BAUAW Newsletter: 03/18/2007

Saturday, March 24, 2007

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2007

Friday, March 23, 2007

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2007

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CINE DEL BARRIO and New College Media Studies Program present:
The Red Dance (El Baile Rojo) directed by Yezid Campos
a film about Colombia, video, in color, 57 minutes, 2004
sub-titles in English
Saturday, April 7, 11:30 a.m.
at the Roxie New College Film Center
3117 - 16th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero)
San Francisco
No admission charge

This is part of "Nuestra America, Muestra de Cine y Video
Documental" series of film showings on Saturdays of March,
April, and May. All films are at 11:30am and 1:30pm on
Saturdays at the Roxie. Films on Nicaragua, Venezuela,
Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and the U.S. (Immigrantes
Nuevo Orleans). Films are in Spanish with English sub-titles.
For more information: 415-863-1087
www.roxie.com

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DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
March 22, 2007
The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Dr. Al-Arian is currently
under his 60th day of a water-only hunger strike in protest of his
maltreatment 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.

Dr. Al-Arian is currently being held at a medical facility in North Carolina.
He is in critical condition, having lost 53 pounds, over 25% of his
body weight.

According to family members who recently visited him he is no longer
able to walk or stand on his own.

More information on Dr. Al-Arian's ordeal can be found in the transcript
of a recent interview with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian on Democracy 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/

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Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html

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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ

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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]

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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en

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Come listen and participate in a series of community conversations on
what's happening in public education. Get the 411 on:
Code Breakers: Deciphering Military Myths
Thursday, March 22, 2007 6pm-8pm
At New College of California
780 Valencia (@19th) San Francisco,CA
Military recruiters with a multi-billion dollar budget easily outnumber
college recruiters at most working class high schools. Black hummers,
outfitted with sound systems, flat screen TVs and video game systems
roll up to campuses luring students with false promises of job training,
college support, travel, and non combat positions. At this t4sj 411,
teachers from Community MultiMedia Academy in Hayward will lead
a workshop about the impact of military recruiters on campus and
how this can become an opportunity to think critically about media
campaigns, poverty, personal ethics and the role of a military
in US and global society. Curriculum and student work will be
shared. Participants will be encouraged to participate and share
their insights and work.
For future events check out http://www.T4SJ.org

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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/

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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_

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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/

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Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327

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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489

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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/

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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"

CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.

"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."

"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "

Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.

The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.

Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.

Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.

Contact:

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Survivor Council to Open Lawless High School
Residents and Volunteers Face Down Cops and School Officials
[VIA Email from: Rolandgarret@aol.com...bw]

2) Three Detectives Are Indicted in 50-Shot Killing in Queens
By AL BAKER
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/nyregion/17grand.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

3) Taming Fossil Fuels
Editorial
The importance of these projects cannot be overstated. As a report
released Wednesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology observed, coal produces more than 30 percent of America’s
carbon dioxide emissions."
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/opinion/17sat1.html?hp

4) Utah Sets Rigorous Rules for School Clubs, and Gay Ones May Be Target
By KIRK JOHNSON
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/education/17utah.html?ref=us

5) TERRORISM
Cuba -- How scared should we be?
BY PHILIP PETERS
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/43180.html

6) The Ides of March 2003
By FRANK RICH
Op-Ed Columnist
March 18, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/18rich.html?hp

7) In March, Protesters Recall War Anniversaries
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SARAH ABRUZZESE
March 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/us/18protest.html

8) The Army, After Iraq
Editorial
March 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/nyregionopinions/18sun1.html?hp

9) Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 19, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp

10) The Medicaid Documentation Mess
Editorial
March 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

11) Tens of Thousands March on the Pentagon
Riot Police Block Buses and Deny Access to People
Coming to the Demonstration, plus, full
Message from Immortal Technique
on being denied entrance to the March
on the Pentagon
March 17, 2007
http://www.pephost.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8421&JServSessionIdr004=19pxequxo1.app8a

12) Students’ Right to Free Speech
Editorial
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/opinion/20tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

13) Stepping on the Dream
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 22, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp

14) Congress’s Challenge on Iraq
Editorial
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/opinion/22thu1.html?hp

15) Illegal Worker, Troubled Citizen and Stolen Name
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/us/22raids.html?ref=us

16) Abolishing the Middlemen Won’t Make Health Care a Free Lunch
By TYLER COWEN
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/business/22scene.html

17) Foreclosures Force Suburbs to Fight Blight
By ERIK ECKHOLM
"Noting that the problem with the desertion numbers arises
when the service cannot find enough recruits to fill certain
crucial specialties like medical experts and bomb defusers..."
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23vacant.html?ref=us

18) Army Revises Upward Number of Desertions in ’06
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23awol.html?ref=us

19) New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
"Some administration lawyers are deeply reluctant to move
terrorism suspects to American soil because it could increase
their constitutional and statutory rights..."
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23gitmo.html?ref=us

20) State Takes Control of Troubled Public Schools in St. Louis
By MALCOLM GAY
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23missouri.html

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1) Survivor Council to Open Lawless High School
Residents and Volunteers Face Down Cops and School Officials
[VIA Email from: Rolandgarret@aol.com...bw]

On Thursday, March 8, residents and volunteers working with the New
Orleans Survivor Council faced off against the Recovery School
District (RSD). The NOSC had previously decided to reopen the public
school system themselves, because the city has taken public education
out of New Orleans. They are targeting mainly poor black communities,
and particularly the Lower Ninth Ward and the area around the C.J.
Peete public housing development.

As a result of NOSC pressure, Martin Luther King elementary school
will be reopened soon in the Lower Ninth, but residents are not happy
about the fact that it is reopening as a charter school. People need
to know that all of their children are guaranteed to be able to attend
school in order for them to move back home. Charter schools choose
their students.

So a few weeks ago, the Survivor Council decided to reopen Lawless
High School, also in the Lower Ninth, and Tom Lafon near C.J. Peete,
as public schools. Student volunteers have been cleaning Lawless out
for the past week. This week, students from Wilberforce and FAMU were
in the building, cleaning and salvaging usable educational materials,
when the RSD sent contractors to the school. The contractors demanded
to know who had authorized the students to work. They answered, "the
New Orleans Survivor Council authorized us; this is their school, and
we're cleaning and reopening it."

The contractors revealed that they had been hired to clear out the
"full contents" of the school, throw them away, and prepare the school
for demolition! The second floor of the building had computers, books,
software still in its original wrappings, and other salvageable
materials. At schools that have been designated as "full content"
schools, contractors are instructed to throw away all the contents of
the school. Nearly all of the schools designated as "full content"
schools are in poor, black neighborhoods. Other schools are designated
"partial content" schools, and in those, contents are salvaged.

Since both the volunteers and the hired contractors were under
instructions to clean out the school, the POC organizers proposed that
they all work together. An agreement was worked out whereby the RSD
contractors would work on the first floor, where everything needed to
be thrown out, and the NOSC volunteers would work on the second floor
and continue to salvage materials. However, then the contractors added
"you have one day." After that, they said, the students would be in
the way and would have to go.

The volunteers responded that they planned to stay until they got the
job done, and added that if anyone started tearing the building down,
the students would get in their way. When the contractors reiterated
their demand that the students leave the following day, POC and the
Survivor Council decided to pull out all the stops. That night, they
called residents and the press.

The next day (Thursday), nearly a dozen residents donned protective
clothing to join twenty students in cleaning out the school. The press
watched as the students, many of them having done a quick orientation
in civil disobedience, prepared to be arrested if necessary, alongside
residents who were not about to back down on their goal of opening a
high school for their children.

Looking for a response, the press called RSD officials on the phone.
The officials asked where the things taken out of the school were, and
residents responded that they had salvaged it, because the RSD was
going to trash useful materials and equipment. The RSD then decided
that they did not want the publicity that would come from calling
police to arrest residents and their volunteers cleaning out their own
school, and finally said they would meet with NOSC to discuss the
reopening of Lawless School!

After the experience of MLK School, residents don't have confidence in
the RSD to look out for their interests, but they knew they had won at
least a temporary victory that day. The next day, they sent another
team into Tom Lafon School so that residents determined to reoccupy
C.J. Peete would also have a school to send their kids to.

People's Organizing Committee
www.peoplesorganizing.org

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2) Three Detectives Are Indicted in 50-Shot Killing in Queens
By AL BAKER
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/nyregion/17grand.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

A grand jury voted yesterday to indict three city police detectives —
two black men and a white man — in the killing of an unarmed
23-year-old black man who died in a burst of 50 police bullets outside
a Queens strip club hours before he was to be wed last year, defense
lawyers and police union leaders said last night.

The jury charged two of the detectives — Gescard F. Isnora, an
undercover officer who fired the first shot, and Michael Oliver,
who fired 31 shots — with manslaughter, two people with direct
knowledge of the case said. The third detective, Marc Cooper, who
fired four shots, faces a lesser charge of reckless endangerment,
those two people said.

Detectives Isnora and Cooper are black; Detective Oliver is white.
They were among five police officers who fired into a gray Nissan
Altima carrying the bridegroom, Sean Bell, and two friends during
a chaotic confrontation in Jamaica early on the morning of Nov. 25.
Neither Mr. Bell nor his friends, both of whom were wounded, were
armed, although the police officers apparently believed that they were.

The grand jury reached its decision after three days of deliberations
and nearly two months of hearing evidence in an emotionally charged
case whose stark outlines — five officers firing 50 bullets at three
unarmed men who had been out celebrating — prompted an
outpouring of anger in some minority communities, and widespread
comparisons to the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African
street peddler who was felled by 19 of 41 police officers’ bullets
fired at him in 1999.

The grand jurors, who dispersed into the wintry afternoon yesterday,
indicted the three officers on less-serious charges than the second-
degree murder charges filed against the four police officers who
shot Mr. Diallo. All four were acquitted.

It was unclear whether Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney,
sought the indictment of the other two officers who fired at Mr. Bell,
Detective Paul Headley, 35, who fired one shot, and Officer Michael
Carey, 26, who fired three shots. All five of the officers testified
voluntarily before the grand jury without immunity from prosecution.

Mr. Brown scheduled a news conference on Monday morning. Lawyers
for the indicted detectives said they had been told to have the men
surrender on Monday — the next day that State Supreme Court in
Queens is in session. Mr. Brown’s office, which would not confirm
the indictments, said the grand jury’s decision had to remain sealed
until at least one officer was formally charged in court.

The person with direct knowledge of the case who said Detectives
Isnora and Oliver faced manslaughter charges did not know if they
were first- or second-degree counts. Second-degree manslaughter
is defined as recklessly causing the death of another person. First-degree
manslaughter is defined as causing the death of a person while intending
to cause serious physical injury to that person or causing the death of
a third person under those circumstances. The three officers may also
face additional lesser charges.

Some leaders in the black community expressed muted optimism
as news of the indictments spread late yesterday, while others felt
the indictments did not go far enough. In Jamaica, some detected
a sense of relief that at least some of the officers would face charges.

“As long as I know that somebody got something, I can live with that,”
said Bishop Lester Williams, who was to officiate at Mr. Bell’s wedding
on the day he died. “I have some degree of relief.”

If there had been no indictments, he said, “you have groups out
there that would not have been calm. The youth of this city would
have responded.”

Lawyers for the indicted officers criticized the grand jury’s action.

Philip E. Karasyk, who represents Detective Isnora, said, “Obviously,
my client is upset, and he’s looking forward to having his day in court,
and we’re all confident he will be vindicated.”

Paul P. Martin, a lawyer for Detective Cooper, 39, said: “I am
disappointed with the grand jury’s decision, but this is just the
first stage of a long process, and I am confident that once all the
facts are considered by a jury of Detective Cooper’s peers that he
will be exonerated of all charges.”

James J. Culleton, the lawyer for Detective Oliver, said the indictment
“was not unexpected — a grand jury presentation is one-sided,”

"I firmly believe that he will be found not guilty," he said of Detective
Oliver, 35, who, with Detective Isnora, 28, were considered the most
vulnerable to criminal charges. Detective Oliver fired far and away
the most bullets, emptying one magazine, reloading and emptying
a second, and Detective Isnora opened fire first, touching off the
50-shot barrage. Detective Isnora fired 11 shots, emptying his gun.

Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives Endowment
Association, confirmed the indictments but said he did not know
the charges and would not know them until Monday, when they
were unsealed.

“I know the grand jury worked very long and very hard on this
particular case,” Mr. Palladino said at a late-afternoon press conference,
surrounded by officials of his association. “I respect their decision.
However I firmly disagree with the decision to indict these officers.”

Mr. Palladino predicted that the jury’s vote would have a chilling
effect on police officers in the city and nationwide.

“The message that’s being sent now is that even though you’re
acting in good faith, in pursuit of your lawful duties, there
is no room, no margin for error,” he said.

Stephen C. Worth, a lawyer for Officer Michael Carey, described
the moment he learned his client had not been indicted:

Mr. Worth said he got a call from Charles Testagrossa, the
prosecutor who presented evidence to the grand jury, who
“told me there was no true bill as to my guy.”

“Obviously,” he said, ”we are gratified by the grand jury’s decision
as to Mike, and I have always believed that he acted professionally
on the night of this incident.”

Police Department procedures call for the suspension of officers
who are charged with a crime, and the three detectives will be
ordered to surrender their shields; all five officers are already
on paid leave without their weapons. Those who are suspended
will be unpaid.

If indictments of police officers are unusual, convictions are even
more so. Many saw a jury’s decision to acquit the officers who
opened fire on Mr. Diallo after a two-month trial as a firm rejection
of the powerful charges against them. In recent years in New York City,
Bryan Conroy, a police officer who shot a peddler in a Chelsea warehouse
had faced second-degree manslaughter charges, but was convicted
of the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide by a judge, who
sentenced him to probation.

The detectives indicted in the Bell case were in a larger group seeking
prostitution arrests outside the Club Kalua, a topless bar in Jamaica
that had been plagued by narcotics and prostitution activity,
under-age drinking and guns.

Detective Isnora had trailed Mr. Bell’s party, which was broken into
two groups of four men, believing that Joseph Guzman, one
of Mr. Bell’s companions, had a gun and was about to use it,
according to a person familiar with the detective’s account.

The detective approached Mr. Bell’s car. But Mr. Bell drove forward,
clipping him, and then hit a police minivan, backed up, nearly hitting
the detective again and slammed into the minivan a second time,
the police have said.

Detective Isnora, with his shield around his neck, said he opened
fire, according to the person familiar with his account. This led
to the fusillade of shots, with some of the officers apparently
believing that their colleagues’ muzzle flashes were those
of assailants.

Mr. Bell was killed as he sat in the driver’s seat. Trent Benefield,
23, who was in the passenger seat, was struck three times,
in the leg and buttock, and Mr. Guzman, 31, who was in
a back seat, had at least 11 bullet wounds along his right
side, from his neck to his feet.

Like the officers, the wounded men told their stories before
the grand jury.

Protests that followed the shooting were mostly peaceful. Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg convened a meeting of black religious
leaders and elected officials at City Hall. He emerged from
it calling the circumstances “inexplicable” and “unacceptable,”
and said, “It sounds to me like excessive force was used.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s quick reaction was viewed as a salve to the
situation and a turnabout from the approach of his predecessor,
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who did not reach out to black leaders
in the immediate aftermath of the fatal shooting of Mr. Diallo.

The panel of grand jurors began its work on Jan. 22 and met
as often as three times a week in an auditorium-style room
in an office building in Kew Gardens.

The officers testified in the reverse order of the number of rounds
they fired: Detective Headley and Officer Carey testified on March 5;
Detectives Cooper and Isnora, testified on March 7; and Friday last
week, Detective Oliver testified in the zenith of the process.

Deliberations seemed to move slowly and in fits and starts. After
Mr. Testagrossa read the charge — the instructions on the law
that the panel had to consider as it weighed the evidence —
the panelists were left alone to deliberate.

Reporting was contributed by Cara Buckley, Diane Cardwell,
Jim Dwyer, Manny Fernandez, Colin Moynihan and William K.
Rashbaum.

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3) Taming Fossil Fuels
Editorial
"The importance of these projects cannot be overstated. As a report
released Wednesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology observed, coal produces more than 30 percent of America’s
carbon dioxide emissions."
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/opinion/17sat1.html?hp

Each day seems to bring news of another prominent convert to the
cause of requiring mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases. Each day also seems to bring news of technological
advances that would make it possible to achieve those reductions without
serious economic damage. Put all these glad tidings together, and Congress
has all the reasons it needs to move quickly to regulate global warming
emissions here at home, thus setting an example for the world.

Last week the chief executives of America’s largest automobile companies
— General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota North America — pledged
to support mandatory caps on carbon emissions, as long as the caps
covered all sectors of the economy. They delivered their promise
to a House committee run by John Dingell — the crusty Michigan
Democrat who is another convert to the cause and has taken
to describing the global warming threat with phrases like
“Hannibal is at the gates.”

Meanwhile, dozens of major institutional investors organized by Ceres,
a coalition of investors and environmentalists, will gather in Washington
on Monday to offer support for mandatory controls. The group will include
Calpers, the huge California state pension fund with a history of making
environmentally friendly investments, and Merrill Lynch, whose credentials
are less impressive.

The news on the technology side is also good — particularly several
recent announcements about coal. The first came from TXU, a huge
Texas utility where the bidders have agreed to drop plans to build 11
old-fashioned coal-burning power plants. TXU has now announced
that it will build two experimental plants intended to capture carbon
dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere. American Electric Power,
another large utility, has also announced that it will build a coal-fired
plant based on slightly different technology but with the same intended
result: capturing carbon.

The importance of these projects cannot be overstated. As a report
released Wednesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology observed, coal produces more than 30 percent of America’s
carbon dioxide emissions. It is also a huge problem in China, where the
equivalent of one large coal-fired power plant is being built each week,
using antiquated methods. Unless coal can be tamed, the game
is essentially lost.

But while technology will play an indispensable role, the lead authors
of the M.I.T. report, writing in The Wall Street Journal, argue that the
most effective way to reduce emissions is to attach a significant price
to carbon emissions, either as a carbon tax or through a cap-and-
trade program of the sort now embodied in various legislative proposals
in Congress. Forcing people to pay to pollute would do more than any
other known incentive to bring new technologies to commercial scale.
That is the task before Congress.

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4) Utah Sets Rigorous Rules for School Clubs, and Gay Ones May Be Target
By KIRK JOHNSON
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/education/17utah.html?ref=us

SALT LAKE CITY, March 16 — Most people would probably not consider
the average high school chess club to be a hotbed of disorder or immorality.
But a club is a club, and Utah has decided that student groups need some
stern policing and regulation.

Next month, a 17-page law will take effect governing just about every
nuance of public school extracurricular clubs, from kindergarten jump
rope to high school drama. How groups can form, what they can discuss
in their meetings, who can join, and what a principal must do if rules
are violated are addressed.

But the school clubs law, signed last week by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.,
was not really intended to rein in the rowdies down at the audio-visual
club, some lawmakers said. The real target was homosexuality.

“This is all about gay-straight alliance clubs, and anybody who tells
you different is lying,” said State Senator Scott D. McCoy, Democrat
from Salt Lake City, who voted against the law.

State Senator D. Chris Buttars, a Republican from the Salt Lake City
suburbs and the law’s co-sponsor, said in an interview that he saw
the need for the measure after parents from a high school in Provo,
Utah, protested the formation of a gay-straight club in 2005.

But Mr. Buttars said his bill was intended to bring uniformity to the rules.
The centerpiece, he said, is a clause giving school administrators
the authority to ensure that clubs do not violate “the boundaries
of socially appropriate behavior.”

“If a gay-straight club wants to meet together, as they say they do,
just for friendship, I have no problem with that,” Mr. Buttars said.
“But I think school districts should have the authority to do whatever
they need to do protect their schools — the law gives them authority
to make decisions to protect the physical, emotional, psychological
or moral well being of students.”

The State Board of Education opposed the bill and asked Governor
Huntsman to veto it. Carol Lear, a lawyer for the board, said
in an interview that she feared that the complicated rules and the
subjective decisions that might be made in defining the term
“socially appropriate” could entangle principals in red tape and
litigation.

But Ms. Lear said she did not think the law would have much effect
on gay-straight clubs, which she said were protected under the
Federal Equal Access Act of 1984 from being singled out for
sanction or special regulation.

“It’s just mean-spirited,” Ms. Lear said of the new law. “It discourages
students from having organizations that would be helpful and mutually
supportive and that would be safer for them than being outside
the school.”

In a paradoxical twist missed by almost nobody in the clubs debate,
the federal equal access law was co-sponsored by United States
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, to make sure that
religious and Bible study groups were not discriminated against
by secular-minded principals.

The same protections mean that gay-straight alliances cannot
be singled out, legal experts say, which is why the rules in the
new schools law must be applied across the board to all clubs,
no matter what they do or who joins them.

Under the new Utah law, every club will have to complete an activity
disclosure statement that itemizes what it will do, and discusses how
many members it will have, and whether tryouts are required.
It mandates that any student joining any club needs a parent’s
signature — though most public schools in Utah require that already
— and specifically bans any discussion by any club of “human
sexuality.”

The law defines that term to mean “advocating or engaging
in sexual activity outside of legal recognized marriage or forbidden
by state law,” and “presenting or discussing information relating
to the use of contraceptive devices.”

Gay community leaders and legal experts say the name of the law
should be “Unintended Consequences.” Some gay community advocates
said the effort to crack down on gay-straight clubs may have backfired
and in fact strengthened Utah’s gay community.

Teenage leaders at some gay-straight clubs got politically involved
and testified at the Capitol. One of the State Legislature’s three
openly gay members successfully pushed through amendments that
could limit the law’s effect and even perhaps increase visibility
of gay-straight clubs in the 14 Utah public high schools that now
have them, by requiring that all clubs get equal treatment
on bulletin boards and in school newspapers.

“We helped weaken the bill and water it down, and that is in some
ways a victory,” said Samantha Verde, 17, a senior at Hunter High
School west of Salt Lake City and co-president of the school’s
Gay-Straight Alliance.

Ms. Verde went to the Capitol this year with the club’s adviser and
Hal Newman, Hunter High’s advanced placement European history
teacher, to lobby lawmakers. She said she thought that many club
members who became politically involved in the fight would remain
engaged.

“The attitude that led to the bill is still prevalent,” she said, “so
I think we’ll be fighting again next year.” Meanwhile, the governor
was confident that the new law would not have “a deleterious effect”
on student clubs, said Michael Mower, a spokesman.

“Our interpretation is that students can continue to organize clubs
as long they don’t discuss illegal conduct,” Mr. Mower said. For
example, there can be no Texas Hold-em club, he said, if it involved
real gambling and money.

Asked whether he thought principals might try to use the law to
eliminate or ban formation of gay-straight alliances, Mr. Mower said,
“We will encourage principals to be mindful of other aspects, especially
the equal access provisions, in making decisions.”

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5) TERRORISM
Cuba -- How scared should we be?
BY PHILIP PETERS
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/43180.html

[Outstanding column by Phil Peters - as usual, debunking what's been
printed in the MIAMI HERALD and such places with an astute political
judgement and a reverence for facts and logic which is rare in U.S.
media coverage of Cuba. In my dreams, someone like Phil Peters would
someday be in charge of U.S. policy toward Cuba. He's not a leftist
or socialist at all, but he does think facts and logic should take
precedence over rhetoric and posturing. Note that this is filed under
"Other Views" in the HERALD, which gave prominent coverage to the
Original nonsense when it first came out. Read and study closely.
Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net]

According to a defector, Cuba has a secret, underground laboratory
southeast of Havana called ''Labor Uno,'' where biological agents --
''viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses'' -- are being
developed for military use.

The administration calls Cuba a ''state sponsor of terrorism,'' so if
the defector's story is true, Cuba would represent what President
Bush terms one of the worst national security threats of the 21st
century: the world's most dangerous weapons in the hands of the
world's most dangerous people.

How scared should we be?

Not scared at all, if we judge by the administration's policies and
public statements, none of which betray concern, much less certainty,
about any threat emanating from Cuba.

The defector, Roberto Ortega, was Cuba's top military doctor. He
visited Labor Uno in 1992 while he was escorting a visiting Russian
delegation.

Ortega may be entirely truthful, but the Iraq experience teaches that
fragments of interesting information do not amount to ''slam-dunk''
intelligence.

Indeed, the Iraq intelligence failure led U.S. agencies to reassess
their views on weapons programs worldwide. The result came in August
2005 when, with Ortega's account in hand, these agencies downgraded
their Cuba assessment, concluding unanimously that it was ``unclear
whether Cuba has an active offensive biological-warfare effort now,
or even had one in the past.''

But the administration gives us more reasons to sleep easy.

 Cuba missed the ``axis of evil.'' With the exception of
now-departed John Bolton, senior officials responsible for security
matters have been silent about Cuba. In October 2005, Bolton's
successor as the State Department's top security official, Robert
Joseph, did not mention Cuba in a global survey of weapons of mass
destruction issues. Cabinet-level officials routinely chide Cuba's
human rights abuses but mention no security concerns.

 Ana Montes unchallenged. After Cuban spy Ana Montes was discovered
to be working as the administration's top Cuba defense-intelligence
analyst in 2001, Bolton and other officials charged that she had
skewed U.S. intelligence, including a famous 1998 report that called
Cuba's military capabilities ''residual'' and ''defensive'' and its
threat ''negligible.'' But in six years, the administration has
issued no report offering a less benign assessment, even though it
would serve its political interests to do so. Montes' betrayal, we
can deduce, involved leaking the identities of agents and other U.S.
secrets to Cuba rather than distorting U.S. intelligence.

 Migration exception. If the administration had the slightest
concern about terrorism coming from Cuba, it would not have a unique,
open-door policy toward undocumented Cuban migrants, where we welcome
those who reach our shores or Mexican border crossings and release
them into the community within hours. This may make humanitarian
sense, but it is truly a pre-9/11 policy in a post-9/11 world. It
tells Cuba, if indeed it is a terrorist state, to infiltrate
operatives not through cloak-and-dagger ruses but mixed in with
everyday migrants.

 No negotiations. In return for a promise to cap its nuclear
program, North Korea will receive fuel oil and direct talks with
Washington that could lead to normalized relations. Similarly, Iran
has been offered rewards for ending its nuclear ambitions. In the
Cuban case, the administration seeks no talks and does not pursue
Ortega's recommendation that international inspectors go to Cuba.
Apparently, the administration sees nothing to talk about.

What we are left with is that the only visible U.S. action in
response to a Cuba-related security issue is a maritime exercise to
prepare for a possible migration crisis in the Florida Straits.

Floridians can therefore go back to worrying about hurricanes,
tornadoes and inadequate insurance coverage -- until, that is, Raúl
Castro figures out that a new weapons program might be the ticket to
achieve normal relations with the United States.

Philip Peters is vice president of the Lexington Institute in
Arlington, Va.

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6) The Ides of March 2003
By FRANK RICH
Op-Ed Columnist
March 18, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/18rich.html?hp

TOMORROW night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s prime
-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the
broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America,
where memories are congenitally short, it’s an eternity. That’s why
a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it
written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this
exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician
and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence”
before the war, and few imagined that the administration would
so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would
go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now ...” has
been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently
disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much
of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war
and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available
before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone
who wanted to look.

By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these
warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were
the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for
the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant,
mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be
over in a flash.

Now many of the same leaders who sold the war argue that
escalation should be given a chance. This time they’re peddling
the new doomsday scenario that any withdrawal timetable will
lead to the next 9/11. The question we must ask is: Has history
taught us anything in four years?

Here is a chronology of some of the high and low points in the
days leading up to the national train wreck whose anniversary
we mourn this week [with occasional “where are they now”
updates].

March 5, 2003

“I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard.”

— Representative Duke Cunningham, Republican of California,
on the floor of the House denouncing French opposition
to the Iraq war.

[In November 2005, he resigned from Congress and pleaded
guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors. In January 2007,
the United States attorney who prosecuted him — Carol Lam,
a Bush appointee — was forced to step down for “performance-
related” issues by Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department.]

March 6, 2003

President Bush holds his last prewar news conference. The New
York Observer writes that he interchanged Iraq with the attacks
of 9/11 eight times, “and eight times he was unchallenged.”
The ABC News White House correspondent, Terry Moran, says
the Washington press corps was left “looking like zombies.”

March 7, 2003

Appearing before the United Nations Security Council on the
same day that the United States and three allies (Britain, Spain
and Bulgaria) put forth their resolution demanding that Iraq
disarm by March 17, the director general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, reports there is
“no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear
weapons program in Iraq.”. He adds that documents “which
formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction
between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” None of the
three broadcast networks’ evening newscasts mention his
findings.

[In 2005 ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.]

March 10, 2003

Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks tells an audience in England,
“We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that
the president of the United States is from Texas.” Boycotts, death
threats and anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations follow.

[In 2007, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards, including
best song for “Not Ready to Make Nice.”]

March 12, 2003

A senior military planner tells The Daily News “an attack on
Iraq could last as few as seven days.”

“Isn’t it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in
the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of
jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few
equals in its ruthlessness?”

— John McCain, writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

“The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow
‘Operation Re-elect Bush’ doesn’t seem to be popular.”

— Jay Leno, “The Tonight Show.”

March 14, 2003

Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, asks
the F.B.I. to investigate the forged documents cited a week earlier
by ElBaradei and alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction:
“There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents
may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating
public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”

March 16, 2003

On “Meet the Press,” Dick Cheney says that American troops will
be “greeted as liberators,” that Saddam “has a longstanding
relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda
organization,” and that it is an “overstatement” to suggest that
several hundred thousand troops will be needed in Iraq after it is
liberated. Asked by Tim Russert about ElBaradei’s statement that
Iraq does not have a nuclear program, the vice president says,
“I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.”

“There will be new recruits, new recruits probably because of the
war that’s about to happen. So we haven’t seen the last
of Al Qaeda.”

— Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar,
on ABC’s “This Week.”

[From the recently declassified “key judgments” of the National
Intelligence Estimate of April 2006: “The Iraq conflict has become
the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment
of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters
for the global jihadist movement.”]

“Despite the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons
of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable
to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the
amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according
to administration officials and members of Congress. Senior
intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands
from White House, Pentagon and other government policy makers
for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and
what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.”

— “U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms,” by Walter Pincus (with
additional reporting by Bob Woodward), The Washington Post,
Page A17.

March 17, 2003

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who voted
for the Iraq war resolution, writes the president to ask why the
administration has repeatedly used W.M.D. evidence that has
turned out to be “a hoax” — “correspondence that indicates that
Iraq sought to obtain nuclear weapons from an African country,
Niger.”

[Still waiting for “an adequate explanation” of the bogus Niger
claim four years later, Waxman, now chairman of the chief
oversight committee in the House, wrote Condoleezza Rice
on March 12, 2007, seeking a response “to multiple letters
I sent you about this matter.”]

In a prime-time address, President Bush tells Saddam to leave
Iraq within 48 hours: “Every measure has been made to avoid
war, and every measure will be taken to win it.” After the speech,
NBC rushes through its analysis to join a hit show in progress,
“Fear Factor,” where men and women walk with bare feet over
broken glass to win $50,000.

March 18, 2003

Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America”
that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: “Why should
we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day
it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose?
Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful
mind on something like that?”

[Visiting the homeless victims of another cataclysm, Hurricane
Katrina, at the Houston Astrodome in 2005, Mrs. Bush said, “And
so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were
underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well
for them.”]

In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street
Journal writes, “There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored
Al Qaeda members.”

[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House’s use
of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, “Any links between
Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned
in the run-up to war.”]

In an article headlined “Post-war ‘Occupation’ of Iraq Could Result
in Chaos,” Mark McDonald of Knight Ridder Newspapers quotes
a “senior leader of one of Iraq’s closest Arab neighbors,” who
says, “We’re worried that the outcome will be civil war.”

A questioner at a White House news briefing asserts that “every
other war has been accompanied by fiscal austerity of some sort,
often including tax increases” and asks, “What’s different about
this war?” Ari Fleischer responds, “The most important thing, war
or no war, is for the economy to grow,” adding that in the
president’s judgment, “the best way to help the economy to
grow is to stimulate the economy by providing tax relief.”

After consulting with the homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge,
the N.C.A.A. announces that the men’s basketball tournament will
tip off this week as scheduled. The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand,
says, “We were not going to let a tyrant determine how we were
going to lead our lives.”

March 19, 2003

“I’d guess that if it goes beyond three weeks, Bush will be
in real trouble.”

— Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel teaching at Boston
University, quoted in The Washington Post.

[The March 2007 installment of the Congressionally mandated
Pentagon assessment “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq”
reported that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 9, 2007, there were more than
1,000 weekly attacks, up from about 400 in spring 2004.]

Robert McIlvaine, whose 26-year-old son was killed at the World
Trade Center 18 months earlier, is arrested at a peace demonstration
at the Capitol in Washington. He tells The Washington Post: “It’s
very insulting to hear President Bush say this is for Sept. 11.”

“I don’t think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after
three and a half months,” when Iraq’s government is providing
more cooperation than it has in more than a decade.

— Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of
Americans support going to war in Iraq, up from 59 percent before
the president’s March 17 speech.

“When the president talks about sacrifice, I think the American
people clearly understand what the president is talking about.”

— Ari Fleischer

[Asked in January 2007 how Americans have sacrificed, President
Bush answered: “I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean,
they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images
of violence on TV every night.”]

Pentagon units will “locate and survey at least 130 and as many
as 1,400 possible weapons sites.”

— “Disarming Saddam Hussein; Teams of Experts to Hunt Iraq
Arms” by Judith Miller, The Times, Page A1.

President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national
address: “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our
purpose is sure.”

Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50

[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted
for a split in 2006: $64.12.]

March 20, 2003

“The pictures you’re seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These
are live pictures of the Seventh Cavalry racing across the deserts
in southern Iraq. They will — it will be days before they get
to Baghdad, but you’ve never seen battlefield pictures like
these before.”

— Walter Rodgers, an embedded CNN correspondent.

“It seems quite odd to me that while we are commenced upon
a war, we have no funding for that war in this budget.”

—Hillary Clinton.

“Coalition forces suffered their first casualties in a helicopter
crash that left 12 Britons and 4 Americans dead.”

— The Associated Press.

Though the March 23 Oscar ceremony will dispense with the
red carpet in deference to the war, an E! channel executive
announces there will be no cutback on pre-Oscar programming,
but “the tone will be much more somber.”

March 21, 2003

“I don’t mean to be glib about this, or make it sound trite, but
it really is a symphony that has to be orchestrated by a conductor.”

— Retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, CNN military analyst,
speaking to Wolf Blitzer of the bombardment of Baghdad
during Shock and Awe.

[“Many parts of Iraq are stable. But of course what we see on
television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.”

— Laura Bush, “Larry King Live,” Feb. 26, 2007.]

“The president may occasionally turn on the TV, but that’s not
how he gets his news or his information. ... He is the president,
he’s made his decisions and the American people are watching
him.”

— Ari Fleischer.

[The former press secretary received immunity from prosecution
in the Valerie Wilson leak case and testified in the perjury trial
of Scooter Libby in 2007.]

“Peter, I may be going out on a limb, but I’m not sure that the first
stage of this Shock and Awe campaign is really going to frighten
the Iraqi people. In fact, it may have just the opposite effect. If they
feel that they’ve survived the most that the United States can throw
at them and they’re still standing, and they’re still able to go about
their lives, well, then they might be rather emboldened. They might
feel that, well, look, we can stand a lot more than this.”

— Richard Engel, a Baghdad correspondent speaking to Peter
Jennings on ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

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7) In March, Protesters Recall War Anniversaries
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SARAH ABRUZZESE
March 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/us/18protest.html

WASHINGTON, March 17 — Thousands of demonstrators marched
to the Pentagon on Saturday to mark both the fourth anniversary
of the American invasion of Iraq and the 40th anniversary of the
march along the same route to protest the Vietnam War.

The march coincided with other demonstrations in Washington,
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere in advance
of the March 20 anniversary of the invasion. The liberal group
MoveOn.org has held many small protest vigils around the country.
And in Washington on Friday night a coalition of liberal Christian
groups, including Sojourners/Call to Renewal, led several thousand
people in a march that began with a service at the National Cathedral.
More than 200 participants were arrested praying in front of the
White House, the police said.

Saturday’s march was organized by the Answer Coalition — named
for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism — an organization that
was initially associated with the Workers World Party and now affiliated
with a breakaway faction of that party called the Party for Socialism
and Liberation.

The turnout for the march was much smaller than the crowd that
gathered two months ago on the National Mall for a demonstration
opposing President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. That
event featured speeches by a members of Congress who opposed
the war as well as a handful of Hollywood stars.

Judging by the speeches and placards, the marchers on Saturday
set their sights on sweeping goals, including not only ending the
war but also impeaching President Bush and ending the Israeli
occupation of Palestine. Many carried Answer Coalition signs
bearing the image of the Latin American revolutionary Che
Guevara.

Brian Becker, the national coordinator of the Answer Coalition
and a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, said the
group held out little hope of influencing either the president or
Congress. “It is about radicalizing people,” Mr. Becker said in
an interview. “You hook into a movement that exists — in this
case the antiwar movement — and channel people who care
about that movement and bring them into political life, the
life of political activism.”

In a speech before the march, Cindy Sheehan, who made headlines
in 2005 camping outside the Mr. Bush’s Texas ranch after her
son was killed in Iraq, called the president and his military
advisers “war criminals.”

“We want the people in the White House out of our house and
arrested for crimes against humanity,” Ms. Sheehan said.

As they gathered before the march, the protesters met what
several veterans of the antiwar movement described as an
unusually large contingent of several hundred counterdemonstrators.
Many were veterans in biker jackets who said they had come
to protect the nearby Vietnam Memorial, citing rumors that
had circulated among veterans groups that the demonstrators
planned to deface it.

Crossing the bridge toward the Pentagon, the marchers met
another group of about 50 counterdemonstrators by the Arlington
Cemetery, one holding a sign that said: “Go to hell traitors.
You dishonor our dead on hallowed ground.”

Near the Pentagon, police officers in riot gear spread across the
road, effectively blocking the demonstrators from approaching
the building. Five people were arrested by the Pentagon Force
Protection Agency for “failure to obey a lawful order,” said
Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Many in the crowd said they were unfamiliar with the Answer
Coalition and puzzled by the many signs about socialism.
Several said they had come from across the country for
a chance to voice their dismay at the war.

Alan Rainey, an adjunct professor and small publisher from
West Lafayette, Ind., said he had not attended a protest since
1973, not long after he had returned from military duty in Vietnam.
On Saturday, he carried a sign with green clover and a St. Patrick’s
Day theme. “Help drive the snakes out of the White House,” it said,
depicting snakes with the faces of Mr. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney.

“This war is criminal,” Mr. Rainey said. “We impeached Clinton
for a little indiscretion with an adult.”

Judy Creville, who came from Michigan, said she had opposed
the war from the start but never attended a protest before. “They
got on my last nerve,” Ms. Creville said. She came with two sisters
from Michigan and Iowa, and all three wore pictures of their school-
age grandchildren.

Zohrea Whitaker said she came from Sacramento for the protest.
“I have a son serving over there, and I want him home,”
Ms. Whitaker said.

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8) The Army, After Iraq
Editorial
March 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/nyregionopinions/18sun1.html?hp

You do not have to look very hard these days to see the grave damage
the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the Iraq conflict has
inflicted on the United States Army. Consider the moral waivers for
violent offenders, to meet recruitment targets. Or the rapid rotation
of exhausted units back to the battlefield. Or the scandalous shortages
of protective armor. Or the warnings from generals that there are
not enough troops available to sustain increased force levels for
more than a few months.

Adding 7,000 soldiers a year, as President Bush now proposes, will
bring the Army’s overall strength to 547,000 by 2012. That will help,
but not much, and not at all in Iraq. America’s all-volunteer military
was simply never designed to be deployed as it has been for the past
few years: unilaterally, indefinitely, and at peak strength in the middle
of a raging civil war.

Exiting Iraq with America’s forces, credibility and regional interests
intact is now, understandably, the nation’s most immediate concern.
But in the process, crucial lessons need to be absorbed from this
unnecessary, horribly botched and now unwinnable war.

The first lesson is the continued importance of ground soldiers in
a world that defense planners predicted would be all about stealth,
Star Wars, satellites and Special Operations forces sent on short-
term missions. Now we know that enemies hunkered down in caves
and urban slums can be as dangerous as those in defense ministry
bunkers — and that rebuilding defeated nations is crucial to lasting
security.

Beyond Iraq, the Army needs to move out of permanent crisis mode
— with almost every available division deployed, just returned
or preparing to be shipped out. It needs a force large enough to
be able to devote time and resources to develop skills it is now
chronically short of, and is sure to need in the post-Iraq future:
soldiers and translators fluent in Arabic and other languages;
military teams able to work with local populations in civic
reconstruction, health and education projects; sergeants and
officers who can help friendly governments train their own
armies to provide security without relying on large numbers
of American troops.

America needs to keep investing in military technology. But it
needs to stop shortchanging ordinary soldiers. They cannot
match the lobbying firepower of high-tech defense contractors,
but our security depends on them. Congress needs to heed
the lessons of Walter Reed, armor shortages and other scandals
and make wiser budgetary trade-offs.

The volunteer military cannot be expanded at will. Nor does
it need to be. When not abused as it has been for the past four
years — but not the preceding 30 — it provides superior-quality
troops and better morale, and is more consistent with the free-
choice values of America’s market society.

As long as United States troops are in Iraq, meeting the recruiting
quotas of an expanded force will be difficult. The multiple combat
tours, the warehoused wounded, the deteriorating Iraqi security
situation are a lot to overcome.

Once that is behind us, the Army can be increased substantially,
and should be, so long as Congress can assure the country that
it will never again delegate away its war powers as carelessly and
recklessly as it did in 2002. And so long as the next president
understands that the point of having a large Army is to strengthen
American diplomacy, not to launch impulsive and unnecessary wars.

Simply legislating a bigger Army will not be enough. The
administration and Congress need to offer a better deal —
better training, better protective equipment and better family
support — to the men and women the Army needs to recruit.
And they need to offer soldiers a clear pledge: if the armed
forces are asked to fight, it will be only as a last resort, after
full and informed Congressional debate, and never just at
the whim of a president.

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9) Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 19, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp

Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves
in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown,
Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.

Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.

“The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very, very persistent,”
Ms. Lucey told me in a call from Orlando, Fla., where she was on
vacation with her husband and their two grown daughters last week.
The conversation was difficult. Ms. Lucey would talk for a while, and
then her husband would get on the phone.

“We see him everywhere,” Ms. Lucey said. “Every little dark-haired
boy you see, it looks like Jeff. If we see a parent reprimanding
a child, it’s like you want to go up and say, ‘Oh, don’t do that,
because you don’t know how long you’re going to have him.’ ”

The war in Iraq began four years ago today. Fans at sporting
events around the U.S. greeted the war and its early “shock and
awe” bombing campaign with chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

Jeffrey Lucey, who turned 22 the day before the war began, had
a different perspective. He had no illusions about the glory or
glamour of warfare. His unit had been activated and he was part
of the first wave of troops to head into the combat zone.

A diary entry noted the explosion of a Scud missile near his unit:
“The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone’s
heart truly skipped a beat. ... Nerves are on edge.”

By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess. He had
gruesome stories to tell. They could not all be verified, but there
was no doubt that this once-healthy young man had been
shattered by his experiences.

He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his
friends. He wrecked his parents’ car. He began to hallucinate.

In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve after his return
from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags at his sister Debra and
cried out, “Don’t you know your brother’s a murderer?”

Jeffrey exhibited all the signs of deep depression and post-traumatic
stress disorder. Wars do that to people. They rip apart the mind
and the soul in the same way that bullets and bombs mutilate the
body. The war in Iraq is inflicting a much greater emotional toll
on U.S. troops than most Americans realize.

The Luceys tried desperately to get help for Jeffrey, but neither the
military nor the Veterans Administration is equipped to cope with
the war’s mounting emotional and psychological casualties.

On the evening of June 22, 2004, Kevin Lucey came home and
called out to Jeffrey. There was no answer. He noticed that the door
leading to the basement was open and that the light in the basement
was on. He did not see the two notes that Jeffrey had left on the
first floor for his parents:

“It’s 4:35 p.m. and I am near completing my death.”

“Dad, please don’t look. Mom, just call the police — Love, Jeff.”

The first thing Mr. Lucey saw as he walked down to the basement
was that Jeff had set up an arrangement of photos. There was a picture
of his platoon, and photos of his sisters, Debra and Kelly, his
parents, the family dog and himself.

“Then I could see, through the corner of my eye, Jeff,” said Mr. Lucey.
“And he was, I thought, standing there. Then I noticed the hose
around his neck.”

The Luceys hope that in talking about their family’s tragedy they will
bring more attention to the awful struggle faced by so many troops
suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional
illnesses. “We hear of so many suicides,” said Mr. Lucey.

Ms. Lucey added, “We thought that if we told other people about
Jeffrey they might see their loved ones mirrored in him, and maybe
they would be more aggressive, or do something different than we
did. We didn’t feel we had the knowledge we needed and we lost
our child.”

The Luceys are more than just concerned and grief-stricken. They’re
angry. They’ve joined an antiwar organization, Military Families Speak
Out, and they want the war in Iraq brought to an end. “That’s the
only way to prevent further Jeffreys from happening,” Ms. Lucey said.

Mr. Lucey made no effort to hide his bitterness over the government’s
failure to address many of the critical needs of troops returning
from Iraq and Afghanistan. His voice quivered as he said, “When we
hear anybody in the administration get up and say that they support
the troops, it sickens us.”

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10) The Medicaid Documentation Mess
Editorial
March 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Exaggerated fears that illegal immigrants are fraudulently receiving
Medicaid health benefits have led to a crackdown that is preventing
tens of thousands of American citizens from obtaining legitimate
coverage. Congress, whose mindless actions led to this travesty,
needs to fix this injustice.

The problem was triggered by last year’s Deficit Reduction Act,
which contained provisions requiring applicants for Medicaid,
a health insurance program for the poor, to show proof of their
citizenship and identity when they apply for or seek to renew
coverage. That may not seem unreasonable since eligibility is
generally limited to American citizens and certain qualified aliens.
But previously most states had simply asked applicants to declare
in writing — under penalty of perjury — that they were citizens
or qualified immigrants.

Now they must submit specified documents, such as birth certificates
and passports, which many have difficulty tracking down or paying for.
The Bush administration added to the difficulties by requiring people
to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing
agency, not simply other copies they might have at hand.

The more stringent documentation was the brainchild of two Republican
congressmen from Georgia. Never mind that there was little evidence
that illegal immigrants were defrauding the program. Now the fruits
of that policy are becoming visible. As Robert Pear recently wrote
in The Times, at least seven states have reported declines in Medicaid
enrollments and traced them to the new requirements. It is hard
to be sure how many illegal immigrants were screened out, but state
officials think the number is small. Florida believes that nearly all
of the people it has excluded for failure to produce documents
are American citizens.

The most appalling impact falls on infants born to illegal immigrants
whose deliveries were paid for by Medicaid. They are American citizens
under the 14th Amendment simply by virtue of being born here and
used to be covered automatically for a year. Now they must wait
until their skittish parents obtain a birth certificate before they can
get vital infant care that should begin at birth.

Congress needs to move quickly to fix this problem. At a minimum,
every poor infant born here ought to be automatically enrolled
in Medicaid. Congress also needs to simplify the Medicaid application
process instead of making it more onerous. That would be fairer
to qualified applicants and could help reduce the ranks of the
uninsured.

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11) Tens of Thousands March on the Pentagon
Riot Police Block Buses and Deny Access to People
Coming to the Demonstration, plus, full
Message from Immortal Technique
on being denied entrance to the March
on the Pentagon
March 17, 2007
http://www.pephost.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8421&JServSessionIdr004=19pxequxo1.app8a

On the way to the Pentagon, March 17

Congratulations to everyone who made it through the snow and
freezing rain to get to Washington and join together in the tens
of thousands and March on the Pentagon!

Led by a contingent of Iraq war veterans, active-duty service-
members, Gold Star families, and veterans from other past and
present wars, the demonstration received a large amount of
media coverage. CNN has featured the demonstration, which
the report described as a march of tens of thousands, in its
rotation since yesterday. The major French newspaper, Le Monde,
ran a significant article under the headline, "More than 50,000
People Protest Against the War in Iraq," about the March on the
Pentagon as the U.S. component of the world-wide protests
marking the beginning of the fifth year of the war against Iraq.
The rally was broadcast live on C-span and Al-Jazeera and
received wide-spread media coverage. C-span will be replaying
the rally, check for times at:

http://www.cspan.org/

The March on the Pentagon was not a solitary action but one
of more than 1,000 protests that will take place in the U.S.
between March 17 and March 20. In Los Angeles, the A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition called a demonstration that drew 50,000. Maxine Waters
was one of many speakers and music was provided by renowned
Ozomatli, Jackson Browne and Ben Harper.

The ANSWER demonstration on March 18 in San Francisco drew
40,000 protesters and filled 15 blocks of Market Street,
a six-lane avenue.

The March on the Pentagon took place the day after a severe winter
snow and sleet storm suddenly hit northeastern states that prevented
many buses from traveling, 700 fights from taking off, and thousands
of cars from reaching the March. Motorists were advised throughout
New England and the Mid-Atlantic region to stay off the road.
The large turnout at the demonstration was all the more significant
given the hardships people had to endure to participate in the
activity. People marched to the Pentagon and stayed as long
as they could braving 20 mile-an-hour winds and a windchill
factor into the teens.

The front banner for the March on the Pentagon

A great thank you is owed to the committed volunteers who
endured a torrential downpour of freezing rain though Friday
night to help set up the assembly and rally sites. People stayed
overnight with the equipment and then began working again at
5:00 am in complete darkness. The assembly area had become
a lake on March 16 and filled with mud by the time the march
stepped off. The windchill in the early hours was not far above
zero. At the rally site the large tents and canopies blew down.
Volunteers continued to work long hours after the rally ended
to take-down, pack, clean the entire area and unload trucks.
The anti-war movement is growing both numerically and its
organizational capability and the tireless work of volunteers
forms the core of this success.

The lead banner of the march demanding US Out of Iraq Now
was carried by Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Jonathan
Hutto co-founder of Appeal for Redress, Mahdi Bray, Executive
Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation,
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and youth and students
in the anti-war movement.

Pentagon Prevents Immortal Technique and Others
from Joining the Rally

Police at the March on the Pentagon

The Pentagon and Virginia State Police, many clad in riot gear,
wearing gas masks and wielding batons, blocked people coming
from the subway/metro who wanted to attend the demonstration.
They also blocked buses from accessing the Pentagon in
contravention of the agreements reached in the permit. This
required people to walk nearly two miles to get to their buses
following the rally.

Many people who came to the rally after it had begun - some
who had seen the huge march at a distance as it crossed over
the Memorial Bridge across the roadways and wanted to then
join the activity - were blocked by the Pentagon and the police
from entering the rally site through a maze of misdirection,
road closures and threats of arrest at multiple different locations.
The ANSWER Coalition worked to get people in, and ANSWER
organizers and our attorneys went to the site of sudden police
confrontations and shutdowns, but many people were still
unable to get in including the hip-hop artist Immortal Technique
who was scheduled to perform.

Like so many other people, the hip-hop artist Immortal Technique's
travel plans to get to the demonstration, seemed so daunting
as to be virtually impossible. But due to his determination and
his resourcefulness, he found a way to overcome cancelled flights
and frozen roads. Although he rebooked flights in order to land
in North Carolina, personally rented a car and drove it to
Washington, D.C., the Pentagon and law enforcement blocked
him from coming into the rally where he was going to perform.
We urge everyone to read Immortal Technique's compelling
account -- which is both a narrative and a political commentary.
Immortal Technique's message below should be read and
circulated to your e-mail address book and to e-mail lists
everywhere.

Message from Immortal Technique
on being denied entrance to the March on the Pentagon

"First and foremost I would like to congratulate the organizers
of ANSWER and in specific Brian, Amelia, Peta, and Sarah and the
many others who reached out to me and who I saw make a powerful
statement today. I am not a big fan of marches and rallies because
I have always believed that the system must be attacked economically
above all. But, if coordinated well, they can effect change and remind
people that this war is still costing lives and no matter who the father
of Anna Nicole's Baby is or who wins the next season of American
Idol or what new song is on the radio, people are dying, both from
this country and in massive numbers in the Iraqi Civil War. March 17th,
even with all the problems we faced, was a success in reminding
people of the insurmountable evidence of corruption, self righteous
moral depravity, and dishonesty present within our government...
Because we have issue with the administration we should not be
painted as people who despise their country. If I am not pleased
with a book I read or a movie I watch that doesn't mean I hate the
concept of film in general or that I take issue with printed literature
on a whole. The administration presently tries to attach itself
to the idea of America as if they were the far right standard
by which all should be judged by as Americans. This White House
after all just concerns itself with the well being of its stock holders,
make-shift praetorian guard of politicians and political contributors.

"The ANSWER coalition and others have been working to separate
these two so people can see the Bush Regime as that which uses
America like a whore and claims to love her.

"As most of you know the storms in and around the New York
and NJ area prevented travel back home on the 16th. So in order
to try and make the Pentagon on March 17th since my flight out
of Atlanta was canceled I flew into Greensboro and drove through
the radio span of about 54 Christian Radio, Top 40 and Country
Music stations. There were some songs like this one right here
that I had to listen to all the way through even though they were
lyrically abhorrent. I guess it was just like people who slow down
on the highway to watch a terrible car accident. Musical
Rubbernecking is what I called it, to bear witness to just about
the most ridiculous piece of musical propaganda that isn't based
on any facts but rather someone’s uninformed and uncultured
back road view of America and what we are fighting over. I only
heard the song but now that I've seen the video, it really makes
me wonder how anyone from the right wing can accuse the
resistance of using music or religion to promote their political
agenda. It also makes me wonder what the future generations
of this nation will be like.

"At any rate after my arrival in DC late on the 16th I woke up and
got ready to check out and go to the Pentagon when everywhere
began to shut down. I went over the key bridge and parked in the
South Parking of the Pentagon when I was abruptly told by Pentagon
Police that I needed to get to the North Side. After some directional
confusion and them closing 27 to prevent me from going in there,
Sarah Sloan tirelessly guided me back through the maze of area
highways. I was entering the North Parking at which point 2 Pentagon
police motorcycles rolled up and sent me back, then after circling and
trying again I was at the point where the entry was for all the buses
entering. There 4 police cars detained me and asked me who I was
and what my relationship was to the event. When I told them why I was
there they immediately demanded that I leave. They claimed that
other officers must not know that this section was closed. And
I thought about how difficulty in communication across the parking
lot was a blatant farce. One said I should park my car in one of
the local parking lots and then try the underpass and walk in,
which I did but by that time it was 3:30 and as I parked my car
and walked in again there was a police presence there that was
sending not just myself but everyone else back.

"They said they had to arrest people for walking in the wrong
areas and for not respecting the boundaries and were basically
just trying to dissuade anyone from the street who had seen the
march from a distance from joining it. Several local residents
were there with me and were told to leave as well. I took a bus
towards Arlington and then they shut that passage down too.
I say all this not to complain because I expected as much but
to point out that we should expect this and if this is going to
be done again we should have back up plans, people on the
perimeter other ideas I’m thinking of discussing with ANSWER
personally etc… Less than a football field away I was blocked,
followed out, cornered by cop cars, surrounded twice and turned
back several times. It was an attempt to discourage myself and
others, to make it as difficult as legally and illegally possible
during that period of time to get in. I didn't expect them to
be hospitable or helpful in any way but they did nothing to
stop the message or dissuade me in any way. In fact they
just doubled my resolve and reaffirmed how committed
and focused we have to be in these times.

Peace & Respect,

Immortal Technique

P.S.

"This Administration talks a lot about God, so much that
if you think about it the Republican Party has created this
ubiquitous monopoly on religion in the political world.
As if they were the only people who believed in God. It's no
secret that they use religious values to cultivate a fan base
that would normally be very disturbed by their domestic,
economic, and foreign policy agendas. They are even breeding
this type of thinking in the children of this nation, thinking
much farther ahead than we are actually.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c7_1173547096

"You know about 3000 years ago there were Egyptians who
worshipped the statues of Gods like Osiris and Anubis and
thought praying to these pagan entities gave them strength,
virility, victory and love. We now scoff at this practice and think
"how could people be so ignorant as to worship such idols
thinking they will bring them what they ask for?" We think how
could people pray to a man with a dog's head or a man with
a bird’s head and think that those deities will fulfill their humble
requests from the heavens. But the sad truth is that 3000 years
from now if humanity still exists people will probably look back
on our society and say, "look at these people they prayed to
a man nailed to piece of wood, and the saddest part was that
they couldn't even follow the most basic commandment
of what he said, which was treat others the way you wish
to be treated." This coming from a person who while he
doesn't let religion control his life, believes in God strongly,
and knows how much Christ and others like him spoke about
individuals who made money off of others suffering, people
like our modern day war profiteers, globalization architects
and oil barons.

"Knowing how Jesus brought drama to the Holy Temple back
in the day because of the way the people had made the name
of God into a mechanism to increase their own personal wealth...
I think that the people who work for the administration
and more specifically the president that are reading this right
now should let him know that if Jesus was alive, he'd probably
spit in your face."

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12) Students’ Right to Free Speech
Editorial
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/opinion/20tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case that has
attracted attention mainly because of its eccentric story line: An Alaska
student was suspended from high school in 2002 after he unfurled
a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” while the Olympic torch passed
by. But the case raises important issues of freedom of expression
and student censorship that go far beyond the words on that banner.
The court should affirm the appeals court’s well-reasoned decision
that when the school punished the student it violated his First
Amendment rights.

Joseph Frederick and his fellow students were allowed to leave
the grounds of Juneau-Douglas High School so they could watch
the Olympic torch pass nearby. When the cameras began to roll,
he unfurled his banner, which he says was meant to be funny
and get him on television. The principal took it from him, and
suspended him for 10 days.

Mr. Frederick says the suspension violated his rights. The school
board insists the principal had the right to confiscate the banner
and punish the student because the language undermined its
teachings about the dangers of illegal drugs. The San Francisco-
based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled
for Mr. Frederick, citing the 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines
Independent Community School District, which held that students
have the right to free speech, which can be suppressed only
when the speech disrupts school activities.

The Bush administration joined the school district in arguing that
schools have broad authority to limit talk about drugs because
of the importance of keeping drugs away from young people.
But if schools can limit speech on any subject deemed to be
important, students could soon be punished for talking about
the war on terror or the war in Iraq because the government also
considers those subjects important.

Some school administrators would no doubt use their power to
clamp down on conservative speech while others would clamp
down on liberal speech. A school that values diversity could punish
students who criticize affirmative action, while a more conservative
school could ban students from taking outspoken positions about
global warming. Religious groups have joined civil libertarians
in backing Mr. Frederick because they fear schools will punish
students who talk about their religious beliefs.

If the Supreme Court wants to dodge the free-speech-in-school
issues, it could rule that the off-campus Olympic torch event was
not a formal school activity — and that the principal had no right
to limit anyone’s free speech there. That would not harm students’
free speech rights, but it would also do little to affirm them.

The court should go further, and rule that Mr. Frederick’s rights
were infringed. Students do not have the right to interfere
substantially with school activities, but Mr. Frederick did not
do that. The court should use this case to reaffirm Tinker’s
famous pronouncement that students do not shed their right
to free speech “at the schoolhouse gate.”

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13) Stepping on the Dream
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
March 22, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp

One of the weirder things at work these days is the fact that we’re
making it more difficult for American youngsters to afford college
at a time when a college education is a virtual prerequisite for
establishing and maintaining a middle-class standard of living.

Young men and women are leaving college with debt loads that
would break the back of a mule. Families in many cases are taking
out second mortgages, loading up credit cards and raiding
401(k)s to supplement the students’ first wave of debt, the
ubiquitous college loan.

At the same time, many thousands of well-qualified young men
and women are being shut out of college, denied the benefits
and satisfactions of higher education, because they can’t meet
the ever-escalating costs.

You want a recipe for making the U.S. less competitive over
the next few decades? This is it.

Traditionally, one of the sweetest periods in the lives of many
college graduates has been the time immediately after leaving
school, when they could relax and take the measure of the newly
emerging adult world. It was a time, perhaps, to travel, or to
sample intriguing employment opportunities, even if they didn’t
pay particularly well. Debt was not usually the overriding
concern of the young graduate.

That has changed. Along with their degree, most graduates leave
college now with a loan obligation that will hover over them for
years, maybe decades. Student loans have decisively overtaken
grants as the primary form of financial aid for undergraduates.

Two-thirds of all graduates now leave college with some form
of debt. The average amount is close to $20,000. Some owe
many times that.

Tamara Draut, in her book, “Strapped: Why America’s 20- and
30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead,” tells us:

“Back in the 1970s, before college became essential to securing
a middle-class lifestyle, our government did a great job of helping
students pay for school. Students from modest economic backgrounds
received almost free tuition through Pell grants, and middle-class
households could still afford to pay for their kids’ college.”

Since then, tuition at public and private universities has soared
while government support for higher education, other than student
loan programs, has diminished.

This is a wonderful example of extreme stupidity. America will pony
up a trillion or two for a president who goes to war on a whim,
but can’t find the money to adequately educate its young. History
has shown that these kinds of destructive trade-offs are early
clues to a society in decline.

At the state level, per-pupil spending for higher education
is at a 25-year low, even as government officials and corporate
leaders keep pounding out the message that a college degree
is the key to a successful future.

Ms. Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos,
a public policy group in New York, got to the heart of the matter
in her recent testimony before a U.S. Senate committee looking
into higher education costs.

“The fundamental problem,” she said, “is rooted in the reality that
our government no longer really helps people pay for college —
it helps them go into debt for college. The question we need
to be asking is not, ‘How much student loan debt is reasonable?’
but, ‘What is the best way to help students afford college?’ ”

The kids who graduate with enormous debt burdens —
$40,000, $80,000, $100,000 or more — face a range
of uncomfortable and even debilitating consequences,
the first of which is the persistent anxiety over how their
loans are to be repaid.

I’ve spoken recently with a number of law students who
have already decided to go into corporate practice because
their first choice — public interest law — would not pay
enough to cover their loans. Many students have turned
their backs on teaching for the same reason.

At that stage of life, you shouldn’t have to choose between
a job you would love and one that you would take simply
because it would pay the bills. Talk about stepping on a dream.

There are also plenty of cases of students who have postponed
marriage or buying a home or having children because of their
college loan obligations.

And then there are those who never see a graduation day.
There’s no way of telling what talents have been squandered,
or what great benefits to society have been lost, because
bright students who were unable to afford the costs have been
forced to leave college, or never went to college at all.

In a nation as rich as ours, it should be easy to pay for college.
For some reason, we find it easier to pay for wars.

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14) Congress’s Challenge on Iraq
Editorial
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/opinion/22thu1.html?hp

The House of Representatives now has a chance to lead the nation
toward a wiser, more responsible Iraq policy. It is scheduled to vote
this week on whether to impose benchmarks for much-needed
political progress on the Iraqi government — and link them to the
continued presence of American combat forces. The bill also seeks
to lessen the intolerable strains on American forces, requiring
President Bush to certify that units are fit for battle before sending
any troops to Iraq. Both of these requirements are long overdue.
The House should vote yes, by an overwhelming, bipartisan margin.

It is normally the president who provides the leadership for American
foreign policy and decides when there needs to be a change of course.
But Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to do either, and the country cannot
afford to wait out the rest of his term. Given Mr. Bush’s failure,
Congress has a responsibility to do all it can to use Washington’s
remaining leverage to try to lessen the chaos that will likely follow
an American withdrawal — no matter when it happens — and to ensure
that the credibility and readiness of the United States military
is preserved.

House Democrats have wisely moved beyond their earlier infatuation
with mere deadlines. The benchmarks spelled out in this legislation,
which also provides the next round of money for the war, require
that the Iraqi government stop shielding and encouraging the Shiite
militias that are helping drive the killing. United States and Iraqi
security forces must be allowed to pursue all extremists, Shiite
and Sunni, disarm sectarian militias and provide “evenhanded
security for all Iraqis.”

The benchmarks also require the Iraqi government to take
measurable steps toward national reconciliation: equitably
distributing oil revenues, opening up more political and economic
opportunities to the Sunni minority and amending the constitution
to discourage further fragmentation.

The legislation does not settle for more empty promises — from
Mr. Bush and the Iraqis. It would require the president to provide
Congress, by July, with an initial detailed report on Iraq’s efforts
to meet these benchmarks. By October, the Iraqi government would
have to complete a specific set of legislative and constitutional
steps. Failure to meet these deadlines would trigger the withdrawal
of all American combat forces — but not those training Iraqis
or fighting Al Qaeda — to be concluded in April 2008. If the
benchmarks were met, American combat forces would remain
until the fall of 2008.

The measure would also bar sending any unit to Iraq that cannot
be certified as fully ready. It sets a reasonable 365-day limit
on combat tours for the Army and a shorter 210-day combat
tour limit for the Marines. As for how many troops can remain
in Iraq — until the House’s deadlines for withdrawal — the
legislation imposes no reduction on the level of roughly 132,000
in place at the start of this year.

Critics will complain that the House is doing the Pentagon’s
planning. But the Pentagon and Mr. Bush have clearly failed
to protect America’s ground forces from the ever more costly
effects of extended, accelerated and repeated deployments.

If Iraq’s leaders were truly committed to national reconciliation
and reining in their civil war, there would be no need for
benchmarks or deadlines. But they are not. If Mr. Bush were
willing to grasp Iraq’s horrifying reality, he would be the
one imposing benchmarks, timetables and readiness rules.
He will not, so Congress must. American troops should not
be trapped in the middle of a blood bath that neither
Mr. Bush nor Iraq’s leaders have the vision or the will to halt.

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15) Illegal Worker, Troubled Citizen and Stolen Name
By JULIA PRESTON
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/us/22raids.html?ref=us

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — The two women named Violeta Blanco
have never met. But for a long time they shared not only a name,
but the same birth date and the same Social Security number.

One is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who went to work slicing
pork in a meat-packing plant here after her husband left her with
three children. The other is a single American mother in California
who has never held a job, struggles with drug addiction and
is fighting to keep the state from taking her children.

With little in common but their shared identity, the two women
are unwittingly linked by an illicit trade that is the focus of a new
federal crackdown on illegal immigration. Detained in a recent
raid on the Iowa plant, the Mexican worker admitted that she
had used the California woman's identity to get her job. Now she
is in jail on felony charges of identity theft, her trial set to begin
in Des Moines on Monday.

Immigration raids at six Swift & Company meat-packing plants
in six states in December, as well as more recent sweeps in Michigan,
Florida and Arizona, have exposed an expanding front in the
underground business that caters to illegal immigrants looking
for work, officials say.

As the authorities have aggressively prosecuted employers for hiring
undocumented workers, companies are examining applicants more
carefully, and fake documents no longer pass inspection as easily
as they did. Illegal immigrants have turned increasingly to bona fide
documents, stolen or bought by traffickers from actual Americans.

With scrutiny tightening, illegal immigrants "invest more effort and
money into getting better documents," said Julie L. Myers, the top
official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "More and more,
that includes taking on the identities of U.S. citizens and legal
immigrants."

The case of Violeta Blanco, 31, of Bakersfield, Calif., and the woman
in Iowa who used her name, Eloisa Nuñez Galeana, 32, provides a rare
view of the new identity trade through hard lives on both ends.

On one side is an immigrant who is eager to work and who says she
never thought she could be stealing from a real person; on the other
is an American down on her luck who says she does not know how
her personal information came to be exchanged on the black market.

Interviewed in jail in Des Moines, Ms. Nuñez said she used Ms. Blanco's
documents — which she had purchased from a woman she did not
know — in 2003 to apply for her job at Swift, but that she never used
them again.

She had hoped to work at the plant for many years, she said, perhaps
long enough to see her children, who range in age from 2 to 15,
graduate from high school (two were born in Iowa and are American
citizens).

"I was innocent when I came from Mexico," said Ms. Nuñez, a petite,
round-faced woman who said she was devastated to find herself
in a criminal lock-up. "But they don't give you a job so easily anymore.
To get honest work, you need good documents."

While Ms. Nuñez worked at the Swift plant pushing sides of pork
into a saw that sliced off the fat, Ms. Blanco was in her hometown
of Bakersfield leading a life teeming with trouble. She had been
in rehabilitation to shake an addiction to the drug known as PCP.
She had lost custody of her children to the state child welfare
authorities, and then had regained it.

As a result, Ms. Blanco said she was distracted and paid little
attention to letters three years ago from the Social Security
Administration ordering her to report the employment income
showing up under her number. She had never been close
to taking a job.

"I don't know the person, but I'm upset," Ms. Blanco said
of Ms. Nuñez. "I think she could get more benefit from me,
from my identity, than I could from her. "

A Market for Authenticity

Of 1,282 illegal immigrants detained in the Swift raids, the
majority were charged with civil immigration violations and
quickly deported. But federal prosecutors brought identity-
theft charges against 148 of the workers.

Court papers show that the accused did not use stolen documents
to loot bank accounts or credit cards, the primary crimes that
identity-theft laws seek to attack. Instead, they used the birth
certificates and Social Security cards to get jobs.

Still, Matthew C. Allen, the senior investigations official at
Immigration and Custom Enforcement, said that 326 Americans
had reported financial complications and tax liabilities from
having their identities used at Swift. "The victims have suffered
very real consequences," Mr. Allen said.

At Swift, the workers had Social Security contributions and other
taxes deducted from their paychecks, but they did not file tax
returns. The Social Security taxes accumulated in the accounts
of the real owners. Because the documents were real, Swift managers
were not alerted to any irregularities by the Social Security Administration,
and no charges were brought against the company in connection
with the raids.

Traffickers have devised several ways to meet the demand for authentic
documents. Along the Mexican border, immigration officials said,
muggers and pickpockets have learned that selling stolen documents
to black market vendors can be less risky than a shopping spree with
a stolen credit card.

Some Americans willingly sell their documents.

In Corpus Christi, Tex., this month, seven people pleaded guilty
to selling their birth certificates and Social Security cards for
as little as $100 for both. In another recent case, immigration
officials said, an employee of a Michigan state employment
bureau sold confidential identity information from state records
to illegal immigrants seeking jobs.

A significant number of documents purchased by the immigrants
here belonged to Americans, like Ms. Blanco, who were born and
lived in Bakersfield, 115 miles north of Los Angeles. A number
of those Americans lived at one time within blocks of each other
in the same Latino neighborhood in Bakersfield, though at this
point there is no explanation as to how their documents wound
up on the black market.

Traffickers apparently sold and resold the documents in several
places. Many of the identities found in Marshalltown, including
Ms. Blanco's, had also been used by immigrant workers in Green
Forest, Ark., and Milwaukee, Wis. Neither Ms. Nuñez nor Ms. Blanco
has ever been to either place, they said.

Ms. Nuñez said she was reluctant to use identity documents that
did not belong to her, but she said she did not know that she
could be committing a federal offense, since buying documents
was routine among illegal immigrants here.

Real Documents for $800

She said she first came to Iowa a decade ago, joining a sister
and brother who were both longtime legal residents married
to United States citizens. Despite her family ties, no legal work
visa was available for Ms. Nuñez, or for many other Mexican
and Central American immigrants who flocked to Marshalltown
in recent years, drawn by the jobs at Swift.

Ms. Nuñez said that after her third child was born, her husband,
who was also Mexican, abandoned the family. She put out the
word that she needed a steady job. Friends told her that fake
documents would not be good enough to apply at Swift because
the company's vetting was thorough.

Before long, a Mexican woman she did not know knocked on
her door. Ms. Nuñez said she paid the woman $800 for official
copies of Ms. Blanco's birth certificate and Social Security card.

The Marshalltown Swift plant, which employs 2,220, was always
hiring, and Ms. Nuñez went to work at the standard starting wage
of $11.50 an hour. The work was wearing, she said, but the pay
was good.

"The line moves fast, and they want the work well done," said
Ms. Nuñez, speaking Spanish (she does not speak English).
"After a while, I was on top of it. I did it because I had to."

The immigration agents who raided the plant on Dec. 12 released
many of the illegal immigrants who were single parents.
Ms. Nuñez was among the exceptions.

María Barajas, Ms. Nuñez's sister who lives 20 miles from the plant,
said Ms. Nuñez called her from jail, "nervous, crying, her voice
was shaking."

Mrs. Barajas, who has two sons of her own, has been taking care
of Ms. Nuñez's children. The two oldest have grown up attending
Marshalltown public schools; the youngest is 2. To support them,
Mrs. Barajas said she had taken a job at Swift.

At the mention of her children during an interview in Des Moines,
Ms. Nuñez, hunched in a gray-and-white striped jail uniform,
began to cry.

"I risked everything so they could grow up in the United States,"
she said. "I'm only asking for permission to do honest work."

Ms. Nuñez and several other immigrant women detained in the
Iowa raid who have children who are American citizens say they
have resolved to fight the charges against them rather than make
a deal with prosecutors that would lead to their deportation
with no chance of legal return.

"She's a mother who cut my pork chops and gave Social Security
a lot of money," said Michael H. Said, a lawyer representing
Ms. Nuñez. "She deserves a medal, not an indictment."

In a similar case, a Des Moines jury this month disagreed. Lorena
Andrade Rodríguez, 34, an illegal Mexican immigrant working
at Swift, was convicted of identity theft on March 7.
Ms. Andrade is appealing the verdict.

"I'm not a bad person," she said. "My record is clean. My only
mistake was to do hard work in someone else's name."

Tracing a Name to Its Source

In Bakersfield, Ms. Blanco cast a glance around her disheveled
bungalow, clogged with crates of toys and clothes, and admitted
there were many ways her documents could have slipped away.
She said she did not sell them.

"I mean, I'm not organized," said Ms. Blanco, who lives on Social
Security payments for a psychological disability. "I just throw stuff
here, throw stuff there. Or I'm not here, stuff has been stolen.
Or I moved. Most of it was that stuff got lost when I moved around."

Ms. Blanco also said her purse had been stolen several times
by one of her sons. Iowa court records show that replacements
for Ms. Blanco's Social Security card were ordered 20 times over
the last decade. Ms. Blanco said she could not remember requesting
all the new cards.

She said that her father was a convicted cocaine dealer and one
of her sons was arrested for assault when he was 9, and now, three
years later, lives in a juvenile home. She has been arrested for petty
theft, assault and drug use, and was once sentenced to three months
in jail.

Waving a file of wrinkled papers that she keeps in a cellophane bag,
she said that Ms. Nuñez's employment under her name was only
a small part of problems she attributed to identity theft.

She said she had difficulty renewing her driver's license because
someone else using her identity had taken out a license in Arkansas.
A bank where she tried to open an account told her that it already
had one in her name in another state — not Iowa.

"I know that when I get ready, I'm going to get everything all filed
up, and I'm going to try to take care of it," Ms. Blanco said. "I don't
know how, but I'm going to try."

Margot Williams contributed reporting from New York.

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16) Abolishing the Middlemen Won’t Make Health Care a Free Lunch
By TYLER COWEN
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/business/22scene.html

Proponents of single-payer national health insurance note that
private health insurance has overhead costs of 10 to 25 percent
of expenditures. Medicare, by contrast, has overhead costs of
about 2 to 3 percent, and socialized European health care
systems generally have low overhead costs as well. That is
why single-payer supporters claim that we can save money
by substituting government for private insurance. But this
would shift overhead costs, not reduce them.

The monitoring, marketing and overhead costs of private
insurance are what allow more expensive medical treatments
through the door. It is precisely because competing insurance
companies spend money evaluating the appropriateness
of claims that they are willing to pay for so many heart
bypasses, extra tests, private hospital rooms and CT scans.

Medical insurance, whether private or government, is always
going to be faced with a fundamental problem: patients
and doctors will try to get the most out of any system. When
they aren’t paying directly, patients will seek extra care and
doctors will be happy to oblige. To deal with that problem,
health care systems can offer services indiscriminately and
write off the resulting losses, spend money on monitoring,
or limit services and prices. An analogous problem is faced
by retail stores: they must either put up with theft, hire
security to limit theft, or carry lower-value items.

Just as some items are harder to shoplift than others, so
some medical services are less prone to overuse. European
systems are relatively good at providing prenatal care or
mending someone hit by a car. Few people would try to
get these services unless they were really needed. No one
but an expectant mother, for instance, will show up for
a prenatal checkup; nor would excess prenatal checkups
cost a great deal. The unwillingness of European systems
to spend on overhead means they will do best specializing
in these kinds of services.

Health insurers cannot just offer expensive tests, technologies,
hospital rooms and surgeries for older patients for the taking.
Doctors will too often recommend these services and receive
reimbursement, even to the point of financial abuse. Medicare
has this problem to some extent.

When it comes to these discretionary benefits, European
systems are more likely to make people wait for them, more
likely to make the service inconvenient or uncomfortable,
or simply not make the services available in the first place.
All of these features discourage those who don’t really need
care, and, of course, some people simply go elsewhere and
pay out of their own pockets. Either way, the overhead costs
have been shifted onto patients and their families.

On average, European systems are relatively good for the
young, who are generally healthy and need treatment for
obvious accidents and emergencies, with transparent remedies.
European systems are less effective for the elderly, the primary
demanders of discretionary medical benefits. American society
has the reputation of paying less heed to the elderly than Europe
does, but when it comes to medical care it is the other way around.

American citizens could, if they wanted, replicate many features
of Canadian and European systems, but in the private sector. They,
or their employers, could join stringent but cheap managed care plans.
Health maintenance organizations were popular 15 years ago,
but Americans didn’t like being told that they couldn’t have
a treatment, or that they would have to wait. That experience
showed that Americans are willing to pay for insurance company
overhead costs, if it means they sometimes get more in return.

Private insurance also provided earlier access to prescription drugs
— an expensive yet effective form of medical care — for 20 years
or more before Medicare did. The competition among private
insurers may appear wasteful, but over time it stimulates better
and more complete coverage.

Nor are Canadian and European health care systems as cheap
as they look. Measuring health care expenditures as a share
of national income does not count waiting costs or the lack
of availability of many advanced technologies and treatments.

Furthermore, the lower reimbursement rates for doctors and
hospitals in Canada and Western Europe save less than first
impressions suggest. Bargaining down health care prices won’t
change the reality that real resources must be devoted to
produce care. The true social cost of a doctor is not the doctor’s
wage, which is simply money passing from one hand to another;
the true cost is what the doctor could have produced doing
something else. Higher doctors’ wages in the United States
reflect, in part, the higher return to skilled talent in the more
entrepreneurial American economy.

As long as lifestyle, diet, attitude, social standing and exercise
are the major determinants of personal health, the expensive
American emphasis on discretionary treatment will not always
seem sensible. Many people just don’t benefit that much from
medical care. Look at the life expectancy around the Mediterranean
— it is high but not because of wonderful health care.

But as populations age and the value of medical technology
grows, the overhead costs of private insurance will prove an
increasingly wise investment. For all its high immediate expenses,
the American health care system is looking toward the future
rather than the past. In the long run, the hidden and indirect
costs of single-payer systems are harder to measure and thus
are ultimately harder to control.

Middlemen and marketing costs have long been viewed with
suspicion by critics of commerce. But these practices are usually
signs of market sophistication, not waste. The gains from
abolishing private insurance and its overhead costs are an
illusion. TANSTAAFL, or “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free
Lunch.”

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason
University and co-author of a blog at www.marginalrevolution.com.

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17) Foreclosures Force Suburbs to Fight Blight
By ERIK ECKHOLM
"Noting that the problem with the desertion numbers arises
when the service cannot find enough recruits to fill certain
crucial specialties like medical experts and bomb defusers..."
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23vacant.html?ref=us

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — In a sign of the spreading economic fallout
of mortgage foreclosures, several suburbs of Cleveland, one of the
nation’s hardest-hit cities, are spending millions of dollars to maintain
vacant houses as they try to contain blight and real-estate panic.

In suburbs like this one, officials are installing alarms, fixing broken
windows and mowing lawns at the vacant houses in hopes of preventing
a snowball effect, in which surrounding property values suffer and
worried neighbors move away. The officials are also working with
financially troubled homeowners to renegotiate debts or, when
eviction is unavoidable, to find apartments.

“It’s a tragedy and it’s just beginning,” Mayor Judith H. Rawson
of Shaker Heights, a mostly affluent suburb, said of the evictions
and vacancies, a problem fueled by a rapid increase in high-
interest, subprime loans.

“All those shaky loans are out there, and the foreclosures
are coming,” Ms. Rawson said. “Managing the damage
to our communities will take years.”

Cuyahoga County, including Cleveland and 58 suburbs, has
one of the country’s highest foreclosure rates, and officials say
the worst is yet to come. In 1995, the county had 2,500 foreclosures;
last year there were 15,000. Officials blame the weak economy and
housing market and a rash of subprime loans for the high numbers,
and the unusual prevalence of vacant houses.

Foreclosures in Cleveland’s inner ring of suburbs, while still low
compared with those in Cleveland itself, have climbed sharply,
especially in lower-income neighborhoods that border the city.
Hundreds of houses are vacant because they are caught in legal
limbo, have been abandoned by distant banks or the owners
cannot find buyers.

The suburbs here are among the best organized in their counterattack,
experts say, but many suburbs elsewhere in the country have
had jumps in foreclosures and are also working to stem the
damage.

Outside Atlanta, Gwinnett and DeKalb Counties have mounted
antiforeclosure campaigns while several towns south of Chicago
are forcing titleholders to fix up empty houses, or repay the
government for doing it.

Here in Ohio, there are more than 200 vacant houses in Euclid,
a suburb of Cleveland north of here. In the last two years more
than 600 houses in Euclid have gone through foreclosure or
started the process, many of them the homes of elderly people
who refinanced with low two-year teaser rates, then saw their
payments grow by 50 percent or more.

Euclid has installed alarm systems in some vacant houses to
keep out people hoping to steal lights and other fixtures, drug
users and squatters. The city has hired three new building
inspectors, bringing the total to nine, to deal with troubled
properties and is getting a $1 million loan from the county
to cover the costs of rehabilitation, demolition and lawn care
at the foreclosed houses. (When the properties are sold, such
direct maintenance costs will be recovered through tax
assessments.)

The Euclid mayor, Bill Cervenik, said the city, with a population
of 53,000, was losing $750,000 a year in property taxes from
the empty houses.

At greatest risk in Cleveland’s suburbs are the low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods where subprime lending
has soared. The practice involves lenders issuing mortgages
at high interest rates for people with lower incomes or poor
credit ratings, usually involving adjustable rates and sometimes
no down payment and no investigation of the borrower’s
circumstances.

“What makes the subprime mortgages so devastating from
a community perspective is that they’re so concentrated
geographically,” said Dan Immergluck, a professor of city
planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Rosa Hutchinson Yates, 62, had kept up payments on her tidy
two-story house on Chagrin Boulevard in Shaker Heights for
30 years. Now, she may well lose the house because of
a disastrous refinancing deal in 2003 that brought her
$24,000 in cash but bills she could not pay.

Ms. Yates, who has worked as a beautician and a cocktail
waitress, was emotional and confused as she tried to explain
what happened. Though she signed the closing documents,
she said she did not realize that she was getting an adjustable
rate mortgage that did not include taxes and insurance.

In 2006, broke and bewildered, she stopped making payments
and the lender started foreclosure proceedings. A Shaker Heights
city attorney said it appeared that illegally high fees might have
been charged and that the broker had overstated Ms. Yates’s
income, raising the possibility of a legal challenge.

Ms. Yates, preparing for the worst, has learned that she can
move into a subsidized apartment for retirees. But the thought
is devastating.

“When folks pay for a home, they expect to die in it,” she said,
breaking into tears.

In a report for Shaker Heights, Mark Duda and William C. Apgar
of Harvard University found that expensive refinancing deals
had been aggressively “push-marketed” in the city’s less affluent
west and south sides, bordering Cleveland. They said that “the
rising number of foreclosures threatens to undermine the
stability” of those areas.

“The moral outrage,” Ms. Rawson, the mayor, said, “is that
subprime lenders have targeted our seniors and African-Americans,
people who saved all their lives to get a step up.”

About one-third of the residents in Shaker Heights and Euclid
are black.

Early last year, James Rokakis, the Cuyahoga County treasurer,
started a countywide foreclosure-prevention program, which
pays community groups to educate people about loans and help
defaulting borrowers negotiate with lenders.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Rokakis said, the flight of manufacturing
jobs was the major cause of rising foreclosures but around 2000,
the surge in careless lending began to wreak havoc.

Mr. Rokakis estimated that more than three-fourths of the current
foreclosures in Cuyahoga County involved subprime loans, some
of them blatantly unwise or dishonestly portrayed to buyers.
Only last year did Ohio tighten its laws to require more complete
disclosures to borrowers.

With so many homeowners running into trouble, the City of
Cleveland has been unable to keep track of the number of vacant
houses, said Mark N. Wiseman, director of the county prevention
program. He estimates that 10,000 of the city’s 84,000 single-
family houses are empty.

Suburbs like Shaker Heights are trying to avoid the experiences
of blighted neighborhoods in Cleveland like the one where Barbara
Anderson lives. Ms. Anderson, 59, said her block of East 76th
Street was fully occupied three years ago, but now about half
the houses are empty.

Many of the houses are filled with smelly trash and mattresses
used by vagrants. They have been stripped of aluminum siding,
appliances, pipes and anything else that scavengers can sell
to scrap dealers.

“It stifles you,” Ms. Anderson said of the squalor. “It lowers the
value and affects the kind of people who are willing to move
here. I’m embarrassed to say I live here.”

Ms. Anderson, who works for the city ombudsman’s office,
is president of a street association that is working with a county
-financed group, the East Side Organizing Project, to salvage
some homes. But so far, she said, “when we try to board the
houses up, someone comes and tears the boards down.”

Things are not as bad in the Moreland section of Shaker Heights,
but residents are worried and angry all the same. Robert O’Neal,
52, has lived there nearly all his life and, until recently, could
not remember a house being empty for more than a month.
Now on his block, 4 of the 12 houses are vacant, 3 of them for
more than a year. Lost jobs, divorces and predatory loans have
all played roles, he said.

“It’s sucking the life out of the neighborhood,” said Mr. O’Neal,
the town’s chief probation officer. “These are big empty houses
near the Cleveland border, and people start worrying about
letting their kids out to play.”

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18) Army Revises Upward Number of Desertions in ’06
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23awol.html?ref=us

A total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army last year,
or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures
from the Army.

The new calculations by the Army, which had about 500,000
active-duty troops at the end of 2006, significantly alter the
annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year.

In 2005, for example, the Army now says 2,543 soldiers deserted,
not the 2,011 it had reported. For some earlier years, the desertion
numbers were revised downward.

National Public Radio first reported on Tuesday that the Army
had been inaccurately reporting desertion figures.

A soldier is considered a deserter if he leaves his post without
permission, quits his unit or fails to report for duty with the intent
of staying away permanently. Soldiers who are absent without leave
— or AWOL, a designation that assumes a soldier still intends
to return to duty — are automatically classified as deserters and
are dropped from a unit’s rolls if they remain away for more
than 30 days.

Some Army officers link the recent uptick in annual desertion
rates to the toll of wartime deployments and point to the increasing
percentage of troops who are on their second or third tours
in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But an Army spokeswoman, Maj. Anne Edgecomb, gave different
reasons. Most soldiers desert because of personal, family
or financial problems, Major Edgecomb said, adding, “We don’t
have any facts to indicate that soldiers who desert now are doing
so for reasons different from why soldiers deserted in the past.”

Lt. Col. Brian C. Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said the desertion
data errors were caused by confusion among employees who
tally them. “They were counting things wrong, and doing
it inconsistently,” Colonel Hilferty said in an interview.

He added, “We are looking at the rise in desertions, but the
numbers remain below prewar levels, and retention remains
high. So the force is healthy.”

The failure to count deserters accurately is inexcusable, said
Derek B. Stewart, director for Defense Department personnel
issues for the Government Accountability Office.

“It is just unbelievable to the G.A.O. to hear that the Army
does not know what that number is,” Mr. Stewart said in
an interview Thursday.

Noting that the problem with the desertion numbers arises
when the service cannot find enough recruits to fill certain
crucial specialties like medical experts and bomb defusers
Mr. Stewart said, “In the context of their current recruiting
problems for certain occupations, these desertion numbers
are huge.”

The new figures also show a faster acceleration in the rate
of desertions over the previous two fiscal years than announced.
In 2006, for instance, desertions rose by 27 percent, not
17 percent, as the Army had previously reported, a spokesman said.

The revised figures show 2,543 desertions in the fiscal year 2005,
an 8 percent increase from the 2,357 the year before. Previously,
the service said 2005 desertions dropped by 17 percent, to 2,011
from 2,432.

But from the fiscal year 2000 through 2003, there were hundreds
fewer desertions than the Army had previously reported. The Army’s
revised data, while reflecting significant errors in year-to-year
desertions, showed a total of 22,468 desertions since the fiscal
year 2000, nearly the same as the old count of 22,586.

Over all, desertions, a chronic problem in the Army but hardly
pervasive, now account for less than 1 percent of active-duty soldiers.
The current annual rates pale in comparison with the 33,094 soldiers
— 3.41 percent of the total force — who deserted the Army in 1971,
during the Vietnam War.

The Army’s data does not reflect deserters from the 63,000 currently
activated National Guard and Reserve soldiers, and Colonel Hilferty
said that data was not available yesterday. But he said few soldiers
from those units deserted.

In an e-mail statement yesterday, Colonel Hilferty also said that
the record keeping was damaged in the Sept. 11 attack on the
Pentagon, which destroyed personnel records.

“Unfortunately, for the past several years,” he said, “our methodology
for tracking deserters at the macro level has been flawed.”

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19) New to Job, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
"Some administration lawyers are deeply reluctant to move
terrorism suspects to American soil because it could increase
their constitutional and statutory rights..."
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23gitmo.html?ref=us

WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary,
Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal
proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate,
according to senior administration officials. He told President
Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated
desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action,
the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials
of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both
to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s
continued existence hampered the broader war effort,
administration officials said.

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers
expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the
United States, a stance that was backed by the office
of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention
facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the
high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came
to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although
officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon
and the State Department continue to analyze options
for the detention of terrorism suspects.

The base at Guantánamo holds about 385 prisoners, among
them 14 senior leaders of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, who were transferred to it last year from secret
prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Under
the Pentagon’s current plans, some prisoners, including
Mr. Mohammed, will face war crimes charges under military
trials that could begin later this year.

“The policy remains unchanged,” said Gordon D. Johndroe,
a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Even so, one senior administration official who favors the
closing of the facility said the battle might be renewed.

“Let’s see what happens to Gonzales,” that official said,
referring to speculation that Mr. Gonzales will be forced
to step down, or at least is significantly weakened, because
of the political uproar over the dismissal of United States
attorneys. “I suspect this one isn’t over yet.”

Details of the internal discussions on Guantánamo were
described by senior officials from three departments or
agencies of the executive branch, including officials who
support moving rapidly to close Guantánamo and those
who do not. One official made it clear that he was willing
to discuss the internal deliberations in part because
of Mr. Gonzales’s current political weakness. The senior
officials discussed the issue on ground rules of anonymity
because it entailed confidential conversations.

The officials said Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice expressed their
concerns about Guantánamo in conversations with Mr. Bush
and others, including Mr. Gonzales, beginning in January
and onward. One widely discussed alternative would move
the prisoners to military brigs in the United States, where
they would remain in the custody of the Pentagon and
would be subject to trial under military proceedings.
There is widespread agreement, however, that moving
any detainees or legal proceedings to American territory
could bring significant complications.

Some administration lawyers are deeply reluctant to move
terrorism suspects to American soil because it could increase
their constitutional and statutory rights — and invite an
explosion of civil litigation. Guantánamo was chosen because
it was an American military facility but not on American soil.

Placing the detainees in military brigs on United States territory
might fend off some of those challenges. The solution may
eventually require a new act of Congress establishing legal
standing for the detainees and new rules for their trial and
incarceration if brought to the United States.

Mr. Gates’s criticism of Guantánamo marks a sharply different
approach than the one taken by his predecessor, Donald H.
Rumsfeld. It also demonstrated a new dynamic in the administration,
in which Mr. Gates was teaming up with Ms. Rice, who often was
at loggerheads with Mr. Rumsfeld. The State Department has long
been concerned about the adverse foreign-policy impact
of housing prisoners at Guantánamo.

In the end, Mr. Gates did succeed in killing plans to build a $100
million courthouse and detention complex at Guantánamo, after
he argued that the large and expensive project would leave the
impression of a long-lasting American detainee operation there
and that the money could be more effectively spent elsewhere
by the Pentagon. Mr. Gates approved a far more modest facility
at one-tenth of the cost.

The setback in his effort to close Guantánamo was described by
senior Pentagon officials as Mr. Gates’s only significant failure
during an effort in his first three months in office to shift course
from policies pursued by Mr. Rumsfeld. The outcome suggests
that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales remain committed
to a detention plan that has become one of the most controversial
elements of the administration’s counterterrorism program.

Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lee Anne McBride, said via e-mail
that “we don’t discuss internal deliberations.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he ultimately wants to shutter the
detention operations at Guantánamo. But he has also said it is
not possible to do so any time soon.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said that even close
allies are uncomfortable with American policies toward Guantánamo,
making it more difficult in some cases to coordinate efforts
in counterterrorism, intelligence and law enforcement.

More than 390 detainees have been transferred abroad from the
Guantánamo facility since it was opened amid global controversy
in 2002. Last year, 111 detainees were transferred out, and
12 more have been this year. About 20 of those repatriated
to home countries have been picked up again in sweeps of terrorism
suspects or have been killed or captured in battle, Pentagon
officials say.

Many countries do not want to take back the detainees held
at Guantánamo. Some home nations will not guarantee that
returning detainees would be assured humane treatment and
fair trials, while others will not guarantee that detainees viewed
by American officials as still dangerous would not be set free.

Mr. Gates’s challenge has sent a ripple through the White House,
because it forced officials to confront the question of whether
Mr. Bush was actually moving to fulfill his stated desire to close
the detention facility. Officials who advocate shutting down
Guantánamo, including some at the Pentagon and the State
Department, said an underlying motivation of those who want
to keep the center open is that closing it would be seen as
a public admission of an incorrect policy — something the
Bush administration is loath to do.

Neither Mr. Gates nor Ms. Rice have made public their comments
to Mr. Bush. “Nobody is going to be insubordinate with the
president,” said one senior administration official involved
in the discussions. “You know the saying: ‘One war, one team.’ ”

But in a recent Pentagon news conference, Mr. Gates did
speak about his concerns over Guantánamo in general terms.

“I think that Guantánamo has become symbolic, whether we
like it or not, for many around the world,” Mr. Gates said at
the time. “The problem is that we have a certain number of
the detainees there who often by their own confessions are
people who if released would come back to attack the United
States. There are others that we would like to turn back to their
home countries, but their home countries don’t want them.”

He said officials “are trying to address the problem of how do
we reduce the numbers at Guantánamo and then what do you
do with the relatively limited number that would be irresponsible
to release.”

“And I would tell you that we’re wrestling with those questions
right now,” he continued.

In an interview on Thursday, Gordon England, the deputy secretary
of defense who is Mr. Gates’s point man on detention issues,
suggested that the long-term answer to Guantánamo might
be creating some new international legal structure or set of
multilateral agreements to manage captured members of global
terrorist organizations.

“I don’t know the alternative unless the international community,
frankly, develops an alternative,” Mr. England said. “It is not
a U.S. problem. It is an international problem to be dealt with.”

Mr. England said American government officials had “an
extraordinarily high degree of confidence from the information
available” that many Guantánamo detainees were “going
to damage the country, so you just can’t let them go.”

“So,” he added, “this is difficult. I know it’s onerous. I know
there are a lot of questions about it. We deal with it the best
we can. But at the end of the day, we are not going to put the
country or our citizens in jeopardy.”

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20) State Takes Control of Troubled Public Schools in St. Louis
By MALCOLM GAY
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23missouri.html

ST. LOUIS, March 22 — The Missouri State Board of Education voted
on Thursday to take control of the troubled St. Louis public schools.

At an emotional meeting in Jefferson City that was interrupted by
students who had arrived by bus from here to protest the expected
decision, the board voted, 5 to 1, to strip the St. Louis Public School
District of its accreditation, effective June 15.

The board also voted to provide for a transitional three-member panel
appointed by state and local officials to run the city’s 93 public schools,
many of which are old and run-down. The district’s seven-member
school board will remain intact, but will have no governing authority.

The governor, the mayor of St. Louis and the president of the city’s
Board of Aldermen will each appoint one-member to the transition
panel.

A spokesman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education, Jim Morris, said the three-member panel
was expected to run the district for the next six years, although
the State Board of Education could elect to extend the panel’s
term indefinitely.

“Ideally, the local board would be in a position to resume authority
over the district once it’s turned around,” Mr. Morris said.

The St. Louis school district is at least the seventh to be taken over
by a state since March 2004, said Jennifer Dounay, policy analyst
for the Education Commission of the States, but none were as large
as St. Louis. A year ago, the Maryland legislature blocked an attempt
to take over the Baltimore schools.

The St. Louis district, which has 35,000 students — many of whom
are poor or homeless — has a history of financial, administrative
and student achievement failures. Its cumulative debt in 2006
was almost $25 million, according to the State Board of Education,
and it has had six superintendents since 2003.

The district’s 2006 graduation rate was roughly 55 percent, and
the dropout rate nearly 19 percent, the state board said. More than
60 percent of 10th graders scored at a level “below basic” in math
on state standardized tests last year.

“We’re not preparing kids for college,” said the district board
president, Veronica O’Brien, who supports the state takeover.
“We don’t even graduate children. Everyone’s been asleep at the
St. Louis public schools.”

But three other board members said they strongly opposed the
takeover. One of them, William Purdy, said he thought the state
should have voted to appoint the three-member panel to an
advisory role.

“There’s a problem when the state comes in and literally throws
out the people who were elected by the voters of St. Louis to be
the governing body of the district,” said Mr. Purdy, adding that
he and two other board members were planning to file a lawsuit
to block the takeover. “They’ve disenfranchised St. Louis voters.”

Students who graduate this year will be unaffected by the district’s
loss of accreditation, but it was far from clear how that would
affect future graduates’ chances for college admission
and scholarships.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation and anger about the potential
harmful consequences for students,” Mr. Morris said. “But that’s
never been an issue to our knowledge.”

But a sophomore at Soldan International Studies High School,
Kaylan Holloway, was not convinced. “They say, ‘We believe lack
of accreditation should not be a problem,’ but that’s not good
enough,” Mr. Holloway said. “We need to hear that it will not
be a problem.”

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21) Colombia seeks eight in Chiquita terrorist scandal
"The banana conglomorate has confessed to paying right-wing
paramilitaries."
By Eoin O'Carroll | csmonitor.com
posted March 22, 2007 at 12:20 p.m. EDT -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0322/p99s01-duts.html

The Colombian government says that it will likely seek the extradition of
eight unnamed people affiliated with the US banana giant Chiquita Brands
International for their alleged involvement in the company's payments to
and arms trafficking with a violent right-wing paramilitary group.

The Chicago Tribune reported on Thursday that Colombia's chief federal
prosecutor, Mario Iguaran, has formally requested from the US Justice
Department documents relating to Chiquita's payment of $1.7 million to the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known as the AUC, by its Spanish
initials) a group that the United States labels a terrorist organization.

Chiquita pleaded guilty Monday in US federal court to making payments to
the AUC, and agreed to pay a $25 million fine, payable over five years. As
part of the plea agreement, the US government will not publicly identify
the senior Chiquita executives who approved the illegal payments.

Speaking in Bogotá, Mr. Iguaran denied Chiquita's claims that the payments
were made under duress.

"The relationship was not one of the extortionist and the extorted but
a criminal relationship," Iguaran told a handful of foreign correspondents
in an interview.

"It's a much bigger, more macabre plan," he added. "Who wouldn't know
what an illegal armed group like the AUC does . . . by exterminating and
annihilating its enemies," Iguaran said. "When you pay a group like this
you are conscious of what they are doing."

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Mr. Iguaran said in an
interview with a Colombian radio station that he will demand that the
United States hand over the eight suspects, whose identities have not been
disclosed by the US government. "They must be judged in Colombia," Iguaran
said.

According to the US Department of Justice, Chiquita began making payments
to the AUC in 1997 through its Colombian shipping operation, Banadex. The
payments began when the AUC's then-leader, Carlos Castaño, met with a
senior Banadex executive and implied that failure to make payments would
result in physical harm to the company's workers and property.

The United States designated the AUC a foreign terrorist organization on
September 10, 2001. Despite warnings from lawyers who advised the company
to leave Colombia, Chiquita continued to pay the group. In April 2003, the
company's board of directors learned of the payments, who later that month
confessed to the Department of Justice, who told Chiquita to stop paying.
Nevertheless, the payments continued through February 2004.

Additionally, according to a report by the Organization of American States,
in 2001 Banadex helped divert 3,000 Nicaraguan AK-47 rifles and millions of
rounds of ammunition to the AUC.

Chiquita sold Banadex, its most profitable operation, to a Colombian buyer
in June 2004.

The news comes in the midst of a major political scandal in Colombia that
has linked many members of the country's political leadership to right-wing
death squads.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Center for International Policy, a human
rights advocacy group, sees Colombia's extradition request as a political
move to burnish Bogotá's image domestically. He writes:

The call for Chiquita executives' extradition also taps into a
commonly felt frustration among Colombians. Many see their government
handing over Colombian citizens to face long jail sentences in the United
States, but believe that U.S. citizens accused of trafficking drugs or
supporting armed groups in Colombia - including rogue U.S. military
personnel who have dealt in drugs or weapons - get slaps on the wrist, such
as fines or a few months in prison.

Either way, if the Colombian government wishes to begin punishing
foreign executives whose corporations have paid "protection money" to
illegal armed groups, it is within its rights to do so - but it may find
itself extraditing a lot of people. Such payments are widely believed to
have been commonplace for decades.

Journalist Amy Goodman, however, says that Colombian authorities have every
right to single out Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit. In her
syndicated column she cites the company's history of right-wing violence in
Latin America, which includes helping to orchestrate the 1954 overthrow of
Guatemala's democratically elected president and the 1928 massacre of trade
unionists in northwestern Colombia.

A $25-million fine to a multibillion-dollar corporation like Chiquita
is a mere slap on the wrist, the cost of doing business. Presidents like
George W. Bush and Uribe, businessmen first, while squabbling over
extraditions, would never lose track of their overarching shared goal of a
stridently pro-corporate, military-supported so-called free-trade regime. ...

That next organic, fair-trade banana you buy just might save a life.

The online magazine Slate points out that Chiquita pleaded guilty to the
very same crime for which John Walker Lindh, the so-called American
Taliban, is serving a 20-year sentence.

Shares of Chiquita Brands International Inc. rose six cents overnight to
open Thursday at $13.92 on the New York Stock Exchange.

www.marxmail.org

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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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They’re Looking for a Few Good Coal Miners
By STUART ELLIOTT
"YOU load 16 tons, and what do you get? How about a paycheck,
vacations, a dental plan and a 401(k)?"
[The Army is looking for a few good bomb diffusers, too!...bw]
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/business/media/23adco.html?ref=business

California: The Land of Milk and Megadairies
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
The Tulare County Board of Supervisors approved a plan Tuesday
for two 160-acre megadairies to be built across from Colonel Allensworth
State Historic Park, a site dedicated to the history of California’s first
and only black planned community. The county approved the proposal
by a local rancher to establish two dairies with some 16,000 cows near
the park, in a remote corner of the Central Valley. Citizens, including
some from the original Allensworth Colony, and environmentalists
have protested the plan.
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23brfs-MILK.html

California: Marijuana Card Ruling
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
An appeals court ruled that California’s medical marijuana law does
not automatically shield patients from searches by law enforcement.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the State Court of
Appeal said a Napa County sheriff’s deputy had probable cause to
search the vehicle of Gabriel Strasburg, who claimed to have a medical
marijuana card, in October 2005. The law limits patient possession
to eight ounces. The deputy claimed Mr. Strasburg had about 23
ounces and a scale and was smoking in a parked car. Mr. Strasburg
pleaded no contest to misdemeanor possession but appealed, claiming
an unlawful search. In the decision, Justice James Marchiano said the
amount of marijuana found in the search left “a strong suggestion”
that Mr. Strasburg “was using the act as a façade to conceal illegal
activity.”
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/us/23brfs-CALIFORNIA.html

Rat Poison Found in Tainted Pet Food
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:09 p.m. ET
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pet-Food-Recall.html?ref=us

French Court Rules for Newspaper That Printed Muhammad Cartoons
By CRAIG S. SMITH
March 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/world/europe/23france.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Kentucky: Soldier Pleads Guilty
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A soldier pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the rape and murder
of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family. The soldier,
Pfc. Bryan Howard, 19, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct
justice. Under a plea deal, Private Howard will not serve more than
27 months if he obeys certain conditions. Private Howard’s rank will
be reduced, and he will be dishonorably discharged. He will also have
to testify against others charged in the attacks last year in Mahmoudiya,
20 miles south of Baghdad.
March 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/us/22brfs-SOLDIER.html

After Bell, Critics Want Mayor to Broaden Focus on Police
By DIANE CARDWELL
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/nyregion/21bloomberg.html?ref=nyregion

Israel Workers Launch General Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:45 a.m. ET
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Strike.html

Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils
By ALAN COWELL
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/europe/21britain.html?ref=world

F.B.I. Is Warned Over Its Misuse of Data Collection
By SCOTT SHANE
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washington/21fbi.html?hp

Doctors’ Ties to Drug Makers Are Put on Close View
By GARDINER HARRIS and JANET ROBERTS
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/us/21drug.html?hp

No Paradise for Criminals Deported to Jamaica
By MARC LACEY
March 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/americas/21kingston.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill

Dems Abandon War Authority Provision
By DAVID ESPO and MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press
03.13.07, 12:28 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/03/13/ap3510002.html

Defense Spending Soars to Highest Levels Since World War II
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0320-05.htm

Iraqis Increasingly Pessimistic, Anti-US
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0320-02.htm

Three Detectives Plead Not Guilty in 50-Shot Killing
By ELLEN BARRY and COLIN MOYNIHAN
The three detectives left their homes in the predawn darkness yesterday.
They walked in the back entrance of the courthouse in Queens
to Central Booking, where they went through a routine that must
have seemed familiar: fingerprints, waiting, mug shots, more
waiting, paperwork, more waiting.
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/nyregion/20cops.html?ref=nyregion

Communist Party USA Gives Its History to N.Y.U.
By PATRICIA COHEN
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/arts/20nyu.html?ref=nyregion

Nowadays, Angola Is Oil’s Topic A
By JAD MOUAWAD
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20angola.html?ref=business

G.I. Is Jailed for Killing Iraqi Detainees
By REUTERS
CHICAGO, March 19 (Reuters) — An American soldier was sentenced
to 10 years in prison on Monday after a court-martial found him guilty
of killing three Iraqi detainees who were freed and told to run before
being shot, officials at Fort Campbell in Kentucky said.
The soldier, Sgt. Raymond Girouard, 24, of Sweetwater, Tenn., had
been charged with premeditated murder and other offenses that
could have drawn a life sentence, but the military jury hearing his
case convicted him on Friday of negligent homicide, a lesser offense.
The sentence is subject to review by the commanding general
at the post, and Sergeant Girouard could be paroled after serving
about a third of the 10-year sentence, a spokesman said.
Sergeant Girouard led a squad in May 2006 during a raid on
a suspected insurgent camp southwest of Tikrit, when the
killings occurred.
Three other soldiers under his command who were also charged
with the deaths made plea agreements earlier and have been
sentenced. Two received 18-year prison sentences and a third
got nine months in jail.
The three had said Sergeant Girouard ordered them to shoot
the men. He had said he was under orders to kill all men
of military age but denied ordering the slayings.
During a hearing in Iraq in August that led to the charges,
a witness testified that he saw the prisoners trying to run
away at full sprint, some with their blindfolds down, when
they were shot.
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/us/20abuse.html

Tests by Pet Food Maker Killed 7 Animals Before Recall
By KATIE ZEZIMA
March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/us/20petfood.html?ref=us

Developer sued over Hunters Point toxics
Executives say their firm retaliated against them for questioning
construction dust
Lance Williams, Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, March 18,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/BAGGKOMQE129.DTL&hw=Alioto&sn=001&sc=1000

Global warming is a 'weapon of mass destruction'
Climate experts hit back after being accused
of overstating the problem
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Published: 18 March 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2368999.ece

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

FOCUS | From Shock and Awe to the "Surge" Without End
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031807Y.shtml

Give Us Some Real Political Leaders
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily
"BAGHDAD, Mar 15 (IPS) - Many Iraqis are now looking to local
political leadership to fill wide gaps in a fractured government
that is failing to provide security and basic needs."
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000549.php#more

An Awkward Creature
The Chinese Way of Capitalism
By REZA FIYOUZAT
March 16, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/fiyouzat03162007.html

These Boots Were Made for 22 M.P.H.
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17gazshoes.html?ref=business

Iowa: ‘Tar Baby’ Prompts an Apology
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, offered an apology
in Cedar Falls after using the term “tar baby” in answering a voter’s
question about federal intervention in divorce and custody cases.
In response to the question, Mr. McCain said he was not going
to take a position that it was proper “to declare divorces invalid
because of someone who feels they weren’t treated fairly in court.”
He said, ”We are getting into a tar-baby of enormous proportions,
and I don’t know how you get out of that.” When told afterward that
some people considered the term a racial epithet, Mr. McCain responded,
“I hope that it’s not viewed that way.” A moment later, he apologized,
saying, “I don’t think I should have used that word, and I was wrong
to do it.” One of Mr. McCain’s rivals for the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination, for Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, apologized
last year for using the term in referring to the troubled Big Dig
highway project in Boston.
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/us/politics/17brfs-mccain-tar-baby.html

Court Says Health Coverage May Bar Birth-Control Pills
By TAMAR LEWIN
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/health/17pill.html?ref=us

Mortgage Trouble Clouds Homeownership Dream
By EDUARDO PORTER and VIKAS BAJAJ
March 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/17dream.html?hp

The liberal war on democracy
John Pilger
Published 19 March 2007
http://www.newstatesman.com/200703190024

Florida: Settlement in Boot Camp Death
By CHRISTINE JORDAN SEXTON
The state’s Department of Juvenile Justice reached a $5 million
settlement with the parents of a 14-year-old boy who died
in January 2006 after being beaten at a boot camp in Panama City.
The agreement, orchestrated by Gov. Charlie Crist, would require
approval by the Legislature. A lawyer for the boy’s parents, Ben Crump,
said the family would seek another $5 million settlement from Bay County,
which ran the boot camp. A criminal case is pending against the seven
guards charged with beating the boy, Martin Lee Anderson,
and against a nurse who watched.
March 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15brfs-SETTLEMENTIN_BRF.html

Safe Ground in a Housing Market Meltdown?
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Wednesday 14 March 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031407J.shtml

Manhattan: Arrests at Antiwar Protest
By KATE HAMMER
Twenty students were arrested yesterday at an antiwar protest
in an Army and Navy recruiting station at 157 Chambers Street.
The protest began at noon when members of the group, Students
for a Democratic Society, marched from the campuses of Pace
University and the New School and converged near the recruitment
center. The 20 staged a sit-in while about 40 others stood outside
chanting antiwar slogans, banging steel drums and waving posters.
Organizers said that the students were demonstrating against military
recruitment practices, and that the protest was intended to call
attention to the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war,
which will be next week. The police said the 20 would be charged
with criminal trespass.
March 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/nyregion/13mbrfs-protest.html

Manhattan: Rulings on Convention Arrests
By JIM DWYER
The city may use secret police intelligence in civil rights lawsuits
to defend its policies during the 2004 Republican National Convention,
but it will be penalized for failing to disclose the information earlier
in the case, a federal judge ruled yesterday. The New York Civil Liberties
Union, which is suing the city on behalf of seven people who claim
they were wrongly arrested and detained during the convention, had
argued that intelligence reports and testimony from David Cohen,
the deputy police commissioner for intelligence, should be barred
because the city missed deadlines for disclosing that Mr. Cohen
and the documents would be part of its defense. Magistrate Judge
James C. Francis IV agreed that city lawyers had “offered no legitimate
excuse” for being late and said the city would have to pay legal
fees and other costs as punishment.
March 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/nyregion/13mbrfs-convention.html

Home in San Francisco, Pelosi Gets the Crawford Treatment
By JESSE McKINLEY
"SAN FRANCISCO, March 12 — San Francisco, meet Crawford, Tex."
March 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/washington/13pelosi.html

Your country needs you... but not you: Soldiers' mother
faces deportation
"Leven Bowman served in Iraq. His brother Damian was an army
poster boy. Now the Home Office wants to deport their mother
and her 15-year-old daughter
By Ian Herbert and Nigel Morris
Published: 13 March 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2352800.ece

U.S. House Democrats seek more war funds than Bush
01 Mar 2007 23:53:19 GMT
By Richard Cowan
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N01426347.htm

Inmates to fill the void in farm fields
"Pilot program to help farmers replace workers driven
off by state's new immigration laws."
By CHARLES ASHBY
CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1172581202/1

No More Denials, Please
Editorial
March 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/opinion/03sat1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar
By PAM BELLUCK
March 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03maple.html?ref=us

New Design for Warhead Is Awarded to Livermore
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
March 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/washington/03nuke.html?ref=us
[U.S. OUT OF LIVERMORE! DEVOTE LIVERMORE TO PEACEFUL
PURPOSES NOT FOR WAR--TO HELP HUMANITY, NOT DESTROY IT!...BW]

The Must-Do List
Editorial
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/opinion/04sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The Nation In Wartime, Who Has the Power?
By JEFFREY ROSEN
WASHINGTON
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/weekinreview/04rosen.html?ref=world

Judge to Decide Validity of Case on Marijuana
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04pot.html?ref=us

Investigations Multiplying in Juvenile Abuse Scandal
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04youth.html

Antiwar Caucus Wants to Be Heard Now
By MICHAEL LUO
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/washington/04cong.htm

State Facilities’ Use of Force Is Scrutinized After a Death
By CASSI FELDMAN
March 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/nyregion/04detention.html?ref=nyregion

16 Civilians Die as U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Road
By CARLOTTA GALL
March 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

The Right to Organize
Editorial
March 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06tues1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Visit by Bush Fires Up Latins’ Debate Over Socialism
By JIM RUTENBERG and LARRY ROHTER
March 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/americas/09latin.html

Veterans Face Vast Inequities Over Disability
By IAN URBINA and RON NIXON
March 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/washington/09veterans.html?ref=us

The Next Big Health Care Battle
Editorial
March 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/12mon1.html?hp

Strike at Big Shipyard Is Yet Another Effect of Katrina
By ADAM NOSSITER
March 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/us/13strike.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Immigration Misery
Editorial
March 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/opinion/15thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Dying Woman Loses Appeal on Marijuana as Medication
By JESSE McKINLEY
March 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15marijuana.html?ref=us

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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/

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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4

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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html

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URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS.
Call for action to save Iraq's Academics
A little known aspect of the tragedy engulfing Iraq is the systematic
liquidation of the country's academics. Even according to conservative
estimates, over 250 educators have been assassinated, and many
hundreds more have disappeared. With thousands fleeing the country
in fear for their lives, not only is Iraq undergoing a major brain drain,
the secular middle class - which has refused to be co-opted by the
US occupation - is being decimated, with far-reaching consequences
for the future of Iraq.
http://www.brussellstribunal.org/

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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177

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ENDORSE THE A.N.S.W.E.R. CALL TO ACTION
March 17-18, 2007
GLOBAL DAYS OF ACTION ON THE
4TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WAR!
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?
SURVEY_ID=3400&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&JServSessionIdr011=
k7a3443r73.app8a

http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage

Please circulate widely
www.answercoalition.org

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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html

On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.

Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:

Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.

You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.

Happy Holidays!

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html

SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.