, and if you haven't
already done so, please contact the DuPage County State's attorney, Joe
Birkett, to demand that the charges against Jeff Zurawski and Sarah
Heartfield be dropped. The contact information for Birkett is:
Joseph E. Birkett, State's Attorney
503 N. County Farm Road
Wheaton, IL 60187
Phone: (630) 407-8000
Fax: (630) 407-8151
Email: stsattn@dupageco.org
Please forward this information far and wide.
My Letter:
Joseph E. Birkett, State's Attorney
503 N. County Farm Road
Wheaton, IL 60187
Phone: (630) 407-8000
Fax: (630) 407-8151
Email: stsattn@dupageco.org
Dear State's Attorney Birkett,
The news of the arrest of Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Heartfield is getting out far and wide. Their arrest is outrageous! Not only should all charges be dropped against Jeff and Sarah, but a clear directive should be given to Police Departments everywhere that this kind of harassment of those who wish to practice free speech will not be tolerated.
The arrest of Jeff and Sarah was the crime. The display of their message was an act of heroism!
We demand you drop all charges against Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Heartfield NOW!
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War, www.bauaw.org, San Francisco, California
415-824-8730
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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ADDICTED TO WAR
Animated Video Preview
Narrated by Peter Coyote
Is now on YouTube and Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZwyuHEN5h8
We are planning on making the ADDICTED To WAR movie.
Can you let me know what you think about this animated preview?
Do you think it would work as a full length film?
Please send your response to:
Fdorrel@sbcglobal. net or Fdorrel@Addictedtow ar.com
In Peace,
Frank Dorrel
Publisher
Addicted To War
P.O. Box 3261
Culver City, CA 90231-3261
310-838-8131
fdorrel@addictedtow ar.com
fdorrel@sbcglobal. net
www.addictedtowar. com
For copies of the book:
http://www.addictedtowar.com/book.html
OR SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO:
Frank Dorrel
P.O. BOX 3261
CULVER CITY, CALIF. 90231-3261
fdorrel@addictedtowar.com
$10.00 per copy (Spanish or English); special bulk rates
can be found at: http://www.addictedtowar.com/bookbulk.html
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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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
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html
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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
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'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
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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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
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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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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
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[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]
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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.
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