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NEXT OCT. 27th COALITION STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2 P.M., CENTRO del PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA ST.(Near 16th St., one block from 16th St. BART)
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The cultural revolution is coming to a venue near you.
Don't miss it because Fox won't be covering it!
September 28 (FRIDAY)
THE PEACENIKS in concert
fun songs of peace and social justice
with TOMMI AVICOLLI MECCA and DIANA HARTMAN
Martin dePorres "the kitchen"
225 Portrero/16th, 7pm
(22, 33, 53 buses stop at the corner)
Hear your favorites:
"Yuppie Yuppie stole my pad"
"Don't get sick in America"
"do wopping wops"
"Redistribute the wealth,"
and many more you won't hear on the radio.
FREE FREE FREE
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Free the Jena 6! Free Mychal Bell!
Join the Protest at the New Federal Building
Tuesday, October 2 at 5:00 pm
7th St. near Mission St., San Francisco
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Toxic West Virginia: Mountaintop Removal- Episode 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziuFW-7h1LM
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Join Active duty Soldiers from Fort Drum and people from across New York
State to demand and end to the war.
Steve Wickham and the NEPAJAC Sept 29th Caravan Coordinating Committee
webmaster@RememberingTheFallen.org
webmaster@Neighbors4Peace.org
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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
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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:
NEXT OCT. 27th COALITION STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2 P.M., CENTRO del PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA ST.(Near 16th St., one block from 16th St. BART)
The next meeting of the October 27th Coalition Steering Committee will take place on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2 P.M. at the Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., San Francisco. Originally the meeting had been set for 12 noon, but Centro del Pueblo is not available until 2 p.m.
This meeting was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon, in order to allow more regional participation in the meeting and the steering committee. We know that organizers from Sacramento and San Jose are planning to attend, and hope other cities where Oct. 27 organizing is taking place will be able to participate. The meeting should last about two hours, and will have reports from the various working committees, a proposal for the program and plan for the day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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--Check out our new website at: http://www.oct27sf.org/DotNetNuke/default.aspx
A.N.S.W.E.R.
Al Awda SF, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Alameda County Central Labor Council
Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP)
American Friends Service Committee
Arab American Union Members Council
Arab Resource and Organizing Center
Barrio Unidos por Amnestia
Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice
Bay Area United Against War
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee
Cindy Sheehan
Coalicion Primero de Mayo, SFBA
Coalition to Free the Angola 3
CODE PINK Women for Peace
Common Ground Relief
Communications Workers of America Local 9415
Community Futures Collective
Contra Costa County Central Labor Council
East Bay Labor and Community Coalition
East Bay Coalition in Support of Self Rule for Iraqis
Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy and Laity Concerned
Episcopal Diocese of California
First Quarter Storm Network - USA
FMLN
Free Palestine Alliance
Global Exchange
Greenwood Earth Alliance
International Socialist Organization
Iraq Moratorium
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at
Kabataang maka-Bayan (KmB - Pro-People Youth)
La Raza Centro Legal
Larry Everest, author
LEF Foundation
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Monterey Bay Labor Council
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
National Council of Arab Americans
Not In Our Name
Office and Professional Employees Union, Local 3, Exec Board
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Pride at Work
Renee Saucedo
Revolutionary Workers Group
Revolution Youth
Sacramento Area Black Caucus
San Francisco Bay View Newspaper
San Francisco Day Labor Program
S.F. Green Party
San Francisco Labor Council
San Jose Peace Center
San Mateo County Central Labor Council
Scientific Socialist Collective
Senior Action Network
SF Bay View Newspaper
SF/LCLAA
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
The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
The United Educators of San Francisco, (CTA/NEA and CFT/AFT - Local 61)
U.S. Labor Against the War
United for Peace & Justice Bay Area
United for Peace and Justice
Vanguard Foundation
Veterans for Peace
West County Toxics Coalition
Women for Peace
Workers International League
World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime! SF Bay Area Chapter
Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R.
...a partial listing! we are gathering groups faster than we
can post them!
Here's what they're doing in Boston on Oct. 27:
*PLEASE FORWARD TO MEMBERSHIPS, CONTACT LISTS AND LISTSERVS AROUND NEW
ENGLAND:*
Join thousands for the *New England Mobilization to End the War at 12:00 *on
*Saturday, October 27th in Boston*. People will be demonstrating in
regional sites around the country in a nationally coordinated day of protest
against the war in Iraq organized by United for Peace and Justice, the
nation's largest grassroots antiwar coalition.
The New England event will start with a rally at the Boston Commons
bandstand from noon to 2:00 PM, followed by a march from 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
The rally will include both speakers and cultural performances. Speakers
confirmed so far include:
*Felix Arroyo (Member, Boston City Council)*
*Gabriel Camacho (Immigrant Rights)*
*Gold Star Parents (speaker/s to be announced)*
*Shep Gurwitz (Veterans for Peace)*
*Liam Madden (Iraq Veterans Against the War)*
*Military Families Speak Out (several members will speak)*
*Merrie Najimy (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee)*
*Rostam Pourzal (Iranian-American specialist on human rights) *
*Dahlia Wasfi (Iraqi-American MD)*
*Howard Zinn (historian)*
The central demands for the regional event in Boston, as approved by the New
England United membership at its meeting on September 8, are:
*BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW*
*SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITIES, FUND HUMAN NEEDS*
*END ALL IRAQ WAR FUNDING NOW*
*NO ATTACK ON IRAN*
*STOP THE ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES, DEFEND HUMAN RIGHTS*
For more information, please visit the New England United regional website
at http://newenglandunited.org/ .
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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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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Profits Rise as Care Slips at Nursing Homes
By CHARLES DUHIGG
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/business/23nursing.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1190485213-H5iS86AouJ7Sr9mVxK3I8A
2) U.S. Rule Limits Emergency Care for Immigrants
By SARAH KERSHAW
September 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/washington/22emergency.html
3) $50 Billion for Military Is Added to Budget
By HELENE COOPER
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/washington/23spend.html?ref=world
4) Risky Business
The Deadly Game of Private Security
By JOHN F. BURNS
CAMBRIDGE, England
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/weekinreview/23burns.html?ref=world
5) The Case of Alison Bodine
By The Alison Bodine Defense Committee (ABDC)
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
6) G.M. Workers Begin Walkout Over Contract Impasse
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/24cnd-autostrike.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
7) The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise
By DAVID MARGOLICK
Op-Ed Contributor
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23margolick.html?em&ex=1190692800&en=6617c05632e2b455&ei=5087%0A
8) Soldiers Describe Baiting of Insurgents
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-abuse.html?hp
9) Graft in Military Contracts Spread From Base
By GINGER THOMPSON and ERIC SCHMITT
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24contractor.html
10) Urgent: Call School Board To Stop Lennar's Toxic Exposures To Students
(415) 241-6427
11) Letter to the School Board Members of SFUSD, by Bonnie Weinstein
The Corporation that Ate San Francisco
Lennar's failures at Hunters Point Shipyard highlight the risk of putting the Bay Area's prime real estate into the hands of profit-driven developers
By Sarah Phelan
sarah@sfbg.com
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3084
12) In G.M. Strike, Both Sides See a Crossroads
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/business/25auto.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
13) On Strike at G.M., Resolute but Anxious About Future
By NICK BUNKLEY and MARY M. CHAPMAN
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/business/25workers.html
14) Court Advances Military Trials for Detainees
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/washington/25gitmo.html?ref=us
15) Panel to Consider Stronger Regulation of Utah Mines
By DAN FROSCH
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/us/25mine.html?ref=us
16) U.S. Sues Illinois to Let Employers Use Immigrant Databases
By JULIA PRESTON
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/washington/25immig.html?ref=us
17) WHAT DOES THE “RULE OF LAW” MEAN IN KAHNAWAKE?
BAND COUNCIL ATTACKS “COUNCIL OF ELDERS” AS
PART OF GENOCIDE PLAN
In a message dated
9/25/07 12:15:55 PM,
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/09/mohawk-membership-genocide-and-great.html
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1) Profits Rise as Care Slips at Nursing Homes
By CHARLES DUHIGG
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/business/23nursing.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1190485213-H5iS86AouJ7Sr9mVxK3I8A
Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
The Habana center quickly became a moneymaker for its investors as managers, hired by another company, cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.
Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staffing levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.
“They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.
Habana is one of thousands of nursing homes across the nation that large Wall Street investment companies have bought or agreed to acquire in recent years.
Those investors include prominent private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, better known for buying companies like Dunkin’ Donuts.
As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains.
But by many regulatory benchmarks, residents at those nursing homes are worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data collected by government agencies from 2000 to 2006.
The Times analysis shows that, as at Habana, managers at many other nursing homes acquired by large private investors have cut jobs and other expenses, sometimes below minimum legal requirements.
Regulators say residents at these homes have suffered. At facilities owned by private investment firms, residents on average have fared more poorly than occupants of other homes in common problems like depression, loss of mobility and loss of ability to dress and bathe themselves, according to data collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The typical nursing home acquired by a large investment company before 2006 scored worse than national rates in 12 of 14 indicators that regulators use to track ailments of long-term residents. Those ailments include bedsores and easily preventable infections, as well as the need to use restraints. Before they were acquired by private investors, many of those homes scored at or above national averages in similar measurements.
In the past, residents’ families often responded to such declines in care by suing, and regulators levied heavy fines against nursing home chains where understaffing led to lapses in care.
But private investment companies have made it very difficult for plaintiffs to succeed in court and for regulators to levy chainwide fines by creating complex corporate structures that obscure who controls their nursing homes.
By contrast, publicly owned nursing home chains are essentially required to disclose who controls their facilities in securities filings and other regulatory documents.
The Byzantine structures established at homes owned by private investment firms also make it harder for regulators to know if one company is responsible for multiple centers. And the structures help owners bypass rules that require them to report when they, in effect, pay themselves from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Investors in these homes say such structures are common in other businesses and have helped them revive an industry that was on the brink of widespread bankruptcy.
“Lawyers were convincing nursing home residents to sue over almost anything,” said Arnold M. Whitman, a principal with the fund that bought Habana in 2002, Formation Properties I.
Homes were closing because of ballooning litigation costs, he said. So investors like Mr. Whitman created corporate structures that insulated them from costly lawsuits, his company said.
“We should be recognized for supporting this industry when almost everyone else was running away,” Mr. Whitman said in an interview.
Some families of residents say those structures unjustly protect investors who profit while care declines.
When Mrs. Hewitt sued Habana over her mother’s death, for example, she found that the home’s owners and managers had spread control of Habana among 15 companies and five layers of firms.
As a result, Mrs. Hewitt’s lawyer, like many others confronting privately owned homes, has been unable to definitively establish who was responsible for her mother’s care.
Current staff members at Habana declined to comment. Formation Properties I said it owned only Habana’s real estate and leased it to an independent company, and thus bore no responsibility for resident care.
That independent company — Florida Health Care Properties, which eventually became Epsilon Health Care Properties and subleased the home’s operation to Tampa Health Care Associates — is affiliated with Warburg Pincus, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Warburg Pincus, Florida Health Care, Epsilon and Tampa Health Care all declined to comment.
Demand for Nursing Homes
The graying of America has presented financial opportunities for all kinds of businesses. Nursing homes, which received more than $75 billion last year from taxpayer programs like Medicare and Medicaid, offer some of the biggest rewards.
“There’s essentially unlimited consumer demand as the baby boomers age,” said Ronald E. Silva, president and chief executive of Fillmore Capital Partners, which paid $1.8 billion last year to buy one of the nation’s largest nursing home chains. “I’ve never seen a surer bet.”
For years, investors shunned nursing home companies as the industry was battered by bankruptcies, expensive lawsuits and regulatory investigations.
But in recent years, private equity firms have agreed to buy 6 of the nation’s 10 largest nursing home chains, containing over 141,000 beds, or 9 percent of the nation’s total. Private investment groups own at least another 60,000 beds at smaller chains and are expected to acquire many more companies as firms come under shareholder pressure to sell.
The typical large chain owned by an investment company in 2005 earned profit of $1,700 a resident, according to reports filed by the facilities. Those homes, on average, were 41 percent more profitable than the average home.
But, as in the case of Habana, cutting costs has become an issue at homes owned by large investment groups.
“The first thing owners do is lay off nurses and other staff that are essential to keeping patients safe,” said Charlene Harrington, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco who studies nursing homes. In her opinion, she added, “chains have made a lot of money by cutting nurses, but it’s at the cost of human lives.”
The Times’s analysis of records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reveals that at 60 percent of homes bought by large private equity groups from 2000 to 2006, managers have cut the number of clinical registered nurses, sometimes far below levels required by law. (At 19 percent of those homes, staffing has remained relatively constant, though often below national averages. At 21 percent, staffing rose significantly, though even those homes were typically below national averages.) During that period, staffing at many of the nation’s other homes has fallen much less or grown.
Nurses are often residents’ primary medical providers. In 2002, the Department of Health and Human Services said most nursing home residents needed at least 1.3 hours of care a day from a registered or licensed practical nurse. The average home was close to meeting that last year, according to data.
But homes owned by large investment companies typically provided only one hour of care a day, according to The Times’s analysis of records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
For the most highly trained nurses, ratios were worse: Homes owned by large private investment firms provided 1 clinical registered nurse for every 20 residents, 35 percent below the national average, the analysis showed.
Regulators with state and federal health care agencies have cited those staffing deficiencies alongside some cases where residents died from accidental suffocations, injuries or other medical emergencies.
Federal and state regulators also said in interviews that such cuts help explain why serious quality-of-care deficiencies — like moldy food and the restraining of residents for long periods or the administration of the wrong medications — rose at every large nursing home chain after it was acquired by a private investment group from 2000 to 2006, even as citations declined at many other homes and chains.
The typical number of serious health deficiencies cited by regulators last year was almost 19 percent higher at homes owned by large investment companies than the national average, according to analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services records.
(The Times’s analysis of trends did not include Genesis HealthCare, which was acquired earlier this year, or HCR Manor Care, which the Carlyle Group is buying, because sufficient data were not available.)
Representatives of all the investment groups that bought nursing home chains since 2000 — Warburg Pincus, Formation, National Senior Care, Fillmore Capital Partners and the Carlyle Group — were offered the data and findings from the Times analysis. All but one declined to comment.
An executive with a company owned by Fillmore Capital, which acquired 342 homes last year, said that because some data regarding the company were missing or collected before its acquisition last year, The Times’s analysis was not a complete portrayal of current conditions. That executive, Jack MacDonald, also said that it was too early to evaluate the new management, that total staff members at homes was rising and that quality had improved by some measures.
“We are focused on becoming a better organization today than we were 18 months ago,” he said. “We are confident that we will be an even better organization in the future.”
A Web of Responsibility
Vivian Hewitt’s mother, Alice Garcia, was 81 and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease when, in late 2002, she moved into Habana.
“I couldn’t take care of her properly anymore, and Habana seemed like a really nice place,” Mrs. Hewitt said.
Earlier that year, Formation bought Habana, 48 other nursing homes and four assisted living centers from Beverly Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest chains, for $165 million.
Formation immediately leased many of the homes, including Habana, to an affiliate of Warburg Pincus. That firm spread management of the homes among dozens of other corporations, according to documents filed with Florida agencies and depositions from lawsuits.
Each home was operated by a separate company. Other companies helped choose staff members, keep the books and negotiate for equipment and supplies. Some companies had no employees or offices, which permitted executives to file regulatory documents without revealing their other corporate affiliations.
Habana’s managers increased occupancy, and they cut expenses by laying off about 10 of 30 clinical administrators and nurses, Medicare filings reveal. (After regulators complained, some of those positions were refilled.) Soon, regulators with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began citing Habana for malfunctioning fire doors, moldy air vents and broken walls.
Throughout that period, Formation and the Warburg Pincus affiliate received rent and fees that were directly tied to Habana’s revenues, according to interviews and regulatory filings. As the home’s fiscal health improved, those payments grew. In total, they exceeded $3.5 million by last year. The companies received payments tied to the other 48 homes, as well.
Though spending cuts improved the home’s bottom line, they raised concerns among regulators and staff.
“Those owners wouldn’t let us hire people,” said Annie Thornton, who became interim director of nursing around the time Habana was acquired, and who left about a year later. “We told the higher-ups we needed more staffing, but they said we should make do.”
Regulators typically visit nursing homes about once a year. But in the 12 months after Formation’s acquisition of Habana, they visited an average of once a month, often in response to residents’ complaints. The home was cited for failing to follow doctors’ orders, cutting staff below legal minimums, blocking emergency exits, storing residents’ food in unhygienic areas and other health violations.
Soon after, nursing home inspectors wrote in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services documents that Habana was at fault when a resident suffocated because his tracheotomy tube became clogged. Although he had complained of shortness of breath, there were no records indicating that the staff had checked on him for almost two days.
Those citations never mentioned Formation, Warburg Pincus or its affiliates. Warburg Pincus and its affiliates declined to discuss the citations. Formation said it was merely a landlord.
“Formation Properties owns real estate and leases it to an unaffiliated third party that obtains a license to operate it as a health care facility,” Formation said. “No citation would mention Formation Properties since it has no involvement or control over the operations at the facility or any entity that is involved in such operations.”
For Mrs. Hewitt’s mother, problems began within months of moving in as she suffered repeated falls.
“I would call and call and call them to come to her room to change her diaper or help me move her, but they would never come,” Mrs. Hewitt recalled.
Five months later, Mrs. Hewitt discovered that her mother had a large bedsore on her back that was oozing pus. Mrs. Garcia was rushed to the hospital. A physician later said the wound should have been detected much earlier, according to medical records submitted as part of a lawsuit Mrs. Hewitt filed in a Florida Circuit Court.
Three weeks later, Mrs. Garcia died.
“I feel so guilty,” Mrs. Hewitt said. “But there was no way for me to find out how bad that place really was.”
Death and a Lawsuit
Within a few months, Mrs. Hewitt decided to sue the nursing home.
“The only way I can send a message is to hit them in their pocketbook, to make it too expensive to let people like my mother suffer,” she said.
But when Mrs. Hewitt’s lawyer, Sumeet Kaul, began investigating Habana’s corporate structure, he discovered that its complexity meant that even if she prevailed in court, the investors’ wallets would likely be out of reach.
Others had tried and failed. In response to dozens of lawsuits, Formation and affiliates of Warburg Pincus had successfully argued in court that they were not nursing home operators, and thus not liable for deficiencies in care.
Formation said that it was not reasonable to hold the company responsible for residents, “any more, say, than it would be reasonable for a landlord who owns a building, one of whose tenants is Starbucks, to be held liable if a Starbucks customer is scalded by a cup of hot coffee.”
Formation, Warburg Pincus and its affiliates all declined to answer questions regarding Mrs. Hewitt’s lawsuit.
Advocates for nursing home reforms say anyone who profits from a facility should be held accountable for its care.
“Private equity is buying up this industry and then hiding the assets,” said Toby S. Edelman, a nursing home expert with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that counsels people on Medicare. “And now residents are dying, and there is little the courts or regulators can do.”
Mrs. Hewitt’s lawyer has spent three years and $30,000 trying to prove that an affiliate of Warburg Pincus might be responsible for Mrs. Garcia’s care. He has not named Formation or Warburg Pincus as defendants. A judge is expected to rule on some of his arguments this year.
Complex corporate structures have dissuaded scores of other lawyers from suing nursing homes.
About 70 percent of lawyers who once sued homes have stopped because the cases became too expensive or difficult, estimates Nathan P. Carter, a plaintiffs’ lawyer in Florida.
“In one case, I had to sue 22 different companies,” he said. “In another, I got a $400,000 verdict and ended up collecting only $25,000.”
Regulators have also been stymied.
For instance, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration has named Habana and 34 other homes owned by Formation and operated by affiliates of Warburg Pincus as among the state’s worst in categories like “nutrition and hydration,” “restraints and abuse” and “quality of care.” Those homes have been individually cited for violations of safety codes, but there have been no chainwide investigations or fines, said Molly McKinstry, bureau chief for long-term-care services at with Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
And even when regulators do issue fines to investor-owned homes, they have found penalties difficult to collect.
“These companies leave the nursing home licensee with no assets, and so there is nothing to take,” said Scott Johnson, special assistant attorney general of Mississippi.
Government authorities are also frequently unaware when nursing homes pay large fees to affiliates.
For example, Habana, operated by a Warburg Pincus affiliate, paid other Warburg Pincus affiliates an estimated $558,000 for management advice and other services last year, according to reports the home filed.
Government programs require nursing homes to reveal when they pay affiliates so that such disbursements can be scrutinized to make sure they are not artificially inflated.
However, complex corporate structures make such scrutiny difficult. Regulators did not know that so many of Habana’s payments went to companies affiliated with Warburg Pincus.
“The government tries to make sure homes are paying a fair market value for things like rent and consulting and supplies,” said John Villegas-Grubbs, a Medicaid expert who has developed payment systems for several states. “But when home owners pay themselves without revealing it, they can pad their bills. It’s not feasible to expect regulators to catch that unless they have transparency on ownership structures.”
Formation and Warburg Pincus both declined to discuss disclosure issues.
Groups lobbying to increase transparency at nursing homes say complicated corporate structures should be outlawed. One idea popular among organizations like the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform is requiring the company that owns a home’s most valuable assets, its land and building, to manage it. That would put owners at risk if care declines.
But owners say that tying a home’s property to its operation would make it impossible to operate in leased facilities, and exacerbate a growing nationwide nursing home shortage.
Moreover, investors say, they deserve credit for rebuilding an industry on the edge of widespread insolvency.
“Legal and regulatory costs were killing this industry,” said Mr. Whitman, the Formation executive.
For instance, Beverly Enterprises, which also had a history of regulatory problems, sold Habana and the rest of its Florida centers to Formation because, it said at the time, of rising litigation costs. AON Risk Consultants, a research company, says the average cost of nursing home litigation in Florida during that period had increased 270 percent in five years.
“Lawyers were suing nursing homes because they knew the companies were worth billions of dollars, so we made the companies smaller and poorer, and the lawsuits have diminished,” Mr. Whitman said. This year, another fund affiliated with Mr. Whitman and other investors acquired the nation’s third-largest nursing home chain, Genesis HealthCare, for $1.5 billion.
If investors are barred from setting up complex structures, “this industry makes no economic sense,” Mr. Whitman said. “If nursing home owners are forced to operate at a loss, the entire industry will disappear.”
However, advocates for nursing home reforms say investors exaggerate the industry’s precariousness. Last year, Formation sold Habana and 185 other facilities to General Electric for $1.4 billion. A prominent nursing home industry analyst, Steve Monroe, estimates that Formation’s and its co-investors’ gains from that sale were more than $500 million in just four years. Formation declined to comment on that figure.
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2) U.S. Rule Limits Emergency Care for Immigrants
By SARAH KERSHAW
September 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/washington/22emergency.html
The federal government has told New York State health officials that chemotherapy, which had been covered for illegal immigrants under a government-financed program for emergency medical care, does not qualify for coverage. The decision sets the stage for a battle between the state and federal governments over how medical emergencies are defined.
The change comes amid a fierce national debate on providing medical care to immigrants, with New York State officials and critics saying this latest move is one more indication of the Bush administration’s efforts to exclude the uninsured from public health services.
State officials in New York and other states have found themselves caught in the middle. The New York dispute, focusing on illegal immigrants with cancer — a marginal group of unknown size among the more than 500,000 people living in New York illegally — has become a flash point for health officials and advocates for immigrants in recent weeks.
Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.
Last month, federal officials, concluding an audit that began in 2004 and was not challenged by the state until now, told New York State that they would no longer provide matching funds for chemotherapy under the emergency program. Yesterday, state officials sent a letter to the federal Medicaid agency protesting the change, saying that doctors, not the federal government, should determine when chemotherapy is needed.
Federal health officials declined to discuss chemotherapy or the New York claims. But Dennis Smith, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement, “Longstanding interpretations by the agency have been that emergency Medicaid benefits are to cover emergencies.”
The federal statute that defines an emergency under Medicaid makes it clear that routine care for illegal immigrants and nonresidents, including foreign students and visitors, is not covered. But the only procedures it specifically excludes from reimbursement are organ transplants, leaving to the states the task of further defining an emergency. States and courts have grappled with the question for years, yielding no clear definition.
Some states have maintained that any time a patient is able to schedule an appointment — as opposed to showing up at an emergency room — the condition would not be considered an emergency. Others, including New York, have defined an emergency as any condition that could become an emergency or lead to death without treatment.
“There are clearly situations that we consider emergencies where we need to give people chemotherapy,” Richard F. Daines, the New York State health commissioner, said in an interview late yesterday. “To say they don’t qualify is self-defeating in that those situations will eventually become emergencies.”
Dr. Daines said that for every effort in the state to use Medicaid “creatively” to cover the uninsured, “the Bush administration, at every chance, is pushing it back.”
The state estimated that the federal government denied $60 million in matching funds for emergency Medicaid from 2001 to 2006, including $11.1 million for chemotherapy. Medicaid costs are typically split evenly between the state and the federal government.
It is unclear how many other states are providing chemotherapy to illegal immigrants, because all emergency services are generally lumped together in state Medicaid reports. But others have also been challenged on emergency Medicaid claims.
In Washington State, where illegal immigrants are entitled to Medicaid coverage for a month or more after treatment in an emergency, officials said a federal audit of their emergency Medicaid claims was under way, and the state has asked the federal government to provide a definition of emergency services.
“The awkward position state Medicaid programs are in is trying to figure out what kinds of medical care should be available for emergency conditions,” said Douglas Porter, assistant secretary for the Washington Health and Recovery Services Administration.
Washington and other states have also fought the federal government over Medicaid for infants born to illegal immigrants, an issue reflected in the ferocious debate over the national children’s health insurance program.
In the wake of stricter federal rules, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and 20 other states have extended full Medicaid coverage, using only state money, to some immigrants who do not qualify for federal aid. Under federal law, proof of citizenship is required for full Medicaid coverage, but not for emergency coverage.
But some states with growing immigrant populations, like Georgia and Arizona, have themselves moved to limit coverage under emergency Medicaid, leading to intense opposition from immigrant health advocates.
Advocates for breast cancer patients said they were particularly concerned about the denial of coverage after lobbying the federal government for years to provide breast cancer screening to uninsured women. Under a program offered to underinsured and uninsured women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides free or low-cost screening.
“To allow women to be diagnosed with breast cancer and then create an obstacle for them to get treatment is a horrendous policy,” said Donna Lawrence, executive director of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in New York.
In New York City, cancer kills 15,000 residents a year. It is the second leading cause of death among both the native- and the foreign-born, according to a 2006 survey by the city’s health department, with lung, breast and colon cancer the top killers.
The state had initially accepted the federal finding that New York was not entitled to federal reimbursement for chemotherapy under the emergency Medicaid program. But until last month, state health officials had not informed medical providers that the treatment would no longer be covered by either state or federal funds.
That provoked a pitched outcry from immigrant health advocates over the last few weeks, and state health officials reversed their position this week, saying Medicaid should cover the treatment.
State officials said they were challenging the federal decision on the grounds that chemotherapy treatment qualifies as an emergency under the federal government’s own rules. Certain conditions, including diseases of the brain, spinal cord and bone marrow disease, could require immediate chemotherapy.
The state’s letter also said that chemotherapy can be used to “cure cancer, control cancer and/or ease cancer symptoms,” and that if that the measures typically used to treat cancer were not available to patients, their health could be in serious jeopardy — one of the federal criteria in determining an emergency.
The cost of emergency Medicaid is still a relatively small portion of state Medicaid budgets, experts said, and a majority of the money is spent on care for pregnant women, labor and delivery. But the demand for it rising quickly as the immigrant population balloons.
Health advocates say that many illegal immigrants who need and qualify for emergency care are afraid to seek help, and that emergency Medicaid is underused.
A recent study of emergency Medicaid services in North Carolina found that spending, largely devoted to pregnant women, increased by 28 percent from 2001 to 2004; still, the emergency costs accounted for less than 1 percent of total Medicaid expenditures.
New York City public hospitals, which serve 400,000 uninsured patients a year, among them illegal immigrants, would continue to provide the cancer treatment no matter what, said officials from the Health and Hospitals Corporation. But if there is no reimbursement from Medicaid, they said, they will have to look elsewhere for financial support.
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3) $50 Billion for Military Is Added to Budget
By HELENE COOPER
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/washington/23spend.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The Bush administration plans to increase its 2008 financing request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by almost $50 billion, with about a quarter of the additional money going toward armored trucks built to withstand roadside bombs, Pentagon officials said Saturday.
The increase would bring the amount the administration is seeking to finance the war effort through 2008 to almost $200 billion. Much of that money will go to refurbishment of military equipment and to the purchase of new protective equipment for troops, officials said, an indication of the toll that years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken on military vehicles, aircraft, weapons and other items.
Defense officials said earlier this year that the Pentagon would need a war budget of $141 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The additional request for nearly $50 billion, which was first reported in The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, will be presented by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, the Pentagon said. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and senior military officials are also expected to attend the hearing.
Mr. Gates is to testify two weeks after Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, went before Congress to warn against a rapid reduction of troops in Iraq, and a week after a Democratic effort to limit troop rotations stumbled in the Senate. The financing request may serve to further sharpen partisan divisions over the Iraq war in general, and its soaring cost in particular.
About a quarter of the new money would go to build additional mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, Pentagon officials said. “We’d put in an original request for 7,000 MRAPS, but we’re going to double that number,” said a senior Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.
Members of Congress have criticized the Defense Department, saying it has been too slow to buy enough of the vehicles for troops in Iraq.
The vehicles, which cost around $1 million each, have a raised chassis and V-shaped underside that deflects explosions better than the flat underbelly on Humvees, which are used by most combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Bush administration originally sought $2.6 billion for fiscal 2007 to buy additional MRAPs, but Congress increased the total by $1.2 billion. Acquiring MRAPs has become one of the Pentagon’s biggest budget priorities.
Senator Joesph R. Biden Jr., of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reintroduced legislation last week to increase financing for the mine-resistant vehicles by $23.6 billion.
“We have no higher obligation than to protect those we send to the front lines,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Wednesday. “So when our commanders in the field tell us that MRAPs will reduce casualties by 67 to 80 percent, it is our responsibility to provide them.”
Defense officials, conceding that increasing production of MRAPs so steeply could lead to bottlenecks, have said the Defense Department’s leadership now agrees that the risk is acceptable in order to provide vehicles that can better withstand roadside attacks.
Before the Pentagon decided several months ago to buy as many MRAPs as could be made, the vehicles were provided primarily for units with such high-risk missions as clearing roads of bombs, officials said.
Mr. Gates ordered an acceleration in production in May after news reports said Marine units using the vehicles in Anbar Province had experienced a sharp decline in casualties from roadside bombs.
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4) Risky Business
The Deadly Game of Private Security
By JOHN F. BURNS
CAMBRIDGE, England
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/weekinreview/23burns.html?ref=world
ON a stifling summer’s day in Baghdad a couple of years ago, a senior American officer bound for a visit to troops in the Iraqi hinterland was preparing to board an army Black Hawk at the helicopter landing zone in Baghdad’s Green Zone command compound.
With undisguised disdain, he fixed his gaze across the concrete toward two smaller helicopters taking off from a hangar operated by Blackwater USA — the private security company whose men, while guarding an American diplomatic convoy, were involved last week in a Baghdad shootout that killed at least eight people and, according to an Iraqi government report, as many as 20.
In a style now familiar to many living beneath Baghdad’s skies, a Blackwater sharpshooter in khaki pants, with matching T-shirt and flak jacket, sat sideways on the right side of each chopper, leaning well outside the craft. With their automatic weapons gripped for battle, their feet planted on the helicopter’s metal skids, and only a slim strap securing them to the craft, the men looked as if they were self-consciously re-creating the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Blackwater defends its low-flying, ready-to-shoot posture as a powerful deterrent to attacks on American officials being moved through the capital’s streets. But that posture has become, to the company’s critics, a hallmark of its muscle-bound showiness.
As the Blackwater machines cleared the landing zone’s fence that day, the American officer leaned toward a companion and, over the thwump-thwump of the Black Hawk’s rotors, voiced his contempt. “If I’ve got one ambition left here,” he said, “it’s to see one of those showboats fall out.”
From the moment Blackwater arrived in Iraq in 2003, on the heels of the American invasion, much about its operations has seemed tinged with an aggressive machismo that has led its critics, including many in the American military, to dismiss its operatives — and counterparts from at least 25 other private security companies, with a combined manpower estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 — as “cowboys,” “hired guns,” and other, still harsher, terms.
Partly, the disparagement stems from the contempt with which professional military men have traditionally viewed mercenaries — especially those who earn, like some contractors in Baghdad, as much as $1,000 a day for skills and risks that bring about the lowest-paid American soldier a tenth of that. Not even four-star generals earn as much.
The security contractors’ advocates counter by pointing to the guards’ expertise. The highest-paid learned their skills in units like the Navy Seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and equivalent units in the British, Australian, South African and other militaries.
With rare exceptions, the men look and sound the part, with tattooed forearms, close-cropped hair or shaven heads, and a taciturn manner that discourages any but the most cryptic exchanges with outsiders. The value of their skills, their proponents say, is indicated by the Pentagon’s willingness to pay Special Forces’ re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $150,000. But that much and more can be a single year’s salary with companies like Blackwater.
There is no avoiding the fact that these bodyguards do work that is both extremely hazardous, and indispensable. Blackwater’s involves a State Department contract to protect American officials, including the ambassador.
Such officials are among the most endangered individuals in Iraq; nevertheless, no senior American officials have been assassinated, while the murder of senior Iraqi officials has become almost commonplace.
Together with other security contractors — notably the American companies DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, and the British-run Aegis Security and Erinys International — Blackwater operates in a nightmarish landscape.
No trip outside the Green Zone is remotely safe. The enemy lurks everywhere among the population. Attackers show no mercy for innocent bystanders, who commonly outnumber intended targets. Each mission carries the threat of roadside bombs, suicide attacks by explosives-packed cars and trucks, and ambushes by insurgents.
Reliable figures are elusive, but figures quoted by security industry insiders suggest that more than 100 contractors in Iraq have been killed, and scores of others wounded.
Against this, critics point to a pattern of recklessness in the use of deadly force, of a kind that the Iraqi government, and some Iraqi witnesses, have alleged — and Blackwater has denied — in the episode last Sunday in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. While Blackwater armored vehicles accompanying diplomats were sent to close off traffic into the square, a car entering it failed to heed an Iraqi policeman’s signal to stop, and it came under fire that killed the driver, a passenger and a baby in her arms. There is dispute over the ensuing gunfight, and whether Blackwater personnel, insurgents or nearby Iraqi troops caused the deaths.
An Iraqi government probe later found Blackwater “100 percent guilty” in the killings, and government leaders demanded an end to Blackwater activities. Blackwater responded that its contractors fired in self-defense. After a four-day suspension, a compromise on Friday allowed Blackwater to resume “essential missions” while an Iraqi-American commission investigates.
To those who have watched the private security companies’ operations for the past four years, the only real surprise was that the crisis was so long in coming. The seeds were sown in the first year of the American occupation, when a decree by the American administrator L. Paul Bremer III exempted security companies and their employees from accountability under Iraqi law for deaths and injuries caused in the execution of their duties. Although Congress in 2005 instructed the Pentagon to bring contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, no action has been taken, leaving the contractors in a legal no-man’s land — in effect, at liberty to treat all Iraq as a free-fire zone.
No official records have been made public of how many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed by contractors. But a glimpse at the scale was offered by one American general who kept his own tally, Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst of the Third Infantry Division; he told The Washington Post in 2005 that he had tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians in Baghdad between May and July that year, with six Iraqis killed.
“These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff,” the paper quoted the general as saying. “There’s no authority over them.”
But critics say the heart of the problem lies in an attitude that the security contractors share with the American military, one that elevates “force protection” to something approaching an absolute. This, the critics say, has the effect of valuing the saving of American lives above avoiding risk to innocent Iraqis. The attitude has its origins in Vietnam, where the appalling American combat losses left succeeding generations of American commanders with an instinct to apply rapid increments of firepower — what the military calls “escalation of force” — with the goal of sparing American casualties.
After some of the most damaging incidents in Iraq, especially the killing by marines of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005, the American command ordered new restraints on force escalation that had the effect of sharply cutting incidents in which troops opened fire on civilians.
But the change appeared to have scant impact on security contractors, whose attitudes, unconstrained by concern at being held accountable under law, continued to cast a pall of fear and resentment among Iraqis.
This has had the effect — as officers like General Horst have said — of undermining Iraqi trust in the American forces, and in the wider American enterprise in Iraq, since many Iraqis who survive or witness negligent shootings make no distinction between an American in uniform and one in the paramilitary guise of a contractor.
Contractors say the high profile of their armored convoys, coupled with the covert nature of the insurgents, places a premium on high mobility and rapid response — driving at high speed and in a bullying manner through city traffic and driving on the wrong side of boulevards and expressways, always ready to resort instantly, at the first hint of threat, to heavy firepower.
It is a formula fraught with potential for error. To be overtaken on Baghdad’s airport road by a private security convoy driving at 120 miles an hour, with contractors leaning out of windows or part-opened doors with leveled weapons, waving their fists in a frantic pantomime, is a heart-stopping experience even for other Westerners in armored cars with guards of their own. For ordinary Iraqis, with no weapons and no armoring, it can be pure terror.
At their worst, some contractors have made Iraq into a grim playground for acting out tendencies that have gone beyond bullying. In a Virginia civil court case against Triple Canopy last month, two former employees claimed that their supervisor — like his accusers, a veteran of the United States military — shot randomly into two Iraqi civilian vehicles on the airport road in Baghdad last year, after telling them that he wanted to “kill somebody” before leaving the country on vacation. The supervisor denied it.
Just why some contractors resort to such extremes is a study in war and the ways in which it plumbs the darker sides of human nature. In the military units where they acquired their weapons and tactical skills, the men who cause mayhem on the streets and highways of Iraq were subject to tight constraints — as one former soldier who does security work in Iraq and did not want to be identified expressed it in a private note to this reporter:
“Being motivated, and also somehow restrained, by the trappings of history, and by being part of something large, collective, and, one hopes, right,” this man wrote. “But being a security contractor strips much of this sociological and political upholstery away, and replaces it with cash.”
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5) The Case of Alison Bodine
By The Alison Bodine Defense Committee (ABDC)
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
The Alison Bodine Defense Committee is appealing to all progressive groups and organizations who fight for a better world to support the campaign to defend Alison Bodine, a U.S. citizen who is being targeted by Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) for being an anti-war and social justice activist.
Originally from Broomfield, Colorado, Alison is a central organizer with Vancouver, Canada antiwar coalition Mobilization Against War & Occupation (MAWO), for three years was the president of the University of British Columbia’s Coalition Against War on the People of Iraq and Internationally (CAWOPI), a long-time executive committee member of the UBC Social Justice Center, is a prominent activist in solidarity with Cuba and the Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba, and a supporter of immigrant and refugee rights in Canada and the U.S..
Near midnight on Thursday September 13, 2007, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) arrested Alison when she attempted to legally cross the border at Peace Arch border crossing, traveling from Canada into the United States. Three days prior, Alison was harassed by CBSA officials while traveling from the U.S. into Canada. The ordeal began after border officials searched her vehicle and identified her as a political organizer after they found various political materials and progressive newspapers in her car.
As an international student at the University of British Columbia who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Physics in June 2007, Alison has traveled between the U.S. and Canada on dozens of occasions, and had never been denied entrance to Canada or asked to return to the U.S.
As she was returning to the U.S. on Thursday, September 13, Alison returned to claim items confiscated earlier by the CBSA. Upon presenting her receipt to claim her materials, she was handcuffed and told she was under arrest, and that a warrant for her arrest had been issued across Canada. She was then taken into detention. This unjust and illegal imprisonment was met with a huge protest and organizing drive by the newly formed Committee to Free Alison Bodine. Friday afternoon, on only five hours notice, 80 people came together at the Citizenship and Immigration Canada Offices in Vancouver, demanding the immediate release of Alison Bodine. Media was also quick to pick up this important case, which was covered locally and nationally by newspapers, TV and radio.
Following all of this, Alison’s status took a major turn. Officials constantly reminded her all day that there was no way she would be released from detention before Monday. However, at 8:00 P.M. on Friday, September 14, Alison was given notice by immigration officials that she would be released from custody immediately until her Admissibility Hearing on Monday, September 17—a major victory in the campaign for her freedom. However Alison’s ordeal is not yet over. In the early afternoon of September 17, Alison learned from a CBC reporter that the CBSA had cancelled her Admissibility Hearing scheduled for 2:00 P.M. that day. Alison herself was never officially notified by CBSA.
At 1:30 P.M. on Monday, September 17, more than 50 supporters rallied outside the downtown Citizenship and Immigration Canada offices, especially because of the cancelled hearing, to demand that all charges against Alison be dropped immediately. The CBSA postponement of Alison’s hearing is a maneuver to delay because they know they won’t be able to prove the charges they have made up so far. It also shows they have decided to escalate this case to a more political level by finding some different charges to bring because they know right now their case cannot win in a hearing.
Being without status in Canada, Alison’s situation is always uncertain, and she can still be arrested at any time. All progressive, humanity loving people must unite around this case. We must understand that this is not just an attack on Alison; this is an attack on all of us. This is an attack on the basic democratic and human rights of all people, especially social justice activists, immigrants, refugees and all non-status people and non-residents in Canada. The illegal and unjust arrest and detention of Alison Bodine means the Government of Canada and its agencies want to continue and escalate the silencing of free speech and political expression and continue their terrorizing of people who oppose their policies at home and abroad and the new era of war and occupation. They are also testing and evaluating our response to defend ourselves against their attacks against us. The degree, seriousness, effectiveness and consistency of our defense impact their decision on how to further their repressive measures.
For this reason, we are appealing to you to join us in this struggle by endorsing this emergency campaign and by writing a letter of support demanding that the CBSA drop all charges against Alison. Please send this appeal to your email lists and friends. We must show the Government of Canada and their agency, the CBSA, that they cannot get away with trying to intimidate activists. We have attached a template support letter, as an example. Letters of support should be sent to: defendalisonbodine@hotmail.com
The CBSA might think that by delaying the Admissibility hearing this campaign will lose steam and the pressure against them will lessen. On the contrary, this campaign is only just beginning. People all across Canada and the world know about this case of political harassment and this will only gain momentum from here. This is a political case; Alison has done nothing wrong or illegal. Alison, along with supporters in Vancouver and across the country will keep up the demand that the CBSA must drop all charges against her and restore her full rights to travel between the U.S. and Canada. For now, they have re-scheduled her Admissibility hearing for Friday, September 28 at 9:00 A.M. In the time between now and then we will not back down, we will not slow down and we will continue fighting!
Our fight is not over. Your support is essential to get all charges against Alison dropped!
WE WILL WIN!
Contact by phone:
Shannon Bundock 778.891.1470
Tamara Hansen 778.882.5223
Aaron Mercredi 604.339.7103 A
Andrew Barry 604.780.4029
Blog, Daily Updates & Action Info:
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
Email:
defendalisonbodine@hotmail.com
Sample Letter to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)
Alison Bodine Defence Committee
778.891.1470 or 778.882.5223 or 604.339.7103
defendalisonbodine@hotmail.com
alisonbodine.blogspot.com
Date:
To: Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)
Alison Bodine is a U.S. citizen, is a central organizer with Vancouver antiwar coalition Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO), for three years was the president of the University of British Columbia’s Coalition Against War on the People of Iraq and Internationally (CAWOPI) and was a long-time executive committee member of the UBC Social Justice Center. She is also a prominent activist in solidarity with Cuba, and is a supporter of immigrant and refugee rights in Canada in the U.S.
Near midnight, Thursday September 13, 2007 Alison Bodine was unjustly arrested by the Canada Border Services Agency and detained by the RCMP when she went voluntarily to the U.S.-Canada border to pick up previously detained political materials and other items. Alison has not done anything illegal, and has crossed the border many times with no incident. It was not until her political materials were found that the charges were laid.
Alison’s arrest and all charges against her are an attack on the democratic rights of individuals to organize and express their political views. This is an attack on the right to free speech, and an attack on immigrants, refugees, people without status and non-residents of Canada. This is clearly a politically motivated case against Alison Bodine.
I am demanding that the Canada Border Services Agency drop any and all charges against Alison Bodine and reinstate her right to freely travel between the U.S. and Canada.
Sincerely,
(Signature/name of organization)
(Your name)
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6) G.M. Workers Begin Walkout Over Contract Impasse
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and NICK BUNKLEY
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/24cnd-autostrike.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
DETROIT, Sept. 24 — Members of the United Automobile Workers union walked off the job today at General Motors plants across the country after union leaders and company officials failed to reach an agreement in contentious talks on a new contract.
It is the first national strike by the union against G.M. since 1970. That strike lasted for two months. The U.A.W. last struck G.M. at two plants in Flint, Mich., in 1998, in a strike that went on for seven weeks.
The union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said the union would return to the bargaining table today. “This is nothing we wanted,” Mr. Gettelfinger said. “Nobody wins in a strike.”
The two sides apparently hit a stalemate over the union’s demand for job protection for its work force at G.M., which is one-fifth its size in 1990. G.M., in return, had pushed for the creation of a trust that would assume responsibility for its $55 billion liability for health care benefits for workers, retirees and their families.
Although the two sides agreed last week on the framework of the trust, they could not reach an agreement without addressing other contract issues, which in turn would determine how much money G.M. could invest in the trust.
Workers left their jobs at 11 a.m. Eastern time, after a strike deadline set by the union late Sunday passed without a deal.
G.M., in a statement, said it was disappointed by the union’s decision to strike.
“The bargaining involves complex, difficult issues that affect the job security of our U.S. work force and the long-term viability of the company,” said Tom Wickham, a G.M. spokesman. He said company officials would “continue focusing our efforts on reaching an agreement as soon as possible."
At a news conference shortly after noon, Mr. Gettelfinger said the union was “very concerned” about the long-term outlook for G.M., which was passed this year by Toyota as the world’s biggest auto company.
“We’ve done a lot of things to help that company,” he said. “But look, there comes a point in time where you have to draw a line in the sand.”
He said the union discussed sending individual local unions out on strike, but decided a national strike would give it the “quickest opportunity” to get this thing resolved.
Mr. Gettelfinger said job security measures were one of the major issues facing negotiators. He said the strike was not connected to G.M.’s push for the health care trust, called a voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA. Because the proposal is not part of the G.M. contract with the union, the U.A.W. could not strike G.M. over the idea.
“We were eager to discuss it,” Mr. Gettelfinger said. “This strike is in no way about VEBA discussions.”
In fact, Mr. Gettelfinger said the union had proposed such a trust during negotiations in 2005 on health care cuts, but G.M. chose a more modest proposal. He said the union knew by Friday that negotiations were bogged down but did not want to strike G.M. over the weekend.
“They made it very clear as we moved closer to the deadline that they had no intention of sitting down and negotiating something that was equitable for both sides,” he said.
The U.A.W. had made it clear to its 73,000 members at G.M. that they were to strike the company unless local leaders received calls from their headquarters in Detroit, telling them to stay on the job.
Those calls did not come, and workers streamed out of plants once the deadline passed.
Some immediately picked up picket signs and began to march in front of their factories; others headed for their cars to go to union halls or head for home.
Chris Sherwood, president of U.A.W. Local 652 in Lansing, Mich., said there was no announcement of a strike made by the union’s leadership. “We got no call not to go, so we went,” Mr. Sherwood said. “Hopefully it won’t last long.”
He added, “A lot of people, including myself, thought this deal would get done, but apparently not.”
Officials at the union hall were telling workers on the afternoon shift not to report to the plant today.
Workers streamed out of G.M.’s plant in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit enclave, moments after the deadline passed. Carole Garcia, who displayed a picket sign through the sunroof of her white Cadillac CTS sedan, said she was most concerned about preserving pension and health care benefits.
“Nobody wanted this strike, but we’re tired of taking concessions,” Ms. Garcia said. She has 30 years’ experience at the plant, making her eligible to retire with full benefits.
Another 30-year employee, Sylvia Hill, said she approved of union leaders’ decision as she walked on a picket line outside the plant.
“It’s about time the union stood up against the company and stood for the people,” Ms. Hill said as she gave a thumbs-up sign to horn-blowing motorists. “If I can keep my health care, I’m going to retire as soon as I can.”
The union be well prepared for a strike. It has nearly $900 million in a strike fund, which pays workers $200 a week if they take shifts on the picket line. At that rate, the union could endure at least a two-month strike.
G.M.’s contract with the U.A.W. expired on Sept. 14, and was extended hour by hour. Late last week, Mr. Gettelfinger said leaders were trying to reach an agreement without a strike.
But late Sunday, the U.A.W. told workers to be prepared to walk off the job at 11 a.m. Eastern time if no deal had been reached. In a statement early today, the union said it had set the strike deadline because G.M. had failed to address job security and other “mandatory issues of bargaining,” which it did not name.
Union officials criticized G.M. for continuing to pay bonuses to its executives while pressing U.A.W. members to make concessions. (G.M. did not pay cash bonuses to its top officials last year, but gave them stock awards and other perquisites.)
“This is our reward,” said Cal Rapson, a union vice president and director of the union’s G.M. Department, adding that G.M. was demanding that “our members accept a reduced standard of living.”
The tough tone of the statement was in sharp contrast to the silence that had surrounded the talks until then. The U.A.W. had not commented publicly on the negotiations since they began in July, although it has sent updates to its local unions.
In addition to the issues of job guarantees and the health care trust, the U.A.W. has wanted G.M. to pay workers a bonus of several thousand dollars apiece once the contract is approved, in an effort to defray any other concessions sought by the company.
Even after a deal is reached at G.M., the union must still come to agreements at Ford Motor and Chrysler, where the issue of a health care trust is likely to be discussed.
Together, the three auto companies have a collective liability of nearly $100 billion. The health care trust would take over responsibility for paying benefits to workers and their families.
Mary M. Chapman contributed reporting.
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7) The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise
By DAVID MARGOLICK
Op-Ed Contributor
September 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23margolick.html?em&ex=1190692800&en=6617c05632e2b455&ei=5087%0A
FIFTY years ago this week, all eyes were on Little Rock, Ark., where nine black students were trying, for the first time, to desegregate a major Southern high school. With fewer than 150 blacks, the town of Grand Forks, N.D., hardly figured to be a key front in that battle — until, that is, Larry Lubenow talked to Louis Armstrong.
On the night of Sept. 17, 1957, two weeks after the Little Rock Nine were first barred from Central High School, the jazz trumpeter happened to be on tour with his All Stars band in Grand Forks. Larry Lubenow, meanwhile, was a 21-year-old journalism student and jazz fan at the University of North Dakota, moonlighting for $1.75 an hour at The Grand Forks Herald.
Shortly before Mr. Armstrong’s concert, Mr. Lubenow’s editor sent him to the Dakota Hotel, where Mr. Armstrong was staying, to see if he could land an interview. Perhaps sensing trouble — Mr. Lubenow was, he now says, a “rabble-rouser and liberal” — his boss laid out the ground rules: “No politics,” he ordered. That hardly seemed necessary, for Mr. Armstrong rarely ventured into such things anyway. “I don’t get involved in politics,” he once said. “I just blow my horn.”
But Mr. Lubenow was thinking about other things, race relations among them. The bell captain, with whom he was friendly, had told him that Mr. Armstrong was quietly making history in Grand Forks, as he had done innumerable times and ways before, by becoming the first black man ever to stay at what was then the best hotel in town. Mr. Lubenow knew, too, that Grand Forks had its own link to Little Rock: it was the hometown of Judge Ronald Davies, who’d just ordered that the desegregation plan in Little Rock proceed after Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas and a band of local segregationists tried to block it.
As Mr. Armstrong prepared to play that night — oddly enough, at Grand Forks’s own Central High School — members of the Arkansas National Guard ringed the school in Little Rock, ordered to keep the black students out. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s meeting with Governor Faubus three days earlier in Newport, R.I., had ended inconclusively. Central High School was open, but the black children stayed home.
Mr. Lubenow was first told he couldn’t talk to Mr. Armstrong until after the concert. That wouldn’t do. With the connivance of the bell captain, he snuck into Mr. Armstrong’s suite with a room service lobster dinner. And Mr. Armstrong, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, agreed to talk. Mr. Lubenow stuck initially to his editor’s script, asking Mr. Armstrong to name his favorite musician. (Bing Crosby, it turned out.) But soon he brought up Little Rock, and he could not believe what he heard. “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country,” a furious Mr. Armstrong told him. President Eisenhower, he charged, was “two faced,” and had “no guts.” For Governor Faubus, he used a double-barreled hyphenated expletive, utterly unfit for print. The two settled on something safer: “uneducated plow boy.” The euphemism, Mr. Lubenow says, was far more his than Mr. Armstrong’s.
Mr. Armstrong bitterly recounted some of his experiences touring in the Jim Crow South. He then sang the opening bar of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” inserting obscenities into the lyrics and prompting Velma Middleton, the vocalist who toured with Mr. Armstrong and who had joined them in the room, to hush him up.
Mr. Armstrong had been contemplating a good-will tour to the Soviet Union for the State Department. “They ain’t so cold but what we couldn’t bruise them with happy music,” he had said. Now, though, he confessed to having second thoughts. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” he said, offering further choice words about the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. “The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?”
Mr. Lubenow, who came from a small North Dakota farming community, was shocked by what he heard, but he also knew he had a story; he skipped the concert and went back to the paper to write it up. It was too late to get it in his own paper; nor would the Associated Press editor in Minneapolis, dubious that Mr. Armstrong could have said such things, put it on the national wire, at least until Mr. Lubenow could prove he hadn’t made it all up. So the next morning Mr. Lubenow returned to the Dakota Hotel and, as Mr. Armstrong shaved, had the Herald photographer take their picture together. Then Mr. Lubenow showed Mr. Armstrong what he’d written. “Don’t take nothing out of that story,” Mr. Armstrong declared. “That’s just what I said, and still say.” He then wrote “solid” on the bottom of the yellow copy paper, and signed his name.
The article ran all over the country. Douglas Edwards and John Cameron Swayze broadcast it on the evening news. The Russians, an anonymous government spokesman warned, would relish everything Mr. Armstrong had said. A radio station in Hattiesburg, Miss., threw out all of Mr. Armstrong’s records. Sammy Davis Jr. criticized Mr. Armstrong for not speaking out earlier. But Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and Marian Anderson quickly backed him up.
Mostly, there was surprise, especially among blacks. Secretary Dulles might just as well have stood up at the United Nations and led a chorus of the Russian national anthem, declared Jet magazine, which once called Mr. Armstrong an “Uncle Tom.” Mr. Armstrong had long tried to convince people throughout the world that “the Negro’s lot in America is a happy one,” it observed, but in one bold stroke he’d pulled nearly 15 million American blacks to his bosom. Any white confused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s polite talk need only listen to Mr. Armstrong, The Amsterdam News declared. Mr. Armstrong’s words had the “explosive effect of an H-bomb,” said The Chicago Defender. “He may not have been grammatical, but he was eloquent.”
His road manager quickly put out that Mr. Armstrong had been tricked, and regretted his statements, but Mr. Armstrong would have none of that. “I said what somebody should have said a long time ago,” he said the following day in Montevideo, Minn., where he gave his next concert. He closed that show with “The Star-Spangled Banner” — this time, minus the obscenities.
Mr. Armstrong was to pay a price for his outspokenness. There were calls for boycotts of his concerts. The Ford Motor Company threatened to pull out of a Bing Crosby special on which Mr. Armstrong was to appear. Van Cliburn’s manager refused to let him perform a duet with Mr. Armstrong on Steve Allen’s talk show.
But it didn’t really matter. On Sept. 24, President Eisenhower sent 1,200 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne into Little Rock, and the next day soldiers escorted the nine students into Central High School. Mr. Armstrong exulted. “If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy,” he wired the president. “God bless you.” As for Mr. Lubenow, who now works in public relations in Cedar Park, Tex., he got $3.50 for writing the story and, perhaps, for changing history. But his editor was miffed — he’d gotten into politics, after all. Within a week, he left the paper.
David Margolick, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of “Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink.’’
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8) Soldiers Describe Baiting of Insurgents
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-abuse.html?hp
Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, planting fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks up them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.
The existence of the classified “baiting program,” as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team. Each soldier is accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi in three separate incidents between April and June near Iskandariya.
In sworn statements, soldiers testifying for the defense have said the sniper team was employing a baiting program developed by the Pentagon’s Asymmetrical Warfare Group, which met with and gave equipment to Ranger sniper teams in Iraq in January.
The Washington Post first described the baiting program in an article Monday.
An Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said on Monday that the Army does not discuss specific methods for “targeting enemy combatants” publicly, and that no classified program authorizes the use of “drop weapons” to make a killing appear justified.
The court martial of one of the accused soldiers, Spec. Jorge Sandoval Jr., is scheduled to begin in Baghdad on Wednesday. The two other soldiers facing premeditated murder charges are Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley, the sniper team squad leader, and Sgt. Evan Vela. All three are part of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.
None of the three soldiers deny that they killed the three Iraqis they are charged with murdering. Through their lawyers and in court documents, the soldiers argue that the killings were legal and authorized by their superiors. A transcript of the hearing was provided by a member of an accused soldier’s family.
Snipers are among the most specialized of soldiers, using camouflage clothing and makeup to infiltrate enemy locations and high-powered rifles and scopes to stalk and kill enemy fighters. The three snipers accused of murder had for months ventured into some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, said lawyers for Sgt. Vela.
“Snipers are special people who are trained to shoot in a detached fashion, not to see their targets as human beings,” said James D. Culp, one of Sgt. Vela’s lawyers. “Snipers have split-seconds to take shots, and he had a split second to decide whether to shoot.”
After visiting the sniper unit in Iraq, members of the Asymmetrical Warfare Group gave soldiers ammunition boxes containing so-called “drop items” like bullets, plastic explosives and bomb detonation chords to use to target Iraqis involved in insurgent activity, according to Capt. Matthew P. Didier, a sniper platoon leader who gave sworn testimony in the accused soldiers’ court hearings.
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9) Graft in Military Contracts Spread From Base
By GINGER THOMPSON and ERIC SCHMITT
September 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/world/middleeast/24contractor.html
CASTOR, La. — On the fourth Sunday in July, John Lee Cockerham was here in his hometown for the baptism of his twin sons.
People in this northwest corner of Louisiana think of him as an unlikely success story, a man who started with nothing to become a major in the Army. He and his 17 siblings grew up without electricity and running water. His parents earned barely enough to keep everyone fed.
Yet even after he made it out of Castor, his ties to these backwoods remained strong. The congregation at New Friendship Baptist Church celebrated his last promotion with a parade. At his sons’ baptism, he told fellow worshipers that he hoped to instill in his children the values he had wrested from hardship.
Less than 24 hours later Major Cockerham was behind bars, accused of orchestrating the largest single bribery scheme against the military since the start of the Iraq war. According to the authorities, the 41-year-old officer, with his wife and a sister, used an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts and safe deposit boxes to hide nearly $10 million in bribes from companies seeking military contracts.
The accusations against Major Cockerham are tied to a crisis of corruption inside the behemoth bureaucracy that sustains America’s troops. Pentagon officials are investigating some $6 billion in military contracts, most covering supplies as varied as bottled water, tents and latrines for troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The inquiries have resulted in charges against at least 29 civilians and soldiers, more than 75 other criminal investigations and the suicides of at least two officers. They have prompted the Pentagon, the largest purchasing agency in the world, to overhaul its war-zone procurement system.
Much of the scrutiny has focused on the contracting office where Major Cockerham worked at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, a world away from Castor in more than miles. Until the buildup to the war in Iraq, it was a tiny outpost with a staff of 7 to 12 people who awarded about $150 million a year in contracts, according to Bryon J. Young, a retired Army colonel and the current director of the Army Contracting Agency.
But when tens of thousands of soldiers began pouring through Kuwait, Mr. Young said in an interview, his agency was forced to entrust nearly $4 billion over the next four years to what he described as a B team of civilians and military officers with limited contracting experience. It was a setting flush with money, he said, but lacking the safeguards to prevent contracting officials from taking it.
Pages of the affidavits in United States District Court in San Antonio involving Major Cockerham read like scenes from a spy novel. They allege that unidentified businesspeople carried hundreds of thousands of dollars in shopping bags, delivering the money to Mrs. Cockerham as she played courier in the Middle East with her three small children, while her husband kept coded records of a mounting fortune.
A criminal complaint filed with the court says that during a December 2006 search of their home at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., Major Cockerham and his wife admitted taking $1 million in bribes. The investigation continued, and when the couple were arrested some seven months later on charges of accepting $9.6 million in bribes, they pleaded not guilty.
Major Cockerham’s lawyer, Jimmy Parks, in denying the charges, said his client did not have the authority to pull off such a conspiracy.
An Officer’s Suicide
Although a Justice Department official said it was too early to know if the suspects in the corruption investigation operated independently or in a network, public records indicate that several served overlapping tours. At least two officers who worked at Camp Arifjan when Major Cockerham was there committed suicide after learning they would face bribery charges. One, Maj. Gloria D. Davis of Missouri, shot herself in December 2006, a day after admitting she took at least $225,000 in bribes, government officials said.
“It is particularly disturbing that while so many of our military personnel are fighting and dying in Iraq, a few have apparently taken the opportunity to unlawfully enrich themselves,” Charles W. Beardall, chief criminal investigator for the Pentagon inspector general, said in a statement. “Their greed is unconscionable, especially in the midst of our soldiers’ heroic actions.”
The charges against Major Cockerham have hit hard in this town of 200 people, where residents have vivid recollections of him as little John Lee, a quiet, polite boy who was so worn out from milking cows before school that he had a hard time staying awake in class.
“He’s a country boy, just like the rest of us,” said Mark Plunkett, who played high school basketball with John Lee. “You throw a suitcase with a million dollars in front of us, who knows what we would do?”
Chris Guin, who considers himself one of Major Cockerham’s best friends, shook his head. “That don’t sound like John Lee,” he said. “I think he’s being railroaded.”
While others from Castor have achieved more than Major Cockerham, few started with his disadvantages. From outside the family’s run-down four-room house, it is hard to see where he got the nerve to dream. Growing up, the boys slept in one room, the girls in another, said his brother Charles. They lived on grits in the morning and corn bread at night. For water, he said, the children hauled buckets from a nearby stream.
Charles Cockerham said his father, John Lee Sr., who worked at the local sawmill, did not finish high school, but encouraged his children to do so. His mother, Clara, who worked as a teacher until her brood got too big, was even more emphatic about education.
“He used to come to my house after school and stick his head in my encyclopedias,” said Verba Egans, who is so close to Major Cockerham that he calls her Mom. She added, “It was never easy for him, but he worked hard because he was determined to make something of himself.”
The Army as a Way Out
Like many poor young people from rural towns across America, John Cockerham saw the Army as the best way to advancement. He joined right out of high school in 1984 and married a fellow soldier, Melissa Jordan, while stationed at Fort Knox, Ky. Later, he went to Northeastern Louisiana University on an R.O.T.C. scholarship, graduating in 1993 with an Army commission.
Over the next decade, according to family and military records, he served in Haiti and Germany, and earned a master’s in business from Webster University in 2004. In June of that year, he was assigned to Camp Arifjan, one of the Pentagon’s busiest supply centers.
The camp, a $200 million logistics hub, stands like an island in the middle of the desert south of Kuwait City. Major Cockerham worked in a prefabricated two-story building with about 20 other military people and civilians, committing millions of dollars on the phone or with a few strokes on his computer in his cubicle.
Military officials said a major assigned to award such large contracts for the Army Contracting Agency should have at least 10 years of experience in “broad acquisition,” a minimum of four years of direct contracting experience and annual ethics training. But the procurement workload from the Iraq war grew so big so fast that the Pentagon was forced to rush people with virtually no training or experience into some of its most complicated contracting jobs, Army officials said.
“From what I understand, John didn’t get the courses he should have had for his assignment until his assignment was over,” said Mr. Parks, Major Cockerham’s lawyer.
Oversight was virtually nonexistent by design. There were no auditors at Camp Arifjan, and contracts worth more than $500,000 were the only ones requiring review in Washington. Most contracts were written for about $100,000. It was also common for contracting officers to use “blanket purchase agreements,” allowing them to open a line of credit with a company with little more than a promissory note, much like a customer at a small-town grocery store.
Ideally, Army officials said, the purchasing cycle would be divided among at least three contracting officers. One would take an order for supplies from a unit commander and seek bids from companies to fill the order. Another would award the contract, and a third would oversee delivery of the goods. That system, officials said, would allow each contracting officer to serve as a check on the others.
At Camp Arifjan, a single contracting officer handled all three parts of the process, giving the officers broad discretion and creating opportunities for unit commanders to join conspiracies by inflating their troops’ needs. What resulted, said Mr. Young, the Army Contracting Agency director, was “a web of deceit.”
A Family Stands Accused
Court records do not make clear how far authorities believe the web spun beyond Major Cockerham. The Gulf Group, a Kuwait-based business, has sued the Army, claiming that its contracts were canceled for no reason. Major Cockerham and Major Davis were listed on the contract and cancellation documents. “My hunch is that my clients’ contracts were canceled because we would not play ball,” said Iliaura Hands, a lawyer for the Gulf Groups, “and another company, with a lot more money, did.”
The accusations against Major Cockerham depict a corrupt family enterprise. The criminal complaint filed in Texas says he arranged for representatives of companies awarded contracts to deliver payments to his wife or his sister Carolyn Blake.
Ms. Blake moved to Kuwait because Major Cockerham told her she could make more money there than she was making as a teacher in Dallas, according to the court papers. Mrs. Cockerham, who lived at the couple’s home at Fort Sam Houston, made at least two trips to Kuwait and Dubai, once taking her 7-year-old sons and 3-year-old daughter.
The company representatives would show up at her hotel room with bags of cash, then accompany her to put the money in safe deposit boxes, the records assert.
There is little evidence the couple went on buying binges. Investigators have seized $175,000 from an account believed linked to them. During the December 2006 search of their home, court documents said, the couple confessed to accepting $1 million in bribes. However, investigators reported finding handwritten ledgers with coded entries for amounts from $13,600 to $2 million stashed in offshore bank accounts. The court records allege that the major accepted bribes from eight companies, which are not named in the documents.
A Letter From Prison
At church services in Castor on Sept. 9, Mrs. Egans told congregants of New Friendship Baptist Church that she had gotten a letter from Major Cockerham, who is in custody in a federal prison in San Antonio, Tex., with his wife. (Their children are staying with Melissa Cockerham’s relatives in Kentucky.) He wrote that his wife was busy with a new singing ministry for the other women in the prison and that he had preached two sermons to the men.
He thanked Mrs. Egans for reading the names of his sons when they were baptized, just as she had done at his own baptism more than 30 years earlier. He offered no explanation of the charges against him, nor did he express any sadness.
“We are at such peace, with such zeal for the Lord,” Major Cockerham wrote, “that we know this is exactly where we are supposed to be for this short time.”
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10) Urgent: Call School Board To Stop Lennar's Toxic Exposures To Students
(415) 241-6427
Please email Board Members:
Mr. Mark Sanchez
President
e-mail: SanchezM5@sfusd.edu
Mr. Norman Yee
Vice President
e-mail: YeeN1@sfusd.edu
Ms. Jane Kim
e-mail: KimJ7@sfusd.edu
Mr. Eric Mar, Esq.
e-mail: mare@sfusd.edu
Ms. Kim-Shree Maufas
e-mail: MaufasKS@sfusd.edu
Ms. Hydra Mendoza
email: MendozaH@sfusd.edu
Ms. Jill Wynns
e-mail: Wynnsj@sfusd.edu
Hi all,
If you call the School Board today, you can help stop a toxic travesty in San Francisco.
Over the past year, the Miami based Lennar construction corporation has been exposing children and residents in San Francisco to toxic exposures of deadly chemicals, most notably the extremely dangerous and cancer causing air born substance, asbestos. Lennar was given permission to do large scale housing and condo construction in the Bayview Hunters point district of San Francisco, and almost immediately began violating safety precautions meant to prevent toxic dust and asbestos in that area from being released into the City's air.
Community activists went before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to demand that Lennar's construction work to be halted until it can be guaranteed safe to the public, but unfortunately, under serious pressure from Lennar and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (which is outrageously complicit in Lennar's violations) six of our eleven Board of Supervisors members voted in the majority to allow Lennar to continue its hazardous behavior.
But the fight is not over. Eric Mar and other members of the San Francisco Board of Education have brought new hope by drafting their own resolution to insist that Lennar's construction be halted until proper testing can be done to guarantee that public school students will not be exposed to toxic emissions from Lennar's work.
The School Board will vote on this resolution as early as tomorrow, Tuesday, September 25th at around 6pm.
What You Can Do
Take a quick moment to call the San Francisco School Board Executive Assistant's office at:
415-241-6427
and give them the following message:
"Please forward my message to all School Board members. Please suspend the rules, and vote immediately to insist that schools and students near the Lennar construction site be tested for chemical and asbestos exposure, before allowing Lennar's construction to continue."
If you get an answering machine, just leave your message on the machine.
For more information, see the San Francisco Bay Guardian report at:
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3084 [reprinted below—see next article...bw]
Thanks for you action and support!
Eric Brooks
Campaign Coordinator
Our City
http://our-city.org
Sustainability mailing list
Sustainability@sfgreens.org
https://list.sfgreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainability
Previous related messages containing the individual email addresses for the School Board and the full text of the resolution:
Our deepest gratitude to School Board members Eric Mar and Kim-Shree Maufas for sponsoring this resolution. Its passage by the full School Board on Tuesday, Sept. 25 (meeting starts at 6 p.m. at 555 Franklin at McAllister), would give an enormous boost to our movement to stop Lennar and assess our people's health. This is literally a life and death issue - our children are suffering and their parents and grandparents are dying. Our precious people's health and very lives are being sacrificed for the greater profit of a corrupt, greedy, guilty corporate giant called Lennar.
Let's call on our School Board members to join us in "slaying" that giant - or at least shutting it down while our health is being assessed. Let's take control of our community and our destiny, infuse our children with hope and watch them thrive physically and academically ... and make all their fondest dreams come true.
Mary
SF Bay View
Eric Mar wrote:
Tim and Mary - i know this is short notice. but we are
voting at the school board meeting on tues 9/25 at 6pm
on a resolution that calls for an independent study of
the environmental health conditions at the hunters
point LENNAR development area to support the families
and students in the area.
can you help get the word out and we need some calls
and emails to the board of education members to vote
on the resolution that night as well.
School Board meetings are held in the Board meeting
room at 555 Franklin Street @ McAllister Street.
Call 241-6427 (the day before or the day of the
meeting) in order to be on the speaker's list. You can
also sign up to speak when you arrive at the meeting.
here's a text version of the resolution:
San Francisco Board of Education Resolution
In Opposition to Lennar Corporation’s Hunters
Point Naval Shipyard Development and In Support of
the Community’s Demand for a Temporary Stoppage and
an Independent Health and Safety Assessment to
Protect Our Students and Their Families
- Commissioners Eric Mar and Kim-Shree Maufas
[will move to suspend the rules to vote on First
Reading 9/25]
WHEREAS: Patterns of environmental racism,
inequity and injustice exist within San Francisco,
where schools in communities like Bayview Hunters
Point bear the brunt of environmental health
problems; and
WHEREAS: Since October 2006, when a young worker
blew the whistle on Lennar Corporation’s Hunters
Point Naval Shipyard development, large numbers of
students, teachers, educators, workers, and families
of the Bayview Hunters Point area have been voicing
their concerns about the construction-related dust
at the Hunters Point Shipyard site and the dangerous
health impact that the dust and toxics in it,
including asbestos, heavy metals and other
inorganics, are having on our SFUSD students, staff
and members of the community; and
WHEREAS: Lennar Corporation is a Florida-based
Fortune 500 company which reportedly had revenues of
$16.3 billion in 2006 from development projects
throughout the country like the 1500-unit
condominium development planned for Hunters Point;
and
WHEREAS: Lennar Bayview Hunters Point LLC was
involved in large scale grading that reportedly
caused untold amounts of toxic dust and Asbestos
Structures to migrate over its boundary and into
areas were children and families live, work and
play; and
WHEREAS: In response to these health dangers and
conerns, a broad grassroots coalition of Bayview
Hunters Point and social justice community
organizations has been demanding a temporary
stoppage in Lennar Corporation’s construction so
that an independent health assessment can be
conducted; and
WHEREAS: There has been a history of problems with
implementing the City’s dust-mitigation plan since
the soil grading and disposal process began that has
included: an absence of air monitoring for the first
four months of the project during heavy grading;
malfunctioning air monitors; a Notice of Violation
from the Air Quality Management District; and when
the monitors started working, routine exceedances of
the agreed-upon allowance of asbestos prevalence in
the air – 16,000 structures per cubic meter [SF
Department of Health Regulations, Article 31]
including 9 exceedances in June alone; and very poor
communication of these exceedances to adjacent
neighbors; and
WHEREAS: Numerous studies have documented that
Bayview Hunter's Point and other communities in
Southeast San Francisco are overburdened with the
cumulative impacts of a multitude of environmental
health threats that impact the health and well-being
of children and other residents who are
overwhelmingly African American and other people of
color. These impacts include exposure to toxic air
pollution, carcinogens, and other inorganic
substances from industrial facilities, power plants,
sewage treatment and solid and hazardous waste
facilities and diesel particulate from trucks,
trains and other vehicles. Additionally, these
impacted children and residents are more vulnerable
to environmental toxics due to their limited access
to quality health care and healthy foods and other
social and cultural factors. And, this
disproportionate impact has a damaging effect on our
students academic achievement and opportunities for
success in school and in their lives; and
WHEREAS: San Francisco public schools such as
Malcolm X Academy, George Washington Carver, Bret
Harte, and Dr. Charles Drew College Prep Academy,
other schools, childcare centers, and playgrounds
are in the immediate vicinity of the Lennar
development site; and
WHEREAS: Three African American employees of
Lennar Corporation filed a whistle blower lawsuit in
SF Superior Court on March 16, 2007, alleging that
they suffered retaliation after reporting asbestos
dust exposure and racial discrimination and that the
company failed to contain asbestos dust while
drilling into the Shipyard site, endangering the
local community, including the school children of
the neighboring Muslim University;
WHEREAS: The World Health Organization reports
that there is no evidence for a threshold for the
carcinogenic effect of asbestos and that increased
cancer risks have been observed in populations
exposed to very low levels of asbestos; However,
there are tests for lead, chromium, radon, arsenic,
etc., which are toxic chemicals that are present in
the dirt on the affected site; and
WHEREAS: The ‘Precautionary Principle’ has been
adopted by a growing number of cities, including San
Francisco, as well as the Los Angeles Unified School
District, as a proactive approach to promote the
safest, lowest risk approach to protecting people’s
health, the environment, and property; and
WHEREAS: The Precautionary Principle as adopted
by the City and County of San Francisco includes the
following “essential elements:” :
Anticipatory Action: There is a duty to take
anticipatory action to prevent harm. Government,
business, and community groups, as well as the
general public, share this responsibility.
Right to Know: The community has a right to know
complete and accurate information on potential human
health and environmental impacts associated with the
selection of products, services, operations or
plans. The burden to supply this information lies
with the proponent, not with the general public.
Alternatives Assessment: An obligation exists to
examine a full range of alternatives and select the
alternative with the least potential impact on human
health and the environment including the alternative
of doing nothing.
Full Cost Accounting: When evaluating potential
alternatives, there is a duty to consider all the
reasonably foreseeable costs, including raw
materials, manufacturing, transportation, use,
cleanup, eventual disposal, and health costs even if
such costs are not reflected in the initial price.
Short-and long-term benefits and time thresholds
should be considered when making decisions.
Participatory Decision Process: Decisions
applying the Precautionary Principle must be
transparent, participatory, and informed by the best
available information. (City of San Francisco,
Precautionary Principle Ordinance, Section 101,
August 2003,
http://temp.sfgov.org/sfenvironment/aboutus/innovative/pp/sfpp.htm
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the Board of
Education of the San Francisco Unified School
District believes that the Precautionary Principle
as adopted by the City and County of San Francisco
requires the Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Redevelopment
Agency, Department of Public Health, Board of
Supervisors, and other agencies accountable to our
communities to take “anticipatory action” to prevent
harm and through exploration and careful analysis of
courses of action in order to present the least
threat to the students, families and staff of the
schools in the vicinity of the Hunters Point
development; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board of
Education of the San Francisco Unified School
District calls on the Mayor, Board of Supervisors,
Redevelopment Agency, Department of Public Health
and other relevant City agencies to require an
immediate halt of Lennar Corporation’s development
of Parcel A in the Hunter’s Point Shipyard until an
immediate and independent health and safety
assessment can be conducted in coordination with the
Superintendent and the School District’s School
Health Programs Office and relevant community
organizations and City task forces like the SF
Asthma Task Force; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board directs
the Superintendent to coordinate with City officials
to ensure the health of our students and their
families in the affected area and report back to the
full Board with an environmental safety action plan
and timelines to ensure the safety of our students
and their families no later than the Board’s October
23rd meeting.
-----
Eric Mar - SF Board of Education - Cell 415-730-4188
ericmar@sbcglobal.net or mare@sfusd.edu
http://www.edjustice.blogspot.com
-----
Eric Mar - SF Board of Education - Cell 415-730-4188
ericmar@sbcglobal.net or mare@sfusd.edu
http://www.edjustice.blogspot.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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11) Letter to the School Board Members of SFUSD, by Bonnie Weinstein
The Corporation that Ate San Francisco
Lennar's failures at Hunters Point Shipyard highlight the risk of putting the Bay Area's prime real estate into the hands of profit-driven developers
By Sarah Phelan
sarah@sfbg.com
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3084
Letter to the School Board Members of SFUSD, by Bonnie Weinstein:
Dear School Board Members,
I implore you to Stop Lennar! San Francisco children are exposed to so much toxins already—especially in the Bayview/Hunters Point district—and it must be stopped. It amounts to allowing further toxins to permeate the lives of our children. It would be one thing if this kind of work were done with the highest quality materials and with the children's safety in mind but those are not the standards Lennar goes by—they are out to make a buck and safety be damned!
Ultimately, you, the members of the Board of Education, are the caretakers of our children. In this instance, their lives and their health and well being are in your hands.
Please vote to stop the construction until and when it is proven to be safe and non-toxic to our children.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area Untied Against War
Mother of a child that suffered asthma with most of the other neighborhood children in the Bayview, SF.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Corporation that Ate San Francisco
Lennar's failures at Hunters Point Shipyard highlight the risk of putting the Bay Area's prime real estate into the hands of profit-driven developers
By Sarah Phelan
sarah@sfbg.com
http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3084
For the past decade, Florida-based megadeveloper Lennar Corp. has been snatching up the rights to the Bay Area's former naval bases, those vast stretches of land that once housed the Pacific Fleet but are now home to rats, weeds, and in some places, low-income renters.
When the Navy pulled out of Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, it left behind a landscape pitted with abandoned barracks, cracked runways, spooky radiation laboratories, antique cranes, rusting docks, and countless toxic spills.
A quarter century later, Lennar came knocking at the shipyard's door — and those of other military bases abandoned in the waning days of the cold war — recognizing these toxic wastelands as the last frontier of underdeveloped land in urban American and an unparalleled opportunity to make big money.
Lennar had already won its first battle in 1997, seizing control of the Bay Area's former military pearl in Vallejo when it was named master developer for the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Two years later it almost lost its bid for Hunters Point Shipyard when a consultant for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency recommended giving the development rights to the Ohio-based Forest City.
Lennar fought back, calling on politically connected friends and citing its deep pockets and its track record at Mare Island.
A parade of Lennar supporters, many of them friends of then-mayor Willie Brown and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, told the Redevelopment Agency commissioners that Lennar was the only developer that had bothered to reach out to the Bayview–Hunters Point community. In the end, the commissioners — all of them mayoral appointees — ignored their consultant's advice and voted for Lennar.
Nobody knows if Forest City would have done a better job. A developer is, after all, a developer. But Lennar's victory at the shipyard helped it win the rights, four years later, to redevelop Treasure Island — long before it had even broken ground at Hunters Point. And a couple years ago, it parlayed those footholds into an exclusive development agreement for Candlestick Point.
Now the Fortune 500 company, which had revenues of $16.3 billion in 2006, does have a track record at the shipyard. And that performance is raising doubts about whether San Francisco should have entrusted almost its entire undeveloped coastline to a profit-driven corporation that is proving difficult to regulate or hold accountable for its actions.
Sure, Lennar has provided job training for southeast San Francisco residents, set up small-business assistance and community builder programs, and invested $75 million in the first phase of development. That's the good news.
But on Lennar's watch, a subcontractor failed to monitor and control dangerous asbestos dust next to a school at the Hunters Point Shipyard, potentially exposing students to a deadly toxin — despite promising to carefully monitor the air and control the construction dust.
And when the homebuilding industry took a nosedive last year, Lennar reneged on its promise to provide needed rental housing on Hunters Point — saying that its profit margins were no longer good enough to make rentals worthwhile. All of which raises questions about whether this company, which is working with Mayor Gavin Newsom to build a stadium at the shipyard to keep the 49ers in town, really has San Francisco's interests in mind.
Bayview–Hunters Point native Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, a physician and a Sierra Club member, called the Lennar deal the "dirty transfer of the shipyard." She told us, "There is no reason why I'd trust Lennar more than I would the Navy and the federal regulators who have stringently worked on the cleanup of Hunters Point Shipyard, and yet it still remains toxic."
"This is just a play to get the shipyard," said Porter Sumchai, whose father was a longshore worker at the shipyard and died from asbestosis.
Part of the problem is systemic: the Redevelopment Agency hands over these giant projects to master, for-profit developers — who can then change the plans based on financial considerations, not community needs. And while Lennar likes to tell decision makers of its massive size and resources, the actual work at these bases has been delegated to limited-liability subsidiaries with far fewer available assets.
In this case, Lennar experienced a 3 percent drop in sales last year, a 29 percent increase in cancellation rates on homes, and a 15 percent dip in its fourth quarter profits. The downturn prompted Lennar's president and CEO, Stuart Miller, to identify ways to improve what he described in the annual report as the company's "margin of improvement" in 2007. These included "reducing construction costs by negotiating lower prices, redesigning products to meet today's market demand and building on land at current market prices."
A Lennar spokesperson, Sam Singer, issued a statement to us saying that "Lennar BVHP is committed to operating responsibly, continually incorporating best community and environmental practices into our everyday business decisions."
But for a look at how Lennar's model clashes with community interests, you need go no further than the edge of the site where Lennar has been digging up asbestos-laden rock.
DUST IN THE WIND
The Muhammed University of Islam is a small private school that occupies a modest flat-roofed hilltop building on Kiska Road with a bird's-eye view of the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard. This year-round K–12 school is affiliated with the Nation of Islam and attracts mostly African American students but also brings in Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander children, many of whom have had problems in the public school system and whose parents can't cover the cost of a private school.
"We find a way," the school's mustachioed and nattily dressed minister, Christopher Muhammed, recently told the Redevelopment Agency in a veiled allusion to the financial nexus between the MUI and the Nation of Islam's mosque and bakery on Third Street. "Many students aren't members of our tradition but live across the street, down the street, or come from Oakland and Vallejo."
The minister is asking the Redevelopment Agency, the agency that selected Lennar and oversees the project, to permanently relocate the school. The school's classrooms and basketball courts sit on the other side of a chain-link fence from Parcel A, which is the first and only plot of land that the Navy has certified at the shipyard as clean and ready for development.
Standing on these courts, the children have been able to watch heavy machinery digging up and moving huge amounts of earth in preparation for the 1,600 condos and town houses that Lennar wants to build on this sunny hillside, which has views of the bay and the rest of the shipyard.
The shipyard's other five parcels are still part of a federal Superfund site, despite having undergone years of decontamination. Black tarps cover piles of soil that have been tagged as contaminated, and recently, radiological deposits were found in the sewers and soil. The Navy is still cleaning up a long list of nasty toxins, including PCBs and solvents, on Parcels B through F, the land Newsom now wants the city to take over so that it can hastily build a stadium for the 49ers.
But the minister's request to relocate the MUI isn't inspired by fear of Navy-related contamination or the impact of a stadium on the neighborhood but rather by the reality that asbestos is naturally present in this hillside and Lennar's excavation work on the other side of the school's chain-link fence has been kicking up dust for almost a year.
It's not that Lennar and the city didn't know about the asbestos. In April 2000 the environmental impact report for the shipyard reuse noted, "Because asbestos-containing serpentinite rock occurs at Hunters Point Shipyard, construction-related excavation activities could cause chrysotile asbestos associated with serpentinite to become airborne, creating a potentially significant impact to public health and safety."
So when Lennar proposed demolishing abandoned housing and roads and grading and transferring massive amounts of earth on Parcel A, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District demanded an asbestos dust mitigation plan that included sweeping and watering the construction sites and making sure that vehicle tires are washed before drivers exit.
The state Asbestos Air Control Toxic Measure also stipulates that if a school lies within a quarter mile of a construction site, local air districts can require developers to install asbestos dust monitors and shut down their sites whenever asbestos registers 16,000 fibers per cubic meter. The state requires these extra steps because children have higher metabolisms, growing lungs, and longer life expectancy. Plus, they're lower to the ground and are likely to run, skip, hop, and play ball games that kick up dust.
Although Lennar agreed to abide by the air district's requirements, the developer failed to properly implement this plan for more than a year.
The air district's records show that Lennar's environmental consultant, CH2M Hill, failed to include any air monitoring in its original plan for Parcel A, which is odd because the school is obvious to anyone who visits the site. It was only when the air district pointed out the existence of the Hunters Point Boys and Girls Club, the Milton Meyer Recreation Center, and the MUI, all within the quarter-mile limit, that Lennar agreed, at least on paper, to what the air district describes as "one of the most stringent asbestos dust mitigation plans in the state."
The plan combines the air district's asbestos requirements with the city's demands that Lennar limit "ordinary dust" that can cause respiratory irritation and aggravate existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma and bronchitis. Lennar agreed to implement the plan in the summer of 2005 and determine background levels of dust and toxins at the site before work began in the spring of 2006.
But that didn't happen. For 13 months there is no data to show how much asbestos the MUI students were exposed to, neither for the 10 months before construction started on the cleared site nor for the first three hot and dusty months when Lennar's subcontractors began massive earth-moving operations next to the school.
You'd think that after these failures became public knowledge, a devastated Lennar would have gotten a black eye and perhaps fired the subcontractors involved. Failing to protect children in a community that's been the repeat victim of environmental injustice is a public relations nightmare, particularly in a part of town where distrust of redevelopment runs deep, thanks to the travesties in the Fillmore in the 1960s, followed by the city's recent rejection of a referendum to put the Bayview–Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan to a public vote.
But while Lennar's executives finally did the right thing last August by alerting the air district and replacing CH2M Hill, they didn't release their two other subcontractors, Gordon Ball and Luster, nor did they sufficiently rein them in when violations continued, critics have testified at agency meetings.
And instead of apologizing to the air district and the city's Department of Public Health for making them look like impotent fools, Lennar executives pushed back, contending that asbestos monitoring wasn't necessary until May 2006 and that they didn't need to water the tires of private vehicles.
They even listed economic rationalizations for the screwups that did happen. According to a memo marked "confidential" that the Guardian unearthed in the air district's files, written by the air district's inspector, Wayne Lee, Lennar stated, "It costs approximately $40,000 a day to stop grading and construction activity" and "Gordon Ball would have to idle about 26 employees on site, and employees tend to look for other work when the work is not consistent."
Meanwhile, the Department of Public Health was left reeling. Environmental health director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia told us, "It was very disappointing. We worked very hard. We wanted this system to be health protective. Whenever things don't work, it takes time to get back to levels of trust. This hurts trust and credibility."
In September 2006 the air district issued Lennar a notice of violation for the period of July 14, 2005, through Aug. 3, 2006. Lee wrote that vegetation removal on the site "disturbed the soil and in some cases, likely resulted in dust." He also made it clear that "any track onto common roads could be tracked out to public thoroughfares and create asbestos dust plumes."
Lennar's fines have yet to be determined, but they could reach into millions of dollars. State fines for emitting air contaminants range from $1,000 a day, if the violation wasn't the result of intentional or negligent conduct, to $75,000 a day, if the conduct was deemed willful and intentional.
But as the air district weighs the evidence, one thing's for sure: this wasn't an isolated case of one set of monitors failing or one subcontractor screwing up. This case involves numerous violations and three subcontractors, two of which — Gordon Ball and Luster — are still working next to the MUI (neither company returned our calls).
Records show that once Lennar fired its environmental compliance subcontractor, CH2M Hill, properly installed monitors immediately detected asbestos dust, triggering 15 health-protective shutdowns during the course of the next six months. From these results, is it reasonable to conclude that had Lennar got its monitoring right from the beginning, further shutdowns would have cost Lennar's construction subcontractors even more truckloads of money, as would have adequate watering of the site, which they didn't get right for months?
So far, the only explanation for the watering deficiencies has come from Kofi Bonner, president of Lennar Urban for Northern California, who told the Redevelopment Agency, "Given the hilly terrain, it can only be watered enough so as not to create difficult conditions for the workers going up and down the site."
Lennar didn't finally start to really control its subcontractors until January, when Lennar ordered Gordon Ball and Luster to "replace two site superintendents with new personnel who must demonstrate environmental sensitivity in conducting their work," according to public records.
MIAMI VICE
Headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla., Lennar began in 1954 as a small home builder, but by 1969 it was developing, owning, and managing commercial and residential real estate. Three years later it became a publicly traded company and has been profitable ever since, spinning off new entities.
Lennar Urban is one such venture. Established in 2003 to focus on military-base reuse, Lennar Urban recently produced a glossy brochure in which it proclaimed, "Military base reuse is our business — this is what we do."
Military-base development may be good business — but it isn't always such a good deal for cities, particularly when communities don't end up receiving what was promised on the front end.
In November 2006, Lennar announced it wouldn't build any rental homes in its 1,600-unit development at the Hunters Point Shipyard. The Redevelopment Agency had originally approved a plan for 700 rental units on the 500-acre site, but Lennar said rising construction costs make rentals a losing investment.
Also in November, Arc Ecology economist Eve Bach warned the Board of Supervisors that Lennar's public-benefits package for Treasure Island could be seriously compromised.
The package includes 1,800 below-market affordable housing units, 300 acres of parks, open space and recreational amenities, thousands of permanent and construction jobs, green building standards, and innovative transportation.
Bach summed up these proposals as "good concepts, uncertain delivery" and noted the discrepancy between Lennar's stated desire for a 25 percent return and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose's conservative prediction of an 18.6 percent return.
"Particularly at risk of shortfalls are transit service levels, very-low-income housing, and open-space maintenance," Bach warned.
With community benefits up in the air, high profits expected, and Lennar's ability to regulate developers uncertain, many community activists question just what San Francisco is getting from the company.
"I can't say that Lennar is trustworthy, not when they come up with a community benefits package that has no benefit for the community," activist Marie Harrison said. "I'd like to be able to say that the bulk of our community are going to be homeowners, but I resent that Lennar is spoon-feeding that idea to folks in public housing who want a roof over their heads and don't want to live with mold and mildew but don't have jobs or good credit or a down payment. I've heard seniors say, 'I can't even afford to die.' Lennar is not being realistic, and that hurts my feelings and breaks my heart."
SHOE-IN
The story of Lennar and Muhammed University of Islam underscores the problems with a system that essentially relies on developers to regulate themselves. Bay Area Air Quality Management District records show officials didn't know monitoring equipment at the site wasn't working until August 2006, when Lennar discovered and reported the problem.
Lee reported after an Aug. 31, 2006, meeting with CH2M Hill staff, "They were not confident that the air sampling equipment was sampling correctly, due to faulty records and suspect batteries. CH2M Hill staff discovered depleted batteries and could not determine when they drained."
The air district's air quality program manager, Janet Glasgow, told the Guardian, "The district had never been in this situation before, in which a developer, Lennar, came in and self-reported that they discovered a problem with their monitoring — something the district would never have been able to determine."
Worrisome as Glasgow's statement is, there's also the possibility that CH2M Hill's failures might never have come to light had it not been for the city's decision to demand another layer of dust controls. As Department of Public Health engineer Amy Brownell said, her inspectors were witnessing trails of dust firsthand, yet CH2M Hill's monitors kept registering "non-detect" around asbestos.
"Which was suspicious," Brownell told us, "since they were doing massive earthwork."
Saul Bloom, who is executive director for Arc Ecology, a local nonprofit that helps communities plan for base closures and cleanups, told us he recalls "waiting for the first shoe to drop, wondering how there could be no work stoppages when Lennar was digging up a hillside of serpentinite."
The other shoe did drop shortly after the August 2006 meeting. It was black and well polished and attached to the foot of Muhammed, who began questioning whether the dust wasn't harming his students.
But Muhammed found his questions weren't easy to answer, given that Lennar had failed to monitor itself and therefore lacked the data that could have proved no harm was done, a scary situation since health problems from asbestos exposure don't generally manifest themselves until many years later.
Those questions raised others about Lennar and whether it should be trusted to self-regulate.
DÉJÀ VU
In December 2006, Redevelopment Agency Commissioner Francee Covington asked Lennar's environmental manager, Sheila Roebuck, if the company had any asbestos issues at other projects in the nation. Roebuck replied no, not to her knowledge.
But the Guardian has learned that Lennar already had problems with naturally occurring asbestos in El Dorado. The problems concerned dynamiting in hills that were full of naturally occurring asbestos and resulted in a $350,000 settlement in November 2006. The case involved two El Dorado Hills developers, Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and Larry Gualco, and their earthmoving subcontractor, DeSilva Gates Construction of Dublin.
As part of the terms of the settlement, the county agreed, at the behest of the developers, to make their earthmoving contractor, DeSilva Gates, who provided the dynamite, solely responsible for the settlement. Accused of, but not formally charged with, 47 violations of air- and water-pollution laws is West Valley, a limited liability company composed of Lennar Communities of Roseville, Gualco, and Tsakopoulos's AKT Investments of Sacramento, with Lennar managing the LLC and AKT acting as the investor.
But as the Sacramento Bee's Chris Bowman reported, El Dorado Air Quality Management District head Marcella McTaggart expressed her displeasure directly to Lennar Communities, writing, "We are very disappointed to note that the agreed-upon measures to minimize ... dust were completely disregarded by your company."
McTaggart's words bear an eerie resemblance to Bhatia's comments about how Lennar's failure to protect the public heath "hurts trust and credibility."
"Ultimately, I'm very interested in being able to talk to the families and children who believe they have been harmed," Bhatia told us. "I want to help with people's uncertainties and fears."
LEGAL PROBLEMS
Uncertainty and fear were on display at the Redevelopment Agency's December 2006 meeting when Muhammed claimed that serpentinite, arsenic, and antimony had been found on his students and staff through "resonance testing."
Lung cancer experts doubt that methodology, telling us the only way to detect serpentinite in bodies is by doing an autopsy.
Following the minister's claims, a rattled Bonner told the Redevelopment Agency, "Lennar cannot continue to be accused of covering something up or willfully poisoning the community because of profits. Lennar is a national public company, and the accusations and allegations are very serious."
Unfortunately for Lennar and the city, the company's failures to monitor and control dust have left both entities exposed, since they formed a limited liability company without extensive resources, Lennar BVHP, to conduct the shipyard cleanup.
This exposure became even more evident when Muhammed returned to the Redevelopment Agency Commission in January with 15 MUI students in tow to ask for a temporary shutdown of Lennar's site until a permanent relocation of the school had been worked out.
"It doesn't seem proper to have peace discussions while the other side is still shooting," Muhammed said.
His relocation request got Bayview–Hunters Point community activist Espanola Jackson raising more questions: "OK, but where are the other residents going? How can you displace them? Have the residents on Kiska Road been notified? Or on Palou? Nope. You give people dollars to do outreach, but they don't come to my door. Someone is being paid to not give the truth."
Scott Madison, a member of the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, who'd observed large excavation machines breaking rock but not using water or any other dust controls, said, "I don't understand how Lennar, who I believe has a sincere interest in doing right, can continue to have a contractor who is out of control."
Bonner explained that Lennar sent notices of default to its subcontractors and hired people from the community to be monitors, plus installed a secondary level of consultants to monitor contractors. But when Redevelopment Agency commissioner London Breed expressed interest in releasing the old contractor and hiring a new one, the agency's executive director, Marcia Rosen, chimed in.
"Our agreement," Rosen said, "is not with the subcontractor. Our agreement is with Lennar." Her words illustrated the agency's impotency or unwillingness to crack the whip over Lennar and its subcontractors. But when Lennar Urban vice president Paul Menaker began to explain that its contractors have a 10-day cure period, it was too much for Commissioner Covington.
"We're way past that," Covington exploded. "We're not hams!"
EXPLODING HAMS
Perhaps they're not hams, but the commissioners' apparent inability to pull the plug on Lennar or its subcontractors leaves observers wondering how best to characterize the relationship between the agency, the city, the community, and Lennar.
Redevelopment Agency commissioners have been appointed either by Mayor Gavin Newsom or his predecessor, the consummate dealmaker Willie Brown. But the incestuous web of political connections goes even further.
Newsom is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's nephew by marriage. Newsom's campaign treasurer is another Pelosi nephew, Laurence Pelosi, who used to be vice president of acquisitions for Lennar and now works for Morgan Stanley Real Estate, which holds Lennar stock.
Both Newsom and Laurence Pelosi are connected to lobbyist Darius Anderson, who hosted a fundraiser to pay off Newsom's campaign debts. Anderson counts Lennar as his client for Treasure Island, Mare Island, the Hunters Point Shipyard, and Candlestick Point, another vast swath of land that Lennar controls.
Brown's ties to the agency and Lennar run equally deep, thanks in part to Lennar's Bonner, who was Brown's former head of economic development and before that worked for the Redevelopment Agency, where he recommended hiring KPMG Peat Marwick to choose between Catellus, Lennar, and Forest City for the Hunters Point project.
KPMG acknowledged all three were capable master developers, but the commission decided to go with the most deep-pocketed entity.
Clearly, Lennar plays both sides of the political fence, a reality that suggests it would be wiser for cities to give elected officials such as the Board of Supervisors, not mayoral appointees, the job of controlling developers.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Under the current system, in which Lennar seems accountable to no one except an apparently toothless Redevelopment Agency, you can't trust Lennar to answer tough questions once it's already won your military base.
Asked about asbestos at the Hunters Point Shipyard, Bonner directed the Guardian's questions to veteran flack Sam Singer, who also handles PR for Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Singer tried to dodge the issue by cherry-picking quotes, beginning with a Dec. 1, 2006, letter that the city's health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, sent to Redevelopment's Rosen.
Katz wrote, "I believe that regulatory mechanisms currently in place for Shipyard Redevelopment are appropriate and adequate to protect the public from potential environmental hazards."
The assessment would seem to be at odds with that of Katz's environmental health director Bhatia, who has been on the frontline of the asbestos fallout and wrote in a Jan. 25 letter, "The failure to secure timely compliance with the regulations by the developer and the repeated violations has also challenged our credibility as a public health agency able and committed to securing the regulatory compliance necessary to protect public health."
Singer also quoted from a Feb. 20 Arc Ecology report on asbestos and dust control for Parcel A, which stated, "Lennar's responses have been consistently cooperative." But he failed to include Arc's criticisms of Lennar, namely that its "subcontractors have consistently undermined its compliance requirements," that it has "not exercised sufficient contractual control over its subcontractors so as to ensure compliance," and that it was "overly slow" in implementing an enhanced community air-monitoring system.
Singer focused instead on Arc's observation that "there is currently no evidence that asbestos from the grading operation on Parcel A poses an endangerment to human health and the environment."
Lack of evidence is not the same as proof, and while Arc's Saul Bloom doesn't believe that "asbestos dust is the issue," he does believe that not moving the school, at least temporarily, leaves Lennar and the city liable.
"They formed a partnership, protective measures didn't happen, the subcontractors continue to be unreliable, and dust in general continues to be a problem," Bloom told us.
Bloom also recommends the Redevelopment Agency have an independent consultant on-site each day and bar contractors who screw up. "Without these teeth, the Redevelopment Agency's claims that they have enforcement capabilities are like arguments for the existence of God."
Raymond Tompkins, an associate researcher in the Chemistry Department at San Francisco State University and a member of the Remediation Advisory Board to the Navy who has family in Bayview–Hunters Point, says what's missing from the city's relationship with Lennar is accountability, independence, and citizen oversight.
"If you can't put water on dirt so dust doesn't come up, you can't deal with the processes at the rest of the shipyard, which are far more complicated," says Tompkins, who doesn't want the Navy to walk away and believes an industrial hygienist is needed.
"The cavalier attitude around asbestos dust and Lennar at the shipyard fosters the concerns of the African American community that gentrification is taking place — and that, next stop, they are going to be sacrificed for a stadium." *
Wednesday March 14, 2007
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12) In G.M. Strike, Both Sides See a Crossroads
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/business/25auto.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
General Motors’ unyielding stance in its contract dispute with the United Automobile Workers reflects its decision to accept the short-term pain of a strike to achieve its goals: a lower cost structure and more flexible work force to better compete against surging Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda.
“This really is a defining moment,” said James P. Womack, an expert on manufacturing and co-author of “The Machine That Changed the World,” which studied the plants of Japanese automakers in the United States. “G.M. has backed away from defining moments for generations. And now somebody there has finally said, ‘We have to do this because it’s a new era.’ ”
With the strike by 73,000 U.A.W. members in its second day, bargaining resumed today in Detroit as workers walked picket lines outside G.M. plants across the country.
“We want to get it done as quickly as we can,” the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said in an interview this morning on WJR-AM radio in Detroit.
The strike, which caught many experts by surprise, came in part over the union’s demand for job security for workers who will be left at G.M. after the company completes a restructuring plan.
Mr. Gettelfinger said today that the two sides had stopped discussing G.M.’s most important priority, a trust fund that would assume its liability for worker and retiree health care benefits.
“That’s off the table for now,” Mr. Gettelfinger said. But he said such a fund, called a voluntary employee benefit association, would be “in the best interests of our retirees.”
Mr. Gettelfinger said he disagreed with analysts who said a lengthy strike could spell the end of G.M. “I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said. “I realize there are some people who think we are crazy, and some people who think we will never settle.”
The duration of the walkout may hinge on the answers to two crucial questions: How long can the U.A.W. afford to stay out? And how long can G.M. endure a strike? While an indefinite strike would pose risk to both sides, each has made a calculated decision that it has more to gain by standing tough.
G.M. is better positioned to handle a strike now than in earlier contract talks, though not for reasons that have to do with strength. With its operations shrinking in the United States, the majority of its sales and profits are now coming from abroad.
It is selling more vehicles built in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, the source of new models for its Saturn division. And it is rapidly expanding production overseas, especially in China, which is fast becoming one of the world’s major car markets.
The company’s problems at home, which resulted in losses of more than $12 billion in the last two years, have forced it to close all or parts of a dozen factories, cut tens of thousands of jobs and offer deals to workers to quit or retire. A smaller G.M. means there are far fewer workers involved in this strike, so a halt in production inflicts less pain on the company.
The U.A.W. membership at G.M. has shrunk by more than 80 percent since the 1970 strike, when 400,000 workers were off the job for 67 days.
In recent years, the U.A.W. has been more cooperative with Detroit automakers, working side by side with auto executives to fashion early retirement incentives to shrink the work force and better match Detroit’s diminished stature within the industry. It also agreed to concessions on health care at G.M. and Ford Motor.
But yesterday, U.A.W. officials sought to dispel any doubts among the membership that they could still stand up to management.
“A strike gives the union an opportunity to say we’re not completely acquiescent,” said David L. Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John’s University in Queens.
Eldon Renaud, president of U.A.W. Local 2164 in Bowling Green, Ky., where workers make the Chevrolet Corvette and Cadillac XLR sports cars, said, “I think a lot of people are happy the strike happened, because they believe the company is walking over them.”
The strike occurred even though G.M. and the U.A.W. agreed to discuss a health care trust — called a voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA — that would have assumed G.M.’s $55 billion liability for medical benefits. G.M. considered the formation of a VEBA its major demand.
Investors and G.M. managers have pushed for a VEBA as a way to move the liability of generous health care benefits for current and retired G.M. workers, as well as their families, off the books of the automaker once and for all, even if that required a huge upfront payment.
G.M. has long said that such costs, representing hundreds of dollars for every car it builds, put it at a disadvantage with foreign competitors.
Mr. Gettelfinger, in fact, stressed that the strike was over other issues besides the VEBA, with job security topping the list.
Tom Wickham, a G.M. spokesman, said, “The bargaining involves complex, difficult issues that affect the job security of our U.S. work force and the long-term viability of the company.” He added that company officials would “continue focusing our efforts on reaching an agreement as soon as possible."
But industry analysts said that given how far apart the two sides appear to be, the strike could last for weeks.
Jonathan Steinmetz, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, said the company could endure a strike lasting several weeks, but not more. After that, G.M. would begin to burn cash, and investors, who have encouraged G.M. to take a firm stand with the U.A.W., might eventually grow impatient in the face of a months-long strike.
Another analyst, Mark Oline of Fitch Ratings, cautioned that the damage caused by the walkout would have a ripple effect on suppliers that sell parts to G.M.
“The U.A.W. strike has the potential for far-reaching, crippling repercussions throughout the industry,” Mr. Oline said in a research report yesterday.
The union, which pays workers $200 a week in strike pay if they take shifts on the picket line, has nearly $900 million in its strike fund, enough to cover a two-month walkout.
G.M., meanwhile, had a 65-day supply of vehicles at the end of August, about normal for summer, and it had already announced plans to reduce production in the final three months of the year because of slowing sales.
Beyond that, however, each side risks damage to its image. In recent years, the U.A.W. had fostered an image of being more of a partner than a foe in Detroit’s efforts to restructure.
Even last week, Mr. Gettelfinger said in an e-mail message to union members that the U.A.W. was committed to avoiding a walkout, although he acknowledged yesterday that he suspected last week that a strike was likely.
Likewise, G.M. has spent years trying to convince consumers that its vehicles are the equivalent of high-quality Japanese models, and that its brands are every bit as appealing as Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans. An angry work force, or one worried about its future, may scare off some buyers.
Before yesterday’s strike, experts had widely predicted that the two sides would reach an agreement, noting that it was in their interest to find common ground to better ensure their survival.
Even Mr. Gettelfinger seemed disappointed at the outcome. “This is nothing we wanted,” he said at the news conference. “Nobody wins in a strike.”
G.M. has an unsuccessful track record of facing down the U.A.W. In the past, its response, by and large, was to cave in to U.A.W. demands. That happened during the last big walkout, at two parts plants in Flint, Mich., in 1998. That seven-week standoff occurred when Rick Wagoner, the current chief executive of G.M., was president of its North American operations.
G.M. never recovered the 31 percent market share it held before the strike, and was forced to offer rebate deals to get customers back into showrooms.
“G.M. has made deal after deal that didn’t deal with fundamental problems,” Mr. Womack said. “This time they have to hold the line on a contract.”
Nick Bunkley and Mary M. Chapman contributed reporting.
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13) On Strike at G.M., Resolute but Anxious About Future
By NICK BUNKLEY and MARY M. CHAPMAN
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/business/25workers.html
PONTIAC, Mich., Sept. 24 — They had not expected a strike this year. And when they walked out midway through the morning shift on Monday, the workers at the General Motors pickup truck plant here had no idea how long their walkout would last.
But as they walked the picket lines, most said they knew why they were there.
“We’re fighting for our lives,” said Ed Demetrak, 52, a 30-year G.M. employee. “There isn’t any of us that are making bonuses. We’re just trying to etch out a living for our families. We’re not rich men.”
Workers at the truck plant in Pontiac, about 25 miles north of Detroit, have been through this before. A few were already working for G.M. in 1970, the last time the United Automobile Workers union called a national strike against the automaker. Most worked there 10 years ago, when job cuts led to strikes at that plant and others.
The workers said Monday that they were trying to prepare themselves for the possibility of spending months out of work again, but hoped that word of a contract agreement would arrive any minute.
“The only tool we’ve got left is a strike,” said Mr. Demetrak, an employee assistance professional at the plant. “Nobody wants it; it’s not good for anybody. But it’s all we’ve got.”
Mr. Demetrak said he was disappointed to find himself on a picket line, earning $200 a week from the U.A.W. instead of a full paycheck from G.M., but he does not blame union leaders for putting him there. He and others said they have full confidence in the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, who compared G.M.’s approach at the bargaining table to being “pushed off a cliff.”
Salaried workers continued to stream in and out through the picket lines here. Around 2 p.m., a man driving into the plant struck a female hourly worker with his minivan, injuring her leg.
As the woman was taken away in an ambulance, she gave co-workers a thumbs-up signal and the paramedics flashed a V for victory sign as they drove past. There was a kind of nervous lightheartedness in the early hours of the strike. Drivers honked as they zipped past the factory, and several businesses down the street dropped off free pizzas and icy bottles of water.
“You’re never happy about a strike; neither side wins,” said Ken Gunther, 49, as he carried a picket sign that read in part, “G.M. doesn’t care.”
“Everybody looks pretty jovial, but we don’t want to be out here,” he said. “It’s a very nervous time right now.”
The reaction to the strike was similar at G.M. plants and union halls across the country, as workers spent the afternoon carrying picket signs and chatting nervously about their future.
Any other day, Greg Kelly said he would be preparing for his evening shift at G.M.’s assembly plant in Hamtramck, Mich., a largely Polish community surrounded by Detroit, but instead he stood on a corner facing the plant entrance holding a video camera to his eye.
“I’m recording all this for my grandchildren,” said Mr. Kelly, a 29-year G.M. veteran. “I don’t want them to see a news clip, I want them to see the whole thing. I want them to see what is one of the worst times in history for autoworkers, it’s that bad.”
Mr. Kelly’s wife, Yvette, who has worked at the plant for 10 years, was carrying a “U.A.W. on strike” sign a block away.
“I’ll be out here until the cows come home,” Mrs. Kelly said. “They don’t want to guarantee job security or health care. What’s left? They just chop, chop, chop away, and send everything overseas. Who wants to keep putting up with that?”
Job security was on many workers’ minds. Many also spoke of the need to maintain their wage and benefit levels, realizing that many Americans would see video of the G.M. picket lines on the evening news and simply dismiss the workers as greedy.
“We’re not overpaid and underworked,” said Alan Benchich, president of U.A.W. Local 909 in Warren, Mich. “The fact is that the ones who claim that are underpaid themselves. And the reason they are underpaid is because we’re unionized, we’re organized, and they are not.”
But many U.A.W. workers said they were resigned to the idea of their pay being reduced and wondered if the strike would raise expectations too much. Bryan Moore, who has worked at the Hamtramck plant for 10 years, said, “It’s going to take quite a bit to get workers to return with a pay cut. I don’t know how long we’ll be out.”
Not all full-time G.M. workers were immediately affected by the strike. Local 798 of the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America represents workers at the Moraine, Ohio, assembly plant. They stayed on the job Monday, some offering cautious support to the U.A.W. strikers. The plant, which has more than 2,100 hourly workers, will eventually shut down if parts shipments from plants represented by the U.A.W. do not resume soon.
One worker in Moraine, Randy Kling, a 30-year veteran, said he was worried about his own job in cleaning operations, a department that is set to be outsourced in October or November. But he said the U.A.W. should stand firm to stop the erosion of wages and benefits. “Just keep bargaining,” he said.
G.M. workers were not the only ones picketing Monday. Some Chrysler and Ford Motor Company employees joined in to show their support, as the new contract for those companies is expected to be based on the eventual deal with G.M.
Steve Heemsoth, 57, who retired from Chrysler in August, carried a picket sign outside the Pontiac truck plant. “This isn’t just a U.A.W. issue,” Mr. Heemsoth said. “This is an issue that the United States needs to address.”
Factory Closes in Canada
OTTAWA, Sept. 24 — General Motors of Canada closed a transmission factory in Windsor, Ontario, early Monday because of a parts shortage.
Stew Low, a spokesman for the company, said the factory would remain shut for the duration of the strike in the United States. Mr. Low said that it appeared that other G.M. factories in Canada had enough parts to continue operations through Monday night.
Nick Bunkley reported from Pontiac and Mary M. Chapman from Detroit. Bob Driehaus contributed reporting from Moraine, Ohio.
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14) Court Advances Military Trials for Detainees
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/washington/25gitmo.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — A special military appeals court, overturning a lower court ruling, on Monday removed a legal hurdle that has derailed war crime trials for detainees at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba.
The ruling allows military prosecutors to address a legal flaw that had ground the prosecutions to a halt. The decision, by a three-judge panel of a newly formed military appeals court, was an important victory for the government in its protracted efforts to begin prosecuting some of the 340 detainees at Guantánamo.
The legal flaw involved a requirement by Congress that before the detainees could be tried in military tribunals, they had to be formally declared “alien unlawful enemy combatants.” The problem for prosecutors was that while the detainees had been found by a military panel to be enemy combatants, they had not been specifically found to be unlawful.
Under the ruling, prosecutors will be able to present new evidence to the war crimes trial judge hearing a case to support their contention that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. Until now, only one case has been resolved, that of an Australian citizen who accepted a plea deal in March.
The legal flaw was cited in June by a military judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III, in a ruling dismissing charges against a detainee.
The question of the detainees’ formal status has stalled the entire war crimes system and frustrated administration officials.
The three appeals judges said yesterday that Judge Brownback had “abused his discretion in deciding this critical jurisdictional matter without first fully considering” the government’s evidence. The appeals court sent the case back to Judge Brownback for further consideration.
A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon said last night that military officials were pleased by the ruling. “We welcome the court’s decision,” Commander Gordon said. “We will proceed in the most expeditious manner to get the military commission cases to trial.”
Lawyers said there was legal uncertainly about whether the defense could appeal Monday’s ruling, which came in the case of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian detainee who was charged with killing an American soldier in a firefight and other crimes.
Dennis Edney, Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyer, said the defense was considering whether to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If there is an appeal, it could delay the resumption of Guantánamo cases yet again.
Mr. Edney said he was disappointed by the military panel’s ruling but not surprised. “Omar Khadr still faces a process that is tainted, and designed to make a finding of guilt,” he said.
But some military officials expressed relief that the hearing process appeared to be “back on track” as one put it.
The chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, said that after the ruling in Mr. Khadr’s case prosecutors would consider filing new charges against other detainees.
“We’ve got other cases that are ready,” Colonel Davis said. “I think very shortly we’ll be moving forward with some other cases.” Colonel Davis has said as many as 80 detainees may eventually face war crimes charges,
On the same day in June that Judge Brownback dismissed Mr. Khadr’s case, a second military judge made a similar ruling in the case of a Yemeni detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Mr. Hamdan’s appeal of an earlier effort to prosecute him led to a Supreme Court decision in which the justices struck down the administration’s first system for war-crimes trials.
Prosecutors asked the military judge in Mr. Hamdan’s case, Capt. Keith Allred of the Navy, to reconsider, but he has not yet issued a reconsidered ruling.
The military appeals court said in its ruling yesterday that Judge Brownback was wrong in concluding that he did not have the authority to decide whether a detainee was an “unlawful” enemy combatant, which would give his court the power to hear a war-crimes case.
The court said the trial judge could hear the government’s evidence that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. An unlawful combatant, for example, could be a fighter who does not wear a uniform and conceals his weapons.
In Mr. Khadr’s case, prosecutors said their evidence included a videotape of Mr. Khadr, 15 at the time, preparing explosives for use against American forces.
In the ruling Monday, the military appeals judges, the United States Court of Military Commission Review, agreed that the law written by Congress did say that finding by a military panel that a detainee was an “unlawful” enemy combatant was a prerequisite for prosecution. But the judges said Congress intended the Guantánamo courts to apply usual procedures of military courts.
“This would include the common procedures used before general courts-martial permitting military judges to hear evidence and decide factual and legal matters concerning the court’s own jurisdiction over the accused appearing before it,” the appeals judges wrote.
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15) Panel to Consider Stronger Regulation of Utah Mines
By DAN FROSCH
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/us/25mine.html?ref=us
SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 24 — In the shadows of the Utah mountain where six miners were entombed and three rescue workers killed last month, a new mine safety commission will convene in Huntington on Tuesday.
The commission, created by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. after last month’s collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine, is expected to hear testimony from mine operators and those who live in the tight-knit surrounding towns, many of them coal miners whose relatives have toiled underground for generations.
The advent of the commission, which is meeting for the second time, is a sign that Utah is considering a greater role in regulating its 13 coal mines after 30 years of deferring to the federal government.
After Congress passed legislation in 1977 that led to the creation of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, Utah began to disband its own mine inspection program. Other more prominent mining states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, continue to oversee their mines, while the federal agency ensures they abide by federal law.
“Without a doubt, we will be more involved in aspects of mine safety,” Mr. Huntsman said in an interview. “The status quo is unacceptable.”
Efforts to find the six miners trapped in the coal-blackened guts of Crandall Canyon, near Huntington, after the mine’s initial collapse on Aug. 6 have long since ended. But their deaths and those of three rescuers, killed after the mountain buckled a second time, on Aug. 16, left some here calling for change.
“Everyone wants better safety and working conditions in the mines if that’s possible,” said Abe Aragon, a former coal miner from the nearby town of Price. “They’ve been mining like this forever, and sometimes things happen down there that can’t be avoided.”
“But if the mines can be made safer,” Mr. Aragon said, “then that’s really a good thing.”
Mr. Huntsman expressed frustration at the federal mine agency’s handling of the disaster and the process by which the Murray Energy Corporation, the mine’s co-owner, received approval to conduct retreat mining at Crandall Canyon. The procedure involves shearing thick pillars of coal and is often considered risky.
Critics have also faulted the agency for failing to swiftly put into effect the federal Miner Act, passed by Congress last year and intended to improve safety.
A report issued in February by the House Committee on Education and Labor concluded that the agency was too slow to address risks laid out by the Miner Act and to approve two-way, wireless communication systems that would allow miners and rescue workers to stay in touch when something went wrong underground.
According to the Miner Act, the federal agency must create regulations for the installation of the systems by 2009, but agency officials say they have not found a communications device durable enough to function in the extreme environment of a coal mine.
“The approval process is not what’s taking time,” said Mark Skiles, director of technical support for the agency. “What’s taking time is the development process.”
Congress has allocated $23 million to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for development of underground communications technology. Officials at the institute say that 40 new communication and tracking systems have been tested, and at least two are close to being ready for use in mines.
“On the one hand, we don’t want to be satisfied with today’s technology,” said Dr. Jeffery Kohler, the institute’s associate director for mining and construction. “On the other, we don’t want to wait five years for the perfect system.”
Officials from Utah, including Mr. Huntsman, have sought guidance from colleagues in West Virginia, where, without waiting for federal laws, state lawmakers imposed tougher regulations after a mining disaster in Sago in 2006. West Virginia ordered all of its 202 underground mines to submit plans by the end of July to install two-way wireless communications systems.
“We realized there was not going to be any breakthrough technology, so we wanted to take things on the market and figure out how to utilize them in a way that’s survivable,” said Randall Harris, an engineering adviser for the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training.
He said he expected approval of seven communications systems for use in the state by early October. It is unclear whether Utah will go as far as West Virginia, and some commission members remain unsure about returning to the regulatory business.
“I would not want to see the state just duplicate the responsibilities of other entities if there is no enhancement of mine safety,” said David Litvin, president of the Utah Mining Association and a member of the panel.
Scott Matheson Jr., the commission chairman and a former United States attorney who ran against Mr. Huntsman in the governor’s race, cautioned that Utah does not have the infrastructure to support a wholesale shift to regulation.
Still, Mr. Matheson noted that the formation of the commission, whose eight members include a United Mine Workers of America safety official, Dennis O’Dell, indicates that Utah is seriously reconsidering its role in mining matters.
“Inspections, training, emergency response, technology development, all of that is on the table right now,” Mr. Matheson said. “At the very least, the state can supplement and improve mine safety through its own measures and resources.”
Subpoena for Mine Documents
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (AP) — A House committee has issued a subpoena demanding that the labor secretary, Elaine L. Chao, give up documents related to the mine’s collapse. Lawmakers say they have exhausted other options.
Last month, the House Education and Labor Committee asked for a slew of records related to the department’s oversight of the mine, including internal communications with the mine operators.
A spokesman for Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, the committee chairman, said Monday that while Ms. Chao’s agency had turned over some of the requested information, it had not yet produced the internal documents.
The committee has no choice but to subpoena the information, said the spokesman, Tom Kiley. Ms. Chao was given until 5 p.m. Oct. 9 to produce the records.
A Labor Department spokesman, David James, called the subpoena “political grandstanding.”
The House committee and a Senate panel will hold hearings next week about the collapse.
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16) U.S. Sues Illinois to Let Employers Use Immigrant Databases
By JULIA PRESTON
September 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/washington/25immig.html?ref=us
The Bush administration sued the State of Illinois yesterday, hoping to block a new state law that bars employers from using a federal database to verify that immigrant job applicants are in the United States legally and are authorized to work.
With the suit, officials said, the administration is going on the offensive in the courts in response to cases intended to stall a crackdown on illegal immigration that the federal authorities announced last month.
“We will vigorously contest any effort to impede our enforcement measures,” the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The suit, brought by Mr. Chertoff’s department, seeks to stop Illinois from putting into effect a law that forbids employers from enrolling in the federal worker verification database program.
The program, formerly known as Basic Pilot, was renamed E-Verify last month.
Under the Illinois statute, the ban would remain until Washington certifies that the databases used to verify workers’ eligibility are 99 percent accurate.
Supporters of the law say the Social Security Administration and Homeland Security Department databases used to confirm eligibility are riddled with errors and could result in the denial of jobs to legal workers, including citizens.
The law, which passed with bipartisan support, was signed by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich on Aug. 13 and is to take effect on Jan. 1.
Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, did not comment yesterday, because he reportedly had not had a chance to read the suit. A spokeswoman for him, Abby Ottenhoff, said he had signed the bill because he “concurred with the General Assembly that the system now leaves too much room for mistakes and abuse.”
Ms. Ottenhoff said lawmakers had determined the verification program had a 50 percent accuracy rate and was slow, taking up to 10 days to respond to employers.
The suit, filed in Federal District Court for the Central District of Illinois, argues that the state statute is unconstitutional because it pre-empts federal laws that established the worker verification program, beginning in 1996.
The program compares job applicants’ identity information against the Social Security and immigration databases. Illegal immigrants often present false names or Social Security numbers when seeking work.
The program, which functions in all states, remains voluntary for most employers. The suit says 22,200 employers are enrolled in the system, which handled 2.9 million inquiries from employers in the current fiscal year.
“We want to be sure that employers can participate without being punished by the state,” Mr. Chertoff said. “We don’t want them to be guinea pigs” in a legal test between conflicting federal and state laws.
With the defeat of a broad immigration bill in the Senate in June, Mr. Chertoff said, “Congress said, ‘We want you to enforce the law first,’ ” before measures could be considered to give legal status to illegal immigrants.
The Illinois law was supported by business and labor organizations. “We have no problem with the program, but the program needs to be accurate,” said Tim Bell of the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, which helped pass the statute.
Immigration officials said they would begin a system today within the verification program to allow employers for the first time to compare applicants’ photographs against pictures in immigration agencies’ records.
Last month a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily held up a new federal rule that would have forced employers to dismiss illegal immigrants after 90 days.
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17) WHAT DOES THE “RULE OF LAW” MEAN IN KAHNAWAKE?
BAND COUNCIL ATTACKS “COUNCIL OF ELDERS” AS
PART OF GENOCIDE PLAN
In a message dated
9/25/07 12:15:55 PM,
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/09/mohawk-membership-genocide-and-great.html
MNN. Sept. 24, 2007. Every community has a set of rules to
conduct its affairs. One of these in Kahnawake is the
Membership Law.
Before the European invasion the Mohawk lived according
to the Kaianereh’kowa, Great Law of Peace. Many still do.
In 1897 the colonial government of Canada illegally
imposed foreign laws known as the “Indian Act”. Today
the majority object to the illegal band council system and
will not take part in their elections. However, this system
is the only way the Mohawk can get access to the portion
of our assets that these foreigners stole from us.
The people of Kahnawake spent more than 20 years
developing the Membership Law. The people wanted to
decide for themselves who could be a member of our
community instead of letting Indian Affairs impose foreign
notions that are destructive to us and our culture. On May
14th 2004 the people established a Council of Elders at a
public meeting. Their task was to apply the people’s
Membership Law. So far over 90% of the applicants have
been found to meet the requirements.
This isn’t good enough for band council chief, Mike Delisle.
At a closed meeting, without notifying the public, he
unilaterally suspended the activities of the Council of
Elders.
Is this legal? No way. Not unless you believe in
dictatorships. Mike Delisle has completely sidelined
the people of Kahnawake and cut them out of taking
part in the decision-making process.
This brings to mind a situation that occurred in 2002
in Venezuela, a country with great oil wealth that has
been held under the thumb of an oligarchy that kept
most of the people in poverty. The 5% minority
monopolized the resources, power and wealth.
When President Hugo Chavez was democratically
elected, he educated the people about their democratic
constitution. He began to reorganize Venezuela so
that the assets were fairly distributed. This infuriated
the oligarchy. They organized a CIA backed coup.
They invaded the Presidential Palace and abducted
President Chavez. They declared that the elected
government was disbanded. They immediately started
a brutal crackdown, trying to disband popular institutions.
The army was ordered to shoot anyone who objected.
The people refused to accept the return of the old
dictatorship. A huge crowd gathered around the
Presidential Palace. The soldiers would not take
orders from the usurpers to shoot the people and
decided to defend the constitution instead. Within
two days the usurpers were kicked out of the
Presidential Palace and President Chavez was
returned by the people. He did not take revenge.
He simply confirmed that the country was a popular
republic and would continue to be ruled according
to the people’s constitution. No one has the power
to suspend the operation of the law. Hugo Chavez
said, “If anyone does not like what I am doing, they
can vote me out of office”. Only the people can
change the law.
Mike Delisle has not been as brutal as the Venezuelan
oligarchy but he has grabbed power like a dictator.
He took it upon himself to suspend the Membership
Law. Mike Delisle has managed to create a climate
of fear. This is why he’s been able to push the
Council of Elders around. Let’s take a closer look
at what Mike Delisle and the band council did.
At the beginning of September 2007 the Council of
Elders was called by Jenny McComber of the Registrar’s
office to pick up “your envelope” at the band council
office. No explanation was given.
Under threat of suspension Mike Delisle ordered us to
attend an “urgent” meeting at 6:00 pm on September
5th at the “Golden Agers’ Club”. Mike Delisle spoke in a
hostile and angry tone of voice as if he was scolding
kids instead of speaking respectfully to the community’s
elders, some of who are in their late 70s.
Mike Delisle reviewed a “secret” 24-page document
entitled “A Review of the Kahnawake Membership Law”.
This document was not the result of consultation with
the community. The Council of Elders was not given
copies of this list of allegations. There was no indication
who wrote it.
On behalf of the Council of Elders, T.B. carefully summarized
the allegations that had been made by unnamed persons.
T.B. asked for a copy of the document and time to discuss it.
Then band councilor, Rhonda Kirby, a former member of
the Council of Elders, repeated the allegations. She was
followed by Timmy Norton, a member of the Council of
Elders who used to be a band councilor. He stood behind
us and made further allegations, in the course of which he
admitted that he had breached the oath of confidentiality.
He’s the one who told the television station about a decision
before the applicant had been notified. He punctuated his
tirade by resigning from the Council of Elders. The Council
of Elders agreed to suspend application hearings until such
matters were cleared up.
Friday morning, September 7th the Council of Elders was
shocked to read in the Eastern Door newspaper that Mike
Delisle had suspended the activities of the Council of
Elders. The elders were given no opportunity to see the
evidence or to defend themselves against the charges.
Just like the Venezuelan oligarchs, Mike Delisle made a
public announcement of his “fait accompli”.
On Monday, September 10th T.B. of the Council of Elders
supposedly received an email from Alexis Shackleton of
the Membership Registrar’s office declaring that the
Council of Elders would no longer receive any support
services from her office and that we would have no access
to a lawyer. The Council of Elders is required to keep
minutes, write letters and review all administration and
files that are kept by the Registrar.
The band council has followed a procedure that seems
to have violated our tradition in a number of ways. The
issue to be considered was not formulated by a neutral
party. Mike Delisle told the elders that he is selecting a
third party [maybe with the help of Indian Affairs?] to
conduct his investigation. He is also hand picking the
three members of the Council of Elders who will be
involved with him.
According to Haudenosaunee practice, a council
serving the public must be neutral and cannot be
removed once they have been appointed. Mike Delisle
seems to think the Council of Elders can be neutral so
long as it does what he says. Councils serving
the people are given a support staff that must remain
neutral and may not take part in the decision making
process.
The Council of Elders was appointed to conduct a quasi
judicial function. Its neutrality is important. Members
should be protected from arbitrary removal from office,
just like any judge anywhere else in the world.
Before this matter erupted, the Council of Elders had
run into some problems. The Registrar, Alexis
Shackleton, whose role should be purely clerical,
was giving the Council of Elders written instructions
on how they should decide a case before the applicant
was even heard. She also was placing persons on the
membership roll who were not qualified, which were
subsequently overturned by the Council of Elders.
The Council of Elders must make decisions based on
the laws and customs of the people as set out in the
Membership Law. There is no provision to usurp their
decision making role. As it turns out, Alexis Shackleton
is one of the authors of the report that Mike Delisle relied
upon in his attempt to disband the Council of Elders.
Mike Delisle’s suspension has no legal force or effect
under any known concept of legality except totalitarian
dictatorship. There was no evidence presented, no legal
argument and the Council of Elders was not allowed to
present its points of view. This violates the basic principles
of procedural fairness that are recognized by most nations
under international law
If the community doesn’t like the rules, it should change the
law. Mike Delisle is a member of the community. He has no
more authority than anybody else to change it or to dictate
how the Council of Elders applies it.
There has always been pressure from Indian Affairs as to
who can be a member. What are Mike Delisle’s motives?
We understand that almost 4,000 people want to be enrolled.
Perhaps many may or may not qualify according to the
Membership Law. This reminds us of the situation that
happened at Kanehsatake when James Gabriel was handing
out membership cards prior to the 2005 election in the hope
that it would garner him votes. This was done through Alexis
Shackleton’s counterpart, Jean Vincent, the Registrar at
Kanehsatake.
The band council also wants more voters because it will get
more money. The would-be Mohawks want tax free status,
land, health and education benefits, to vote and take over
Kahnawake. Is Indian Affairs planning to relocate the Mohawks
to stop opposition to the expansion of the St. Lawrence Seaway,
to build a ten-lane bridge right through the middle of Kahnawake
and who knows what else! Somebody’s got a long term plan here.
The band council hopes to “cash bleed” the Council of Elders.
On September 24th the Elders paid for a meeting room from
their own pockets. T.B. read the most recent dictate from the
band council which appeared to declare that the Council of
Elders can no longer meet except with the band council.
This is a violation of the right of freedom of association that
is guaranteed under international law. Mike Delisle seems to
infer that it is “unlawful assembly” [according to who?].
Remember how the RCMP used to break up our longhouse
meetings? Indian Affairs must be laughing at how they now
have our own people suppressing us.
This looks like a hostile corporate takeover of Kahnawake
by the powers that think they are. What kind of future is in
store for our children and the generations to come? A
dictatorship under the direction of Indian Affairs and Mike
Delisle? The Mohawks of Kahnawake better speak up quick.
Delisle and his cohorts have put a noose around our necks.
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News (MNN),
Contact Mike Delisle with your comments concerning
his behavior at communications@mck.ca
concerns to loudspirits@hotmail.com
easterndoor@axess.com
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Manhattan: Slain Soldier to Receive Citizenship
A soldier from Washington Heights who was killed while serving with the Army’s Second Infantry Division in Iraq is to receive citizenship posthumously on Monday, immigration officials said in a statement yesterday. The soldier, Cpl. Juan Alcántara, 22, left, was one of four soldiers killed in an explosion as they searched a house in Baquba on Aug. 6. Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, will speak at a ceremony at the City University Great Hall in Manhattan and present a certificate to Corporal Alcántara’s family. The corporal was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Washington Heights, Mr. Rangel’s office said.
September 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/nyregion/14mbrfs-SOLDIER.html?ref=nyregion
Texas: Man Is Spared After Evidence Turns Up
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A judge spared a man who was to be executed today in a double murder, after the Dallas County prosecutor’s office discovered evidence they believe had been withheld from the man’s lawyers. A second polygraph given to a co-defendant of the man, Joseph Lave, came to light in the last few days and reflects on the credibility of the co-defendant, said Mike Ware, of the district attorney’s conviction integrity unit. Mr. Lave was one of three robbers involved in the 1992 deaths of two teenagers in Richardson. Prosecutors say lawyers no longer with the office misled the court by saying the evidence did not exist.
September 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/us/14brfs-texas.html?ref=us
Pennsylvania: Police Chief Calls on Men to Patrol Streets
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Philadelphia’s police chief, acknowledging that the police alone cannot quell a run of deadly violence, has called on 10,000 men to patrol the streets to reduce crime. The chief, Sylvester Johnson, says black men, in particular, have a duty to protect vulnerable residents. He wants volunteers to work three hours a day for at least 90 days. “We are definitely encouraging black men to be involved in it,” he said. But he said he would not turn away men of other races. “We have to put the tourniquet where we’re bleeding at this point,” he said. The men would not make arrests but would emphasize conflict resolution.
September 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/us/14brfs-men.html?ref=us
Fracas Erupts Over Book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor Seeking Tenure
By KAREN W. ARENSON
September 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/education/10barnard.html?ref=nyregion
Hartford: Precautions After Inmate Suicides
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
State prison officials are looking into whether more precautions are needed to protect inmates after the deaths of three prisoners within four days. One prisoner apparently committed suicide on Friday and another apparently did so on Monday. A third prisoner died Saturday of unknown causes. Theresa C. Lantz, the commissioner of the Department of Correction, met with the warden of the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, where two of the men died, about whether changes were needed. Brian Garnett, a Department of Correction spokesman, said the state took action to improve inmate safety in 2004 in response to the suicides of nine inmates that year.
September 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/nyregion/05mbrfs-inmates.html?ref=nyregion
Minnesota: Immigrants Mistreated in Raid, Suit Claims
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A lawsuit filed by an immigrant rights group claims that federal agents who raided a meatpacking plant in Worthington last December detained Hispanic workers, hurled racial epithets at them and forced the women to take off their clothes. The federal lawsuit was filed by Centro Legal on behalf of 10 workers at the Swift & Company plant who are in the United States legally.
September 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/05brfs-IMMIGRANTSMI_BRF.html?ref=us
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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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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