BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2007

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URGENT: PLEASE READ "ARTICLE IN FULL" NUMBER 1, BELOW:

1) What Should the Anti-War Movement Do Now?
A Proposal from the ANSWER Coalition
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
[Please note: I endorse this call wholeheartedly and
encourage everyone to sign on! --Bonnie Weinstein, www.bauaw.org]

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SAN FRANCISCO

FREEDOM NEXT TIME: AN EVENING WITH JOHN PILGER

Pilger will discuss his new book, Freedom Next Time
(Nation Books) and show his film Breaking the Silence:
Truth and Lies in the War on Terror. This film, set
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Washington, looks at President
Bush's "war on terror" and the "liberation" of countries
where bloodshed and repression continue. Followed
by audience dialogue and a book signing.

Wednesday, June 13- 7 PM
Doors open 6:00 PM

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (http://www.ybca.org/)
YBCA Theater
700 Howard St. at Third

$15 general, $5 students

A book signing of Freedom Next Time and other books
by John Pilger will follow the event.

Presented by The Center for Economic Research and
Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with
support from the Wallace Global Fund.

For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order
online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets
at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and
Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third.
(Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm;
Thu: noon - 8 pm.)

For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@thenation.com.

For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com

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ARTICLES IN FULL:

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1) What Should the Anti-War Movement Do Now?
A Proposal from the ANSWER Coalition
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
[Please note: I endorse this call wholeheartedly and
encourage everyone to sign on! --Bonnie Weinstein, www.bauaw.org]

2) U.S. Strikes at Militants in Somalia
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/world/africa/03somalia.html?hp

3) Sweep at School Turns Up a Trove of Electronic Contraband
By JULIE BOSMAN
June 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/nyregion/01school.html

4) Poisonous Police Behavior
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?hp

5) A Legal Debate in Guantánamo on Boy Fighters
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo.html?hp

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1) What Should the Anti-War Movement Do Now?
A Proposal from the ANSWER Coalition
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545

[Please note: I endorse this call wholeheartedly and
encourage everyone to sign on! --Bonnie Weinstein, www.bauaw.org]

It is an absolute responsibility of the anti-war movement
to make an honest and straightforward assessment of the
current situation and to craft a strategy that can really
make a difference. Every serious organization, and especially
those with the greatest mobilizing reach, must be asked
to avoid posturing, make an assessment and develop an
action plan that will change the political landscape
in a decisive way.

This document does not seek to address or detail the
political differences between organizations and groups.
They exist and they have been detailed often. At this
moment, there needs to be an effort at clear perspective
that focuses on one simple question: What will end the
war and occupation of Iraq and what should the US anti-
war movement do?

It is clear that the anti-war movement is not sufficiently
strong at the moment to bring this criminal and despised
war to an end. Every organization must ask why is this
so and most importantly what can be done to change the
situation immediately.

The first question to ask and answer is: Can a people's
movement in the United States overcome the commitment
of the White House, Congress and the Pentagon to authorize,
extend and finance the war and occupation in Iraq?

If you or your organization answers the question negatively
then the rest doesn’t really matter. Perhaps, individuals
can bear witness and continue to protest, but it will
be little more than an individual statement.

If the answer to the question is yes, however, we must
assess various factors and craft a strategy that will be
fundamentally different from the current path of the
anti-war movement.

Historically, wars come to an end either because one side
wins and one side loses, or the people rise in revolution
(usually as a result of a military defeat or pending defeat),
or both sides exhaust each other over a protracted period.

What is the military situation in Iraq? The US cannot
achieve military victory in Iraq. Its multiple opponents
in Iraq are not militarily strong enough to decisively
defeat the US military in the short term. If the Iraqi
population, however, were able to overcome sectarian
divisions introduced with the US occupation it is possible
that Iraq could witness a repeat of a nationwide uprising
such as the 1958 Revolution that drove the British military
out of Iraq. But the flames of division are being whipped
up every day and function as a deterrent to such a spontaneous
national uprising against the occupiers. Finally, the
US military is stretched thin but is clearly able to
continue the occupation for some time, and the anti-U.S.
opponents in Iraq are not exhausted yet by the protracted
conflict. If anything they are gathering strength and
energy as the occupation forces cannot take the strategic
initiative away from guerrilla forces.

Given this complex reality, or realities, we believe that
the U.S. antiwar movement must take strategic and bold
initiatives that change the political climate in this
country. To succeed, these initiatives must be based
on a correct assessment of where we are.

The ANSWER Coalition wants to offer its own brief assessment
of the political equation in the United States. We are
also offering a proposal to all of the major anti-war
coalitions and groups and to all of those organizations
that function on a local level

Assessment of the political situation as it regards
the Iraq war

1) The people of the country have turned decisively against
the continuation of the war. Most recognize that the war was
based on lies and most no longer believe the president and
the generals when they assure them that victory is still
possible.

2) The military situation is worsening rather than improving
in light of the so-called surge. The number of US war dead
in May 2007 spiked to the third highest month since the
initial invasion in 2003. The numbers of Iraqi dead is about
3,000 each month. Two million Iraqis have fled the country
and another two million are internal refugees.

3) The US is unable to secure its political control over
the region as is evident by what is happening in Lebanon,
Iran and Syria and its intensified destabilization campaign
towards the Palestinian people.

4) The Bush administration is increasingly isolated, at home
and abroad, because of its failure in Iraq and its inability
to regain the military initiative even with tens of thousands
of more troops. The Pentagon anticipates occupying Iraq for
decades, as it has Korea and other countries.

5) More and more U.S. soldiers, marines, veterans and the
families of service members are either disillusioned or
completely opposed to the continuation of the war and
occupation.

6) The Democratic-controlled Congress voted overwhelmingly
to extend and finance the war and occupation. The calculation
of the Democratic Party leadership and the vast majority
of its elected officials in Congress is based on avoiding
at all costs taking responsibility for a pullout from Iraq
which will be perceived as a defeat for the United States
in this strategic oil-rich region. They believe that they
can secure an electoral advantage in 2008 by having the war
drag on and have the public hold the Republicans responsible
for the war. Moreover, the Democratic Party is feeding from
the same corporate financing trough as the Republicans and
they share the Bush government’s broad objective of U.S.
domination in the Middle East. Congress, under the current
circumstances, is completely committed to not ending the war
in Iraq in the next two years and probably for much longer
than that.

Assessment of the weakness and strength of the antiwar
movement:

1) There have been a growing number of anti-war protests
on the national, regional and local level during the past
six months.

2) The antiwar protests are being joined and, in some
cases, initiated by the people who have not been involved
in past demonstrations.

3) A growing sentiment of opposition and disgust to the war,
occupation (and the politicians) is building among rank and
file service members and some officers.

4) A large amount of energy and activity was directed at
Congress with the hope that the Congress would heed their
constituents' desire to end the war. When the Congress
instead voted against its constituents and with Bush
to extend the war there was a huge wave of anger, frustration
and desperation but with few available or recognized channels
for effective action.

5) Although the antiwar sentiment is growing among the
general population, the size and intensity of the
demonstrations, protests and acts of resistance does
not at all measure up to the vast magnitude of feelings
against the Iraq war among the general population.

6) The single biggest reason for this dichotomy is the
fact that the anti-war movement is badly splintered rather
than working together or in a united fashion so as to marshal,
stimulate and mobilize a truly massive outpouring of the people.

Proposal to build a truly mass outpouring of the people

If every anti-war coalition and organization came together
on a particular day, and with enough advance notice, under
the simple demand End the War Now it would be easily possible
to mobilize one million people. The political mood in the
country exists to make this happen.

So as to facilitate the greatest degree of coordination between
organizations to build a massive outpouring, the ANSWER Coalition
is not unilaterally setting a date for this potentially million-
strong march and rally. However, we recommend holding it sometime
in November of 2007, or on March 22, 2008--the fifth anniversary
of the war." In order to have such a huge demonstration, enough
time must be given to allow the organizations and coalitions
to come together and for intensive national outreach and
organizing.

This period of time between now and the demonstration would
not be a period of quiet, it would be a time of intensifying
anti-war activity and education at the local and regional level
culminating in this mass action. Unfortunately, unless the
political relationship of forces changes inside the United
States or in Iraq, the war and occupation will continue
through November and beyond. We are proposing a specific
tactic that can contribute to shifting the equation.

The aim is not just one more demonstration but the largest
antiwar demonstration in US history.

A mobilization of one million people marching on Washington
DC would be the best possible trigger for an avalanche
of grassroots organizing throughout the country and among
service members and their families and veterans. It is time
for something bold and broad. Something that sends an
unmistakable message to the powers that be that the people
of the United States have entered the field of politics in
such a way as to become an irresistible force.

Each group and movement should maintain its political
independence. Each group can inscribe on its banners
a variety of slogans or ideas or demands but what will allow
us to unite for the largest mobilization of all the people
is the simple unifying demand. Whatever differences that
exist between groups, and there are many and they are important,
are not sufficient justification for preventing us from coming
together in a show of force that will change the direction
of this country. The lives of too many people, all victims
of a criminal war, are too precious for our movement to tolerate
anything that prevents us from reaching our potential
to end the war in Iraq. With determination, maturity and mutual
respect our diverse anti-war movement can unite.

We would like to hear from everyone in consideration of this
proposal. If you, your friends, or your organization support
the proposal for a unified mass demonstration aiming to bring
1 million people onto the streets of Washington DC, please
join with us and sign on, which you can do by clicking
this link or visiting http://www.answercoalition.org/.
This movement has grown strong because of its grassroots
base. Let’s hear from everyone who supports this exciting
possibility.

During the next week, people like you and thousands of others
can circulate this proposal, discuss it with your organization,
family and friends, and be part of the effort to make it
a reality. We look forward to hearing from you and working
together.

Proposal by the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)
Coalition, May 31, 2007

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2) U.S. Strikes at Militants in Somalia
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
"On Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman,
said in an e-mail message, 'This is a global war on terror
and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist
capabilities when and where we find them.'”
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/world/africa/03somalia.html?hp

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 2 — American forces struck inside
Somalia on Friday, bombarding a mountainous area where
suspected militants were hiding out, Somali officials
said Saturday. It was the third known American strike
on Somali soil this year.

According to Somali security forces, an American warship
fired cruise missiles into the area after two boatloads
of heavily armed gunmen landed at Bargal, a small fishing
village on the north Somali coast, and then escaped into
the mountains.

Hassan Dahir, the vice president of Puntland, a semiautonomous
region of Somalia, said that eight Islamist militants
were killed, including one who was an American citizen,
according to documents found on his body.

Mr. Dahir also said that three American Special Operations
soldiers were on the ground, helping Somali security forces.

“Three Americans came into the mountains with us,”
Mr. Dahir said. “They are counterterrorism experts and
they are investigating the computers that the militants
were carrying.”

American officials declined to comment on this information.
But the operation Mr. Dahir described was congruent with an
attack in early January in which American forces bombed an
area in southern Somalia and then sent in a small contingent
of Special Forces soldiers to investigate the remains of
suspected militants. A few weeks later, American forces
struck again, trying to kill a militant Islamist leader.

On Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman,
said in an e-mail message, “This is a global war on terror
and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist
capabilities when and where we find them.”

The statement went on to say, “The very nature of some of
our operations, as well as the success of those operations,
is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our
partners and allies.”

Mr. Dahir said the militants, thought to number around 15,
were from Somalia’s recently ousted Islamist administration
and that they had come by boat to northern Somalia in an
attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden and escape the country.

Among the eight killed, he said, were men from Eritrea,
Yemen, England and Sweden. He said that Somali officials
contacted American officers in Djibouti, where there is
a large American military base, after a gun battle on
Friday evening in which the militants wounded four Somali
security agents and then melted into the mountains. He
said that an American destroyer moored off Bargal fired
the cruise missiles into the area.

The strike fit a pattern of a broader American strategy
to hunt down Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa,
especially Al Qaeda operatives. American officials have
accused Islamist clerics in Somalia of sheltering Al Qaeda
agents, including the mastermind of the American Embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

American forces played an influential but behind-the-scenes
role in helping overthrow the Islamist movement that
controlled Somalia for six months last year. In late
December, Ethiopian troops, aided by American satellite
imagery and battlefield intelligence, routed Islamist forces.
That paved the way for Somalia’s internationally recognized
but weak transitional government to take loose control
of the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time.

Since then, American warships have been patrolling Somalia’s
1,880-mile coastline. American officials say that several
Qaeda suspects are still inside the country.

The attack on Friday punctured what had been a relatively
peaceful period for Somalia. Over the past several weeks,
life in Mogadishu, the scene of intense fighting in March
and April, has been improving, with policemen patrolling
neighborhoods and sanitation crews lifting enormous amounts
of garbage from the streets. The transitional government
said security was finally good enough to hold a major
reconciliation conference in mid-June, though there were
still some concerns about how to pay for the conference.

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu.

Related:

Somalia: The Other (Hidden) War for Oil
by Carl Bloice; Black Commentator
May 07, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12768

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3) Sweep at School Turns Up a Trove of Electronic Contraband
By JULIE BOSMAN
June 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/nyregion/01school.html

When Olivia Lara-Gresty saw the metal detectors at the
entrance of Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side,
she turned around and ran home to ditch her contraband
before joining her sixth-grade class.

The cellphone police had arrived.

Not everyone was so savvy. The Police Department was there
to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items, requiring
all 900-plus students at the school to walk through metal
detectors before entering.

Their total haul included 404 cellphones, 69 iPods, 23 other
electronic devices, two knives and one imitation gun.

“People were crying,” said Samantha Haber, 14, an
eighth grader.

Officially, the X-ray scans are meant to catch dangerous
items. But since the unannounced sweeps began in April 2006,
they have mostly detected cellphones, infuriating parents
who see them as lifelines and have loudly opposed the checks.

The Education Department first banned “communication devices”
around 1988, when the electronic toy of choice was a beeper.
But the rule was not strictly enforced until last year,
when the Bloomberg administration took action to prohibit
cellphones in schools.

The sweep yesterday was one of the biggest so far since the
crackdown. An unannounced visit to a Queens school on
Wednesday yielded only 40 cellphones, 16 iPods and 33
unspecified electronic devices. The police collected only
83 cellphones during a sweep at a Bronx school a week ago,
but also took 37 items like headphones, batteries and can
openers — all forbidden.

According to rules set by Middle School 54’s principal,
Elana Elster, the items confiscated yesterday could be
picked up only by parents, and no earlier than Tuesday.
But she later amended those instructions in an e-mail
message to parents, saying that students could take home
the cellphones and other items at the end of the day
on Friday.

The initial instructions left hundreds of students leaving
school yesterday at a loss.

“I feel naked,” said Krystal Corchado, 15, an eighth grader
whose phone was seized. “I feel like I lost something very
important to me.”

Around the corner from the school, a group of six students
who had managed to hold onto their phones discussed their
narrow escapes.

Ian Newcomb pulled his blue Samsung phone from his pocket
to demonstrate how it evaded capture. “It’s nearly all
plastic, so the metal detectors didn’t pick it up,” he
said. “It was in my pocket the whole time.”

Maybe the metal detectors were not even turned on, suggested
Axel McFarland, 11. “They didn’t even beep,” he said.

One furious parent, Leslie Lyons, whose eighth-grade daughter
had taken Ms. Lyons’s cellphone to school, threatened to call
the police after exchanging a few sharp words with an assistant
principal. “I haven’t talked to our lawyer yet,” Ms. Lyons
said. “I’m filing a criminal complaint that they stole
my phone.”

Still, the high drama of the cellphone sweep appeared to provide
a few teachable moments. In one humanities class, the children
wrote strongly worded letters to Mr. Bloomberg, said David
Garfinkel, 12. Other students taped homemade signs reading
“No Phones, No School” to their backs in protest, said
Athena Buckley, a sixth grader.

Ms. Elster, the principal, stood wearily on the front steps
at 3:30 p.m., after the students had dispersed. “I’m not
going to talk,” she said, shaking her head.

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4) Poisonous Police Behavior
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?hp

You most likely have no idea of the abusive treatment that
students and teachers at many of New York City’s public
schools are enduring at the hands of overly aggressive
police officers and security aides assigned to the schools.

Students are being belittled, shouted at, cursed at,
intrusively searched and improperly touched by cops and
security aides who answer to the Police Department, not
school authorities. In many cases, the students are roughed
up, handcuffed, arrested and taken off to jail for behavior
that does not even begin to approach the criminal. Teachers
and administrators who have attempted to intervene on the
behalf of students have themselves been abused, and
in some cases arrested.

This poisonous police behavior is an extension into the
schools of the humiliating treatment cops have long been
doling out to youngsters — especially those who are black
or Latino — on the city’s streets.

In January, a 15-year-old girl at Samuel J. Tilden High
School in Brooklyn was manhandled for no discernible reason
by an armed police sergeant. The sergeant had grabbed her
book bag and ordered her into a school detention room. When
the girl replied, “That’s where I’m going,” the sergeant
is alleged to have pushed her. The girl then said she was
going to take down his name and badge number.

When she said that, according to a new study of police
practices in the public schools by the American Civil
Liberties Union, the sergeant jerked the girl’s left arm
behind her back at a painful angle. The girl’s right hand
slammed against a wall and she began to cry.

Students inside the room cried out in protest, but to no
avail. The girl was taken to the police station and given
a summons. That night the school’s assistant principal called
the girl’s home and apologized to her mother for the incident.

One morning last fall a large contingent of police officers
arrived unannounced at Wadleigh, a high school for the
performing arts in Harlem, to do a spot check for weapons
by herding students through portable metal detectors. One
of the students, the vice president of the school government
association, was afraid his cellphone would be confiscated
so he called his mother and asked her to come get it. He
waited outside the school for her to arrive.

When police officers approached him, he explained that his
mother was coming to meet him and would be there in just
a few minutes. The police, according to the report, called
him a smart-aleck, seized his cellphone, handcuffed him,
took him to the local stationhouse and put him in jail.

Unaware that her son had been arrested, the mother was frantic
when she couldn’t find him at the school. The charges against
the boy were later dropped.

There is nothing unusual about this type of activity. A math
teacher at the Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship
rushed outside the school one day last fall when he heard that
a student was being assaulted. He saw a police officer slam
a boy against a car. Explaining that the boy was his student,
the teacher said, “He’s just a kid.”

According to the report, the police officer then hit and
shoved the teacher. People in a group that had gathered
cried out: “He’s a teacher! He’s a teacher!”

A second officer reportedly grabbed the teacher from behind
and threw him onto the sidewalk. The teacher’s head bounced
against the pavement. While on the ground, the teacher was
handcuffed as students and school staffers looked on. He
was arrested and taken off to jail.

The report, a must-read for anyone interested in the reality
of public school life in New York, is titled “Criminalizing
the Classroom” http://www.nyclu.org/policinginschools/
and was released jointly by the New York Civil
Liberties Union and the Racial Justice Program of the
national A.C.L.U.

“Girls,” the report said, “are particularly targeted for
intrusive searches. Girls whose underwire bras set off
metal detectors must lift up their shirts so (security
aides) can verify that they are not concealing metal
objects. Many girls reported that officers ordered
them to unbuckle and/or unzip their pants for the
purpose of verifying that the students were not
concealing cellphones.”

There is no excuse whatever for this systematic mistreatment
of New York City students. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in
charge of the school system, and he and Commissioner Ray Kelly
run the Police Department. Parents across the city should
demand that they step in and bring this cruel madness
to an end.

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5) A Legal Debate in Guantánamo on Boy Fighters
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo.html?hp

The facts of Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case are grim. The shrapnel from the grenade he is accused of throwing ripped through the skull of Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was 28 when he died.

To American military prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is a committed Al Qaeda operative, spy and killer who must be held accountable for killing Sergeant Speer in 2002 and for other bloody acts he committed in Afghanistan.

But there is one fact that may not fit easily into the government’s portrait of Mr. Khadr: He was 15 at the time.

His age is at the center of a legal battle that is to begin tomorrow with an arraignment by a military judge at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of Mr. Khadr, whom a range of legal experts describe as the first child fighter in decades to face war-crimes charges. It is a battle with implications as large as the growing ranks of child fighters around the world.

Defense lawyers argue that military prosecutors are violating international law by filing charges that date from events that occurred when Mr. Khadr was 15 or younger. Legal concepts that are still evolving, the lawyers say, require that countries treat child fighters as victims of warfare, rather than war criminals.

The military prosecutors say such notions may be “well-meaning and worthy,” but are irrelevant to the American military commissions at Guantánamo. Mr. Khadr is one of only three Guantánamo detainees to face charges under the law establishing the commissions, passed by Congress last year.

“International law,” the Justice Department asserted in a court filing in the case last week, “does not prohibit an individual under 18 from being prosecuted for war crimes.” Even so, prosecutors said that if they won a conviction, they would seek something less than a life term, given Mr. Khadr’s age. He is 20 now.

Whatever the outcome, his case seems destined to become a landmark, though some scholars say not enough attention has been given to its importance. “What is the precedent that we are setting with this unique step?” asked Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written about child fighters.

Mr. Khadr’s case offers a snapshot of relatively new questions surrounding the legal treatment of child fighters globally, though advocates for children have tended to focus less on young terrorists and more on children who fight in civil wars, like Ishmael Beah, whose best-selling memoir, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” recounts his bloody days as a child soldier in Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Mr. Khadr may not be the most sympathetic figure for those pressing for the more forgiving interpretation of international law. He was born in Canada to a family with such deep Al Qaeda ties that some newspapers there have called them Canada’s first family of terrorism.

He is the youngest detainee at Guantánamo Bay, nearly blind in one eye from injuries sustained during the July 2002 firefight in which Sergeant Speer was mortally wounded and another American soldier was severely injured. Last week, Mr. Khadr said he wanted to fire all of his American lawyers, and some of them said they understood why he might distrust Americans after five years at Guantánamo.

Still, they argue that war-crimes prosecutors should focus on the adults who press children into service, not on the children themselves. The charges against Mr. Khadr, they said in a recent court filing, cross a line in the treatment of children that no other country has crossed “in modern history.”

The prosecutors, they say, included in their charges acts that occurred when Mr. Khadr was younger than 10. Mr. Khadr “was subject to undue adult influences,” said Muneer I. Ahmad, an associate professor at the American University Washington College of Law, who has represented Mr. Khadr.

“If Omar had had his free choice,” Professor Ahmad said, “what he would have chosen to do is ride horses, play soccer and read Harry Potter books.”

It is an appeal to emotion that the prosecutors are likely to meet with their own. Sergeant Speer left a wife and two small children. His widow, Tabitha, said in an e-mail exchange with a reporter last week that Mr. Khadr’s youth entitled him to no special consideration.

“Given the opportunity, he would do it all over again,” she wrote. “He was trained to do exactly what he did, regardless of his age.”

To the prosecutors, Mr. Khadr is the essence of a young man who should be held to adult standards. American officials say his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was killed in a shootout with Pakistani forces in 2003, was a senior deputy to Osama bin Laden.

One of Mr. Khadr’s brothers is in a wheelchair as a result of that 2003 shootout; another told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation “we are an Al Qaeda family.” Ahmed Khadr traveled internationally from Canada under the auspices of handling charity money for Muslims. In the mid-1990s, he was held for a time in Pakistan on suspicion of helping finance the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.

After he was released, the Khadrs and several of their six children moved from Canada to Afghanistan, where they lived at times in the same compound as Osama bin Laden, officials have said. “All of the children were indoctrinated into the Al Qaeda way of thinking,” said the chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force.

After Sept. 11, Mr. Khadr made deliberate choices to join Al Qaeda and eventually to kill Sergeant Speer, Colonel Davis said in a recent interview. “There is a difference,” Colonel Davis said, “between a 15-year-old who makes a spur-of-the-moment decision and someone who made a long-term choice.”

Captured bloody and bullet-riddled after the firefight that killed Sergeant Speer, Mr. Khadr has been held at Guantánamo since 2002. At least three other juveniles, perhaps as young as 12, were also held there for a time. But they were released in January 2004, the military said.

Mr. Khadr’s lawyers have said in court that he has been subject to physical and psychological torture that exploited his youth, another example of what they say is a violation of international principles that children be accorded special protections.

In legal filings, the lawyers have asserted, for example, that an interrogator at Guantánamo told Mr. Khadr when he was 17 that if he did not cooperate he would be sent to Egypt where he would be confronted by “Soldier No. 9,” a man who the interrogators said would be sent to rape him.

Asked about the accusations, a Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, said they “may be raised by counsel during the course of the trial” but he would not discuss the specifics of the accusations. Commander Gordon added that detainees “have frequently made allegations of abuse while in detention in order to garner public support.”

In their filings, the prosecutors concede that some treaties require special treatment of children caught in warfare. Some of those treaties, they noted, have not been ratified by the United States, and others do not specifically ban prosecution of combatants who are 15 or older.

Some legal experts acknowledge that it is difficult to define precisely what international law requires in the treatment of child fighters. It is a fluid discipline, with few enforcement mechanisms, and there are inconsistent precedents and treaty provisions.

But even those who say there is no bar to the war crimes prosecutions of youthful fighters say the growing use of child fighters around the world means that Mr. Khadr’s case could become pivotal.

“More and more child soldiers are being recruited, and they are committing heinous crimes. This is an issue the international community is going to have to confront,” said Michael A. Newton, a former military prosecutor and expert on the law of war who teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School.

The two sides in the Khadr case interpret some international legal documents differently. One subject on which they differ is a treaty to which the United States is a party, a 2002 United Nations agreement dealing with child fighters.

The defense notes that the agreement requires countries to demobilize captured child fighters and to provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery “and their social reintegration.”

The defense lawyers say that means sending them home. That would be inconsistent with the potential life term Mr. Khadr faces on charges of murder, attempted murder, spying, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.

But government lawyers note that the child-soldier treaty does not expressly rule out war crimes prosecutions for juveniles. Another international child-soldier provision that has become a central issue in Mr. Khadr’s case is a law approved by the United Nations for the prosecution of war crimes after the Sierra Leone civil war in the 1990s. It specifically provides that “persons of 15 years of age” and older can be charged with war crimes.

Colonel Davis said that was a significant precedent. “If the United Nations has signed on to the principle that people who are 15 can be prosecuted for war crimes,” he said, “the notion that we’re blazing a new trail with Mr. Khadr is a false assumption.”

But the former chief war crimes prosecutor for Sierra Leone, David M. Crane, said in an interview that soon after he was appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations in 2002, he announced that he would not prosecute anyone under 18.

Mr. Crane, a former senior Pentagon legal official who is now a professor at Syracuse University Law School, said the Sierra Leone civil war included a catalogue of horrific acts by teenagers and children. But he said he concluded that warriors under 18 did not have the intellectual and emotional maturity to be prosecuted for war crimes.

“I called them as much victims as the people they raped, maimed and mutilated,” he said.

One person who has reached a different conclusion about the culpability of child fighters is Layne Morris, a housing administrator in a Salt Lake City suburb. Mr. Morris is a former Army Special Forces sergeant, who, like Mr. Khadr, is half-blind because of the firefight that day outside Khost, Afghanistan.

On a recent day, Mr. Morris remembered the stream of shots from AK-47s inside a compound a coalition patrol had surrounded. He remembered the hand grenades that kept coming over the wall. And he described the feeling of the shrapnel that took half his sight.

He said the battle did not unfold quickly, as it sometimes seems in the retelling. American forces surrounded the compound. And then they waited. Some women from the compound emerged and were allowed to leave, Mr. Morris said. A boy fighter would have had the chance to walk out of the gate, too, he said.

There were shots. And more waiting, as the Americans called for air support.

Anyone who was inside had a choice of fighting or surrendering, he said, including Mr. Khadr.

“There is just no way you can say this is a poor befuddled, brainwashed kid,” Mr. Morris said. “This is a kid who made a whole lot of decisions on his own.”

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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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Somalia: The Other (Hidden) War for Oil
by Carl Bloice; Black Commentator
May 07, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12768

Interview With Cindy Sheehan: "We'll Come Back Stronger"
"Prominent anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan tells NOW's David
Brancaccio that she plans to rest, spend time with her family,
and then continue her struggle against the Iraq war. "We're
going to pull back and regroup and figure out a better way
to come at this," Sheehan said in a NOW on the News web-
exclusive audio interview."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060107R.shtml

Pentagon IG Report Details Central Role
of Psychologists in Detainee
Interrogations and Abuse
Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
May 29, 2007
www.counterpunch.org

Inuit leader: stop expansion of Stansted airport
By Cahal Milmo
"One of the most prominent members of the Inuit community
will today plead for an end to the expansion of Stansted
Airport and deliver a devastating critique of the link
between Britain's cheap flights culture and the effects
of climate change on his people.
Aqqaluk Lynge will present evidence of the increasing
loss of Inuit villages and hunting grounds across the
Arctic. His testimony will be given to the public inquiry
opening today into plans to dramatically increase the
number of passengers using London's third airport."
Published: 30 May 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2594163.ece

Andrew Sullivan: American interrogation techniques
borrowed from Nazis
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html

Overhaul of Immigration Law Could Reshape New York
By NINA BERNSTEIN
May 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/nyregion/30families.html?ref=nyregion

Los Angeles Police Chief Notes Failures of Command at Rally
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/us/30LAPD.html?ref=us

Mexico: Migrant Jumps to His Death in Immigration Sweep
By MARC LACEY
A raid by the authorities on a train carrying undocumented
Central American immigrants in southern Mexico ended in
tragedy on Monday as a man jumped to his death from
a moving rail car and a boy had his leg severed by the
train’s wheels. “We were all on top of the train when
the police began chasing us,” the boy, Luis Carlos
Hernández, 14, from Honduras, told The Associated Press
from a hospital in Veracruz, where he was recovering
from an amputated right leg. The unidentified man who
jumped fell onto the tracks and was decapitated, officials
said.
May 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/world/americas/30briefs-migrant.html

Site Pulled Calling Anti-War Advocates Terrorists
Anti-Abortion, Gay-Rights Groups Also Included
http://www.nbc6.net/news/13398523/detail.html?taf=ami

Stun gun use on mentally ill questioned
© 2007 The Associated Press
May 28, 2007, 12:28AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4840930.html

As Allies Turn Foe, Disillusion Rises in Some G.I.’s
By MICHAEL KAMBER
May 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/world/middleeast/28delta.html?ref=world

Wealthy Enclave Offers Windfall for Candidates
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
"GREENWICH, Conn., May 25 — Senator John McCain made his
pitch to this gilded shoreline suburb back in April.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts came on May 7,
followed one night later by former President Bill Clinton
on behalf of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Last weekend, it was back-to-back appearances by Senator
Barack Obama, topped off on Sunday with a visit from
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor.
With the mansions along its winding back roads now awash
in hedge fund money, Greenwich has joined New York,
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley as must stops on the
presidential fund-raising tour, with prominent locals
now boasting of candidate scuff marks on their basketball
courts, Secret Service T-shirts in their closets and framed
pictures of their children with the candidates on their
mantels. For a town that has wealth and corporate clout
to spare, the fund-raisers fill a void: access to a potential
White House resident."
May 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/us/politics/28greenwich.html?hp

Site Pulled Calling Anti-War Advocates Terrorists
Anti-Abortion, Gay-Rights Groups Also Included
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The Alabama Department of Homeland
Security has taken down a Web site it operated that
included gay rights, anti-war and anti-abortion organizations
in a list of groups that could include terrorists.
The site included the groups under a description of what
it called "single-issue extremists." The Web site says
such groups include people who feel they are trying to
create a better world.
The director of the department said his agency received
a number of calls and e-mails from people who said they
felt the site unfairly targeted certain people just
because of their beliefs. He said he plans to put the
Web site back on the Internet, but will no longer
identify specific types of groups.
POSTED: 10:27 pm EDT May 27, 2007
UPDATED: 10:28 pm EDT May 27, 2007
http://www.nbc6.net/news/13398523/detail.html?taf=ami

INTERVIEW: AS'AD ABUKHALIL ON THE NAHR AL-BARED SIEGE
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Lebanon, 24 May 2007
"Thousands of Palestinian refugees are fleeing from Nahr
al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as five days of
fighting by the Lebanese army and a militant group known
as Fath al-Islam has left dozens of soldiers and fighters
and an unknown number of civilians dead. As the situation
of these Palestinian refugees worsens, 59 years after they
were first expelled from their homeland into Lebanon, the
world looks on in silence. Electronic Intifada co-founder
Ali Abunimah spoke with As'ad Abukhalil, the creator of
the Angry Arab News Service blog on the origins of Fath
al-Islam, the events that led to the violence and what it
means for Lebanon and the region."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6945.shtml

US Show of Force in Gulf "Greatly Alarming"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052607A.shtml

Federal agents arrest over 100 for immigration violations
in Missouri raid
Michael Sung
JURIST@law.pitt.edu
5/23/2007
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/05/federal-agents-arrest-over-100-for.php

Oil Industry Says Biofuel Push May Hurt at Pump
By JAD MOUAWAD
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/business/24refinery.html?ref=business

For the First Time, New York Links a Death to 9/11 Dust
By ANTHONY DePALMA
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/nyregion/24dust.html?ref=nyregion

$5 Million Settlement in Boot Camp Death
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TALLAHASSEE, Fla., May 23 (AP) — The family of a teenager
who died after being roughed up by guards at a juvenile boot
camp last year will receive $5 million under a bill signed
Wednesday by Gov. Charlie Crist.
The teenager, Martin L. Anderson, 14, died in January 2006
shortly after being kneed and struck and having ammonia
tablets held to his nose at the military-style facility
run by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Panama City, Fla.
Mr. Crist and several lawmakers pushed for the settlement
this spring despite the Legislature’s general distaste
for claims measures.
The state has already paid Martin’s parents $200,000, the
most allowed by law without legislative approval. The bill
signed by Mr. Crist pays the remaining $4.8 million.
The sheriff’s office has separately settled with the Anderson
family for $2.4 million. Seven guards and a nurse employed
at the camp face manslaughter charges.
An initial autopsy said Martin died of complications from
sickle cell trait. But a second autopsy said the death
was caused by suffocation resulting from being forced
to inhale the ammonia.
Martin entered the camp for a probation violation for
trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were
charged with stealing their grandmother’s car.
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/24florida.html

ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicIntifada.net

ONGOING SPECIAL COVERAGE OF SIEGE OF LEBANON REFUGEE CAMP:
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/674.shtml

ONGOING SPECIAL COVERAGE OF RENEWED ISRAELI STRIKES ON GAZA:
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/672.shtml

Democrats Pull Troop Deadline From Iraq Bill
By CARL HULSE
May 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/washington/23cong.html?ref=world

Film Offers New Talking Points in Health Care Debate
By MILT FREUDENHEIM and LIZA KLAUSSMANN
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/media/22react.html?ref=business

Kentucky: Families Sue in Mine Blast
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The sole survivor of a mine explosion last year and relatives
of four of the five miners killed sued the coal company,
saying it had put production over safety. The suit cited
safety violations against the company, Kentucky Darby;
a supervisor, Ralph Napier; and Jericol Mining, which
provided management, planning, engineering and safety
training to the mine, Darby Mine No. 1. The plaintiffs
also seek damages against the manufacturer of the emergency
air packs that the victims used.
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22brfs-FAMILIESSUEI_BRF.html

IRAQ: Educational standards plummet, say specialists
http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=72168

Exclusive: Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr
By Patrick Cockburn In Baghdad
Published: 21 May 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2565123.ece

What's Next in Iraq? Juan Cole Interviews Ali A. Allawi
"Will a surge of U.S. troops make
a difference in Iraq? How viable is
the current Iraqi government? Will
an American withdrawal lead to
all-out civil war?
May 25, 2007
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i38/38b00601.htm

Black Media Delegation Returns from Darfur
Final Call, News Report, Jehron Muhammad,
Posted: May 20, 2007
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=b4a5f713b944aebb26047375d0629bf7

Soldier’s Smallpox Inoculation Sickens Son
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
"A 2-year-old boy spent seven weeks in the hospital
and nearly died from a viral infection he got from
the smallpox vaccination his father received before
shipping out to Iraq, according to a government report
and the doctors who treated him."
May 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/health/18smallpox.html?ref=health

My Dear Fellow Species
By MARY JO MURPHY
"THE Origin of Species” is almost 150 — a fit survivor
of the science canon even if not everyone has seen fit
to jump from the Ark to the Beagle on the matter of
evolution (three Republican presidential candidates,
for example). But Darwin himself was slow to come to
his ideas, and slower still to disclose them to
a skeptical public. Last week, the Darwin Correspondence
Project, based at Cambridge University, put about 5,000
letters to and from Darwin, some of them previously
unpublished, online at darwinproject.ac.uk, with thousands
more to follow. The searchable database lets anyone track
the painstaking development of his research and thinking
— on all kinds of topics, personal and professional,
and with a huge array of correspondents." MARY JO MURPHY
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/weekinreview/20word.html?ref=science

The Closing of the University Commons
by Michael Perelman
May 19, 2007
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/perelman190507.html

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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION

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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s

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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/

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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm

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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html

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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ

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ADDICTED TO WAR
Animated Video Preview
Narrated by Peter Coyote
Is now on YouTube and Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZwyuHEN5h8

We are planning on making the ADDICTED To WAR movie.
Can you let me know what you think about this animated preview?
Do you think it would work as a full length film?
Please send your response to:
Fdorrel@sbcglobal. net or Fdorrel@Addictedtow ar.com

In Peace,

Frank Dorrel
Publisher
Addicted To War
P.O. Box 3261
Culver City, CA 90231-3261
310-838-8131
fdorrel@addictedtow ar.com
fdorrel@sbcglobal. net
www.addictedtowar. com

For copies of the book:

http://www.addictedtowar.com/book.html

OR SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO:
Frank Dorrel
P.O. BOX 3261
CULVER CITY, CALIF. 90231-3261
fdorrel@addictedtowar.com
$10.00 per copy (Spanish or English); special bulk rates
can be found at: http://www.addictedtowar.com/bookbulk.html

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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King

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DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!

See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255

ACTION:

We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.

Call, Email and Write:

1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]

National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/

Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml

Related:

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece

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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]

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

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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY

My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic

Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o

Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw

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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact:

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

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

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

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

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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays!

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

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

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

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2007

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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm

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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html

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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ

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ADDICTED TO WAR
Animated Video Preview
Narrated by Peter Coyote
Is now on YouTube and Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZwyuHEN5h8

We are planning on making the ADDICTED To WAR movie.
Can you let me know what you think about this animated preview?
Do you think it would work as a full length film?
Please send your response to:
Fdorrel@sbcglobal. net or Fdorrel@Addictedtow ar.com

In Peace,

Frank Dorrel
Publisher
Addicted To War
P.O. Box 3261
Culver City, CA 90231-3261
310-838-8131
fdorrel@addictedtow ar.com
fdorrel@sbcglobal. net
www.addictedtowar. com

For copies of the book:

http://www.addictedtowar.com/book.html

OR SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO:
Frank Dorrel
P.O. BOX 3261
CULVER CITY, CALIF. 90231-3261
fdorrel@addictedtowar.com
$10.00 per copy (Spanish or English); special bulk rates
can be found at: http://www.addictedtowar.com/bookbulk.html

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ARTICLES IN FULL:

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1) Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life
County officials express dismay at the events surrounding
the recent controversial death at King-Harbor hospital.
One nurse has resigned.
By Charles Ornstein
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king20may20,0,6057993.story?coll=la-home-center

2) REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE
By Fidel Castro Ruz
May 21, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/reflexiones/ing-009.html

3) Racism goes on trial again in America's Deep South
“The prosecution of three black Louisiana youths
reveals the rise of discrimination by stealth.”
by Tom Mangold in Jena, Louisiana
The Observer (UK) - May 20, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2083762,00.html

4) San Francisco Labor Council Resolution
Denounces the Proposed Iraqi Oil Law
Hands Off Iraqi Oil!

5) Immigration Raid Leaves Sense of Dread in Hispanic Students
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
WILLMAR, Minn.
May 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/education/23education.html?ref=us

6) Paramilitary Ties to Elite In Colombia Are Detailed
Commanders Cite State Complicity in Violent Movement
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101672.html?nav=rss_world

7) Poll Shows Opposition to Iraq War at All Time High
By DALIA SUSSMAN
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/politics/25cnd-poll.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1180030289-x3l5VD/HWQ0i9QWaTIxPpw

8) Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers
By ELISABETH MALKIN
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/world/americas/24unions.html?ref=world

9) Castro, in First Details of Health Crisis,
Says He Is Back on Solid Food
By REUTERS
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/world/americas/24CUBA.html

10) Where Nobody Is Accountable
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily*
May 21, 2007
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

11) Bolivia: Capitalism Humanity's Worst Enemy
Associated Press
May 23, 2007
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/163172.aspx

12) Black Leadership and
Black Mass Incarceration
By Bruce Dixon
Black Agenda Report (BAR)
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=227&Itemid=33

13) Immigrants and Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 25, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html?hp

14) Democracy or Puppetry?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
prisonradio.org

15) Bush Expects Everything to be
Solved with a Bang
By Fidel Castro
May 25, 2007
VIA email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net

16) Chávez creates state of fear among businesses
By GERARDO REYES
MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, May. 25, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/117973.html

17) Arrested While Grieving
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 26, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp

18) Some Union Local Members Call for Using Mail Ballots
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
May 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/nyregion/26labor.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

19) War Without End
Editorial
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/opinion/27sun1.html?hp

20) Michael Moore's Math
‘Sicko,’ Castro and the ‘120 Years Club’
By ANTHONY DePALMA
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/weekinreview/27depalma.html?ref=world

21) Remembrance, and Protest, for a Man Slain by an Officer
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/nyregion/27funeral.html?ref=nyregion

22) "Baghdad is a smashed city..."
Below is an email I have just received from my close friend
and translator Abu Talat. While he has fled Baghdad with
his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had
to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is
left of his former life (his car, belongings from his
house, etc.) before returning back to Syria. His note
is instructive as to the current living conditions in
the capital city of Iraq. Here is the full text of
his message:
May 27, 2007
Dahr_Jamail_Dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
http://DahrJamailIraq.com

23) Trust and Betrayal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 28, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp

24) Cuba’s Cure
Why is Cuba Exporting Its Health Care Miracle
To The World’s Poor?
By Sarah van Gelder
Cubans say they offer health care to the world’s
poor because they have big hearts.
But what do they get in return?
May 25, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/25/1458/

25) Dear Democratic Congress
by CindySheehan
http://cindysheehan.dailykos.com
May 26, 2007 at 07:03:16 AM PDT
http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14771&Itemid=26

26) Who killed the honeybees?
"A round table of experts answer all our pressing questions about the
sudden death of the nation's bees. What they have to say has a bigger
sting than we ever expected."
By Kevin Berger
May. 29, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/29/missing_bees/print.html

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1) Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life
County officials express dismay at the events surrounding
the recent controversial death at King-Harbor hospital.
One nurse has resigned.
By Charles Ornstein
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king20may20,0,6057993.story?coll=la-home-center

In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor
Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.

"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told
Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early
May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital
yelling for help. "This is her third time here."

The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from
the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three
days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription
medication and a doctor's appointment.

Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already
been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to
a report by the county office of public safety, which
provides security at the hospital.

Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after
police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum,
writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked
at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition,
no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her
as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit
camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.

Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend
unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff
and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked
at sending rescuers to a hospital.

Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped
in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding
warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before
she could be put into a squad car.

How Rodriguez came to die at a public hospital, without
help from the many people around her, is now the subject
of much public hand-wringing. The county chief administrative
office has launched an investigation, as has the Sheriff's
Department homicide division and state and federal
health regulators.

The triage nurse involved has resigned, and the emergency
room supervisor has been reassigned. Additional disciplinary
actions could come this week.

The incident has brought renewed attention to King-Harbor,
a long-troubled hospital formerly known as King/Drew.

The Times reconstructed the last 90 minutes of Rodriguez's
life based on accounts by three people who have seen the
confidential videotape, a detailed police report, interviews
with relatives and an account of the boyfriend's 911 call.

"I am completely dumbfounded," said county Supervisor
Zev Yaroslavsky, who has seen the video recording.

"It's an indictment of everybody," he said. "If this woman
was in pain, which she appears to be, if she was writhing
in pain, which she appears to be, why did nobody bother …
to take the most minimal interest in her, in her welfare?
It's just shocking. It really is."

The story of Rodriguez's demise began at 12:34 a.m. when
two county police officers received a radio call of
a "female down" and yelling for help near the front
entrance of King-Harbor, according to the police report.

When they approached Rodriguez to ask what was wrong,
she responded in a "loud and belligerent voice that her
stomach was hurting," the report states. She said she
had 10 gallstones and that one of them had burst.

A staff member summoned by the police arrived with
a wheelchair and rolled her into the emergency room.
Among her belongings, one officer found her latest
discharge slip from the hospital, which instructed
her to "return to ER if nausea, vomit, more pain
or any worse."

When the officers talked to the emergency room nurse,
she "did not show any concern" for Rodriguez, the
police report said. The report identifies the nurse
as Linda Witland, but county officials confirmed that
her name is Linda Ruttlen, who began working for the
county in July 1992.

Ruttlen could not be reached for comment.

During that initial discussion with Ruttlen, Rodriguez
slipped off her wheelchair onto the floor and curled
into a fetal position, screaming in pain, the report said.

Ruttlen told her to "get off the floor and onto a chair,"
the police report said. Two officers and a different nurse
helped her back to the wheelchair and brought her close
to the reception counter, where a staff member asked
her to remain seated.

The officers left and Rodriguez again pitched forward
onto the floor, apparently unable to get up, according
to people who saw the videotape and spoke on the condition
of anonymity.

Because the tape does not have sound, it is not possible
to determine whether Rodriguez was screaming or what
she was saying, the viewers said. Because of the camera's
angle, in most scenes, she is but a grainy blob, sometimes
obstructed, moving around on the floor.

When Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, returned to the
hospital after an errand and saw her on the floor, he
alerted nurses and then called 911.

According to Sheriff's Capt. Ray Peavy, the dispatcher
said, "Look, sir, it indicates you're already in a hospital
setting. We cannot send emergency equipment out there
to take you to a hospital you're already at."

Prado then knocked on the door of the county police,
near the emergency room, and said, "My girlfriend needs
help and they don't want to help her," according to the
police report. A sergeant told him to consult the medical
staff, the report said. Minutes later, Prado came back
to the sergeant and said, "They don't want to help her."
Again, he was told to see the medical staff.

Within minutes, police began taking Rodriguez into custody.
When they told Prado that there was a warrant for Rodriguez's
arrest, he asked if she would get medical care wherever she
was taken. They assured him that she would. He then kissed
her and left, the police report said.

She was wheeled to the patrol vehicle and the door was opened
so that she could get into the back. When officers asked
her to get up, she did not respond. An officer tried to
revive her with an ammonia inhalant, then checked for
a pulse and found none. She died in the emergency room
after resuscitation efforts failed.

According to preliminary coroner's findings, the cause
was a perforated large bowel, which caused an infection.
Experts say the condition can bring about death fairly
suddenly.

Hours after her death, county Department of Health Services
spokesman Michael Wilson sent a note informing county
supervisors' offices about the incident but saying that
that police had been called because Rodriguez's boyfriend
became disruptive.

Health services Director Dr. Bruce Chernof said Friday
that subsequent information showed Prado was not, in fact,
disruptive. Chernof otherwise refused to comment, citing
the open investigation, patient privacy and "other issues."

Peavy, who supervises the sheriff's homicide unit, said
that although his investigation is not complete, "the
county police did absolutely, absolutely nothing wrong
as far as we're concerned."

The coroner's office may relay its final findings to
the district attorney's office for consideration of
criminal charges against hospital staff members,
Peavy said.

"I can't speak for the coroner and I can't speak for
the D.A., but that is certainly a possibility," he added.

Marcela Sanchez, Rodriguez's sister, said she has been
making tamales and selling them to raise money for her
sister's funeral and burial. Her family has been called
by attorneys seeking to represent them, but they do not
know whom to trust.

She said the latest revelations, which she learned from
The Times, are very troubling.

"Wow," she said. "If she was on the floor for that long,
how in the heck did nobody help her then?

"Where was their heart? Where was their humanity? …
When Jose came in, everybody was just sitting, looking.
Where were they?"

Sanchez said her sister was a giving person who always
took an interest in people in need, unlike those who
watched her suffer. "She would have taken her shoes
to give to somebody with no shoes," she said. Rodriguez,
a California native, performed odd jobs and lived
alternately with different relatives.

David Janssen, the county's chief administrative officer,
said the incident is being taken very seriously.
In a rare move, his office took over control of the
inquiry from the county health department and the office
of public safety.

"There's no excuse — and I don't think anybody believes
that there is," Janssen said.

Over the last 3 1/2 years, King-Harbor has reeled from
crisis to crisis.

Based on serious patient-care lapses, it has lost its
national accreditation and federal funding. Hundreds of
staff members have been disciplined and services cut.

Janssen said he was concerned that the incident would
divert attention from preparing the hospital for
a crucial review in six weeks that is to determine
whether it can regain federal funding.

If the hospital fails, it could be forced to close.

"It certainly isn't going to help," Janssen said.

At the same time, he said, the preliminary investigation
suggests that the fault primarily rests with the nurse
who resigned. "I think it's a tragic, tragic incident,
but it's not a systemic one."

Supervisor Gloria Molina, who hadn't seen the videotape,
said she wasn't sure the hospital had reformed.

"What's so discouraging and disappointing for me is that
it seems that this hospital at this point in time hasn't
really transformed itself — and I'm worried about it,"
she said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said he believed care had
improved at the hospital overall, but added, "It's
unconscionable that anyone would ignore a patient
in obvious distress."

Rodriguez's son, Edmundo, 25, said he still couldn't
understand why his mother died. "It's more than negligence.
I can't even think of the word."

His 24-year-old sister, Christina, said, "It just makes
it so much harder to grieve. It's so painful."

charles.ornstein@latimes.com

Times staff writers Stuart Pfeifer and Susannah Rosenblatt
contributed to this report.

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2) REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE
By Fidel Castro Ruz
May 21, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/reflexiones/ing-009.html

The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class,
the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than
two decades.

"A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling
during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxigen and
drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to
surface," was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the
shipyards.

"It‚s a mean looking beast", says another.

"Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it
are 3 nuclear-powered submarines at different stages of
construction," assures yet another.

Someone says that "it can observe the movements of cruisers in New
York Harbor right from the English Channel, drawing close to the
coast without being detected and listen to conversations on cell
phones". "In addition, it can transport special troops in mini-subs
that, at the same time, will be able to fire lethal Tomahawk missiles
for distances of 1,400 miles", a fourth person declares.

El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper, emphatically spreads the news.

The UK Royal Navy declares that it will be one of the most advanced
in the world. The first of them will be launched on June 8 and will
go into service in January of 2009.

It can transport up to 38 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish
torpedoes, capable of destroying a large warship. It will possess a
permanent crew of 98 sailors who will even be able to watch movies on
giant plasma screens.

The new Astute will carry the latest generation of Block 4 Tomahawk
torpedoes which can be reprogrammed in flight. It will be the first
one not having a system of conventional periscopes and, instead, will
be using fibre optics, infrared waves and thermal imaging.

"BAE Systems, the armaments manufacturer, will build two other
submarines of the same class," AP reported. The total cost of the
three submarines, according to calculations that will certainly be
below the mark, is 7.5 billion dollars.

What a feat for the British! The intelligent and tenacious people of
that nation will surely not feel any sense of pride. What is most
amazing is that with such an amount of money, 75 thousand doctors
could be trained to care for 150 million people, assuming that the
cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the
United States. You could build 3 thousand polyclinics, outfitted with
sophisticated equipment, ten times what our country possesses.

Cuba is currently training thousands of young people from other
countries as medical doctors.

In any remote African village, a Cuban doctor can impart medical
knowledge to any youth from the village or from the surrounding
municipality who has the equivalent of a grade twelve education,
using videos and computers energized by a small solar panel; the
youth does not even have to leave his hometown, nor does he need to
be contaminated with the consumer habits of a large city.

The important thing is the patients who are suffering from malaria or
any other of the typical and unmistakable diseases that the student
will be seeing together the doctor.

The method has been tested with surprising results. The knowledge and
practical experience accumulated for years have no possible
comparison.

The non-lucrative practice of medicine is capable of winning over all
noble hearts.

Since the beginning of the Revolution, Cuba has been engaged in
training doctors, teachers and other professionals; with a population
of less than 12 million inhabitants, today we have more Comprehensive
General Medicine specialists than all the doctors in sub-Saharan
Africa where the population exceeds 700 million people.

We must bow our heads in awe after reading the news about the English
submarine. It teaches us, among other things, about the sophisticated
weapons that are needed to maintain the untenable order developed by
the United States imperial system.

We cannot forget that for centuries, and until recently, England was
called the Queen of the Seas. Today, what remains of that privileged
position is merely a fraction of the hegemonic power of her ally and
leader, the United States.

Churchill said: Sink the Bismarck! Today Blair says: Sink whatever
remains of Great Britain‚s prestige!

For that purpose, or for the holocaust of the species, is what his
"marvellous submarine" will be good for.

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3) Racism goes on trial again in America's Deep South
“The prosecution of three black Louisiana youths
reveals the rise of discrimination by stealth.”
by Tom Mangold in Jena, Louisiana
The Observer (UK) - May 20, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2083762,00.html

In the cool and beflagged small courtroom in Jena, Louisiana, three
black schoolboys - Robert Bailey, Theodore Shaw and Mychal Bell - are
about to go on trial for a playground fight that could see them jailed
for between 30 and 50 years.

Jena, about 220 miles north of New Orleans, is a small town of 3,000
people, 85 per cent of whom are white.

Tomorrow it will be the focus for a race trial which could put it on the
map alongside the bad old names of the Mississippi Burning Sixties such
as Selma or Montgomery, Alabama.

Jena is gaining national notoriety as an example of the new 'stealth'
racism, showing how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in
America's Deep South, even in the year that a black man, Barak Obama, is
a serious candidate for the White House.

It began in Jena's high school last August when Kenneth Purvis asked the
headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and
join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during
breaks. The boy was told that he and his friends could sit where they
liked.

The following morning white students had hung three nooses there. 'Bad
taste, silly, but just a prank,' was the response of most of Jena's
whites.

'To us those nooses meant the KKK [Ku Klux Klan], they meant, "Niggers,
we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die,"' says
Caseptla Bailey, a black community leader and mother of one of the
accused. The three white perpetrators of what was seen as a race hate
crime were given 'in-school' suspensions (sent to another school for a
few days before returning).

Jena's major industry is growing and marketing junk pine. Walk down the
usually deserted main street and you will not find many black employees.
Bailey, 56, is a former air force officer and holder of a business
management degree. 'I couldn't even get a job in Jena as a bank teller,'
she said. 'Look at the banks and the best white-collar jobs and you'll
see only white and red necks in those collars.'

Billy Doughty, the local barber, has never cut black men's hair. 'They
just don't come here,' he mumbled.'Anyway, their hair is different
and difficult to cut.'

The majority of blacks live in an area known as Ward 10. Many homes are
trailers, or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. On 'Snob Hill',
where the whites live, the spacious gardens and lawns are trimmed, the
gravelled drives boast SUVs and nice new saloons. Only two black
families live there. A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy
his way in. But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him
a 'white'property even though several were advertised in the local paper
('they're all under contract,' the agents lied). The teacher eventually
went to see one white owner and offered him cash. 'The guy preferred
green [dollars] to black, so I got the property,' laughed the teacher,
'but since we moved in three years ago we haven't been invited by a
single neighbour.'

On 30 November, someone tried to burn Jena High to the ground. The crime
remains unsolved. That same weekend race fights between teenagers broke
out downtown, and on 4 December racial tension boiled over once more in
the school. A white student, Justin Barker, was attacked, allegedly by
six black students.

The expected charges of assault and battery were not laid, and the six
were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to
commit second-degree murder. They now face a lifetime in jail.

Barker spent the evening of the assault at the local Baptist church,
where he was seen by friends to be 'his usual smiling self'.

Nine days later, with the case technically sub judice, the District
Attorney made the following public statement to the local paper: 'I will
not tolerate this type of behavior. To those who act in this manner I
tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are
convicted I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to
it that you never again menace the students at any school in this
parish.'

Bail for the impoverished students was set absurdly high, and most have
been held in custody. The town's mind seems to be made up.

But now the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
and the American Civil Liberties Union - 'damned outsiders' - have
become involved and have begun to recruit, enthuse and empower the local
black population. Reporters from the BBC and the New York Times have
been drawn to the story. Jena does not like this publicity and shifts
uncomfortably in the glare.

It is 42 years since President Lyndon Johnson closed the loopholes that
allowed southern states to discriminate against blacks. When the accused
shuffle into court tomorrow, it's Jena that will be on trial.

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4) San Francisco Labor Council Resolution
Denounces the Proposed Iraqi Oil Law
Hands Off Iraqi Oil!

WHEREAS, in the opening days of the 2003 Iraq invasion, US soldiers were
ordered to protect the Oil Ministry, oil fields and refineries while
wholesale looting of Iraq's antiquities unfolded. The message to Iraqis was
clear: "We've come for the oil." There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Rather than democracy, the US brought massive destruction and civil war to
Iraq; and

WHEREAS, giving credence to Iraqi fears, the oil cartel has prepared a new
Oil Law which, if enacted by the parliament, will put effective control of
Iraq's vast oil resources in the hands of foreign companies. Nationalized
since 1975, Iraq's oil was, before the years of US sanctions and invasions,
the foundation for a relatively high standard of living, producing more
PhD's per capita than the U.S. and a health care system prized as the best
in the region; and

WHEREAS, President Bush says the war is not about oil but his actions belie
that claim. Before the 2003 invasion, the State Dep't "Oil & Energy Working
Group" met to plan how to open Iraq to foreign oil companies. The proposed
new Oil Law is virtually a photocopy of the "Options" plan first conceived
in Texas long before the US occupied Iraq. The law would create an Oil &
Gas Council, on which would sit representatives of Chevron, Exxon-Mobil,
Shell, BP, etc., whose tasks include approving their own contracts; and

WHEREAS, the practice in Iraq -- as in other countries with giant oil
reserves -- has been that control of oil production, development and sale
rests with the public sector. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran run their
industries this way. Yet the proposed Oil Law calls for long-term
contracts, handing to foreign companies effective control of Iraq's oil
industry for up to 30 years, and as much as 70% of the profits; and

WHEREAS, the Iraqi people will not take this looting of their national
treasure lying down. The Oil Law has been unanimously and strongly
condemned by all of Iraq's major labor federations, including the
Federation of Oil Unions. The law would make a mockery of Iraqi sovereignty
and deprive Iraqis of the resources they need to rebuild their shattered
country; and

WHEREAS, the leadership of the Democratic Party has embraced the draft Oil
Law and put it into the supplemental funding bill as one of the
"benchmarks" by which the Iraqi government will be measured. By doing so,
the Democratic leadership becomes complicit in a backdoor effort to
privatize Iraq's publicly owned oil resources -- second largest in the
world; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the San Francisco Labor Council join in solidarity with the
Oil Workers and Trade Unions of Iraq in opposing the proposed new Oil Law,
which is nothing less than a hijack of Iraq's oil by the international oil
cartel; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the Council urge Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional
Democrats to clearly oppose this shameful raid on Iraqi oil, and remove
passage of the Oil Law from their list of "benchmarks." The Bush
Administration and IMF are pressing Iraq to adopt this law. It is
unconscionable for the Congress to become partners in trying to shove this
law, which will benefit only the rapacious oil companies, down the throats
of the Iraqi people.

- Adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council May 14, 2007 by unanimous vote.

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5) Immigration Raid Leaves Sense of Dread in Hispanic Students
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
WILLMAR, Minn.
May 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/education/23education.html?ref=us

The day before everything happened, Alex Sorto left Willmar
High School as usual at 2:30, and grabbed a ride to his night
job as a janitor at the Jennie-O turkey processing plant.
He had been working there for four months, saving money
for college tuition, and hoping to study art even though
his mother wanted him to be a lawyer.

Alex had already heard there were immigration agents
in town, raiding the trailer parks and rented homes
of the Hispanics who had flocked to this county seat
on the Minnesota prairie in search of work at Jennie-O.
Alex believed that because he was a citizen, he was safe.

So he put in his eight hours sweeping and swabbing, and
went home to finish up the portfolio that was his final
project for communications class. The portfolio consisted
mostly of an autobiography. In it Alex recalled his early
years in Los Angeles, the child of two Honduran immigrants,
and the divorce that sent him and his mother, Rosa Sorto,
to a green-shingled duplex on Ann Street in Willmar.

As a senior, just a few weeks from graduation, Alex had
already passed the required state tests, which were being
administered at Willmar High the next morning.

So he knew he could sleep late, a rare treat on a weekday,
before starting his regular classes.

The next thing he knew, at the unfair hour of 6:30 a.m.
on April 13, he heard a banging noise. Groggy, he at first
assumed the racket came from the family upstairs.

By the time he tugged on a pair of jeans and walked toward
the living room, he could hear nearby voices shouting.
He saw his mother on the couch, being peppered with questions
by four immigration agents — questions about her papers,
questions about his, questions about two single men who
rented rooms from them. In his entire life, all 18 years,
Alex had never seen her so close to crying.

In the end, the agents from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement accepted the proof that Alex and his mother,
who has permanent resident status, were legal. The two
renters, Roberto and Augustine, were led away in handcuffs,
Roberto wearing only his boxer shorts.

Then Ms. Sorto discovered how the agents had apparently
entered her apartment; the window of the locked side door,
intact the previous night, was now broken.

Even after all the tumult, Ms. Sorto insisted that Alex
go to school. Even though it was 8:30, and he had no classes
for another hour, she drove him there. He watched her hands
quake as she tried to steer. In art class, his favorite,
he could not get his pencil to move. All he could think
about was what would become of him if his mother were
taken away.

Such was the triumph of Operation Cross Check, the federal
raid against illegal immigrants that went on for four days
last month in this community of about 18,500 people. To the
Department of Homeland Security, the operation was a success,
catching a convicted sex offender and several welfare cheats
among its 49 arrests. In a news release announcing the toll,
an immigration enforcement director for Minnesota said,
“Our job is to help protect the public from those who
commit crimes.”

Yet more than half of those arrested had committed no crime
other than being in the United States illegally, doing
the jobs at Jennie-O that prop up the local economy. And,
as the experience of Alex Sorto demonstrates, the aggressive,
invasive style of the sweep instilled lasting fear among
Willmar’s 3,000 Hispanics, many of them students born or
naturalized in the United States. These young people are
the political football in America’s bitter, unresolved
battle about immigration.

“All of us are scared,” said Andrea Gallegos, a junior
at the high school. “When you go to school, you don’t
know if your parents will be there when you come home.
I don’t feel safe anywhere — walking to the school bus,
walking outside the school building.”

Sharon Tollefson, a guidance counselor, had one promising
student vanish in the aftermath of the raid. The young man,
whom she identified by only his first name, Santiago, had
been attending both day and night classes to graduate this
spring. Ms. Tollefson was helping to arrange for him to visit
a local college, where he planned to study law enforcement
with the goal of becoming a police officer.

The first morning of the raids, April 10, Santiago took
his required state test in writing. The next day, when
he was supposed to sit for the math exam, he did not show
up at school. Ms. Tollefson has since heard rumors that
he was deported to Mexico.

“He was working his fanny off,” Ms. Tollefson said, almost
wistfully, in an interview last week. “I keep saying I’m not
taking him off my roster. I can’t believe he won’t be coming
back.”

THE objections to the immigration raid go far beyond the
anecdotal. A group of about 30 Hispanic residents of Willmar,
including Alex and Rosa Sorto, has filed suit in United States
District Court in Minneapolis, alleging that the immigration
and domestic security agencies violated the Constitution.
The suit maintains that the armed officers engaged in racial
profiling, and that they broke into private homes without
search warrants as part of a “campaign of terror and
intimidation.”

Tim Counts, a spokesman for the immigration agency in
Minnesota, declined yesterday to answer the suit’s
allegations in detail, beyond saying that the operation
was “fully within the law and appropriate.” He also said
that homes were entered only with the permission of
residents, and added, “We will make our case in the
court of law.”

When Alex Sorto moved to Willmar in the late 1990s, he
said he kept quiet about his past. He felt as if he was
the only child in school with divorced parents. Over time,
he grew comfortable enough to share the secret without
being ostracized.

Since that April morning, Friday the 13th, he has reacquired
the habit of silence. His communications teacher suggested
that he try to put the whole experience out of his thoughts.
But she isn’t the one who worries about what could happen
if his mother gets stopped by “la Migra,” as the immigration
agents are known, on a day she left her driver’s license
at home.

“This was the year everything was supposed to go right for
me,” Alex said. “And then all this happened.”

Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia
University. His e-mail address is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.

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6) Paramilitary Ties to Elite In Colombia Are Detailed
Commanders Cite State Complicity in Violent Movement
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101672.html?nav=rss_world

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days
confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: Some
of Colombia's most influential political, military and business
figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated
with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to U.S. cities.

The commanders have named army generals, entrepreneurs, foreign
companies and politicians who not only bankrolled paramilitary
operations but also worked hand in hand with fighters to carry them
out. In accounts that are at odds with those of the government, the
commanders have said their organization, rather than simply sprouting
up to fill a void in lawless regions of the country, had been
systematically built with the help of bigger forces.

"Paramilitarism was state policy," Salvatore Mancuso, a top
paramilitary commander, said last week at a hearing in this city's
Palace of Justice. "I am proof positive of state paramilitarism in
Colombia."

In a scandal that began to gain momentum last fall, investigators
have revealed dozens of cases of government collaboration with
paramilitary groups. But Mancuso's testimony, buttressed with remarks
made in a jailhouse interview by another top paramilitary commander,
represents the first time that major players in the scandal have
described in detail how the establishment joined forces with them.

Dozens of other top commanders are scheduled to testify before
special judicial hearings in the coming days and weeks. Their
testimony could help uncover the roots of the violence and drug
trafficking that have plagued this country and commanded significant
aid from Washington.

The administration of President Álvaro Uribe says that it has moved
aggressively to dismantle the paramilitary groups, and that its
determination to do so has made the investigations possible. The
investigations, however, have resulted in a collective and painful
catharsis for this country.

Ivan Duque, a strategist who helped formulate the ideology of the
paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia, or AUC, said in an interview that the group had alliances
with anyone of influence in the regions where it operated.

"Could these three groups -- I'm talking about political people,
economic people, the institutional people, meaning the military --
operate without having contact with the chief of chiefs?" said Duque,
speaking from the Itagui prison in Medellin, which houses dozens of
paramilitary commanders. "That's impossible. That cannot be."

Chosen by his fellow commanders to speak to two American reporters,
Duque said last week that, now that the paramilitary commanders have
decided to air their dirty secrets, it also was time for the elites
who helped the AUC to come clean. He said paramilitary groups had
17,000 armed fighters and more than 10,000 other associates, from
cooks to drivers to computer technicians and informers. And he said
it was plain for anyone to see.

"Men armed to the teeth," Duque said, gesticulating as he sat in an
office provided by prison guards. "Could you really travel the whole
territory so that no one could see them, notice them, that no one
collaborate with them? That's why I talk of this county of
hypocrisies, this society of lies."

Colombia's paramilitary movement began more than a generation ago to
counter a growing Marxist guerrilla force and quickly turned into an
irregular army that committed widespread massacres and
assassinations, funding much of its operations with cocaine
trafficking. The attorney general's office estimates the paramilitary
fighters killed about 10,000 people from the mid-1990s until the
early part of this decade, when its commanders began negotiating a
disarmament with Uribe's government. The AUC is on the U.S. State
Department list of terrorist organizations.

Now, in a crucial post-disarmament phase that requires commanders to
reveal their crimes in exchange for lenient treatment, Mancuso and
others have begun to speak.

Mancuso's testimony came in the midst of a difficult week for Uribe,
whose administration has received $4 billion in mostly anti-drug and
military aid from Washington since his election in 2002. Authorities
arrested more congressional allies linked to paramilitary commanders,
and then Mancuso began making his uncomfortable disclosures.

"Salvatore Mancuso spoke," the newsweekly Semana said, "and the
country's political sector trembled."

Uribe remains highly popular in Colombia for lowering violence, but
in Washington, Democrats on Capitol Hill are citing the recent
disclosures in holding back support for a U.S. free-trade deal with
Colombia.

So far, authorities have charged 14 members of Colombia's Congress,
seven former lawmakers, the head of the secret police, mayors and
former governors with having collaborated with paramilitary
commanders. A dozen more current congressmen are under investigation.
Most have been close Uribe allies who supported a constitutional
amendment permitting his reelection and approved the lenient law,
known as Justice and Peace, that governs the paramilitary disarmament.

Though Mancuso testified earlier this year to ordering murders and
collaborating with military units, his testimony last week was much
more explosive. He spoke of working closely with three former
generals, all of whom have denied ties.

Mancuso's disclosures -- particularly about retired Gen. Rito Alejo
del Rio, known in the state of Antioquia as the "pacifier" of the
Uraba region -- are embarrassing for Uribe. Though Uribe's
predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, fired del Rio for collaborating with
paramilitary groups, and though the United States rescinded his visa,
Uribe has publicly eulogized him as an "honorable man" and defended
him in Washington.

"I support all the generals who were in Antioquia," Uribe told
Caracol radio earlier this year.

Perhaps Mancuso's biggest impact came when he said that two current
ministers in Uribe's government, Vice President Francisco Santos and
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, met with top paramilitary
commanders in the 1990s. The two men, cousins in an influential
family that owns El Tiempo, Colombia's most influential newspaper,
had acknowledged long ago having met with the paramilitary members.
Both said they did so to further peace in Colombia, not as part of a
sinister plot, as Mancuso alleged.

Mancuso's allegations have prompted some commentators to note that
the commander has besmirched as many people as possible while still
falling far short of accounting for all of the crimes he has
committed. "The strategy behind three days of testimony that tainted
people, institutions and business must be understood," said El Tiempo
in a Sunday editorial. "If the whole county is responsible, then no
one is responsible."

Still, Attorney General Mario Iguaran has noted that, under a new
system specially designed to try the commanders, they are required to
tell the truth or face losing benefits acquired under terms of the
disarmament law. "We should believe him," Iguaran told El Tiempo in
an interview. "That's the principle of the Justice and Peace law."

In the interview, Duque, the strategist, explained that he's writing
a book, tentatively titled "Stories of Silence," in which he plans to
lay out the history of paramilitarism. Once a small-town mayor and
teacher, Duque spoke of how deep anti-Marxist sentiments led him to
join the paramilitary groups. "I fell in love with this cause," he said.

Still, Duque called Colombia's war "dirty, slimy, anarchic,
anachronistic," and said paramilitary fighters had killed countless
civilians in massacres, contradicting long-held claims that those
slain in the attacks were Marxist guerrillas. And he said that the
paramilitary groups also murdered many union members for their
"ideological posture," not for purported ties to guerrillas, as was
claimed. "It was profoundly unjust," he said.

But Duque, like Mancuso, said that much of Colombia has to take
blame. "Colombia would turn another page," he said, "if in an act of
faith for our country we'd stand up and say straight out: 'Yes, I'm
guilty. Yes, I'm responsible.' "

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7) Poll Shows Opposition to Iraq War at All Time High
By DALIA SUSSMAN
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/politics/25cnd-poll.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1180030289-x3l5VD/HWQ0i9QWaTIxPpw

Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than
at any time since the war began, according to the latest
New York Times/CBS News poll.

Six in 10 Americans surveyed say the United States should
have stayed out of Iraq, and more than three in four say
that things are going badly there — including nearly
half who say things are going very badly, the poll found.

Still, the majority of Americans support continuing
to finance the war, as long as the Iraqi government meets
specific goals.

President Bush’s approval ratings remain near the lowest
point of his more than six years in office. Thirty percent
of poll respondents approve of the job he’s doing overall,
while 63 percent disapprove. Majorities of those polled
disapprove of Mr. Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq,
of foreign policy, of immigration, of the economy and
of the campaign against terrorism.

At a news conference in the Rose Garden this morning,
President Bush seemed to acknowledge the erosion of public
support for his administration’s policy in Iraq, even as he
defended the policy. “Failure in Iraq affects the security
of this country,” he said. “And it’s hard for some Americans
to see that. I fully understand it. I see it clearly.”

Mr. Bush said he saw a need for “more of a national
discussion” on “the consequences of failure in Iraq.”

“See, people have got to understand that if that government
were to fall, the people would tend to divide into kind
of sectarian enclaves much more so than today,” he said.
“That would invite Iranian influence and would invite
Al Qaeda influence, much more so than in Iraq today.”Beyond
the war issue, the poll found widespread concern over the
nation’s overall direction. More Americans — 72 percent —
now say that “generally, things in the country are seriously
off on the wrong track” than at any time since the Times/CBS
News poll began asking the question in 1983. The figure
had been in the high 60’s earlier this year.

But the poll results made clear that the war continues
to be the issue Americans are most worried about. Sixty-
one percent of respondents now say that the United States
should never have taken military action against Iraq,
up from 51 percent in a CBS News poll in April and 58
percent in the same poll in January. Seventy-six percent
say that things are going badly in the effort to bring
stability and order to Iraq, including 47 percent who
say they’re going very badly.

Mr. Bush warned today of still worse violence to come
in Iraq in the months before Gen. David Petraeus is
scheduled to report on progress there in September.
“It could make August a tough month, because, you see,
what they’re going to try to do is kill as many innocent
people as they can to try to influence the debate here
at home,” Mr. Bush said, referring to Al Qaeda and
anti-American Iraqi militants. “Don’t you find that
interesting -- I do -- that they recognize that the
death of innocent people could shake our will?”

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Friday
through Wednesday with 1,125 adults. The margin of
sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

A large majority of the public — 76 percent, including
a majority of Republicans — say that the additional
American troops sent to Iraq this year by Mr. Bush
have either had no impact or are making things worse
there. Twenty percent think the troop increase
is improving the situation in Iraq.

A majority of Americans continue to support a timetable
for withdrawal. Sixty-three percent say the United States
should set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq
sometime in 2008.

While the troops remain in Iraq, the overwhelming majority
of Americans support continuing to finance the war,
though most want to do so with conditions. Thirteen
percent want Congress to block all spending on the war.
The majority, 69 percent, including 62 percent of Republicans,
say Congress should appropriate money for the war, but
on the condition that the United States sets benchmarks
for progress and that the Iraqi government meets those goals.
Fifteen percent of all respondents want Congress to
approve war spending without conditions.

President Bush acknowledged the majority view at the
news conference today when he spoke about the war
spending bill now pending in Congress.

“As it provides vital funds for our troops, this bill
also reflects a consensus that the Iraqi government
needs to show real progress in return for America’s
continued support and sacrifice,” he said in his opening
remarks. “The Iraqi Study Group recommended that we hold
the Iraqi government to the series of benchmarks for
improved security, political reconciliation and governance
that the Iraqis have set for themselves. I agree. So does
the Congress. And the bill reflects that recommendation.”

Even so, the poll found that Americans now have more
faith in the Democrats than in the Republicans on the
issue of the Iraq war. For the first time, more than
half of those polled — 51 percent — said the Democratic
party is more likely than the Republican party to make
the right decisions about the war.

In general, more Americans now have a favorable view
of the Democratic party (53 percent) than of the
Republican party (38 percent). The Republican party
has not had a majority positive rating in a New York
Times/CBS News poll since December 2003.

As for Mr. Bush, 23 percent approve of his handling
of the situation in Iraq, while 72 percent disapprove;
25 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy,
while 66 percent disapprove; and 27 percent approve
of his handling of immigration issues, while
60 percent disapprove.

On the economy, 38 percent approve of Mr. Bush’s
handling of the issue, and on the campaign against
terrorism, 40 percent approve, matching his career
low on the issue.

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8) Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers
By ELISABETH MALKIN
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/world/americas/24unions.html?ref=world

TAMPAMOLÓN CORONA, Mexico — Cástulo Benavides, a union
organizer, came to this forgotten mountain town to tell
its men how to get legal jobs in the tobacco fields
of North Carolina.

But this year he introduced them to a change in
a longstanding practice: the men will not have
to pay anyone to get those jobs.

“That’s something that we won with the union,” Mr. Benavides
explained to the workers in the sweltering municipal auditorium
here. “We are stepping on some people’s toes, and we’re doing
it hard.”

The response, if that is what it is, has been brutal. In April,
Mr. Benavides’s co-worker Santiago Rafael Cruz was bound
and beaten to death at the union’s office in Monterrey,
in northern Mexico.

The Ohio-based union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee,
says the killing was a political attack after the union
cleaned up corrupt practices of recruiting workers, like
charging them a fee to be hired.

Mr. Rafael Cruz’s killing comes as the United States Senate
has restarted debate on a long-stalled immigration package
that proposes an expanded guest worker program. But the way
those workers are recruited in Mexico has received little
attention in the debate.

Before planting and harvest time in the United States it
has been common for local recruiters to fan out across
Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers.
The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars,
sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that
comes with it.

“That line of corruption touches both countries,” said
Baldemar Velásquez, the president of the union. “And the
people at the bottom in Mexico end up paying the price.”

The aftermath of Mr. Rafael Cruz’s killing has rippled
all the way to Washington.

On May 8, Representative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat,
and a dozen other legislators wrote to President Felipe
Calderón of Mexico and the governor of the state of Nuevo
León, of which Monterrey is the capital, urging them
to thoroughly investigate the killing and provide protection
for the rest of the Mexico staff of the farm workers’ union.

Closed-circuit cameras have been installed in the union
offices, and the police provide regular patrols.

A spokesman for the Nuevo León attorney general’s office
would not comment on whether the police were investigating
leads related to Mr. Rafael Cruz’s work. The spokesman
asked not to be identified, according to department policy.

The union opened its office in Monterrey two years ago
to help the 6,000 Mexican guest workers it represents
in a collective bargaining agreement with the North
Carolina Growers Association, a group of 650 farmers.

The association includes most of the growers in the
state who employ legal guest workers, said Stan Eury,
its executive director. Even so, a majority of farmers
in North Carolina, as in the rest of the United States,
hire undocumented immigrants.

Last year the United States issued about 37,100 temporary
visas for agricultural workers, said Todd Huizinga,
a spokesman for the United States Consulate in Monterrey.
Mexico accounted for 92 percent of them.

In Monterrey, part of the union’s work has involved
monitoring the association’s Mexican recruiting agency,
called Manpower of the Americas. That company sends out
local recruiters to hire the workers and then processes
their visas at the consulate.

After a lawsuit led to a settlement between the union
and the growers’ association in 2005, all of the workers’
recruiting fees were dropped for two years. For now it
is the growers, not the workers, who must pick up
recruiters’ charges, along with the costs of the visas.

“We did everything we could to get the word out,”
Mr. Velásquez said. “We took away a gold mine from
these operators.”

Since the start, though, the union has been threatened
and harassed in Monterrey, he said. Its office was
broken into twice and computer equipment was stolen.

Mr. Rafael Cruz, 29, who was originally from Oaxaca,
began working with Mr. Benavides in Monterrey in February
after working for the farm workers’ union in the United
States. He was sleeping in the union’s office while
looking for an apartment.

Mr. Velásquez was careful to exclude the growers’
association and the local recruiting agency’s management
from his allegations. Local recruiters working for other
agencies may have felt threatened by a series of meetings
the union held in March, union workers say.

“Who knows what underling was trying to prove himself,”
Mr. Velásquez said.

Mike Bell, president of the recruiting agency, Manpower
of the Americas, said his company kept a tight rein
on its local recruiters.

“I was already doing a good job policing before the union
ever showed up,” said Mr. Bell, a North Carolina native
who said his company sent about 12,000 Mexican workers
— including the 6,000 in North Carolina — to jobs all
over the United States.

“We don’t sit outside some bar and say, ‘Everybody pay
up and we’ll get you a job,’ ” he said.

Aside from the agreement reached in North Carolina,
there is nothing to stop the recruitment abuses, experts
on the guest worker program say.

Roman Ramos, a paralegal at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Laredo,
has followed the agricultural guest worker program, known
as H-2A, for 25 years. He was skeptical that the agreement
would have a wide impact. “There is no indication from
any source that what is happening in North Carolina
is in any form, way or fashion happening anywhere else
in the country,” he said.

“Other recruiters are still charging workers,” he added.
“Everybody makes money out of these guys.”

The starting rate is typically $600, he said. That
figure includes an unspecified fee that is split
between the local recruiter and the agent who has
been contracted to supply workers to the American
employer.

Once workers return home with money from their work,
it is common for the recruiter to stop by again.
Workers know that a couple of hundred dollars in cash,
or maybe a goat or a sheep, will get them on the
list next year.

Two years ago, Juan Bonifacio González gave about $450
to a woman here everybody knew as “La Tolentina,” who
promised to get him a legal guest worker visa. After
months of promises she disappeared. Mr. González borrowed
the money from a local moneylender and says he is still
paying back his loan, which has tripled with interest.

There are no jobs in this town of 14,000, lost in the
steep hills of the state of San Luis Potosí. The mayor
recently invited the farm workers’ union to come and
speak about legal job opportunities in North Carolina,
where the federally mandated wage for agricultural
guest workers is $9.02 an hour.

That seems a fortune to the mostly Nahuatl-speaking
Indians here, where the average wage is less than
$4 a day.

A few had worked in North Carolina and wanted to go back.
Florencio Hernández Angelina spent the past three harvests
there. This year he wanted help in changing employers.
The grower splits her work force between legal guest
workers and illegal migrants. “She gives us fewer hours,”
Mr. Hernández said.

She prefers the illegals, he said, because she pays them less.

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9) Castro, in First Details of Health Crisis,
Says He Is Back on Solid Food
By REUTERS
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/world/americas/24CUBA.html

HAVANA, May 23 (Reuters) — Fidel Castro said Wednesday that
he was eating enough solid food to recover from several
intestinal operations that had not been successful at first.

In his first detailed account of his health crisis since
handing over power as Cuba’s leader 10 months ago, Mr. Castro
said he had spent months being fed intravenously. “It wasn’t
just one operation, but various. Initially there was no success
and this led to a prolonged recuperation,” Mr. Castro said
in an article distributed by the Cuban government by e-mail.

“For many months I depended on IVs and catheters through
which I received an important part of my nourishment,”
he wrote. “Today I receive orally everything my recovery
requires.”

Mr. Castro, 80, has not appeared in public since emergency
surgery forced him to relinquish power temporarily
on July 31 to his brother Raul for the first time since
his 1959 revolution.

He is thought to have suffered from diverticulitis or inflamed
bulging of the large intestine.

Mr. Castro, who gave up smoking cigars 20 years ago, said
his greatest dangers now were his age and the abuses
he subjected his health to when he was younger.

The Cuban leader gave no indication of when he might
show up again in public or resume leadership of Cuba’s
Communist government.

Video images of Mr. Castro released in October showed
a gaunt and shuffling old man. Last month, however, images
of him meeting with a Chinese Communist Party delegation
showed him looking heavier, although still in a hospital.
Cuban officials say he has regained 40 pounds he had lost
after surgery.

Mr. Castro took to writing columns in March to reassert
himself in Cuba. The columns, called “Reflections
of the Comandante,” are published in the ruling
Communist Party’s newspapers and read repeatedly
on radio and television.

His articles have attacked the United States for threatening
the world’s food supply with its biofuels plans, promoting
free trade and encouraging defections from Cuba.

A column published Tuesday criticized Britain for building
nuclear-powered attack submarines, saying the money could
have been used to train 75,000 doctors, treat 150 million
people or build 3,000 polyclinics in poor countries.

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10) Where Nobody Is Accountable
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily*
May 21, 2007
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

BAGHDAD, May 21 (IPS) - Killings, crime, lack of medical care,
collapse of education, the list goes on. But with the
occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and
a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows
who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong.

It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States
and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say.

"It is good of these people to discuss accountability for
theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi
blood," Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya
neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS.

The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by
July 2006, 655,000 people had died as "a consequence of
the war." It has reported that the risk of death among
civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led
invasion in March 2003.

"By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason,
and many millions disabled or badly injured just because
of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington," Ahmed said.
"We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them
even if takes us a lifetime."

But Iraqis have no means to take action against occupiers.

The United States has not accepted jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court, which has the power to
investigate complaints of genocide. The United States
took the view that the court could conduct "politically
motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military
and political officials and personnel."

U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the
strong support for the Court by most of its closest
allies. But Iraqis have found no way to proceed against
these either.

With no doors of justice open to them, many Iraqis are
now taking to unlawful ways to hit back at occupation
forces and government targets.

"The only way to do it is at gunpoint," 32-year-old Ali
Aziz from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS.
"They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous
to talk about any other way of getting back what
belongs to us."

Aziz said he had lost several friends in attacks by U.S.
soldiers. "The whole world is dealing with this in
a hypocritical way, and there is only us to claim our
rights the way we find proper."

The human rights group al-Raya filed a case in a local
court in Fallujah against U.S. forces in 2004, following
a massive military crackdown. About three-quarters
of all buildings in the city were destroyed or heavily
damaged during the U.S. assault in November 2004.

But U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces have hit out
at the human rights group. "The secretary-general for
the organisation has now been arrested by Fallujah
police for reasons that we are not aware of, and the
organisation is not functioning any more," a member
of the board, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told IPS in Baghdad.

"It is not the right time to talk about accountability
when daily killings by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are
still ongoing. God knows if it will ever be possible."

A case for accountability could well be made. A judge
from the United States wrote at the time of the trial
of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg in Germany in 1946:
"To initiate a war of aggressionàis not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international
crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of
the whole."

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was judged by former
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Sep. 16, 2004 as
"an illegal act that contravened the UN charter."

The lack of accountability appears now to be leading
to greater support for armed resistance against
occupation forces.

"What accountability are you talking about, sir," said
Abu Jassim from Fallujah, who lost four members of his
family when a U.S. bomb destroyed his home during the
first U.S. offensive in the city in April 2004. "Americans
are criminals, and the whole world is covering up for
their crimes." They will be held accountable, he said,
by "Allah" and by "the heroes of the Iraqi resistance."

Iraqis are also angry over destruction of their civilian
infrastructure, for which no one has been held responsible.

"The U.S. crime of deliberately crushing Iraqi infrastructure
must be looked at as a crime against humanity," chief engineer
Jalal Abdulla at Baghdad's Ministry of Electricity told IPS.
"They did not have to do this to support their military effort,
but they did it just to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths
for no reason but cruelty."

Others vent their frustration against what they see as an
impotent United Nations. "The UN should be the place for
asking those Americans why they committed so many crimes
in Iraq," said Baghdad resident Malik Hammad.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration
with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who
travels extensively in the region)

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11) Bolivia: Capitalism Humanity's Worst Enemy
Associated Press
May 23, 2007
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/163172.aspx

CBNNews.com - LA PAZ, Bolivia - President Evo Morales called
capitalism the "worst enemy of humanity" at a conference of Latin
American leftist intellectuals on Tuesday.

A coca-growers' union leader who became Bolivia's first Indian
president, the leftist Morales has nationalized oil and natural gas
resources as part of his effort to redistribute wealth in South
America's poorest country.

"The transnational corporations always provoke conflicts to
accumulate capital, and the accumulation of capital in a few hands is
no solution for humanity," Morales said at forum in Cochabamba. "And
so I have arrived at the conclusion that capitalism is the worst
enemy of humanity."

Morales also said Bolivia's new constitution, now being written,
would declare Bolivia a pacifist nation and explicitly renounce war.
"Instead of making more weapons and bullets to kill humankind, we
must concentrate on producing more food," he said.

The president spoke at a two-day conference on the role of media in
political efforts to create a new Latin American socialism, sponsored
by Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Ecuador. Morales counts Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro as close allies.

Morales has criticized the historic role of foreign business
interests in Bolivia, often noting that the 1879 War of the Pacific,
in which Bolivia lost its seashore to Chile, was sparked in part by a
British trading company's rush to control the coast's valuable guano
and saltpeter deposits.

Bolivia later lost tens of thousands of soldiers and another wide
swath of territory in the 1930s Chaco War with Paraguay, which many
historians describe as a proxy battle between U.S. company Standard
Oil and Dutch-British Shell Oil over land thought to hold valuable
petroleum deposits.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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12) Black Leadership and
Black Mass Incarceration
By Bruce Dixon
Black Agenda Report (BAR)
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=227&Itemid=33

America’s undeclared but universal policies of racially
selective policing, prosecution and mass incarceration of
its Black citizens have imposed unprecedented strains on
the social and economic viability of Black families and
communities—of the entire African American polity. This
malevolent social policy demands a political response
from Black leadership, just as Jim Crow and lynching did
in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ day. Why is
the current crop of Black leaders unable to rise to the
crisis of this generation—the fact of racially selective
mass incarceration? And if they did, what would such
a response look like?
—Bruce Dixon

The dismal stats are familiar to us all. America leads
the world in numbers of prisons and prisoners, and African
Americans, though only one eighth of its population, make
up nearly half the locked down. One out of three black men
in their twenties are out on bail, probation, court supervision,
community service or parole—or behind bars. And the fastest
growing demographic of the incarcerated, aside from immigration
prisoners, are black women.

America’s malevolent social policy of racially selective
mass incarceration is so ubiquitous, so thoroughly part of
its statutes, courts, its law enforcement apparatus and
traditions, that it’s hard to believe it was enacted in
a single generation, since the ending, about 1970 of the
black Freedom Movement. But as late as the 1960s whites,
not Blacks were the majority of the nation’s prisoners.
Since 1970 the U.S. prison population has multiplied about
sevenfold, with neither a causative or accompanying increase
in crime, and without a public perception that we are somehow
seven times safer.

The present level of mass incarceration and its deleterious
effects for decades to come upon the black work force,
on economic and health outcomes, on culture and family
formation are facts of African American life that seem
to demand a political response, a concerted and long-term
effort to change these awful public policies, much like that
called forth by lynching and legal segregation. But what
passes for today’s African American leadership is simply
not up to the challenge.

It doesn’t take a social scientist, let alone a rocket
scientist to spot some key differences between black
leadership fifty and sixty years ago and the current crop
of supposed African American leaders.

Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, being identified as an
active member of the NAACP in the South could cost your
livelihood and home, your freedom, even your life. Many
whose names nobody remembers served, and quite a few paid
that price.

Today’s NAACP officials, like their counterparts in corporate
America, fly and dine first class. They hobnob with celebrities
and CEOs, and they depend on Disney, Chrysler, Bank of America
and Fox TV to broadcast its annual Image Awards, which are
handed out to other celebrities and black officials of
whichever administration is in power. The NAACP has in the
recent past even chosen its CEO from the ranks of black execs
at telecommunications corporations that digitally redline
African American neighborhoods.

A significant portion of the black leadership in those days
was responsible to black communities alone. They crafted
political responses to the public policy crises of that era
which they pursued both inside and outside America’s legal
system, responses aimed at changing public policies that
harmed African American communities. Attorneys Charles
Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall crisscrossed the
continent defending black prisoners on death row and filing
cases to overturn legal segregation. It was due to years
of these efforts that Thurgood Marshall, in the 1940s became
known as “Mr. Civil Rights.”

By contrast, a current black elected official like Atlanta’s
Kasim Reed, whose legal practice consists of defending
corporate employers from civil rights and discrimination
lawsuits, represents himself with a straight face as
a “civil rights lawyer.” Presidential candidate Barack
Obama too, is widely credited with being a “civil rights
lawyer,” despite having tried few or no significant civil
rights cases in any court of law.

And of course our parents and grandparents’ generation
did not confine their challenges to Jim Crow to the
boundaries of the law. Visionaries like James Foreman,
Kwame Toure, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, E.B. Nixon and Martin
Luther King crafted strategies around mass mobilizations
in African American communities, and deliberately, creatively
violated the law in order to change the nation’s misguided
public policies. It was common practice, for instance,
in towns and cities where the 1960s Freedom Movement was
in high gear, to turn out a city’s colleges and high schools
for days on end.

Can you imagine the black leadership in your town even
talking to high school students, let alone calling them
out in the street to accomplish a change in public policy?
Can you envision today’s celebrity and business-oriented
black leadership trying to mobilize black America for
anything more radical than watching their TV shows, buying
their books, or volunteering and voting in their campaigns
for political office. It is hard to construct a scenario
in which today’s black leaders might be induced to stand
up to the crime control industry, to become persistent,
forceful advocates of revolutionary reforms which can
appeal broadly to the African American community like:

—Sunsetting all two and three strikes laws, and ending
indeterminate sentencing.

—Ending the trial and sentencing of children as adults.

—Requiring an ethnic impact statement before the
passage of any new sentencing legislation.

—Unconditional restoration of voting rights for all
persons who have served their sentences.

—Restoration of Pell Grants and student financial aid
to persons convicted of felonies.

Though many of the visionary leaders of that earlier generation
were young people it would be a mistake to compare today’s youth
unfavorably to them. Young would-be movement activists in the
1940s, the 50s, all the way till the early 1970s had at least
one key advantage today’s aspiring young movement activists
do not. They had black news, written in black newspapers.
They had black news broadcast on black radio, and with these,
this by itself created what media sociologists call a “public
sphere,” a space in which we could bring our individual and
family crises and situations and compare them with those of
others, and speculate on the nature of collective efforts
to solve what would otherwise be individual problems.

Corporate media has, in the ensuing decades, privatized and
commercialized what used to be public space, by virtually
eliminating broadcast news on black radio. The black print
press confines most of its “reporting” to government and
celebrity press releases. Black TV is worse than useless.
Activists in earlier eras could find out about each other’s
affairs on black radio and in the black press. Now that space
is reserved only for commercial “entertainment.”

Radical shifts in public policy have never arisen from the
pronouncements of public officials, bankers and celebrities.
They don’t come from the good will of real estate and marketing
professionals, or from enlightened decisions on the bench or
sermons in the pulpit. They come from widespread discussion
and exchange in the public sphere. They come from mass movements
which exists outside of and sometimes in spite of the law, and
which are able to capture the risk-taking energy and spirit
of youth.

Whenever we DO see the beginnings of a mass movement to
challenge our nation’s misguided policy of black mass
incarceration, one that unites our young and our old, our
churches and our unions and the people on our street corners
it won’t be led by the folks we think of as black leaders today.
And until the policy of mass incarceration is transformed into
an explicitly political issue and directly challenged, black
youth have little reason to listen to those leaders.

Black leadership has yet to rise to the challenge of the
current generation of black youth—ending our nation’s public
policy of mass imprisonment. And until they do, there will
be no resumption of a mass movement, and little or no real
progress.

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13) Immigrants and Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 25, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html?hp

A piece of advice for progressives trying to figure out where
they stand on immigration reform: it’s the political economy,
stupid. Analyzing the direct economic gains and losses from
proposed reform isn’t enough. You also have to think about
how the reform would affect the future political environment.

To see what I mean — and why the proposed immigration bill,
despite good intentions, could well make things worse — let’s
take a look back at America’s last era of mass immigration.

My own grandparents came to this country during that era,
which ended with the imposition of severe immigration
restrictions in the 1920s. Needless to say, I’m very glad
they made it in before Congress slammed the door. And today’s
would-be immigrants are just as deserving as Emma Lazarus’s
“huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.”

Moreover, as supporters of immigrant rights rightly remind
us, everything today’s immigrant-bashers say — that immigrants
are insufficiently skilled, that they’re too culturally alien,
and, implied though rarely stated explicitly, that they’re
not white enough — was said a century ago about Italians,
Poles and Jews.

Yet then as now there were some good reasons to be concerned
about the effects of immigration.

There’s a highly technical controversy going on among economists
about the effects of recent immigration on wages. However that
dispute turns out, it’s clear that the earlier wave
of immigration increased inequality and depressed the
wages of the less skilled. For example, a recent study
by Jeffrey Williamson, a Harvard economic historian, suggests
that in 1913 the real wages of unskilled U.S. workers were
around 10 percent lower than they would have been without
mass immigration. But the straight economics was the least
of it. Much more important was the way immigration diluted
democracy.

In 1910, almost 14 percent of voting-age males in the United
States were non-naturalized immigrants. (Women didn’t get
the vote until 1920.) Add in the disenfranchised blacks
of the Jim Crow South, and what you had in America was
a sort of minor-key apartheid system, with about a quarter
of the population — in general, the poorest and most
in need of help — denied any political voice.

That dilution of democracy helped prevent any effective
response to the excesses and injustices of the Gilded Age,
because those who might have demanded that politicians
support labor rights, progressive taxation and a basic
social safety net didn’t have the right to vote. Conversely,
the restrictions on immigration imposed in the 1920s had
the unintended effect of paving the way for the New Deal
and sustaining its achievements, by creating a fully
enfranchised working class.

But now we’re living in the second Gilded Age. And as
before, one of the things making antiworker, unequalizing
policies politically possible is the fact that millions
of the worst-paid workers in this country can’t vote. What
progressives should care about, above all, is that immigration
reform stop our drift into a new system of de facto apartheid.

Now, the proposed immigration reform does the right thing
in principle by creating a path to citizenship for those
already here. We’re not going to expel 11 million illegal
immigrants, so the only way to avoid having those immigrants
be a permanent disenfranchised class is to bring them into
the body politic.

And I can’t share the outrage of those who say that illegal
immigrants broke the law by coming here. Is that any worse
than what my grandfather did by staying in America, when
he was supposed to return to Russia to serve in the czar’s
army?

But the bill creates a path to citizenship so torturous
that most immigrants probably won’t even try to legalize
themselves. Meanwhile, the bill creates a guest worker
program, which is exactly what we don’t want to do. Yes,
it would raise the income of the guest workers themselves,
and in narrow financial terms guest workers are a good deal
for the host nation — because they don’t bring their families,
they impose few costs on taxpayers. But it formally creates
exactly the kind of apartheid system we want to avoid.

Progressive supporters of the proposed bill defend the
guest worker program as a necessary evil, the price that
must be paid for business support. Right now, however, the
price looks too high and the reward too small: this bill
could all too easily end up actually expanding the class
of disenfranchised workers.

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14) Democracy or Puppetry?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
prisonradio.org

With wars waged abroad purportedly for “spreading democracy,”
it’s time to face some uncomfortable truths. People are awake
and aware that the U.S. and the West doesn’t give a fig about
democracy. They care about puppets—people in state power who
are answerable to them—and fear democracy more than terrorism.

From Karzai in Afghanistan, Siniora in Lebanon, al-Maliki in
Iraq, and beyond, people are rising up against these shills
for Western, corporate interests. Protests from Kabul to
Pakistan are raging against America’s alleged allies, who
rule by brutality, barbarity and torture.

There are several reasons for this state of affairs, but
perhaps it all bubbles down to two: Abu Ghraib, and the
Iraq invasion/occupation.

American performance on the ground, their treatment of
Iraqis, the chaos that has seized the country like a fever,
had fueled protests far beyond the borders of Iraq, blowing
around the world like the borderless wind. The war in Iraq,
and all of its consequences, has caused the U.S. to be
one of the most-feared and most-hated nations on earth.

Beyond the rhetoric of democracy lies the gloved hand of
international business; or, in a more commonly used term—
globalization. Globalization is far more than the newest
expression of an old economic theory (capitalism); it is
the force that requires the installation of puppets
throughout the Middle East.

One of the many, many protesters against the Siniora
regime in Lebanon, in explaining her opposition to the
government, voiced a concern not usually translated for
American audiences:

“We are peacefully contesting the government to show
that people without a voice are actually the majority.
It is only the rich people who have a voice in this current
government, while the middle and lower classes are not
listened to. There is a class mentality in this government.”
[Fr.: Jamail, Dahr, “Lebanon: this protest won’t go away,”
Asheville Global Report, May 3-May 9, 2007, p.12].

The reason for this infiltration? Oil! Do you really
think that Americans suddenly care about Arab suffering?
One glance at the pain of Palestinians will answer that
question. Indeed, life under any of America’s allies in
the region ain’t no cup of tea; in Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, or in Iraq, democratic activists have faced
the brutality of their regime’s police in the streets,
and the sneer of their torturers in the dungeons beneath
the streets.

America’s response is little more than stony silence,
broken intermittently by the cold academic listing in the
State Dept. report. The message couldn’t be clearer: “We’ll
talk about democracy, but that’s it!”

The U.S. didn’t march to Iraq to bring democracy, to spread
freedom, or anything even remotely like it. It didn’t go
there to stop the oppression of Iraqis. It didn’t go there
because Saddam Hussein was a “bad guy.” It went there because
access to the most precious commodity left on earth—oil—was
there. And the U.S. figured, that as a Superpower, Iraqi
oil was its imperial due.

Every nation in the world knows this. Billions of people
around the globe know this. The tragedy is that there are
still a few Americans who claim to believe in this madness.

If there really was democracy, America’s closest allies would
be out of a job (at the very least,) or hanging from the spires
of their professional palace. If there really was democracy
either in the U.S. or Britain, the most unpopular governments
in generations wouldn’t still be in power.

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15) Bush Expects Everything to be
Solved with a Bang
By Fidel Castro
May 25, 2007
VIA email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net

A word popped up in my mind. I looked it up in the dictionary
and there it was; it’s an onomatopoeic word and its connotation
is tragic: bang. I’ve probably never used it in my life.

Bush is an apocalyptic person. I observe his eyes; his face
and his obsessive preoccupation with pretending that everything
he sees on the “invisible screens” are spontaneous thoughts.
I heard his voice quaver when he answered criticism from his
own father about his Iraq policy. He only expresses emotions
and constantly feigns rationality. Of course he is aware of
the impact of every phrase and every word on the public he
addresses.

What’s dramatic is that what he expects to happen may cost
the American people many lives.

One can never agree, in any kind of war, with events that
take the lives of innocent civilians. Nobody could justify
the attacks of the German Air Force on British cities during
World War II, nor the thousands of bombers that systematically
destroyed German cities in the decisive moments of the war,
nor the two atomic bombs, which the United States dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an act of pure terrorism against
old people, women and children.

Bush expressed his hatred of the poor world when he spoke
on June 1, 2002 at West Point, of the pre-emptive attacks
on “60 or more dark corners of the world.”

Whom are they going to convince now that the thousands of
nuclear weapons in their possession, the missiles and the
precise and exact delivery systems they have developed are
just to combat terrorism? Could it be perhaps that the
sophisticated submarines being constructed by their British
allies, capable of circumnavigating the globe without
surfacing and reprogramming their nuclear missiles
in mid-flight, will be used for that as well? I would
never have imagined that one day such justifications
would be used. Imperialism intends to institutionalize
world tyranny with these weapons. It aims them at other
great nations, which arise not as military adversaries
capable of surpassing their technology with weapons of
mass destruction, but as economic powers that would rival
the United States whose chaotic and wasteful consumerist
economic and social system is absolutely vulnerable.

What’s worse about the bang upon which Bush is hanging
his hopes is the antecedent of his actions during the
September 11th events, when, knowing full well that
bloody attack on the American people was imminent, and
having the capacity to foresee it and even to prevent
it, he took off on a vacation with his entire administrative
apparatus.

From the day of his appointment as President—thanks to the
fraud orchestrated by his friends from the Miami mafia,
in the manner of a “banana republic”—and prior to his
inauguration, W. Bush was informed in detail of the same
facts and in the same way as the president of the United
States, who directed that he be informed. At that moment,
the tragic events symbolized by the fall of the Twin Towers
were still more than 9 months away.

If something similar were to happen with any kind of
explosives or nuclear material, given that enriched uranium
flows like water throughout the world since the days of the
Cold War, what would be the probable fate of humanity?
I try to remember and analyze many moments of humanity’s
march through the millennia, and I wonder: could my views
be subjective?

Just yesterday Bush was bragging about having won the battle
over his adversaries in Congress. He has a hundred billion
dollars, all the money he needs to double, as he wishes, the
number of American troops sent to Iraq, and to carry on with
the slaughter. The problem in the region is increasingly
aggravated.

Any opinion about the president of the United State’s latest
feats grows old in a matter of hours. Is it perhaps that
the American people can’t take this little moral fighting
bull by the horns?

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16) Chávez creates state of fear among businesses
By GERARDO REYES
MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, May. 25, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/103/story/117973.html

When the company president showed up to sign a loan from the
government of Venezuela, an official told him, without a greeting:
``To be rich is to be bad. Come in.''

Days later, the executive had to sign a form asking if he would
support the government's social missions and share with workers the
management of, and profits from, his business.

The businessman, who asked not to be identified, rejected the loan a
few days later, saying he had received it too late. The real reason,
he said: ``It was too much of a commitment for $200,000.''

Such experiences are part of what business people call ''the siege of
private industry'' -- government measures and threats that are
depressing the country's production capacity to an alarming degree,
they say.

''The industrialist lives in a constant state of fear,'' Agustín
Díaz, manager of the Center for Economic and Legal Studies of the
Venezuelan Industrial Federation, Conindustria, said. ``No growth can
take place in a country where the government's concept of private
property is different from that of the entrepreneur's.''

Yet the uncertainty and malaise come at a time when few can complain
about sales. In a survey by Conindustria in the second quarter of
2006, all forms of industry -- major, midsize and light -- responded
that their situation is good. The levels of satisfaction do not seem
to have changed this year.

''What's produced is sold,'' explained Diaz, who acknowledges the
irony of the economic picture. Another businessman, who asked for
anonymity, said the constant clashes between the good news of
prosperity and the bad news from the government are creating a dual
personality among producers.

''One minute we celebrate an increase in sales or a big order just
received, and the next minute we're struck by the feeling that
everything is going to burst and we'll have to drop everything, lose
everything,'' he said.

Some businessmen keep going and take advantage of the bonanza the
country is going through and the credits offered by the government.
Others stay in the country but do not invest in their companies'
growth because they don't believe in the future.

Others fold for fear of being punished if they don't comply with
government demands on prices, taxes and production. Yet others keep
their stores open but invest their profits abroad.

CHAVEZ SUPPORTERS

Two weeks ago, the Federation of Socialist Entrepreneurs, Conseven,
launched to shouts of ''Oooo-hey, Chávez is here to stay.'' As
reported in the daily El Nacional, director Marcos Zarikian proposed
that tax savings be invested in social works.

''I have a dream,'' Zarikian intoned. ``I would like to go someday
through the barrios of Petare [a marginal zone east of Caracas] and
dine in a fancy restaurant with the people who live there. I would
like to share a table with a rich man and a poor man, so we might
talk about a possible Venezuela.''

The federation claims it has 500,000 member companies, an exorbitant
figure it has not documented.

Venezuela's productive capacity is at its highest, yet the industrial
sector is not expanding. The 11,117 industrial establishments
officially registered in 1998 shrank to 6,756 in 2005, according to
figures by the National Institute of Statistics quoted by
Conindustria.

In the past two years, Venezuela has been the country with the lowest
level of competitiveness worldwide, according to the IMD business
management school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The government attributes the reduction in industrial capacity to
sabotage and the unease created by groups that oppose Chávez. But
businessmen say other factors discourage growth, such as:

-Threats to the guarantees of private property.

-Minimum-salary adjustments without consultation.

-Price controls.

-Massive importations and the waiving of tariffs for products the
government is interested in.

-The direct adjudication of government contracts.

`LIVING IN LIMBO'

''We're living in limbo,'' said Marinella Mata, legal advisor to the
Federation of Chambers and Associations of Commerce of Venezuela,
Fedecámaras. ``We used to have greater legal security. Now we work on
a day-to-day basis.''

Businessmen also are nervous about bills such as one that orders them
to grant employees four hours a week to attend ''ideological
training'' in socialism. Chávez's announcement that the work week
will be reduced to 36 hours also disturbs them.

Businessmen say the government is forcing the entrepreneurial sector
to shrink and cutting the production even of basics such as meat,
milk, cheese and sugar. The government claims the scarcities are due
to hoarding by merchants.

The government ''threat'' that has most recently troubled
entrepreneurs is so-called ''co-management,'' a system whereby the
employees have the right to manage the company or share in profits --
or both.

As part of the official campaign to promote co-management, a National
Encounter of Workers for the Recovery of Businesses was held in
Caracas in October 2005. Summoned by the National Workers Union of
Venezuela (UNT), the conference analyzed forms of ''occupation by
workers,'' the final report said.

''In Venezuela, co-management is an alternative to capitalism,'' said
Canadian economics professor Michael A. Lebowitz at the conference.
Lebowitz is a foreign scholar often quoted by Chávez sympathizers.

The businessmen interviewed by El Nuevo Herald say they have no
objection to discussing co-management. But they worry that someday,
without warning or discussion, the practice will be imposed.

''In industry, fear is never a good raw material,'' a businessman
said.

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17) Arrested While Grieving
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 26, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp

No one is paying much attention, but parts of New York City
are like a police state for young men, women and children who
happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped,
searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many
cases, arrested for no good reason.

Most black elected officials have joined their white colleagues
and the media in turning a blind eye to this continuing outrage.
And many black cops have joined their white colleagues in the
systematic mistreatment.

Last Monday in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, about three
dozen grieving young people on their way to a wake for
a teenage friend who had been murdered were surrounded
by the police, cursed at, handcuffed and ordered into paddy
wagons. They were taken to the 83rd precinct stationhouse,
where several were thrown into jail.

Leana Matia, an 18-year-old student at John Jay College,
was one of those taken into custody. “We were walking toward
the train station to take the L train when all these cops
just swooped in on us,” she said. “They cursed us out and
pushed the guys. And then they handcuffed us. We kept asking,
‘What are you doing?’ ”

Children as young as 13 were among those swept up by the
cops. Two of them, including 16-year-old Lamel Carter,
were the children of police officers. Some of the youngsters
were carrying notes from school saying that they were allowed
to be absent to attend the wake. There is no evidence that
I’ve been able to find — other than uncorroborated statements
by the police — that the teenagers were misbehaving in any way.

Everyone was searched, but nothing unlawful was found —
no weapons, no marijuana or other drugs. Some of the kids
were told at the scene that they were being seized because
they had assembled unlawfully. “I didn’t know what unlawful
assembly was,” said Kumar Singh, 18, who was among those
arrested.

According to the police, the youngsters at the scene were
on a rampage, yelling and blocking traffic. That does not
seem to be the truth.

I spoke individually to several of the youngsters, to the
principal of Bushwick Community High School (where a number
of the kids are students), to a parent who was at the scene,
and others. Nowhere was there even a hint of the chaos
described by the police. Every account that I was able to
find described a large group of youngsters, very sad and
downcast about the loss of their friend, walking peacefully
toward the station.

Kathleen Williams, whose son and two nieces were rounded up,
was at the scene. She said there was no disturbance at all,
and that when she tried to ask the police why the kids were
being picked up, she was told to be quiet or she would be
arrested, too.

Capt. Scott Henderson of the 83rd Precinct told me that the
police had developed a “plan” to deal with youngsters going
to the wake because they suspected that the murder was gang-
related and there had already been some retaliation. He said
he had personally witnessed the youngsters in Bushwick
behaving badly and gave the order to arrest them.

Many of the kids were wearing white T-shirts with a picture
of the dead teenager and the letters “R.I.P.” on them. The
cops cited the T-shirts as evidence of gang membership.

Thirty-two of the youngsters were arrested. Most were charged
with unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Several were
held in jail overnight.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly did not exactly give the arrests
a ringing endorsement. He said, in a prepared statement,
“A police captain who witnessed the activity made a good-faith
judgment in ordering the arrests.”

A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes,
said, “It wouldn’t be unusual for a lot of this stuff to get
dismissed.”

The principal of Bushwick Community High, Tira Randall, said,
“My kids come in here on a daily basis with stories about
harassment by the police. They’re not making these stories up.”

New York City cops stopped and, in many cases, searched
individuals more than a half million times last year. Those
stops are not happening on Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan. Thousands upon thousands of them amount to simple
harassment of young black and Hispanic males and females who
have done absolutely nothing wrong, but feel helpless to object.

It is long past time for this harassment of ethnic minorities
by the police to cease. Why it has been tolerated this long,
I have no idea.

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18) Some Union Local Members Call for Using Mail Ballots
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
May 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/nyregion/26labor.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Larry Davis says it is ridiculous that only 2 percent of the
27,000 members in his union local — the largest in the
umbrella union, District Council 37 — voted in the local’s
last election.

In his view, the reason for the low turnout was obvious. His
local’s members, who are mostly school cafeteria aides and
crossing guards, work throughout the city, yet there was
just one voting site, at union headquarters in Lower Manhattan,
and it was open for only four hours.

In an effort to increase turnout, Mr. Davis, the parent
support officer for a school district in Harlem, has
collected 2,100 signatures as part of a petition drive
hoping to persuade his union, Local 372, to elect its
officers by mail ballot.

“The current system doesn’t give a lot of members the
opportunity to come down there and vote,” said Mr. Davis,
who lost a bid to be Local 372’s president two years ago.
“There are members who live in Staten Island and on Long
Island, and they don’t feel like trekking down all the
way to Local 372 to vote.”

Mr. Davis and several allies are seeking to collect 5,000
signatures because that would represent 12 times the number
of votes that Local 372’s president, Veronica Montgomery-
Costa, received when she won a new three-year term in 2005.
She received 417 votes to Mr. Davis’s 122.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa also serves as president of District
Council 37, which comprises 56 locals representing 121,000
municipal workers.

Tony Ferina, an aide at a high school in Elmhurst, Queens,
said it was important to increase democratic participation
in Local 372 because of its corrupt past. For more than
two decades, the local’s former president, Charles Hughes,
ran the local as his personal fief. In 2000, he was sentenced
to three to nine years in prison after pleading guilty
to stealing more than $2 million from the local.

“The advantage of a mail ballot is it gives everyone an equal
opportunity to vote,” said Mr. Ferina, who ran for secretary-
treasurer in 2005 but lost. “Since we’re the poorest-paid
union in the city, some of our members can’t afford the
$4 subway trip to go down to vote. And many of them work
second jobs and don’t have the luxury to take two hours
out of their day to travel back and forth to vote.”

Many of the local’s members earn less than $20,000 a year.

In an interview, Ms. Montgomery-Costa voiced no intention
of changing the voting system. She said Local 372’s
constitution permitted the system of voting at union
headquarters on a single day. She noted that a judicial
panel from the parent union, the American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees, had rejected
Mr. Davis’s appeal that the voting method denied many
workers the opportunity to vote.

After the decision, Ms. Montgomery-Costa agreed to lengthen
voting in next year’s election to nine hours.

“I have done nothing but follow the constitution,” she said,
adding that since being elected, she has worked to clean
up Local 372 and protect its members’ rights.

Ms. Montgomery-Costa said one problem with mail ballots
is the cost — about $2.50 per union member or $67,500
for Local 372.

Mr. Davis said that was a small cost considering that
the local’s members pay millions of dollars in dues
each year.

“If we took the $76,000 raise that Veronica gave herself
in 2002, that would easily pay for a mail ballot,”
Mr. Davis said.

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19) War Without End
Editorial
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/opinion/27sun1.html?hp

Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President
Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general
because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into
dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his
disastrous misadventure.

By week’s end, Mr. Bush was acting as though that bit
of parliamentary strong-arming had left him free to
ignore not just the Democrats, but also the vast majority
of Americans, who want him to stop chasing illusions
of victory and concentrate on how to stop the sacrifice
of young Americans’ lives.

And, ever faithful to his illusions, Mr. Bush was
insisting that he was the only person who understood
the true enemy.

Speaking to graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, Mr. Bush
declared that Al Qaeda is “public enemy No. 1” in Iraq
and that “the terrorists’ goal in Iraq is to reignite
sectarian violence and break support for the war here
at home.” The next day, in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush turned
on a reporter who had the temerity to ask about Mr. Bush’s
declining credibility with the public, declaring that Al Qaeda
is “a threat to your children” and accusing him of naïvely
ignoring the danger.

It’s upsetting to think that Mr. Bush believes the raging
sectarian violence in Iraq awaits reigniting, or that
he does not recognize that Americans’ support for the war
broke down many bloody months ago. But we have grown accustomed
to this president’s disconnect from reality and his habit
of tilting at straw men, like Americans who don’t care about
terrorism because they question his mismanagement of the
war or don’t worry about what will happen after the United
States withdraws, as it inevitably must.

The really disturbing thing about Mr. Bush’s comments is
his painting of the war in Iraq as an obvious-to-everyone-
but-the-wrongheaded fight between the United States and
a young Iraqi democracy on one side, and Al Qaeda on the
other. That fails to acknowledge that the Shiite-dominated
government of Iraq is not a democracy and is at war with
many of its own people. And it removes all pressure from
the Iraqi leadership — and Mr. Bush — to halt the sectarian
fighting and create a real democracy.

There is no doubt that organized Islamist terrorism — call
it Al Qaeda or by any other name — is a dire threat. There
is also no doubt that terrorists entered Iraq — mostly
after the war began.

We, too, believe that Iraq has to be made as stable as
possible so the United States can withdraw its troops
without unleashing even more chaos and destruction. But
Mr. Bush is not doing that and his version of reality only
makes it more unlikely. The only solution lies with the
Iraqi leaders, who have to stop their sectarian blood feud
and make a real attempt to form a united government. That
is their best chance to stabilize the country, allow the
United States to withdraw and, yes, battle Al Qaeda.

The Democrats who called for imposing benchmarks for
political progress on the Iraqis, combined with a withdrawal
date for American soldiers, were trying to start that process.
It’s a shame they could not summon the will and discipline
to keep going, but we hope they have not given up. As
disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach
makes far more sense than Mr. Bush’s denial of Iraq’s
civil war and his war-without-end against terror.

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20) Michael Moore's Math
‘Sicko,’ Castro and the ‘120 Years Club’
By ANTHONY DePALMA
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/weekinreview/27depalma.html?ref=world

CUBA works hard to jam American TV signals and keep out
decadent Hollywood films. But it’s a good bet that Fidel
Castro’s government will turn a blind eye to bootleg copies
of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s newest movie, if they show up
on the streets of Havana.

“Sicko,” the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week,
savages the American health care system — and along the way
extols Cuba’s system as the neatest thing since the white
linen guayabera.

Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba
for treatment in the course of the film, which is scheduled
to open in the United States next month, and he is apparently
dumbfounded that they could get there what they couldn’t
get here.

“There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,”
he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his
regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re
the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’ ”

But hold on. Do they do it? Live longer than, or even
as long as, we do? How could a poor developing country —
where annual health care spending averages just $230
a person compared with $6,096 in the United States —
come anywhere near matching the richest country
in the world?

Statistics from the World Health Organization, the C.I.A.
and other sources all show that the people of Cuba and
the United States have about the same life expectancy —
77 years, give or take a few months — while infant mortality
in Cuba is significantly lower than in the United States.

Of course, many people regard any figures about Cuba as
at least partly fiction. But even if the longevity
statistics are correct, they are open to interpretation.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a professor emeritus of economics
at the University of Pittsburgh, said statistics also
show that Cuba has a high rate of abortion, which can
lower infant mortality rates and improve life expectancy
figures. The constant flow of refugees also may affect
longevity figures, since those births are recorded but
the deaths are not.

Despite such skepticism, many medical experts say they
do believe that average Cubans can live as long as
Americans, and the reason may lie in a combination
of what Cuba does well and the United States does
poorly, if at all.

Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the International
Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning
author on aging, has traveled to Cuba to see firsthand
how doctors are trained. He said a principal reason that
some health standards in Cuba approach the high American
level is that the Cuban system emphasizes early intervention.
Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing
disease rather than treating it.

Dr. Butler said some of Cuba’s shortcomings may actually
improve its health profile. “Because they don’t have
up-to-date cars, they tend to have to exercise more by
walking,” he said. “And they may not have a surfeit of
food, which keeps them from problems like obesity, but
they’re not starving, either.”

Cuban markets are not always well stocked, but city streets
are dotted with hot dog and ice cream vendors. Bellies
are full, but such food can cause problems in the future,
as they have in the United States.

Dr. Butler has just completed a study that shows it is
possible that because of the epidemic of obesity in children,
“this may be the first generation of Americans to live
less long than their parents.”

There could be one great leveler for Cubans and Americans.
While all Cubans have at least minimal free access to
doctors, more than 45 million Americans lack basic health
insurance. Many are reluctant to seek early treatment they
cannot afford, Dr. Butler said. Instead, they wait to be
admitted to an emergency room.

“I know Americans tend to be skeptical,” he said, “but
health and education are two achievements of the Cuban
revolution, and they deserve some credit despite the
government’s poor record on human rights.”

Universal health care has long given the Cuban regime
bragging rights, though there is growing concern about
the future. In the decades that Cuba drew financial and
military support from the Soviet Union, Mr. Castro poured
resources into medical education, creating the largest medical
school in Latin America and turning out thousands of doctors
to practice around the world.

But that changed after the collapse of the Soviets, according
to Cuban defectors like Dr. Leonel Cordova. By the time
Dr. Cordova started practicing in 1992, equipment and drugs
were already becoming scarce. He said he was assigned to
a four-block neighborhood in Havana Province where he was
supposed to care for about 600 people.

“But even if I diagnosed something simple like bronchitis,”
he said, “I couldn’t write a prescription for antibiotics,
because there were none.”

He defected in 2000 while on a medical mission in Zimbabwe
and made his way to the United States. He is now an urgent-
care physician at Baptist Hospital in Miami.

Having practiced medicine in both Cuba and the United States,
Dr. Cordova has an unusual perspective for comparison.

“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because
Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like
those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one
here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best
medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.

But for the 11 million ordinary Cubans, hospitals are often
ill equipped and patients “have to bring their own food, soap,
sheets — they have to bring everything.” And up to 20,000
Cuban doctors may be working in Venezuela, creating
a shortage in Cuba.

Still Cuban officials assert that free health care, a variety
of sports programs, a healthy, if limited, diet and cultural
activities have kept enough Cubans healthy enough well into
old age to warrant starting the 120 Years Club, which enrolls
people who are 80 and older and strives to help them reach
an even riper old age.

Until he had to have emergency surgery last year, Fidel
Castro — who turned 80 this year — was considered a model
of vibrant long life in Cuba. But it was only last week that
he acknowledged in an open letter that his initial surgery
by Cuban doctors had been botched. He did not confirm,
however, that a specialist had been flown in from Spain
last December to help set things right.

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21) Remembrance, and Protest, for a Man Slain by an Officer
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
May 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/nyregion/27funeral.html?ref=nyregion

Wendy Castillo stood at the front of the dimly lighted
chapel, the open coffin a few steps away. Her uncle Fermin
Arzu lay inside. He was dressed elegantly, in a black
suit with white gloves.

“Look what they did,” said Ms. Castillo, 32, pointing
to the coffin. “Look, at our pain. We don’t deserve this
pain. We don’t deserve it. And no one else deserves
this pain.”

As mourners filled the Parkchester Funeral Home in the
Bronx yesterday for Mr. Arzu’s funeral, several of his
relatives and community leaders used the occasion not
so much to remember his life, but to condemn — and demand
justice for — his death. They drew comparisons between his
death and that of Sean Bell, who was killed by police
gunfire in November in Queens.

Both men were involved in confrontations with police
officers, and both were unarmed.

“This man did nothing to warrant being here today,” the
Rev. Al Sharpton told the mourners. Mr. Sharpton, whose
civil rights organization, the National Action Network,
is assisting the Arzu family, attended the funeral with
Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and her mother.
He asked, “How many times do police have to tell us,
‘I thought there was a gun’?”

Shortly before midnight on May 18, Mr. Arzu, 41, who
worked as a building porter and was from Honduras,
crashed his minivan into a parked car near an off-duty
officer’s home on Hewitt Place in the Bronx. The officer,
Raphael Lora, rushed outside and confronted Mr. Arzu,
who had driven half a block from the scene of the accident.

What happened next is not clear. According to someone
involved in the investigation and familiar with Officer
Lora’s account, Officer Lora said he opened the driver’s
side door and found Mr. Arzu to be “completely irrational
and unresponsive.”

Early reports had said that Officer Lora feared Mr. Arzu
might have been reaching for a gun in his glove compartment.
But the person familiar with his account said last week
that the officer realized before any shots were fired
that Mr. Arzu had not produced a gun and that the glove
compartment was not a threat.

The person said that according to Officer Lora, Mr. Arzu
tried to close the door, injuring the officer. Then, as
Mr. Arzu started to drive away, Officer Lora was trapped
by the door and dragged. After partially freeing himself,
Officer Lora reportedly said that he tried to keep up with
the car but lost his footing and began to shoot.

Mr. Arzu was killed by a bullet that entered his back;
four more bullets were found in the vehicle’s door frame,
rear back panel and the panel over the taillight, the
police said. He was shot, Mr. Sharpton pointed out,
on what would have been Mr. Bell’s 24th birthday.

Mr. Bell died in a barrage of police bullets in Jamaica
on Nov. 25 after crashing his car into a detective and
an unmarked police minivan. Three officers have been
indicted, two on manslaughter charges and one on reckless
endangerment charges.

Mr. Arzu’s case is being investigated by the Bronx district
attorney’s office, as well as the Police Department’s
Internal Affairs Bureau.

Mr. Arzu’s funeral drew about 100 relatives, friends,
elected officials and other supporters, and it came on
a day when news media reports surfaced that he had been
drinking that night.

Family members and supporters, including Mr. Sharpton
and Assemblyman Rubén Díaz Jr. of the Bronx, said Mr. Arzu
was the victim in the case, not the suspect, and they
characterized such questions as an effort to criminalize
him.

“They’re saying a lot of things, that he was drunk,”
said Maria Suazo, Mr. Arzu’s niece, who spoke in Spanish
with the aid of a translator earlier in the morning, at
a rally at the Harlem headquarters of the National Action
Network. “O.K., it may happen, it may be true, but there’s
no right for no one to take that person’s life.”

The possibility that Mr. Arzu was intoxicated could color
how investigators, or a grand jury, view Officer Lora’s
actions.

Maki Haberfeld, the chairwoman of the department of law,
police science and criminal justice administration at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that if someone
acts irrationally, it elevates the level of stress for the
police officer, and thus affects his decision-making.
“The danger that the person poses to the police officer
is also elevated,” she said.

Mr. Arzu’s body is being flown tomorrow to Honduras, to
the city of San Pedro Sula, for burial. Mr. Arzu was
a member of the Bronx’s Garifuna community, a Central
American ethnic group made up of descendants of West
African slaves and Arawak Indians from the Caribbean
island of St. Vincent.

Mr. Arzu had until recently played in a Latin music group
called the Rio Tinto Stars Band. Friends and relatives
described him as a garrulous man who looked after his
fiancée, Thomasa Sabio, 46, a cancer patient. At the
Clinton Towers in the Bronx, where he worked, he was known
by residents as helpful and generous.

“Big guy, smiling all the time,” said Tina Gray, who lives
in the high-rise complex and came to the funeral yesterday.
“We’ve been crying all week.”

Mr. Díaz, the assemblyman, said he was struck by how
powerful Mr. Arzu looked, even in the coffin. “They took
this strong figure from the community, from the family,
recklessly,” he said. “He should have been outside enjoying
the day with his family.”

Cara Buckley, Cassi Feldman and Thomas J. Lueck contributed
reporting.

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22) "Baghdad is a smashed city..."
Below is an email I have just received from my close friend
and translator Abu Talat. While he has fled Baghdad with
his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had
to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is
left of his former life (his car, belongings from his
house, etc.) before returning back to Syria. His note
is instructive as to the current living conditions in
the capital city of Iraq. Here is the full text of
his message:
May 27, 2007
Dahr_Jamail_Dispatches@dahrjamailiraq.com
http://DahrJamailIraq.com

Habibi…

Baghdad is a SMASHED city…no roads to drive on…most of them
are closed off by concrete obstacles with concertina wire.
In addition, the presence of the Iraqi military, who cover
their faces with black masks and hold their guns in such
a way that when you see them you will definitely be afraid
that they will shoot you.

The shops in most of the area I went to see are closed.
I asked one of the shop owners I know, 55-year-old Abu Fadhil,
since I heard that his shop was robbed. I found his door
closed and locked and he was nowhere to be found.

Later, on my way to Sadr City, I found that two of the
three roads which lead all the way from south to north
Baghdad are either partially or totally closed in some
places. You still remember the highways in Baghdad…well
now most of them are closed, or at least fenced off with
obstacles, yet they say there is some progress in the security
situation inside the city! Everyday two or three cars explode
across Baghdad, killing big numbers of civilians.

When I returned to my neighborhood of al-Adhamiya, I couldn’t
get in unless the soldiers checked my ID and my car, even
though the guards are from the same neighborhood and they
know me personally. But they had to check it to ensure that
no car bombs might happen. Nevertheless, daily mortars shell
my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this
concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds
our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring
security to our small neighborhood.

Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF
GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench
of dead bodies wherever you go.

Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily.
That’s it. From where we’re staying in the city center,
in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people
sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot
and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners.
Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain
electricity in our building.

Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are
closed so that no one can leave or enter. That way it is kept
secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning.

As far as my family life in this condition, we are as
though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning
where the doors are opened at 7 am.

My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two
days he finds it without any running water. [His son works
in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq]
For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has
been without any air conditioning and almost without
patients, although it’s the biggest hospital in Iraq.

My sons wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another
hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic
lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three
days continuously before my son picks her up with his car
on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure
her safety so she doesn’t have to take a bus or taxi.

As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway
of this apartment where we are staying for the last week
except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.

My wife left here only once, when she went to her job
(which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria)
in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God
she got it.

As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair
it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home
and repair it, since I couldn’t take the car to him
since all the mechanics shops are closed and there
is no place to have a car repaired. All of those
shops are totally closed.

When I saw the mechanic he said, “We cannot live anymore,
and there is no job we can find.”

Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the
current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter
I will tell you some more.

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23) Trust and Betrayal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 28, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp

“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why
America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we
know the costs of war.” That’s what President Bush said
last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington
National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right
to say them than any president in our nation’s history.
For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but
with unseemly eagerness.

Now that war has turned into an epic disaster, in part
because the war’s architects, whom we now know were
warned about the risks, didn’t want to hear about them.
Yet Congress seems powerless to stop it. How did it
all go so wrong?

Future historians will shake their heads over how easily
America was misled into war. The warning signs, the
indications that we had a rogue administration determined
to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those
willing to see them, right from the beginning — even
before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.

In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war
on terror that “will not end until every terrorist group
of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,”
people should have realized that he was going to use
the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.

When he used his first post-attack State of the Union
to denounce an “axis of evil” consisting of three
countries that had nothing to do either with 9/11
or with each other, alarm bells should have gone off.

But the nation, brought together in grief and anger over
the attack, wanted to trust the man occupying the White
House. And so it took a long time before Americans were
willing to admit to themselves just how thoroughly their
trust had been betrayed.

It’s a terrible story, yet it’s also understandable.
I wasn’t really surprised by Republican election victories
in 2002 and 2004: nations almost always rally around their
leaders in times of war, no matter how bad the leaders
and no matter how poorly conceived the war.

The question was whether the public would ever catch on.
Well, to the immense relief of those who spent years trying
to get the truth out, they did. Last November Americans
voted overwhelmingly to bring an end to Mr. Bush’s war.

Yet the war goes on.

To keep the war going, the administration has brought
the original bogyman back out of the closet. At first,
Mr. Bush said he would bring Osama bin Laden in, dead
or alive. Within seven months after 9/11, however, he
had lost interest: “I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at
the center of any command structure,” he said in March
2002. “I truly am not that concerned about him.”

In all of 2003, Mr. Bush, who had an unrelated war to
sell, made public mention of the man behind 9/11 only
seven times.

But Osama is back: last week Mr. Bush invoked his name
11 times in a single speech, warning that if we leave
Iraq, Al Qaeda — which wasn’t there when we went in —
will be the winner. And Democrats, still fearing that
they will end up accused of being weak on terror and
not supporting the troops, gave Mr. Bush another year’s
war funding.

Democratic Party activists were furious, because polls
show a public utterly disillusioned with Mr. Bush and
anxious to see the war ended. But it’s not clear that
the leadership was wrong to be cautious. The truth is
that the nightmare of the Bush years won’t really be
over until politicians are convinced that voters will
punish, not reward, Bush-style fear-mongering. And that
hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says
that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part
of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive
tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should
be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni
and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and
Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be
ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq,
will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent,
uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt
it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will
keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

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24) Cuba’s Cure
Why is Cuba Exporting Its Health Care Miracle
To The World’s Poor?
By Sarah van Gelder
Cubans say they offer health care to the world’s
poor because they have big hearts.
But what do they get in return?
May 25, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/25/1458/

They live longer than almost anyone in Latin America. Far
fewer babies die. Almost everyone has been vaccinated, and
such scourges of the poor as parasites, TB, malaria, even
HIV/AIDS are rare or non-existent. Anyone can see a doctor,
at low cost, right in the neighborhood.

The Cuban health care system is producing a population
that is as healthy as those of the world’s wealthiest
countries at a fraction of the cost. And now Cuba has begun
exporting its system to under-served communities around
the world—including the United States.

The story of Cuba’s health care ambitions is largely hidden
from the people of the United States, where politics left
over from the Cold War maintain an embargo on information
and understanding. But it is increasingly well-known in the
poorest communities of Latin America, the Caribbean, and
parts of Africa where Cuban and Cuban-trained doctors
are practicing.

In the words of Dr. Paul Farmer, Cuba is showing that
“you can introduce the notion of a right to health care
and wipe out the diseases of poverty.”

Health Care for All Cubans

Many elements of the health care system Cuba is exporting
around the world are common-sense practices. Everyone has
access to doctors, nurses, specialists, and medications.
There is a doctor and nurse team in every neighborhood,
although somewhat fewer now, with 29,000 medical professionals
serving out of the country—a fact that is causing some
complaints. If someone doesn’t like their neighborhood
doctor, they can choose another one.

House calls are routine, in part because it’s the responsibility
of the doctor and nurse team to understand you and your health
issues in the context of your family, home, and neighborhood.
This is key to the system. By catching diseases and health
hazards before they get big, the Cuban medical system can
spend a little on prevention rather than a lot later on to
cure diseases, stop outbreaks, or cope with long-term disabilities.
When a health hazard like dengue fever or malaria is identified,
there is a coordinated nationwide effort to eradicate it. Cubans
no longer suffer from diphtheria, rubella, polio, or measles
and they have the lowest AIDS rate in the Americas, and the
highest rate of treatment and control of hypertension.

For health issues beyond the capacity of the neighborhood doctor,
polyclinics provide specialists, outpatient operations, physical
therapy, rehabilitation, and labs. Those who need inpatient
treatment can go to hospitals; at the end of their stay, their
neighborhood medical team helps make the transition home.
Doctors at all levels are trained to administer acupuncture,
herbal cures, or other complementary practices that Cuban labs
have found effective. And Cuban researchers develop their own
vaccinations and treatments when medications aren’t available
due to the blockade, or when they don’t exist.

Exporting Health Care

For decades, Cuba has sent doctors abroad and trained international
students at its medical schools. But things ramped up beginning
in 1998 when Hurricanes George and Mitch hammered Central America
and the Caribbean. As they had often done, Cuban doctors rushed
to the disaster zone to help those suffering the aftermath.
But when it was time to go home, it was clear to the Cuban
teams that the medical needs extended far beyond emergency
care. So Cuba made a commitment to post doctors in several
of these countries and to train local people in medicine
so they could pick up where the Cuban doctors left off. ELAM,
the Havana-based Latin American School of Medicine, was born,
and with it the offer of 10,000 scholarships for free medical
training.

Today the program has grown to 22,000 students from Latin
America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the United States
who attend ELAM and 28 other medical schools across Cuba.
The students represent dozens of ethnic groups, 51 percent
are women, and they come from more than 30 countries.
What they have in common is that they would otherwise be
unable to get a medical education. When a slum dweller
in Port au Prince, a young indigenous person from Bolivia,
the son or daughter of a farmer in Honduras, or a street
vendor in the Gambia wants to become a doctor, they turn
to Cuba. In some cases, Venezuela pays the bill. But most
of the time, Cuba covers tuition, living expenses, books,
and medical care. In return, the students agree that,
upon completion of their studies, they will return to
their own under-served communities to practice medicine.

The curriculum at ELAM begins, for most students, with
up to a year of “bridging” courses, allowing them to
catch up on basic math, science, and Spanish skills.
The students are treated for the ailments many bring
with them.

At the end of their training, which can take up to eight
years, most students return home for residencies. Although
they all make a verbal commitment to serve the poor, a few
students quietly admit that they don’t see this as
a permanent commitment.

One challenge of the Cuban approach is making sure their
investment in medical education benefits those who need
it most. Doctors from poor areas routinely move to
wealthier areas or out of the country altogether. Cuba
trains doctors in an ethic of serving the poor. They
learn to see medical care as a right, not as a commodity,
and to see their own role as one of service. Stories
of Cuban doctors who practice abroad suggest these lessons
stick. They are known for taking money out of their own
pockets to buy medicine for patients who can’t afford
to fill a prescription, and for touching and even
embracing patients.

Cuba plans with the help of Venezuela to take their
medical training to a massive scale and graduate 100,000
doctors over the next 15 years, according to Dr. Juan
Ceballos, advisor to the vice minister of public health.
To do so, Cuba has been building new medical schools
around the country and abroad, at a rapid clip.

But the scale of the effort required to address current
and projected needs for doctors requires breaking out
of the box. The new approach is medical schools without
walls. Students meet their teachers in clinics and hospitals,
in Cuba and abroad, practicing alongside their mentors.
Videotaped lectures and training software mean students
can study anywhere there are Cuban doctors. The lower
training costs make possible a scale of medical education
that could end the scarcity of doctors.

U.S. Students in Cuba

Recently, Cuba extended the offer of free medical training
to students from the United States. It started when
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi got curious
after he and other members of the Congressional Black
Caucus repeatedly encountered Cuban or Cuban-trained
doctors in poor communities around the world.

They visited Cuba in May 2000, and during a conversation
with Fidel Castro, Thompson brought up the lack of medical
access for his poor, rural constituents. “He [Castro] was
very familiar with the unemployment rates, health conditions,
and infant mortality rates in my district, and that surprised me,”
Thompson said. Castro offered scholarships for low-income
Americans under the same terms as the other international
students—they have to agree to go back and serve their
communities.

Today, about 90 young people from poor parts of the United
States have joined the ranks of international students
studying medicine in Cuba.

The offer of medical training is just one way Cuba has
reached out to the United States. Immediately after
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 1,500 Cuban doctors volunteered
to come to the Gulf Coast. They waited with packed bags and
medical supplies, and a ship ready to provide backup support.
Permission from the U.S. government never arrived.

“Our government played politics with the lives of people
when they needed help the most,” said Representative
Thompson. “And that’s unfortunate.”

When an earthquake struck Pakistan shortly afterwards,
though, that country’s government warmly welcomed the Cuban
medical professionals. And 2,300 came, bringing 32 field
hospitals to remote, frigid regions of the Himalayas. There,
they set broken bones, treated ailments, and performed
operations for a total of 1.7 million patients.

The disaster assistance is part of Cuba’s medical aid
mission that has extended from Peru to Indonesia, and
even included caring for 17,000 children sickened by
the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in
the Ukraine.

It isn’t only in times of disaster that Cuban health
care workers get involved. Some 29,000 Cuban health
professionals are now practicing in 69 countries—mostly
in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In Venezuela,
about 20,000 of them have enabled President Hugo Chávez
to make good on his promise to provide health care to
the poor. In the shantytowns around Caracas and the
banks of the Amazon, those who organize themselves
and find a place for a doctor to practice and live
can request a Cuban doctor.

As in Cuba, these doctors and nurses live where they
serve, and become part of the community. They are
available for emergencies, and they introduce
preventative health practices.

Some are tempted to use their time abroad as an
opportunity to leave Cuba. In August, the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security announced a new policy that makes
it easier for Cuban medical professionals to come
to the U.S. But the vast majority remain on the job
and eventually return to Cuba.

Investing in Peace

How do the Cuban people feel about using their country’s
resources for international medical missions? Those
I asked responded with some version of this: We Cubans
have big hearts. We are proud that we can share what
we have with the world’s poor.

Nearly everyone in Cuba knows someone who has served
on a medical mission. These doctors encounter maladies
that have been eradicated from Cuba. They expand their
understanding of medicine and of the suffering associated
with poverty and powerlessness, and they bring home the
pride that goes with making a difference.

And pride is a potent antidote to the dissatisfaction
that can result from the economic hardships that continue
50 years into Cuba’s revolution.

From the government’s perspective, their investment in
medical internationalism is covered, in part, by ALBA,
the new trade agreement among Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua
and Cuba. ALBA, an alternative to the Free Trade Area
of the Americas, puts human needs ahead of economic growth,
so it isn’t surprising that Cuba’s health care offerings
fall within the agreement, as does Venezuelan oil, Bolivian
natural gas, and so on. But Cuba also offers help to countries
outside of ALBA.

“All we ask for in return is solidarity,” Dr. Ceballos says.

“Solidarity” has real-world implications. Before Cuba sent
doctors to Pakistan, relations between the two countries
were not great, Ceballos says. But now the relationship
is “magnificent.” The same is true of Guatemala and El
Salvador. “Although they are conservative governments,
they have become more flexible in their relationship
with Cuba,” he says.

Those investments in health care missions “are resources
that prevent confrontation with other nations,” Ceballos
explains. “The solidarity with Cuba has restrained
aggressions of all kinds.” And in a statement that
acknowledges Cuba’s vulnerabilities on the global stage,
Ceballos puts it this way: “It’s infinitely better
to invest in peace than to invest in war.”

Imagine, then, that this idea took hold. Even more
revolutionary than the right to health care for all
is the idea that an investment in health—or in clean
water, adequate food or housing—could be more powerful,
more effective at building security than bombers and
aircraft carriers.

Sarah van Gelder, executive editor of YES!, was in Cuba
(legally) in December 2006 visiting medical schools,
clinics, and hospitals. Her travel was supported by The
Atlantic Philanthropies, and MEDICC provided program
consulting.

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25) Dear Democratic Congress
by CindySheehan
http://cindysheehan.dailykos.com
May 26, 2007 at 07:03:16 AM PDT
http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14771&Itemid=26

Dublin, Ireland

Dear Democratic Congress,

Hello, my name is Cindy Sheehan and my son Casey Sheehan
was killed on April 04, 2004 in Sadr City , Baghdad , Iraq .
He was killed when the Republicans still were in control of
Congress. Naively, I set off on my tireless campaign calling
on Congress to rescind George’s authority to wage his war
of terror while asking him "for what noble cause" did Casey
and thousands of other have to die. Now, with Democrats
in control of Congress, I have lost my optimistic naiveté
and have become cynically pessimistic as I see you all
caving into as one Daily Kos poster called: "Mr. 28%"

There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you
to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of
our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people
of Iraq to more death and carnage. You think giving him
more money is politically expedient, but it is a moral
abomination and every second the occupation of Iraq
endures, you all have more blood on your hands.

Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said after George
signed the new weak as a newborn baby funding authorization
bill: "Now, I think the president’s policy will begin
to unravel." Begin to unravel? How many more of our
children will have to be killed and how much more of
Iraq will have to be demolished before you all think
enough unraveling has occurred? How many more crimes
will BushCo be allowed to commit while their poll numbers
are crumbling before you all gain the political "courage"
to hold them accountable. If Iraq hasn’t unraveled in
Ms. Pelosi’s mind, what will it take? With almost 700,000
Iraqis dead and four million refugees (which the US
refuses to admit) how could it get worse? Well, it is
getting worse and it can get much worse thanks to your
complicity.

Being cynically pessimistic, it seems to me that this
new vote to extend the war until the end of September,
(and let’s face it, on October 1st, you will give him
more money after some more theatrics, which you think
are fooling the anti-war faction of your party) will
feed right into the presidential primary season and
you believe that if you just hang on until then, the
Democrats will be able to re-take the White House.
Didn’t you see how "well" that worked for John Kerry
in 2004 when he played the politics of careful fence
sitting and pandering? The American electorate are
getting disgusted with weaklings who blow where the
wind takes them while frittering away our precious
lifeblood and borrowing money from our new owners,
the Chinese.

I knew having a Democratic Congress would make no
difference in grassroots action. That’s why we went
to DC when you all were sworn in to tell you that
we wanted the troops back from Iraq and BushCo held
accountable while you pushed for ethics reform which
is quite a hoot...don’t’ you think? We all know that
it is affordable for you all to play this game
of political mayhem because you have no children
in harm’s way...let me tell you what it is like:

You watch your reluctant soldier march off to a war
that neither you nor he agrees with. Once your
soldier leaves the country all you can do is worry.
You lie awake at night staring at the moon wondering
if today will be the day that you get that dreaded
knock on your door. You can’t concentrate, you can’t
eat, and your entire life becomes consumed with
apprehension while you are waiting for the other
shoe to drop.

Then, when your worst fears are realized, you begin
a life of constant pain, regret, and longing. Everyday
is hard, but then you come up on "special" days...like
upcoming Memorial Day. Memorial Day holds double pain
for me because, not only are we supposed to honor our
fallen troops, but Casey was born on Memorial Day
in 1979. It used to be a day of celebration for us
and now it is a day of despair. Our needlessly killed
soldiers of this war and the past conflict in Vietnam
have all left an unnecessary trail of sorrow and deep
holes of absence that will never be filled.

So, Democratic Congress, with the current daily death
toll of 3.72 troops per day, you have condemned 473
more to these early graves. 473 more lives wasted
for your political greed: Thousands of broken hearts
because of your cowardice and avarice. How can you
even go to sleep at night or look at yourselves in
a mirror? How do you put behind you the screaming
mothers on both sides of the conflict? How does
the agony you have created escape you? It will
never escape me...I can’t run far enough or hide
well enough to get away from it.

By the end of September, we will be about 80 troops
short of another bloody milestone: 4000, and
MoveOn.org will hold nationwide candlelight vigils
and you all will be busy passing legislation that
will snuff the lights out of thousands more human
beings.

Congratulations Congress, you have bought yourself
a few more months of an illegal and immoral bloodbath.
And you know you mean to continue it indefinitely so
"other presidents" can solve the horrid problem BushCo
forced our world into.

It used to be George Bush’s war. You could have ended
it honorably. Now it is yours and you all will descend
into calumnious history with BushCo.

The Camp Casey Peace Institute is calling all citizens
who are as disgusted as we are with you all to join us
in Philadelphia on July 4th to try and figure a way out
of this "two" party system that is bought and paid for
by the war machine which has a stranglehold on every
aspect of our lives. As for myself, I am leaving the
Democratic Party. You have completely failed those
who put you in power to change the direction our country
is heading. We did not elect you to help sink our ship
of state but to guide it to safe harbor.

We do not condone our government’s violent meddling in
sovereign countries and we condemn the continued
murderous occupation of Iraq.

We gave you a chance, you betrayed us.

Sincerely,

Cindy Sheehan
Founder and President of
Gold Star Families for Peace.
Founder and Director of
The Camp Casey Peace Institute
Eternally grieving mother of Casey Sheehan

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26) Who killed the honeybees?
"A round table of experts answer all our pressing questions about the
sudden death of the nation's bees. What they have to say has a bigger
sting than we ever expected."
By Kevin Berger
May. 29, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/29/missing_bees/print.html

The buzz about the alarming disappearance of bees has
been all about people food. Honeybees pollinate one-third of the fruits,
nuts and vegetables that end up in our homey kitchen baskets. If the
tireless apian workers didn't fly from one flower to the next,
depositing pollen grains so that fruit trees can bloom, America could
well be asking where its next meal would come from. Last fall, the
nation's beekeepers watched in horror as more than a quarter of their
2.4 million colonies collapsed, killing billions of nature's little
fertilizers.

But as a Salon round table discussion with bee experts revealed, the
mass exodus of bees to the great hive in the sky forebodes a bigger
story. The faltering dance between honeybees and trees is symptomatic of
industrial disease. As the scientists outlined some of the biological
agents behind "colony collapse disorder," and dismissed the ones that
are not -- sorry, friends, the Rapture is out -- they sketched a picture
of how we are forever altering the planet's delicate web of life.

The scientists constituted a fascinating foursome, each with his own
point of view. Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of the USDA's honeybee
lab, told us the current collapse is one of the worst in history. Eric
Mussen, of the Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of
California at Davis, maintained that it may only be cyclical. Wayne
Esaias, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, an amateur beekeeper,
outlined his compelling views about the impact of climate change on
bees. And John McDonald, a biologist, beekeeper and gentleman farmer in
rural Pennsylvania, reminded us, if at times sardonically, of the poetry
in agriculture.

First things first. The Internet, as you know, loves a rumor. Are
cellphones killing the bees?

JEFFREY PETTIS: All the explanations that bees became disoriented by
cellphone radiation, or this, that and the other thing -- there is zero
evidence for any of it. All we know is we lost the worker population and
they died away from the hive. What's unusual is they died over a short
time period. Are they flying off to Nirvana? Who knows where they are?
They are just dying away from the hive, which is normal.

ERIC MUSSEN: It's important to look at what's normal. In the summer,
bees go through a six-week life cycle: three inside the hive, three
outside it as foragers. Then they die of old age. When bees are coming
to the end of their life for whatever reason, they just fly off and
don't come back. They fly out to die because flying out and dying is
what they do. The question is, Why are we seeing bees with such a
shortened life cycle? Well, now we're talking about winter bees. As you
move into fall, the colony is supposed to be rearing bees that have a
long life expectancy -- from about October to March of the next year.
The problem is the winter bees aren't making it. Everything just sort of
fell apart near the end of this summer and those bees that were supposed
to live up to six months didn't come close.

JOHN McDONALD: That cellphone thing is a major source of irritation to
me. If it were true, I suspect about 10,000 people at Penn State would
be lying on the street dead now. And yet you see them walking around and
talking on cellphones. My son explained to me that cellphone radiation
puts out a wavelength of about three inches. A honeybee is
three-quarters of an inch long and so the bee is going to create
virtually no shadow in that wavelength. That's one reason why I look
askance at that theory. The other is where I live, in the middle of
Appalachia, the bees are disappearing and there are virtually no cellphones.

One scientist has said solving the bees' disappearance is like "CSI" for
agriculture. What's the latest word from the lab?

PETTIS: The latest word is we're working on a lot of different samples
we've collected throughout the year. We're working under the idea that
bees have suffered a one-two punch. The first is a primary stressor --
poor diet, mites, or low-level pesticide exposure. That puts them in a
compromised or weak state, and then a secondary pathogen takes over.
Because of how quickly the bees are dying, it seems most likely a
pathogen would be involved. So we're looking for a secondary pathogen
that might be unique or novel.

Are pesticides a major culprit?

MUSSEN: Perhaps 10 percent of commercial bee colonies in any given year
are either severely damaged or die on contact with agricultural
pesticides. But there's no reason to believe the exposure this year is
any different from last year or any other year.

John, you wrote a pretty strong opinion piece that fingered Bt crops,
which have been genetically modified to control insect pests. Based on
your experiences as a beekeeper, how did you come to that conclusion?

McDONALD: My first collapse started last summer when a powerful colony,
in a manner of a week, went downhill. The drone cone sort of cascaded
down over the foundation like ice on a mountain. In another hive that
was equally strong, the bees ended up lying dead on a mat that extended
about six feet. That didn't happen with the other hives, which is
indicative of agricultural poisoning. Also, the drones hung around until
snowfall, which is unusual, indicating some kind of kind of behavioral
dysfunction with the worker bees.

I did a little research and found two studies about the Bt phenomenon.
When you look at the action of Bt gene proteins taken up in the gut of
insects, including bees, you find an enzyme that gobbles its way through
any protein there and affects the insects. And bees are known to forage
on corn flowers to get pollen to rear their young brood. I'm not saying
Bt is the sole cause of collapse, only that I would like to have it
investigated.

Is there any evidence, Jeff or Eric, of Bt crops killing bees?

MUSSEN: When Bt crops were being used in the fields to control
lepidopteron insects, or butterflies, there were a significant number of
studies run to try to determine whether or not incorporating Bt into the
food of the adult bees, or the larvae, would hurt the bees. And the
answer was no.

PETTIS: I contributed to a recent study where we directly fed the Bt
toxin to whole bee colonies and could demonstrate no effects on them.

MUSSEN: There was a study, and perhaps this is the one John is referring
to, that showed the active chemical in these Bt cultures is a protein
crystal that develops in organisms. For four years in a row, an
institution fed that protein to honeybees at 10 times the amount that
they would ever encounter in the field if they were feeding on pollen.
In three of the four years, they saw nothing out of the ordinary. In the
fourth year, a parasite showed up, and the bees that had been consuming
the protein appeared to suffer more. The experiment didn't say the Bt
protein gave the bees the "disappearing" disease, or that it killed all
of them; it just said the bees that came in contact with the crops
appeared to be more negatively affected by the parasite.

Can you tell us about your experiences with colony collapse, Wayne, and
your studies to understand wider ecological causes?

WAYNE ESAIAS: Sure. I'm a small beekeeper. I have about 15 colonies and
have experienced some loss. I realize there are many symptoms involved.
Still, there are one or two I'm puzzled about. I keep records of when my
bees collect pollen and nectar in my backyard. I weigh the hive and I
have a time series that goes back to 1992. What I've seen over the
course of that time is due to local warming: The pollen and nectar flow
come almost a month earlier than they did in the 1970s. This is
coincident with the urbanization of the D.C.-Baltimore area, causing
temperatures to rise.

I'm also using data from NASA satellites to address how global warming
or environmental change might be impacting our honeybee populations, and
even the spread of the African honeybee. We see plants blooming at
different times of the year, and that's why the nectar flows are so much
earlier now. I need to underscore that I have no evidence that global
warming is a key player in colony collapse disorder. But it might be a
contributor, and changes like this might be upping the stress level of
our bee populations.

One new study suggested the collapse might be the result of a rare spore
called Nosema ceranae.

MUSSEN: If you get enough Nosema ceranae, yes, a colony will die. If you
get enough viruses, the colony will die. If you get enough mites, the
colony will die. If you get exposure to insecticides, the colony will
die. So all these things that we are looking at are capable of doing in
a colony. There's no doubt about it. So could a true lack of food.
Literally, you could starve the bees to death. Beekeepers have
accidentally done that many times. What you're going to find is that in
most cases there is not going to be one factor that did them in; it's
going to be a combination. This is the perfect storm for honeybees.

Millions of bees in California alone are trucked around from town to
town to be used as pollinators on farms. That's got to be awfully
stressful on them, right?

MUSSEN: Yes, it's a stress. But commercial beekeepers have been moving
substantial numbers of colonies on trucks for decades. I'm not convinced
that they're being moved more, or that it beats them up any worse that
it did ten years ago. California beekeepers have told me that in a
course of moving the colonies around in the back of the truck, they tend
to lose 10 percent of the queens with each move. Some feel it's that
high. But that doesn't meant that 10 percent of your bee colonies died;
many of them will come back and you will still have a colony.

One researcher has said that the competition for food among the millions
of bees used to pollinate almond trees in California could, essentially,
be working them to death. Do you agree?

MUSSEN: Almond trees aren't the problem. It's what happens after the
bees are done with the trees and are brought back to the holding yards.
In late fall, there is basically no food -- after the almonds -- so the
bees have to fend for themselves. Besides eucalyptus trees, there's a
bunch of weeds that the bees can feed on. They don't get heavy and fat
but they've got some food available.

PETTIS: Beekeepers are always looking for what they call "good pasture,"
places they can put the bees and not have to feed the bees themselves.
Florida has an abundant and diverse set of floral plants, so the bees
are not suffering. What's interesting is that there's a number of
government control programs for invasive weeds. Beekeepers love invasive
weeds. Most produce a lot of nectar for the bees. So there's been
competition in some cities over getting rid of the noxious weeds and
keeping them for beekeepers. But California is unusual in that
beekeepers are doing what we are starting to call "feedlot beekeeping,"
where we are having to provide resources because there is just not
enough food out there. And this is just to meet the almond-pollination
demands.

MUSSEN: The real problem in California is that we've only had half a
normal rainfall this year. So after the almonds, when the bees went out
to find other things, there was barely anything there. What was really
interesting was some of the bees looked like they were well on their way
to establishing good colonies. They looked like they could live on the
stored almonds they had picked up in the late summer and fall. But this
time they collapsed. So that's the question: Why?

And what's your answer?

MUSSEN: I'm probably the strongest advocate in the United States
suggesting that malnutrition was the underlying thing that set up our
bees to be whacked by everything else researchers are looking at.
Honeybees rely on pollen for protein, vitamins, fats and minerals.
That's where their major "health food" comes from. If we are having a
typical year, and the rains come, there aren't too many places in the
United States where the bees cannot find their mix of pollens to meet
their dietary needs and get them through a normal life cycle.

The question is, What happens when things don't go like that? Well, you
get this blast of hot temperature, which is about the time the flower
buds are forming and the pollen grains are beginning to form. What does
that do? You get sterile pollen. A beekeeper could look into the hive
and say, "I've got all kinds of pollen in there and the bees
disappeared." Well, right, you've got pollen grains, but do they have
any nutrition in them?

Anything that interferes with the availability of food, or the quality
of the food, is going to be detrimental to the bees. They don't have
much of an immune system, so the only way that they can resist being
infected by a lot of things is when they have their innate resistance
up, and the best resistance is when they're best fed. So my feeling is
that their nutrition just wasn't what it was supposed to be, and they
were susceptible when they should have been resistant. I think something
happened at the end of last year in many places in the temperate climate
around the world, not just here, and fouled up the bees' food supply.
Unless somebody tells me differently, I'm blaming it on the weather.

ESAIAS: One of the things that I've noticed in my short little time
series in my backyard is that I could pick out every El Niño and La Niña
effect. These are normal. These short-term climate changes are normal,
and our bee population and our natural pollinator population have seen
them, and they can probably handle them. What is disturbing is the
long-term trend. Maybe years of severe climate impact are going to be
more frequent and it's going to be really difficult to pick them out as
causative factors unless we have a coherent way of studying each one.

Could the bees be dying because once they are sent out to do their work
as pollinators on farms, they can't find their way back to their
colonies? Sometimes it seems like there are more mini-malls in America
than flowers, and maybe the bees can't navigate urban land patterns.

MUSSEN: Land patterns would be the least of their problems. When a
honeybee transitions from an in-hive bee to an outside bee, it flies
back and forth around the hive for a few minutes. Then it backs off and
goes further away. In the process, it is taking a bunch of snapshots.
That's how it's going to navigate from that time on -- through those
snapshots. It's going to learn the roads, the trees, the houses, and the
part of the hive with the entrance it uses. Bees use those landmarks to
determine where they are and where they are going. That's another reason
why cellphone communication is not going to rattle them unless it
completely fries their brains so they can't see anymore. But when you
put them into the environment where they have been flying, they'll
follow their landmarks home. So I don't think we have to worry about that.

McDONALD: I'm not sure. I've been thinking about the size of the current
soybean and corn crop, which I think impacts on this. When we fly over
the fields in a jet, we look down and think we see some pastoral idyll.
But the truth of the matter is, we may be looking at a slow-motion
ecological train wreck. I made some calculations, and the total soybean
and corn crop, including genetically modified seeds, is in a
neighborhood of 102 million acres. After a little basic arithmetic, that
would be a strip of crops running from Pennsylvania to the Rocky
Mountains. It would be 100 miles wide, and if you were flying over in a
plane, it would take you four hours. When you look at that thing at that
magnitude of disruption, you can't help but suspect that maybe there's
more to the picture than meets the eye, when you consider the absolute
scale of things, compared with natural environments where you still have
weeds and flowers.

ESAIAS: Land use has changed drastically in the past 100 years. There's
no question that urbanization is increasing at a fantastic rate. I was
thinking, as I was listening to John, that a lot of these concerns apply
to our native pollinators -- the things that live in the hedge rows and
the woods -- much more so than to our managed bee colonies, which are
generally cared for by beekeepers. Crops are a significant source of
pollen and nectar for our bees and our pollinators, and there is no
doubt in my mind that the flora quality is changing, even if we can't
say whether it's for the better or worse just now.

McDONALD: You know, I was looking at my flowering trees the other day. I
have a beautiful weeping crabapple, and my grandson, while standing
under the tree, which was just heavy with blossoms, said spontaneously,
"Last year that tree was humming with bees." Now there was one bumblebee
on it. The small nascent bees and other little bee types are absolutely
missing. Near that tree I've got acres of dandelions and you cannot find
one of the native pollinators. And it's not just the honeybees; it's
other pollinators like moths and butterflies. In many ways, their loss
is probably more alarming or indicative of a deep problem.

PETTIS: We rely on honeybees for agriculture because we can move them in
large numbers. And we know how to manage them. But the National Academy
of Sciences recently published a study that showed that all pollinators
-- which rely on a diversity of flowers -- are in decline. Whether it's
urbanization, habitat fragmentation, or an increase in agricultural land
use, something is severely impacting the native pollinators.

Colony collapse disorder was reported by commercial beekeepers. Is it
also happening to bees in the wild?

PETTIS: There's very few places where we actually monitor the feral
population. I know of a group in Texas that was following some wild
populations of bees, and a Cornell researcher has found a group around
Ithaca, New York. But it's often hard to sample those bees. We know that
wild bee populations were decimated by parasitic varroa mites over time,
and they've rebounded, probably due to natural selection for natural
resistance. But I'm not familiar with data coming in from feral populations.

McDONALD: A few years ago, in a very remote part of the state, I found
thriving bee populations that I assumed were feral. To help them along,
I set up bait boxes and put in anti-mite strips. I slipped them in seed
oil and made little puddles so the bees had to walk through the oil in
this experiment I called "remote medication." But as the summer went on,
the bees collapsed in spite of my attempts to help them. The feral
population is just getting so hard hit that I suspect it's virtually
gone by now.

Are scientists looking at how the climate affects the bees' favorite
flowers and food sources?

ESAIAS: That's a good question. Most of the nectar sources in Maryland,
my state, come from trees -- tulip poplar, black locus, and holly trees.
There has been a great deal of research on plants and increased CO2 and
warming. I tried to find out how temperatures would affect blooming
dates, and there is virtually no information in the literature on how
temperature affects blooming dates of our trees and how increased CO2
concentrations affect blooming dates. There's lots of research that says
it makes plants grow faster, and some of them, like poison ivy, become
more toxic. But ecologists in general have not paid attention to the
timing of blooming and nectar availability and quality of pollen.

McDONALD: That is so true. The only number that I go on is that an apple
tree will bloom after 40 days in 40-degree temperatures. That boils down
that simple formula.

ESAIAS: As a kind of a climatologist, I'm getting paid to study the
impact of potential global warming scenarios on our ecology. There's a
lot of research being done on carbon cycling, but without information
about when the plants bloom and how the quality of the flora changes, we
are in a poor position to asses the effect of changes in temperature and
rainfall on our ecosystems.

Can bees survive climate changes?

MUSSEN: I can tell you that beekeepers take their honeybees north to the
upper Canadian border and all the way down to the equator. If they're
warm, they cool themselves by evaporating water, and if they're cold,
they heat themselves by sucking up a little bit of extra carbohydrate
and rattling their muscles.

So they're great adapters?

MUSSEN: They're going to handle it. The honeybees are not the ones I'm
concerned about. I think Wayne will back me up on this: Historians have
said that thousands of years ago, there were some pretty nasty
fluctuations in the earth's weather. And through this period of time, we
became and continue to be very good farmers. But for whatever reason, we
are beginning to kind of move into a cycle where we are going to find
more extremes than we used to have. The droughts may be hotter and
longer, the storms and floods may be more severe. Things aren't going to
be so nice in the future. But again, I think the honeybees are more
likely to handle that as long as they've got some food available to
them. But with some of these other pollinators, which we rely upon to
keep the environment going for us, well, if they get knocked around too
much by the weather, then that's going to be really consequential.

What do you think the disappearance of the bees teaches us about ecology?

ESAIAS: If I can go back to what Eric was saying, I too don't doubt the
survivability of the honeybee. On average, it's going to do fine. But
what we are dealing with now is a series of local effects. That doesn't
mean we aren't going to see an average global increase of temperature in
the future, if you believe the predictions.

What does it tell us about our native pollinators and ecology? That's
such an exceedingly complex question that I don't know. It just puts me
in awe of earth's complexity. If you ask scientists to predict what
global warming will do to an ecosystem, and they don't throw up their
hands and say, "Beats me," then it shows we have a lot of work to do to
understand the complexity and responses of all of these insect and plant
interactions, when they occur, and will they get out of phase.

McDONALD: I think there is a cautionary tale here. Look at the
progenitors of the maize, the corn which was developed in Mexico. It
took a long time for environmental researchers to find the original
plant because as the maize became dependent upon cultivation, a lot of
those genes from the wild corn had died off. There used to be 1,000
small meat-packing plants, and if a problem arose at one, it was not
particularly important to the other 999. But now with all these together
as one vast factory, any problem that arises has instant implications
everywhere. We're at the mercy of assembly-line farming and high-speed
distribution, and maybe no accountability as far as the quality of the
food. But I don't know how you do it. How do you get more people to go
back to smaller farms? It's practically utopian to bring that up anymore.

It's amazing that an esoteric subject like beekeeping has erupted in the
mass media. Do you think that's been beneficial?

ESAIAS: I think the media coverage is wonderful. I think we are facing a
series of problems like this, problems that are environmental in nature,
and this has been a real eye-opener for me as to how poorly prepared
this country and countries around the world are in taking note of how
climate change or global change will impact our ecosystems. Humanity is
affecting our ecosystems, and it's very complex to determine whether
this is due to environmental change or some disease. You can see now
that it is very difficult to pull these things apart.

McDONALD: The media has done a very good job of telling all sides. But
the problem is, how do you motivate people to change the way they are?
Where I live, I try to live pretty low on the food chain and avoid the
temptation of most of the things that people have. People are just
incredible consumers and runners of fuel and buyers of gadgets. How do
you change that? It's as if there's an ethical or a moral blank spot
there. I don't like to preach, but it's pretty obvious: When you're
killing the corn belt by growing fuel to run SUVs, there's a very bad
disconnect somewhere along the line.

MUSSEN: Bees are a necessary part of our food production. If we don't
grow our own cherries and apples, can't we just buy them somewhere else?
The answer is yes. But do we want to become as dependent on foreign
nations for our food as we are dependent on them for fuel? I would
certainly hope the answer is no. I believe that the amount of food we
exported to other countries last year was less than the amount of food
we imported for our consumption. We use to be the breadbasket of the
world. Now we're just one of the breadbaskets.

McDONALD: The basket case.

MUSSEN: [Laughs.] So to keep our industry healthy, we certainly have to
keep our pollinators healthy.

In the end, are we the people the ultimate cause of the bees' collapse?

PETTIS: We're the ultimate cause in that we've changed the planet to
suit our needs. We're running it to suit our needs and not the benefit
of all the organisms around us. Honeybees aren't totally domesticated,
but we have tried to domesticate them. We've tried to make bees more
gentle and make more honey. In enhancing certain traits, we make the
bees more susceptible to other things.

Do you think the bees will be back?

PETTIS: I do. I don't think we've gone that far in domesticating them.
The bee population is very diverse and can withstand an onslaught of
different things -- including beekeepers.

Research assistance by Jonathan Vanian.

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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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Site Pulled Calling Anti-War Advocates Terrorists
Anti-Abortion, Gay-Rights Groups Also Included
http://www.nbc6.net/news/13398523/detail.html?taf=ami

Stun gun use on mentally ill questioned
© 2007 The Associated Press
May 28, 2007, 12:28AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4840930.html

As Allies Turn Foe, Disillusion Rises in Some G.I.’s
By MICHAEL KAMBER
May 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/world/middleeast/28delta.html?ref=world

Wealthy Enclave Offers Windfall for Candidates
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
"GREENWICH, Conn., May 25 — Senator John McCain made his
pitch to this gilded shoreline suburb back in April.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts came on May 7,
followed one night later by former President Bill Clinton
on behalf of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Last weekend, it was back-to-back appearances by Senator
Barack Obama, topped off on Sunday with a visit from
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor.
With the mansions along its winding back roads now awash
in hedge fund money, Greenwich has joined New York,
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley as must stops on the
presidential fund-raising tour, with prominent locals
now boasting of candidate scuff marks on their basketball
courts, Secret Service T-shirts in their closets and framed
pictures of their children with the candidates on their
mantels. For a town that has wealth and corporate clout
to spare, the fund-raisers fill a void: access to a potential
White House resident."
May 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/us/politics/28greenwich.html?hp

Site Pulled Calling Anti-War Advocates Terrorists
Anti-Abortion, Gay-Rights Groups Also Included
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The Alabama Department of Homeland
Security has taken down a Web site it operated that
included gay rights, anti-war and anti-abortion organizations
in a list of groups that could include terrorists.
The site included the groups under a description of what
it called "single-issue extremists." The Web site says
such groups include people who feel they are trying to
create a better world.
The director of the department said his agency received
a number of calls and e-mails from people who said they
felt the site unfairly targeted certain people just
because of their beliefs. He said he plans to put the
Web site back on the Internet, but will no longer
identify specific types of groups.
POSTED: 10:27 pm EDT May 27, 2007
UPDATED: 10:28 pm EDT May 27, 2007
http://www.nbc6.net/news/13398523/detail.html?taf=ami

INTERVIEW: AS'AD ABUKHALIL ON THE NAHR AL-BARED SIEGE
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Lebanon, 24 May 2007
"Thousands of Palestinian refugees are fleeing from Nahr
al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as five days of
fighting by the Lebanese army and a militant group known
as Fath al-Islam has left dozens of soldiers and fighters
and an unknown number of civilians dead. As the situation
of these Palestinian refugees worsens, 59 years after they
were first expelled from their homeland into Lebanon, the
world looks on in silence. Electronic Intifada co-founder
Ali Abunimah spoke with As'ad Abukhalil, the creator of
the Angry Arab News Service blog on the origins of Fath
al-Islam, the events that led to the violence and what it
means for Lebanon and the region."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6945.shtml

US Show of Force in Gulf "Greatly Alarming"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052607A.shtml

Federal agents arrest over 100 for immigration violations
in Missouri raid
Michael Sung
JURIST@law.pitt.edu
5/23/2007
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/05/federal-agents-arrest-over-100-for.php

Oil Industry Says Biofuel Push May Hurt at Pump
By JAD MOUAWAD
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/business/24refinery.html?ref=business

For the First Time, New York Links a Death to 9/11 Dust
By ANTHONY DePALMA
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/nyregion/24dust.html?ref=nyregion

$5 Million Settlement in Boot Camp Death
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TALLAHASSEE, Fla., May 23 (AP) — The family of a teenager
who died after being roughed up by guards at a juvenile boot
camp last year will receive $5 million under a bill signed
Wednesday by Gov. Charlie Crist.
The teenager, Martin L. Anderson, 14, died in January 2006
shortly after being kneed and struck and having ammonia
tablets held to his nose at the military-style facility
run by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Panama City, Fla.
Mr. Crist and several lawmakers pushed for the settlement
this spring despite the Legislature’s general distaste
for claims measures.
The state has already paid Martin’s parents $200,000, the
most allowed by law without legislative approval. The bill
signed by Mr. Crist pays the remaining $4.8 million.
The sheriff’s office has separately settled with the Anderson
family for $2.4 million. Seven guards and a nurse employed
at the camp face manslaughter charges.
An initial autopsy said Martin died of complications from
sickle cell trait. But a second autopsy said the death
was caused by suffocation resulting from being forced
to inhale the ammonia.
Martin entered the camp for a probation violation for
trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were
charged with stealing their grandmother’s car.
May 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/24florida.html

ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
http://electronicIntifada.net

ONGOING SPECIAL COVERAGE OF SIEGE OF LEBANON REFUGEE CAMP:
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/674.shtml

ONGOING SPECIAL COVERAGE OF RENEWED ISRAELI STRIKES ON GAZA:
http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/672.shtml

Democrats Pull Troop Deadline From Iraq Bill
By CARL HULSE
May 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/washington/23cong.html?ref=world

Film Offers New Talking Points in Health Care Debate
By MILT FREUDENHEIM and LIZA KLAUSSMANN
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/media/22react.html?ref=business

Kentucky: Families Sue in Mine Blast
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The sole survivor of a mine explosion last year and relatives
of four of the five miners killed sued the coal company,
saying it had put production over safety. The suit cited
safety violations against the company, Kentucky Darby;
a supervisor, Ralph Napier; and Jericol Mining, which
provided management, planning, engineering and safety
training to the mine, Darby Mine No. 1. The plaintiffs
also seek damages against the manufacturer of the emergency
air packs that the victims used.
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22brfs-FAMILIESSUEI_BRF.html

IRAQ: Educational standards plummet, say specialists
http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=72168

Exclusive: Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr
By Patrick Cockburn In Baghdad
Published: 21 May 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2565123.ece

What's Next in Iraq? Juan Cole Interviews Ali A. Allawi
"Will a surge of U.S. troops make
a difference in Iraq? How viable is
the current Iraqi government? Will
an American withdrawal lead to
all-out civil war?
May 25, 2007
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i38/38b00601.htm

Black Media Delegation Returns from Darfur
Final Call, News Report, Jehron Muhammad,
Posted: May 20, 2007
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=b4a5f713b944aebb26047375d0629bf7

Soldier’s Smallpox Inoculation Sickens Son
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
"A 2-year-old boy spent seven weeks in the hospital
and nearly died from a viral infection he got from
the smallpox vaccination his father received before
shipping out to Iraq, according to a government report
and the doctors who treated him."
May 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/health/18smallpox.html?ref=health

My Dear Fellow Species
By MARY JO MURPHY
"THE Origin of Species” is almost 150 — a fit survivor
of the science canon even if not everyone has seen fit
to jump from the Ark to the Beagle on the matter of
evolution (three Republican presidential candidates,
for example). But Darwin himself was slow to come to
his ideas, and slower still to disclose them to
a skeptical public. Last week, the Darwin Correspondence
Project, based at Cambridge University, put about 5,000
letters to and from Darwin, some of them previously
unpublished, online at darwinproject.ac.uk, with thousands
more to follow. The searchable database lets anyone track
the painstaking development of his research and thinking
— on all kinds of topics, personal and professional,
and with a huge array of correspondents." MARY JO MURPHY
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/weekinreview/20word.html?ref=science

The Closing of the University Commons
by Michael Perelman
May 19, 2007
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/perelman190507.html

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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION

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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s

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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/

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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King

DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!

See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255

ACTION:

We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.

Call, Email and Write:

1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]

National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/

Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml

Related:

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece

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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]

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

Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY

My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic

Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o

Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw

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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact:

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

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

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

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

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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays!

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

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

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