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Next Antiwar Coalition meeting Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
474 Valencia St., Second Floor, rear.
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SAN FRANCISCO
Board approves year extension for high schools' JROTC program
Classes allowed to count for physical education credit
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/12/BAPFTSAS3.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
THE NEXT MEETING OF THE STOP JROTC COMMITTEE IS:
MONDAY,JANUARY 7, 7:00 P.M.
474 VALENCIA STREET, FIRST FLOOR, Room 145 (To the left as you come in, and all the way to the back of the long hallway, then, to the right.)
School Board Cowers Behind Phony JROTC "Task Force"
by Marc Norton
Dec. 12‚ 2007
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5194
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SUPPORT THE DAY AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
SEE THE "TODAY SHOW" STORY ON MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=31683df5-5f31-403d-a34d-2e5290d1cc02
From: LACFreeMumia@aol.com
A ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Mumia's case, based on the hearing in Philadelphia on May 17th 2007, is expected momentarily. Freeing Mumia immediately is what is needed, but that is not an option before this court. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal calls on everyone who supports Mumia‚s case for freedom, to rally the day after a decision comes down. Here are Bay Area day-after details:
OAKLAND:
14th and Broadway, near the Federal Building
4:30 to 6:30 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or on Monday if the ruling comes down on a Friday.
Oakland demonstration called by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, to be held if the Court upholds the death sentence, or denies Mumia's appeals for a new trial or a new hearing. info at (510) 839-0852 or pdcbayarea@sbcglobal.org
SAN FRANCISCO:
Federal Courthouse, 7th & Mission
5 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or Monday if the decision comes down on a Friday
San Francisco demo called by the Mobilization To Free Mumia,
info at (415) 255-1085 or www.freemumia.org
Day-after demonstrations are also planned in:
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver
and other cities internationally.
A National Demonstration is to be held in Philadelphia, 3rd Saturday after the decision
For more information, contact: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.mumia.org;
Partisan Defense Committee, www.partisandefense.org;
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), www.freemumia.com;
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS INNOCENT!
World-renowned journalist, death-row inmate and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is completely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Mountains of evidence--unheard or ignored by the courts--shows this. He is a victim, like thousands of others, of the racist, corrupt criminal justice system in the US; only in his case, there is an added measure of political persecution. Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, and is still an outspoken and active critic of the on-going racism and imperialism of the US. They want to silence him more than they want to kill him.
Anyone who has ever been victimized by, protested or been concerned about the racist travesties of justice meted out to blacks in the US, as well as attacks on immigrants, workers and revolutionary critics of the system, needs to take a close look at the frame-up of Mumia. He is innocent, and he needs to be free.
FREE MUMIA NOW!
END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FOR MASS PROTESTS AND LABOR ACTION TO FREE MUMIA!
In 1995, mass mobilizations helped save Mumia from death.
In 1999, longshore workers shut West Coast ports to free Mumia, and teachers in Oakland and Rio de Janeiro held teach-ins and stop-works.
Mumia needs powerful support again now. Come out to free Mumia!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610
510.763.2347
LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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Help end the war by supporting the troops who have refused to fight it.
Please sign the appeal online:
"DEAR CANADA: LET U.S. WAR RESISTERS STAY!"
"I am writing from the United States to ask you to make a provision for sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military servicemembers currently in Canada, most of whom have traveled to your country in order to resist fighting in the Iraq War. Please let them stay in Canada..."
To sign the appeal or for more information:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/canada
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to three key Canadian officials--Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, and Stéphane Dion, Liberal Party--via international first class mail.
In collaboration with War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), this effort comes at a critical juncture in the international campaign for asylum for U.S. war resisters in Canada.
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We, the Undersigned, endorse the following petition:
FedEx Ground: Your Drivers Deserve to be Treated Fairly!
Target: Dave Rebholz, President and CEO of FedEx Ground
Sponsor: American Rights at Work
More than 15,000 FedEx Ground drivers don't have a voice at work, or the ability to stand up to the company. These men and women work long hours, often without benefits, are frequently harassed and even fired for supporting a union.
What's more, FedEx makes the drivers lease their own trucks (which cost around $40,000) so quitting can mean losing a major personal investment. Unions are often their only recourse.
FedEx Ground advertises efficiency and professionalism, but their anti-union posters and the distribution of anti-union videos show they're more about pushing their own agenda.
A new report shows that when anti-union persuasion fails, there's outright bullying. High-level management arrive on the scene to harass, isolate, retaliate against and even fire union supporters!
Resorting to nasty labor tactics to increase company profits is just not right.
Demand that FedEx Ground give benefits and respect to the people who make the company so successful!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/625027652?z00m=11867690
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
2) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
3) After the Money’s Gone
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/opinion/14krugman.html
4) Barack’s Blast From the Past
By GAIL COLLINS
“If middle-aged men were disqualified from serious jobs because of recreational drug use as teenagers, there would be nobody left to run the stock exchange.”
Op-Ed Columnist
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/opinion/15collins.html?hp
5) A Long Time Coming
Editorial
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/opinion/15sat1.html?hp
6) Gazans Rally on Hamas Anniversary
By STEVEN ERLANGER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/middleeast/15cnd-mideast.html?hp
7) Before It Disappears
By ALLEN SALKIN
QUITO, Ecuador
December 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/fashion/16disappear.html?ref=world
8) Hoffa Condemns Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Suppression of Worker Rights
PR NEWSWIRE
Posted: 2007-12-14 14:01:21
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/hoffa-condemns-immigration-and-customs/n20071214140109990020
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1) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
Distrust and racial tension among Hispanics, Asians and blacks in the United States are pressing concerns for all three groups, a new national poll conducted in English, Spanish and five Asian languages has found.
The poll, published Wednesday, found a stark gap between Hispanics and Asians, who are mainly immigrants, and African-Americans about their prospects for success.
About three-quarters of Hispanics and about two-thirds of Asians believe they will progress in this country if they work hard, the survey found. But only 44 percent of African-Americans polled said they believed that hard work would bring them success, and 66 percent of African-Americans said they did not believe that everyone in the United States had an equal opportunity to succeed.
The poll was published by New America Media, a national association of about 700 ethnic media organizations that promotes better relations among racial and ethnic groups. It was conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a polling organization in Miami.
Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll, said it was the first national survey to look into relations among the leading minority groups in the United States. The Asian languages used were Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog, which is spoken in the Philippines.
The sample of respondents reflected the demographic makeup of the three groups in the United States population, Mr. Bendixen said. About half of Hispanics and about four-fifths of Asians in this country are immigrants, while 90 percent of blacks were born here. The survey did not ask about the legal status of the immigrants.
It reported that 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African-Americans and 73 percent of Asians said racial tension was a very important problem in the United States.
But the groups’ perceptions of one another are not all negative. While 51 percent of African-Americans in the poll said Hispanic immigrants were taking jobs and political power from blacks, another large group of African-Americans — 45 percent — disagreed that they were losing ground to Hispanics. And while 44 percent of Hispanics said they feared African-Americans, identifying them with high crime rates, half of Hispanics had no such fear.
Views of the criminal justice system differ widely among the three groups. Among blacks, 71 percent said the system “favors the rich and powerful,” while 45 percent of Hispanics and only 27 percent of Asians agreed.
The three groups tend to socialize among themselves, mixing infrequently with the others. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanics and Asians and 61 percent of blacks said they had never dated someone who was from either of the two other groups or who was white.
There were signs of optimism, however. More than 60 percent of each of the three groups said they expected race relations to improve in the next decade. Large majorities of Hispanics and Asians credited American blacks and the civil rights movement with making life easier for them here.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 1,105 adults in August and September. The margin of sampling error for each group was plus or minus five percentage points.
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2) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
Fresh Direct, the online grocery delivery operation that caters to affluent and overworked New Yorkers, lost dozens of employees this week after federal immigration officials notified the company that its employee records were under investigation.
The company sent its workers a memo on Sunday and Monday saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to inspect the records of every employee and asked them to update their information and provide documents, like Social Security cards, to prove employment eligibility. At least 40 warehouse workers who could not produce proof that they were authorized to work in the United States quit or were suspended.
At the company’s warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, the work force, largely immigrants, reacted with panic and distress as news of the inquiry spread.
“Some people just walked out the door,” said Sandy Pope, president of a Teamsters local that is one of two unions competing to organize the workers. “They were sobbing, with garbage bags full of their clothes from their lockers. They didn’t feel they had any chance of fixing their paperwork, so they just left.”
Fresh Direct officials said in a statement that they were trying to comply with the government’s request and keep their employees informed about the investigation. But they would not discuss any suspensions or resignations.
The federal investigation, part of a national campaign aimed at employers who hire illegal immigrants, comes in the midst the company’s busiest season and in the middle of a conflict over efforts to unionize some 900 Fresh Direct warehouse workers. The workers are scheduled to vote on Dec. 22 and 23 on whether to affiliate with either Local 805 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or Local 348 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which recently organized Fresh Direct drivers.
Ms. Pope, the Teamsters’ president, said on Wednesday that the suspensions seemed to be an effort to thwart the union and that the company’s lawyers might have invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to scrutinize workers to weaken the union drive.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, said, “I would categorically deny that that’s the case.”
Jim Moore, the company’s senior vice president for business affairs, called the claim outrageous.
“At this point, Fresh Direct is intent on two things,” he said in a written statement. “Complying with the requirements of federal law with respect to the I.C.E. audit and ensuring that its employees know the facts and are given the opportunity to participate” in the union vote. He said the company had asked immigration officials to delay their audit until after the holidays, but they refused.
Without confirming or denying the investigation, Ms. Nantel said such audits were part of the agency’s stepped-up enforcement.
With new financing, she said, the agency recently hired 41 “forensic auditors” to scrutinize employment eligibility verification forms, known as I-9’s, that companies are required to keep on file for every employee they hire.
“Certainly an I-9 audit is one investigatory tool that we use,” Ms. Nantel said. “Depending on the results of the audit, we’ll follow that investigation to whatever next step is appropriate.”
Companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants can face fines or criminal charges, but until recently, prosecutions were extremely rare. In some workplaces elsewhere in the country, workers without proper documents were summoned to the main office without warning, and taken away in handcuffs.
Union officials said that many Fresh Direct employees, who earn between $7.50 and $9.75 an hour, were so frightened of being detained and separated from their children that they stayed home on Wednesday. Others said they were told not to come back.
Ms. Pope said that some employees were warned by company officials not to show up for their paychecks. She said the union was scrambling to find clergy members or other volunteers to collect paychecks for workers who feared going back to the warehouse.
One 41-year-old woman from Ecuador, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of deportation, said she was let go with an expression of regret when she told human resources workers at the company that the Social Security number she had been using for nearly four years was false.
“I’m really desperate now because I have no money to send to my kids,” she said, referring to four children in Ecuador. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.”
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3) After the Money’s Gone
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/opinion/14krugman.html
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced plans to lend $40 billion to banks. By my count, it’s the fourth high-profile attempt to rescue the financial system since things started falling apart about five months ago. Maybe this one will do the trick, but I wouldn’t count on it.
In past financial crises — the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia’s default in 1998 — the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic isn’t working.
Why not? Because the problem with the markets isn’t just a lack of liquidity — there’s also a fundamental problem of solvency.
Let me explain the difference with a hypothetical example.
Suppose that there’s a nasty rumor about the First Bank of Pottersville: people say that the bank made a huge loan to the president’s brother-in-law, who squandered the money on a failed business venture.
Even if the rumor is false, it can break the bank. If everyone, believing that the bank is about to go bust, demands their money out at the same time, the bank would have to raise cash by selling off assets at fire-sale prices — and it may indeed go bust even though it didn’t really make that bum loan.
And because loss of confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, even depositors who don’t believe the rumor would join in the bank run, trying to get their money out while they can.
But the Fed can come to the rescue. If the rumor is false, the bank has enough assets to cover its debts; all it lacks is liquidity — the ability to raise cash on short notice. And the Fed can solve that problem by giving the bank a temporary loan, tiding it over until things calm down.
Matters are very different, however, if the rumor is true: the bank really did make a big bad loan. Then the problem isn’t how to restore confidence; it’s how to deal with the fact that the bank is really, truly insolvent, that is, busted.
My story about a basically sound bank beset by a crisis of confidence, which can be rescued with a temporary loan from the Fed, is more or less what happened to the financial system as a whole in 1998. Russia’s default led to the collapse of the giant hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, and for a few weeks there was panic in the markets.
But when all was said and done, not that much money had been lost; a temporary expansion of credit by the Fed gave everyone time to regain their nerve, and the crisis soon passed.
In August, the Fed tried again to do what it did in 1998, and at first it seemed to work. But then the crisis of confidence came back, worse than ever. And the reason is that this time the financial system — both banks and, probably even more important, nonbank financial institutions — made a lot of loans that are likely to go very, very bad.
It’s easy to get lost in the details of subprime mortgages, resets, collateralized debt obligations, and so on. But there are two important facts that may give you a sense of just how big the problem is.
First, we had an enormous housing bubble in the middle of this decade. To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels.
Second, there was a tremendous amount of borrowing into the bubble, as new home buyers purchased houses with little or no money down, and as people who already owned houses refinanced their mortgages as a way of converting rising home prices into cash.
As home prices come back down to earth, many of these borrowers will find themselves with negative equity — owing more than their houses are worth. Negative equity, in turn, often leads to foreclosures and big losses for lenders.
And the numbers are huge. The financial blog Calculated Risk, using data from First American CoreLogic, estimates that if home prices fall 20 percent there will be 13.7 million homeowners with negative equity. If prices fall 30 percent, that number would rise to more than 20 million.
That translates into a lot of losses, and explains why liquidity has dried up. What’s going on in the markets isn’t an irrational panic. It’s a wholly rational panic, because there’s a lot of bad debt out there, and you don’t know how much of that bad debt is held by the guy who wants to borrow your money.
How will it all end? Markets won’t start functioning normally until investors are reasonably sure that they know where the bodies — I mean, the bad debts — are buried. And that probably won’t happen until house prices have finished falling and financial institutions have come clean about all their losses. All of this will probably take years.
Meanwhile, anyone who expects the Fed or anyone else to come up with a plan that makes this financial crisis just go away will be sorely disappointed.
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4) Barack’s Blast From the Past
By GAIL COLLINS
“If middle-aged men were disqualified from serious jobs because of recreational drug use as teenagers, there would be nobody left to run the stock exchange.”
Op-Ed Columnist
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/opinion/15collins.html?hp
There are lots of different ways for a presidential candidate to deal with the question of drug use. You can admit it, deny it or say you didn’t inhale. That last one, I think we can agree, is a choice we won’t be seeing again any time real soon.
George W. Bush always declined to answer. “If I were you, I wouldn’t tell your kids that you smoked pot unless you want them to smoke pot,” he said during the 2000 campaign in response to the many, many questions about his own history. The phrasing was vintage George W., but tactically, the answer was a thing of genius. In one simple sentence, Bush had: a) eliminated cocaine from the conversation, b) made “you” the guilty party and c) explained that whatever happened, he was clamming up for the sake of the children.
If the Bush Department of Defense had done as much strategic thinking as the Bush campaign’s drug-question detail did, we would be living in a much happier world today.
Barack Obama is the first serious presidential candidate ever to acknowledge using cocaine. “Pot had helped, and booze,” he said of his days as an alienated adolescent. “Maybe a little blow when you could afford it.”
This has not exactly been a secret — that quote appeared in his 1995 autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.” But it hasn’t come up much during the campaign. Even though he has held approximately 10 trillion town hall question-and-answer sessions in Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama has never been challenged in the incessant, sometimes-outrageous way a presidential nominee gets challenged.
“It’ll be: When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you ever sell them?” Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of the New Hampshire Clinton campaign predicted to a reporter from The Washington Post. By the next day, Shaheen was gone, Hillary had apologized to Barack and the controversy had eclipsed even Mike Huckabee’s apology to Mitt Romney for suggesting that Mormons believe Jesus and the devil are brothers. (The Republicans are so deep into theological disputes that their Iowa race is beginning to sound like the Council of Trent.)
The outraged Obama people suspected that the whole thing had been a well-orchestrated plot to call attention to the “blow” quote. They were grossly underestimating the inordinate talent of political operatives for screwing things up on their own. “The most frequently spoken words in a campaign are: ‘Oh, my God! He did what?’” said Bill Curry, a politician turned political columnist.
Representatives of all three leading campaigns went on MSNBC in the wake of the Shaheen debacle and proved the point.
“Well, I think we have made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising,” said the Clinton strategist Mark Penn, with a weird kind of smugness.
“This guy’s been filibustering on this. He just said cocaine again!” cried the John Edwards adviser Joe Trippi.
“I think you’re saying cocaine,” retorted Penn.
Campaigns only behave well when they’re far ahead or far behind. When they’re all bunched together, teetering between victory and disaster, they get sweaty and sloppy and borderline insane. (Hillary is probably regretting the day she called this the “fun part.”) Still, unless you’re a candidate, this is not a bad thing. The whole point of the Iowa caucuses — if there is any point to the Iowa caucuses — is to see how everybody functions under stress.
“I’ve been tested. I’ve been vetted. There are no surprises,” Clinton assured Iowans yesterday. Nobody in their right minds would presume that anything involving the Clintons will be surprise-free, but Hillary’s big selling point has indeed always been her ability to forge ahead through unimaginable political disasters. Now, voters are getting to see how her presidential candidacy holds up when she’s losing her lead in the polls.
For Obama, the real question is not about what he ingested in his freshman year of college. If middle-aged men were disqualified from serious jobs because of recreational drug use as teenagers, there would be nobody left to run the stock exchange.
The question is whether Obama has worked out a way to explain all this to the more conservative voters he’d be wooing next fall. (Particularly if the Republican nominee is Mitt Romney, who has never tried coffee.) That doesn’t rank up there with health care programs when it comes to serious issues, but if you want the candidate with the best chance of winning, it’s a fair concern.
The classic way to get rid of a past-misbehavior problem is to turn it into an inspiring story about sin and redemption. But Obama has a hard time with the cheesy side of political campaigns, and being required to dredge up emotions he doesn’t necessarily feel.
“The point was to inhale. That was the point,” he said, when someone asked the inevitable question.
Bob Herbert is off today.
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5) A Long Time Coming
Editorial
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/opinion/15sat1.html?hp
It took 31 years, but the moral bankruptcy, social imbalance, legal impracticality and ultimate futility of the death penalty has finally penetrated the consciences of lawmakers in one of the 37 states that arrogates to itself the right to execute human beings.
This week, the New Jersey Assembly and Senate passed a law abolishing the death penalty, and Gov. Jon Corzine, a staunch opponent of execution, promised to sign the measure very soon. That will make New Jersey the first state to strike the death penalty from its books since the Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s system of capital punishment three decades ago.
Some lawmakers voted out of principled opposition to the death penalty. Others felt that having the law on the books without enforcing it (New Jersey has had a moratorium on executions since 2006) made a mockery of their argument that it has deterrent value. Whatever the motivation of individual legislators, by forsaking a barbaric practice that grievously hurts the global reputation of the United States without advancing public safety, New Jersey has set a worthy example for the federal government, and for other states that have yet to abandon the creaky, error-prone machinery of death.
New Jersey’s decision to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole seems all the wiser coming in the middle of a month that has already seen the convictions of two people formerly on death row in other states repudiated. In one case, the defendant was found not guilty following a new trial.
The momentum to repeal capital punishment has been building in New Jersey since January, when a 13-member legislative commission recommended its abolition. The panel, which included two prosecutors, a police chief, members of the clergy and a man whose daughter was murdered in 2000, cited serious concerns about the imperfect nature of the justice system and the chance of making an irreversible mistake. The commission also concluded, quite correctly, that capital punishment is both a poor deterrent and “inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”
By clinging to the death penalty, states keep themselves in the company of countries like Iran, North Korea and China — a disreputable pantheon of human mistreatment. Small wonder the gyrations of New Jersey’s Legislature have been watched intently by human rights activists around the world.
Spurred in large part by the large and growing body of DNA-based exonerations, there is increasing national unease about the death penalty. The Supreme Court is poised to consider whether lethal injections that torture prisoners in the process of killing them amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, an exercise bound to put fresh focus on some of the ugly details of implementing capital punishment.
In a sense, the practical impact of New Jersey’s action may be largely symbolic. Although there are eight people on New Jersey’s death row, the moratorium was in place, and the state has not put anyone to death since 1963. Nevertheless, it took political courage for lawmakers to join with Governor Corzine. Their renunciation of the death penalty could prick the conscience of elected officials in other states and inspire them to muster the courage to revisit their own laws on capital punishment.
At least that is our fervent hope.
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6) Gazans Rally on Hamas Anniversary
By STEVEN ERLANGER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/middleeast/15cnd-mideast.html?hp
GAZA — About 200,000 Gazans rallied in support of Hamas on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of its founding.
It was a significant show of force from Hamas, which took over Gaza six months ago in a rapid rout of Fatah forces. The rally was designed to display popular “samoud,” or steadfastness, in the face of the diplomatic and economic isolation of Gaza, which Israel has declared a “hostile entity.” It was easily as large as one a month ago for its rival, the Fatah faction, on the anniversary of the death of Yasir Arafat, and estimates ranged up to 250,000 people.
Central Gaza City was filled with green flags and political slogans, and a large banner reading, “We will not recognize Israel,” adorned the back of the stage.
There were fiery speeches from Hamas notables, filled with the rhetoric of defiance toward Israel and the United States, coupled with calls for renewed national unity with the West Bank, run by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah faction and an appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad.
The Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, whose government was fired by Mr. Abbas, said: “Your message today is that the movement will not surrender in front of such an embargo. We will not break. The root of the movement is like a good tree in good soil.” He said that the suffering of Gaza’s 1.5 million people from that isolation “will not achieve its goal, which is our collapse.”
He said Hamas had succeeded in the first and second uprisings, or intifadas, against Israel, in forcing Israeli troops and settlers to withdraw from Gaza, in winning legislative elections in January 2006 and forming a government, “due to the will of the people, the will to resistance and steadfastness.” Hamas, he said, “has created a great transformation in the history of the Palestinian cause.”
Next week’s Muslim festival of the Id al-Adha, he said, “is an Id for an Islamic Arab Palestinian identity, an Id for the project of Islamic jihad.”
Mr. Haniya also called for renewed dialogue with Fatah and other factions for renewed unity. “We want a dialogue on the basis of no winner and no loser,” he said. “We want a dialogue with no conditions, because the central enemy is the Israeli occupation.”
Mr. Abbas has said he will resume talks with Hamas if it gives up power in Gaza, returns security buildings to Fatah and apologizes, which Mr. Haniya and Hamas seem to have no intention of doing. Fatah and the independent government in Ramallah banned Hamas from having any similar demonstrations in the West Bank.
The Fatah rally for Mr. Arafat in the same Gaza City square on Nov. 12 was also huge, the largest show of support for Fatah since its defeat last June. It was marred by violence, with six people killed and 100 wounded in clashes with Hamas police and security officials.
The Hamas rally was well-organized and not disrupted, and also featured speeches from Hamas founders and the leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Muhammad al-Hindi. Osama al-Mzeini, a Hamas leader, addressed the Qassam brigades, which are the armed wing of Hamas, saying: “The only language the enemy can understand is the language of power, of force. So speak to them in that language.”
Thousands, including women, sang along with a popular Hamas song, which starts: “A Hamas is not afraid of death.”
The crowd featured many who are poor and devout, with many veiled women and masked men. Layali al-Kher, 27, said that there was little money in her family, because factories and construction has largely stopped due to restrictions on cement and raw materials. “But this siege was not imposed by Hamas but on them, so why should we criticize them?” she asked. “They’ve put Hamas in a bottle and they are trying to suffocate it. But they have achieved a lot: the streets are safe, the traffic is controlled. They have adapted quickly and have a strong will.”
Ms. Kher said that she supported the armed struggle against Israel, as did Myasar Suleiman, 56, whose family of six sons and three daughters is largely supported by her husband, who sells vegetables, and by United Nations aid to refugees.
“I like what Hamas is doing, fighting the occupation and getting rid of collaborators,” Mrs. Suleiman said. She said that Mr. Abbas “should stay away from those people,” meaning Israel and the United States, “who are playing with his head” and return to national unity.
A Hamas legislator, Mushir al-Masri, told the crowd that after 20 years, the roots of Hamas “stretch into the heart of the nation and every part of the land.”
“Twenty years,” Mr. Masri said, “from the stone to the knife, the bullet to the bomb, the mortar to the rocket, and from the martyrdom operations to the tunnels of hell.”
Khaled Meshal, the Hamas political leader in exile in Syria, said in comments published on Saturday that the Palestinians “are capable of launching a third or fourth intifada until victory is ours.” He admitted, however, that the Hamas anniversary came amid “difficult circumstances and a painful situation for the besieged Palestinians in Gaza.”
On Monday, in Paris, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad will attend a donors conference of Western countries who are likely to pledge the $5.6 billion in budgetary and development support over the next three years, in large part to try to show Gazans that Fatah’s willingness to negotiate a peace with Israel is a preferable path.
Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza City.
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7) Before It Disappears
By ALLEN SALKIN
QUITO, Ecuador
December 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/fashion/16disappear.html?ref=world
DENNIS and STACIE WOODS, a married couple from Seattle, choose their vacation destinations based on what they fear is fated to destruction.
This month it was a camping and kayaking trip around the Galápagos Islands. Last year, it was a stay at a remote lodge in the Amazon, and before that, an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.
“We wanted to see the islands this year,” Mr. Woods, a lawyer, said last week in a hotel lobby here, “because we figured they’re only going to get worse.”
The visit to the Amazon was “to try to see it in its natural state before it was turned into a cattle ranch or logged or burned to the ground,” Mr. Woods said. Kilimanjaro was about seeing the sunrise on the highest peak in Africa before the ice cap melts, as some forecasters say it will within the next dozen years.
Next on their list: the Arctic before the ice is gone.
The Woodses are part of a travel trend that Ken Shapiro, the editor in chief of TravelAge West, a magazine for travel agents, calls “the Tourism of Doom.”
“It’s not just about going to an exotic place,” Mr. Shapiro said. “It’s about going someplace they expect will be gone in a generation.”
From the tropics to the ice fields, doom is big business. Quark Expeditions, a leader in arctic travel, doubled capacity for its 2008 season of trips to the northern and southernmost reaches of the planet. Travel agents report clients are increasingly requesting trips to see the melting glaciers of Patagonia, the threatened coral of the Great Barrier Reef, and the eroding atolls of the Maldives, Mr. Shapiro said.
Even the sinking of the Antarctic cruise ship Explorer, which hit an iceberg last month, has not cooled interest. Other Antarctic tour operators say they have received frantic calls asking for last-minute berths from those who had been scheduled to take future Explorer voyages. Since most trips are already full, would-be paying customers are being turned away.
What these travelers are chasing may be a modern-day version of an old human impulse — to behold an untrammeled frontier. Except this time around, instead of being the first to climb a mountain or behold a glacier-fed lake, voyagers like the Woodses are eager to be the ones to see things last.
Almost all these trips are marketed as environmentally aware and eco-sensitive — they are, after all, a grand tour of the devastating effects of global warming. But the travel industry, some environmentalists say, is preying on the frenzy. This kind of travel, they argue, is hardly green. It’s greedy, requiring airplanes and boats as well as new hotels.
However well intentioned, these trip takers may hasten the destruction of the very places they are trying to see. But the environmental debate is hardly settled. What is clear is that appealing to the human ego remains a terrific sales tool for almost any product.
“Doom tourism has been with us for a long time indeed,” Jonathan Raban, the travel writer, said by phone from Seattle, his home. “It’s about the world being spoiled and the impulse of the tourist industry to sell us on getting there before it is too late, before other people spoil it.
“I’m thinking of the opening up of the West by the railroads aided by unforgivable painters like Albert Bierstadt, who sold that idyllic version of the pristine West populated only by deer and their fauns and picturesque Indians. There was a rush from the East to get there one step before the miners, who were going to spoil it, and before other tourists started trampling it.”
Back then, the images were of geysers and antelope-dotted Rocky Mountain sunsets. Now the worried traveler, motivated by promotional Web sites showing images of smiling natives in face paint and flocks of colorful exotic birds, hastens to the vulnerable Amazon. Not that this tourist will be roughing it: bamboo-floored lodges await, where hot showers come courtesy of solar power and squawking toucans can be viewed from laddered observation towers.
At hundreds of dollars or more a night, people do want hot water and other comforts.
In November, Travel & Leisure magazine came out with a “responsible travel” issue and listed on its cover “13 guilt-free travel deals,” No. 5 being an Inkaterra Rain Forest package. For $497 a person, it included a three-night stay in a cabana on stilts, an excursion to the hotel’s private ecological reserve, a boat trip to a native farm and a 30-minute massage at the hotel spa.
A “Green Serengeti package” in Tanzania started at $836 a night per person, with all drinks “excluding Champagne.”
This is all a ruse, said John Stetson, a spokesman for the Will Steger Foundation, an environmental education organization in Minnesota. “Eco-tourism is more of a term for the marketer,” he said. “Many people want to do what’s right, so when something is marketed as the right thing, they tend to do that.”
But, he says, traveling by jet to see the icebergs contributes to global warming, which makes the icebergs melt faster. “It’s hard to fault somebody who wants to see something before it disappears, but it’s unfortunate that in their pursuit of doing that, they contribute to the problem,” he said.
Advocates of green tourism counter that even carbon-consuming travel can help preserve destinations, as local people learn that there is more economic value in preserving nature for tourists than in farming or timber harvesting, said Lene Oestergaard, the executive director of the Rainforest Foundation. The organization was founded by Sting and Trudie Styler in 1989 to help the indigenous people of the world’s rain forests protect their environments.
“There are environmentally friendly resorts,” she said. “This is possible.”
Some travel companies have tried to reconcile the conflicting ideas of seeing the planet while also somehow saving it.
Abercrombie & Kent, a luxury travel company, is offering “mission trips” to environmentally sensitive locales. For the Antarctica mission under way now, the 22 participants, who paid $6,190 each for a 13-day tour, gave an additional $500 each to Friends of Conservation.
Some of that money helped buy a high-definition video camera, which the tourists will deliver to Palmer Station, an American ecological research center on the Antarctic peninsula, said Pamela Lassers, a spokeswoman for the tour operator. The camera will be used to film the behavior of krill, she said.
Each tourist receives a certificate of participation and a Climate Change Challenge Mission patch.
“For their expedition parka,” publicity materials instruct.
Another mission in October delivered a weather-monitoring station to researchers on Mount Kilimanjaro, Ms. Lassers said.
In a way, these earnest expeditions say much about how the very idea of adventure has changed. Once naturalists like Darwin made sense of a wild world. Explorers like Lewis and Clark sought to map what seemed limitless wilderness. Adventurers like Livingstone and Scott sought to conquer the earth’s natural challenges and sometimes died trying.
Over the last half-century, backpackers and other adventurers took a gentler route, beating new paths across Asia, South America and other locales — only to realize years later that some paths had been clear-cut into highways fit for Holiday Inns. There is a Baskin-Robbins in Katmandu, and a strip of five-star hotels in Goa, India.
Those who fancy themselves world travelers are scrambling for something untouched. But what is left to brag about at post-voyage cocktail parties? Traveling to India was common by the late 1990s. By 2003, everyone had to rush to dance the tango in Buenos Aires. Moon shots are not yet bookable on Orbitz.
“From where I sit,” said Nancy Novograd, the editor of Travel & Leisure, “traveling to Mongolia now is almost cliché. Last summer, it seemed like everybody was going to Mongolia. The bar keeps getting higher.”
But are there any thrills left?
No one is yet offering an Antarctic trip in which tourists will be allowed to kill and eat sled dogs, as Ernest Shackleton did in desperation on his 1914-16 expedition. For now, travelers to the icy reaches must satisfy themselves with smaller diversions.
Everen T. Brown, a photographer from Salt Lake City, paid Quark Expeditions about $22,000 to be one of the 300 people it leads to the North Pole annually on icebreakers.
“You hear so much about global warming, you almost expect that when you get to the North Pole, there will be nothing there,” Mr. Brown said. “But there still is ice there.”
At the pole, tour leaders plant a sign and have a ceremony with colorful flags, followed by a picnic lunch on the ice and, for the truly intrepid, a tethered plunge into the freezing deep.
“We have this romanticized view of what the North Pole is,” said Mr. Brown, who posted a panoramic photo of the pole on his Web site 360atlas.com. “And then there’s the reality. It’s cold. It’s stark. Santa Claus wasn’t waiting to greet us.”
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8) Hoffa Condemns Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Suppression of Worker Rights
PR NEWSWIRE
Posted: 2007-12-14 14:01:21
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/hoffa-condemns-immigration-and-customs/n20071214140109990020
Official Statement of Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Workers at FreshDirect in Queens, New York are in a fight for their families' futures as the company has staged an aggressive antiunion campaign against their 900 employees who are seeking to organize. To compound an already tense organizing campaign, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has now launched an internal audit at FreshDirect which has led to the dismissal or suspension of more than 100 employees.
ICE's investigation comes at a critical stage of an organizing campaign that has stretched over the course of six months. The workers are scheduled to vote for union representation on December 22 & 23, however many now fear they may be wrongly persecuted during the agency's investigation.
Questions and irregularities surround the launch of the ICE investigation into FreshDirect's employee records. ICE has seemingly violated its own internal policies by initiating FreshDirect's audit during an ongoing labor dispute.
To quote its own policy, ICE will reserve immediate action on any information received concerning employment of undocumented or unauthorized aliens "...where it appears that information may have been provided in order to interfere with or to retaliate against employees for exercising their rights" to form a union.
With a union election just over a week away, I do not see how any official at ICE could in good conscience proceed with any internal audit and believe it would have no impact on the outcome of the vote. I am sure the ICE representatives will find a loophole to justify the timing of its investigation, but that does not change the fact that the internal audit and the additional lost jobs that will result, only help the company continue to intimidate the workforce.
Early in this campaign, FreshDirect boasted to the workers that they had retained the services of an antiunion law firm. And now, with all indications pointing to even more firings, the ICE has only helped spread a culture of intimidation and fear.
The series of events that led to the current situation just highlights the flawed nature of our immigration policies. When the actions by an agency that was established to protect our national security could compromise the pursuit of workers' rights, we as a country must reevaluate our priorities and fix this broken system.
A person's right to form a union is not only their right as a worker, but it is their civil, human and moral right. I urge all workers who are seeking a voice in the workplace at FreshDirect to stand strong and vote with your conscience. The Teamsters stand ready to fight for your rights.
SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Iraq: Marine Discharged Over Killing
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Middle East
A Marine reservist, Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes, 22, of Indianapolis, was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and reduced in rank to private, a day after being convicted at Camp Pendleton, Calif., of negligent homicide in the 2006 stabbing death of an Iraqi soldier he stood watch with at a guard post in Falluja. He has served 10 months in a military prison and will not spend any more time in custody. The lance corporal’s lawyer has said that the killing was in self-defense. Prosecutors contended that he killed the Iraqi and then set up the scene to support his story. He was also found guilty of making a false official statement.
December 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/middleeast/15briefs-MARINEDISCHA_BRF.html?ref=world
Canada: Mounties Urged to Restrict Taser Use
By IAN AUSTEN
In a report, the watchdog commission that oversees the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recommended that Taser stun guns be used only on people who are “combative or posing a risk of death or grievous bodily harm,” much like a conventional firearm rather than a nightstick or pepper spray. The report was ordered by the government after a confused and angry Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, left, died at the airport in Vancouver after being stunned at least twice by Mounties. The report found that Tasers were increasingly being used against people who were merely resistant rather than dangerous.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/americas/13briefs-taser.html?ref=world
Greece: Tens of Thousands March in Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A one-day strike by unions representing 2.5 million workers brought Athens to a standstill. Protesting planned government changes to the state-financed pension system, an estimated 80,000 people marched through central Athens. In Thessaloniki, 30,000 people rallied, the police said. The strike shut down hospitals, banks, schools, courts and all public services. Flights were canceled, and public transportation, including boats connecting the mainland with the islands, ground to a halt. More strikes are expected next week.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/europe/13briefs-strike.html?ref=world
Senator Criticizes Genentech’s Limits on a Cheaper Drug
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Genentech’s plan to restrict the availability of Avastin so doctors cannot use it instead of a more expensive medicine for eye disease will cost taxpayers $1 billion to $3 billion a year, according to Senator Herb Kohl.
Senator Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration that Genentech’s decision to limit access to the medicine by pharmacies that repackage drugs “is of great concern.”
He also sent the company a letter saying that his staff would investigate the restrictions.
The company, based in South San Francisco, wants specialists to buy its newer treatment, Lucentis, instead of Avastin.
November 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/business/29eye.html?ref=health
Weak Dollar Propels Sales at Tiffany
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Jewelry and luxury goods retailer Tiffany & Company’s third-quarter earnings more than tripled on strong sales growth and a gain on the sale and leaseback of its Tokyo flagship store, the company said yesterday.
It also raised its earnings outlook for the full year. However, the company’s stock fell $2.32, or 5 percent, to $46.43 a share, after a morning rally, as analysts expressed caution that its Manhattan flagship store has become a temporarily disproportionate driver of sales, helped by a flood of foreign tourists who are taking advantage of the declining dollar.
The company, based in New York, said net income climbed to $98.9 million, or 71 cents a share, from $29.1 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales increased 18 percent to $627.3 million from $531.8 million a year earlier, helped by a 9 percent rise in global sales at stores open at least one year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of 25 cents a share.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01tiffany.html?ref=business
Israeli Court Upholds Gaza Fuel Cuts
By STEVEN ERLANGER
World Briefing | Middle East
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government could continue cutting fuel supplies to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which it has done since Oct. 28. But it ordered a delay on plans to cut electricity until new details are offered by the groups challenging the plan.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/world/middleeast/01briefs-gaza.html?ref=world
Canada: Man Dies After Shock From Taser
By IAN AUSTEN
World Briefing | Americas
November 23, 2007
A 45-year-old man who had been arrested on assault charges died, about a day after the police in Nova Scotia used a Taser to subdue him. The man was the third person to die in Canada in just over a month after being shocked by Tasers wielded by police officers. Justice Minister Cecil Clarke ordered a review of the use of the hand-held stun guns following the man’s death, the latest in a series of government inquiries into the use of Tasers by the police. Widespread outrage in Canada followed the broadcast of a video last month that showed another man being shocked at least twice with Tasers at a Vancouver airport by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The man, a Polish immigrant who appeared extremely confused on the video, died. A Montreal man also died last month, three days after he was subdued by the police with a Taser while being arrested for drunken driving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/world/americas/23briefs-taser.html?ref=world
California: Cards for Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lawmakers have given final approval to a law making San Francisco the nation’s largest city to issue identification cards to illegal immigrants. The Board of Supervisors voted 10 to 1 to create a municipal ID program to help residents without driver’s licenses obtain access to services and feel secure dealing with local law enforcement. The measure is modeled after a program that started last summer in New Haven, Conn. Supporters say that along with immigrants, elderly people who no longer drive and transgender individuals whose driver’s licenses no longer reflect their appearances also would benefit from having the cards. The measure goes into effect in August.
November 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/21brfs-CARDSFORIMMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Manhattan: Teachers Criticize Review Unit
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor to apologize to the city’s 80,000 teachers yesterday, a day after the chancellor sent principals an e-mail message announcing the formation of teams of lawyers and consultants meant to help principals remove poorly performing tenured teachers. Ms. Weingarten said that the message seemed timed to the release yesterday of national reading and math test scores showing little progress among New York City students. “The first speck of bad news, all of the sudden they go after teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. The mayor said yesterday that removing tenured teachers was “a last alternative.”
November 16, 2007
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/nyregion/16mbrfs-TEACHERS.html?ref=nyregion
Waterboarding and U.S. History
by William Loren Katz
"U.S. officers in the Philippines routinely resorted to what they called ‘the water cure.'"
November 14, 2007
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=1
Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
November 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/media/02cnd-hollywood.html?ref=us
Raids Traumatized Children, Report Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Hundreds of young American children suffered hardship and psychological trauma after immigration raids in the last year in which their parents were detained or deported, according to a report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute. Of 500 children directly affected in three factory raids examined in the report in which 900 adult immigrants were arrested, a large majority were United States citizens younger than 10. With one or both parents deported, the children had reduced economic support, and many remained in the care of relatives who feared contact with the authorities, the study said. Although the children were citizens, few families sought public assistance for them, the study found.
November 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01brfs-raids.html?ref=us
Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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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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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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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.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Thursday, December 13, 2007
BAUAW NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2007
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SAN FRANCISCO
Board approves year extension for high schools' JROTC program
Classes allowed to count for physical education credit
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/12/BAPFTSAS3.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
THE NEXT MEETING OF THE STOP JROTC COMMITTEE IS:
MONDAY,JANUARY 7, 7:00 P.M.
474 VALENCIA STREET, FIRST FLOOR, Room 145 (To the left as you come in, and all the way to the back of the long hallway, then, to the right.)
School Board Cowers Behind Phony JROTC "Task Force"
by Marc Norton
Dec. 12‚ 2007
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5194
Five members of the San Francisco School Board voted last night [Tuesday, December 11, 2007] to extend JROTC for a year. They pretended to act on the request of the JROTC Task Force for more time to work on an "alternative" to JROTC. In fact, they are taking their marching orders from the Pentagon. Only Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez had the moxie to say no to the war-makers.
Beyond Chron has acquired copies of the meeting notes of the JROTC Task Force through early October. Our review of these notes reveals that the task force is actually in the business of blocking the creation of any alternative to JROTC -- the exact opposite of its mandate. Their request for more time is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Reliable sources tell us that Sanchez admits that the board was "played" by the task force.
The School Board voted in November 2006 to phase out JROTC, and to create a task force to look for an "alternative." Then, for five long months, from November through April, nothing happened. There was no task force, no meetings, nothing.
The task force was finally convened by school district officials for the first time, on April 17 -- chosen in secret, and meeting completely outside of any public view. The task force was a collection of JROTC instructors (all retired military officers), school district bureaucrats and a couple of students. There was only one identifiable opponent of JROTC, a relatively mild-mannered gentleman from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
At this meeting, the group fumbled around with some discussion about their mission and various "protocols," and then adjourned for a month.
When they met again, on May 16, one of their first orders of business was to vote on whether to meet once or twice a month. They opted 9-0 to meet once a month, obviously not in any big hurry. They also confirmed that their meetings would remain closed to the public.
Next, Col. Powell offered that they were "developing a survey" of JROTC students. They heard a presentation from former JROTC cadet Daniel "Jane Kim needs to die" Chin. They spent a lot of time discussing whether or not JROTC instructors were certified to teach PE classes for credit, groused about the financial impact of expanded PE classes, and then adjourned for another month.
By their third meeting, on June 29, they were already complaining about not having enough time. "At the rate we are going - we will surely need more time," say the meeting notes. They also had "a discussion... regarding lack of attendance."
At this point -- the school district and the task force having done next-to-nothing to look at alternatives to JROTC for over seven months -- a motion was made to ask for a one-year extension. The motion passed 6-1.
The task force then adjourned for two months.
At their next meeting, on August 29, they had a "discussion of what surveys are available to survey students," produced a "timeline" for their work incorporating their proposed extension of JROTC, and revised the language of the proposed board resolution for the proposed extension.
They met again on October 3. This is the last meeting for which we have notes. They worked again on the "wording on the time line." The student survey had apparently not been sent out yet, as they were still discussing what questions to ask.
Having exhausted themselves with complaining about not having enough time to do their job, they finally had a couple of presentations about possible "alternative" programs. First, they heard a presentation by a retired SF police officer who teaches a "police" class at a charter school. The teacher himself stated that "he does not believe his class would work as a replacement for the JROTC programs."
They next discussed a class taught by a captain in the San Francisco fire department. The task force then left it to the AFSC member to get hard copies of the curriculum from these two programs.
They concluded this meeting with a "closing conversation," including a comment from the AFSC member that "we do not seem to be very close to having a replacement program." No kidding, Sherlock.
And so it goes. At the rate this task force is going, they will need an extension for a decade, not a year.
For all the talk about JROTC teaching "leadership," the task force set up to find an alternative has shown no leadership at all -- unless you call diddling and dallying "leadership." That seems to match just fine the kind of leadership that we see from the majority of the school board.
In the words of Henry David Thoreau: "...most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God."
It is unlikely that Thoreau, writing in 1849, had school board members Jane Kim, Kim-Shree Maufaus, Hydra Mendoza, Jill Wynns and Norman Yee in mind. But he nonetheless described them perfectly. Except, maybe, for the part about not "intending it."
Next: JROTC and military recruitment -- and the fightback.
Copyright © 2007 by Marc Norton
Marc Norton is a bellman at a small hotel in downtown San Francisco. Contact him at nortonsf@ix.netcom.com, or through his website at www.MarcNorton.us
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SUPPORT THE DAY AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
SEE THE "TODAY SHOW" STORY ON MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=31683df5-5f31-403d-a34d-2e5290d1cc02
From: LACFreeMumia@aol.com
A ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Mumia's case, based on the hearing in Philadelphia on May 17th 2007, is expected momentarily. Freeing Mumia immediately is what is needed, but that is not an option before this court. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal calls on everyone who supports Mumia‚s case for freedom, to rally the day after a decision comes down. Here are Bay Area day-after details:
OAKLAND:
14th and Broadway, near the Federal Building
4:30 to 6:30 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or on Monday if the ruling comes down on a Friday.
Oakland demonstration called by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, to be held if the Court upholds the death sentence, or denies Mumia's appeals for a new trial or a new hearing. info at (510) 839-0852 or pdcbayarea@sbcglobal.org
SAN FRANCISCO:
Federal Courthouse, 7th & Mission
5 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or Monday if the decision comes down on a Friday
San Francisco demo called by the Mobilization To Free Mumia,
info at (415) 255-1085 or www.freemumia.org
Day-after demonstrations are also planned in:
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver
and other cities internationally.
A National Demonstration is to be held in Philadelphia, 3rd Saturday after the decision
For more information, contact: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.mumia.org;
Partisan Defense Committee, www.partisandefense.org;
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), www.freemumia.com;
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS INNOCENT!
World-renowned journalist, death-row inmate and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is completely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Mountains of evidence--unheard or ignored by the courts--shows this. He is a victim, like thousands of others, of the racist, corrupt criminal justice system in the US; only in his case, there is an added measure of political persecution. Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, and is still an outspoken and active critic of the on-going racism and imperialism of the US. They want to silence him more than they want to kill him.
Anyone who has ever been victimized by, protested or been concerned about the racist travesties of justice meted out to blacks in the US, as well as attacks on immigrants, workers and revolutionary critics of the system, needs to take a close look at the frame-up of Mumia. He is innocent, and he needs to be free.
FREE MUMIA NOW!
END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FOR MASS PROTESTS AND LABOR ACTION TO FREE MUMIA!
In 1995, mass mobilizations helped save Mumia from death.
In 1999, longshore workers shut West Coast ports to free Mumia, and teachers in Oakland and Rio de Janeiro held teach-ins and stop-works.
Mumia needs powerful support again now. Come out to free Mumia!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610
510.763.2347
LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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Help end the war by supporting the troops who have refused to fight it.
Please sign the appeal online:
"DEAR CANADA: LET U.S. WAR RESISTERS STAY!"
"I am writing from the United States to ask you to make a provision for sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military servicemembers currently in Canada, most of whom have traveled to your country in order to resist fighting in the Iraq War. Please let them stay in Canada..."
To sign the appeal or for more information:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/canada
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to three key Canadian officials--Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, and Stéphane Dion, Liberal Party--via international first class mail.
In collaboration with War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), this effort comes at a critical juncture in the international campaign for asylum for U.S. war resisters in Canada.
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We, the Undersigned, endorse the following petition:
FedEx Ground: Your Drivers Deserve to be Treated Fairly!
Target: Dave Rebholz, President and CEO of FedEx Ground
Sponsor: American Rights at Work
More than 15,000 FedEx Ground drivers don't have a voice at work, or the ability to stand up to the company. These men and women work long hours, often without benefits, are frequently harassed and even fired for supporting a union.
What's more, FedEx makes the drivers lease their own trucks (which cost around $40,000) so quitting can mean losing a major personal investment. Unions are often their only recourse.
FedEx Ground advertises efficiency and professionalism, but their anti-union posters and the distribution of anti-union videos show they're more about pushing their own agenda.
A new report shows that when anti-union persuasion fails, there's outright bullying. High-level management arrive on the scene to harass, isolate, retaliate against and even fire union supporters!
Resorting to nasty labor tactics to increase company profits is just not right.
Demand that FedEx Ground give benefits and respect to the people who make the company so successful!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/625027652?z00m=11867690
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Next Antiwar Coalition meeting Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
474 Valencia St.
The OCT. 27 COALITION met Saturday, November 18. After a long discussion and evaluation of the Oct. 27 action, the group decided to meet again, Sunday, January 6, at 1:00 P.M. at CENTRO DEL PUEBLO, 474 Valencia Street, SF (Near 16th Street) to assess further action.
Everyone felt the demonstration was very successful and, in fact, that the San Francisco demonstration was the largest in the country and, got the most press coverage. Everyone felt the "die in" was extremely effective and the convergence added to the scope of the demonstration.
Please keep a note of the date of the next coalition meeting:
Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
EXPLORATORY LETTER: UNIFIED NATIONAL ACTION DURING MARCH 2008:
The regional antiwar demonstrations on October 27th were a great success.. The Boston mobilization organized by New England United (NEU) drew about 10,000 people, including many new activists and young people. Nationally, tens of thousands demanded an end to war and occupation now.
The NEU-sponsored action on October 27 was endorsed by a broad range of over 200 organizations. At a follow-up meeting, many members of NEU believed that we should build on this momentum by bringing together the antiwar movement in unified national protest in the spring for the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.
Reasons given included: 1) March will be the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and the antiwar movement must come together to demand an end to this war now; 2) The war plans against Iran are intensifying, and we have to fight now to stop a war on Iran before it's too late. At the same time, it was recognized that successful national action in the spring would require a broad base of support from antiwar organizations around the country. Therefore, NEU decided to create a working group to assess the level of support for such an action, and report back to our next general meeting in December with both an assessment of support, and a detailed proposal for a unified national mobilization in the spring. As an indication of growing interest in national action, Cindy Sheehan is convening a peace summit in San Francisco in January to help develop a unified strategy for the peace movement and to develop a plan for a unified national mobilization in DC during the March anniversary of the Iraq war.
A strong base of support from the grass-roots organizations around the country will be necessary to make unified national action a reality. If your organization is interested in planning for unified national action in March, please contact us as soon as possible at the following email address: spring2008@lists.riseup.net . Thank you. Spring Mobilization working group New England United http://www.newenglandunited.org/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Supreme Court Says Crack Sentences Can Be Reduced
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Crack-Cocaine.html?hp
2) The Neediest Cases
When Part-Time Work Isn’t Enough to Pay the Rent
By JOHN SULLIVAN
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/nyregion/10neediest.html?ref=nyregion
3) Advertising: The ’60s as the Good Old Days
By STUART ELLIOTT
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/business/media/10adcol.html?ref=business
4) Pete Seeger and the ‘One Blue Sky Above Us’
By Andrew C. Revkin
Video
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/pete-seeger-and-the-one-blue-sky-above-us/index.html?ref=science
5) Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue
By PETER GELLING
December 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/asia/06indo.html?ref=science
6) Medicare Cuts Payout on 2 Cancer Drugs
By ALEX BERENSON
December 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/business/07drug.html?ref=health
7) Justice in Sentencing
Editorial
December 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/opinion/12wed1.html?hp
8) Wall Street's Bad Boys and Their Washington Enablers
Banksters Gone Wild
By PAM MARTENS
December 7, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens12072007.html
9) Appeals court throws out parts of anti-terror law as too vague
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
10) Omaha Night
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 6, 2007
Prisonradio.org
11) Teaching False History (And Its Consequences)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 8, 2007
Prisonradio.org
12) Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans
Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US
December 11, 2007
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/156081/1/
13) C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods
By SCOTT SHANE
December 13, 2007
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/washington/13inquire.html?ref=world
14) Charity’s Share From Shopping Raises Concern
By STEPHANIE STROM
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13giving.html?ref=us
15) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
16) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
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1) Supreme Court Says Crack Sentences Can Be Reduced
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Crack-Cocaine.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday said judges may impose shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes, enhancing judicial discretion to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine powder.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
''In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines' treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion.
The decision was announced ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets the guidelines, that could cut prison time for up to an estimated 19,500 federal inmates convicted of crack crimes.
The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change. Tuesday's vote is whether to apply the guidelines retroactively.
In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also said judges have discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.
The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term.
The guidelines were established by the Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction, in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.
Justice Samuel Alito, who dissented with Justice Clarence Thomas in both cases, said that after Tuesday's decisions, ''Sentencing disparities will gradually increase.''
Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder. The law also sets maximum terms.
Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms.
Kimbrough is among the remaining 30 percent who, under the guidelines, get even more time in prison because they are convicted of trafficking in more than the amount of crack that triggers the minimum sentences.
''A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion'' to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough, Ginsburg said.
In the other case, the court, also by a 7-2 vote, upheld a sentence of probation for Brian Gall for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 pills of ecstasy. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs several years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business. The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.
''The sentence imposed by the experienced district judge in this case was reasonable,'' Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens formed the majority in both cases.
The cases are Kimbrough v. U.S., 06-6330, and Gall v. U.S., 06-7949.
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2) The Neediest Cases
When Part-Time Work Isn’t Enough to Pay the Rent
By JOHN SULLIVAN
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/nyregion/10neediest.html?ref=nyregion
Some days, Adelle Doulin feels as if she is on a treadmill. No matter how fast she runs, she cannot get ahead.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Doulin left the office building where she works on lower Broadway and walked though the narrow streets of the financial district. At a coffee shop near the massive stone vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ms. Doulin worried about how she would make her monthly rent of $1,500.
“If I could just catch up,” she said.
Ms. Doulin, 45, has held clerical and administrative positions at banks and financial firms for 20 years, but a series of job losses has left her behind on her rent. Ms. Doulin, a single parent with a 10-year-old daughter, fears that if she cannot make her payments, she will be evicted from her apartment in the High Bridge neighborhood in the Bronx.
“I have lived there for 17 years,” she said. “It is a nightmare.”
She took a buyout several years ago to care for her mother, who was suffering from diabetes. After her mother died, Ms. Doulin went back to work, but could not find a full-time job. Since then, she has worked for temporary agencies.
“There are not many job openings right now,” she said. “Most companies are using temps.”
Ms. Doulin says the work is fine but temporary jobs do not offer the same benefits she received as a full-time worker.
“As a temp, I don’t get holidays or sick days,” she said. “I don’t have medical benefits. If I get sick, I would have to go to the emergency room.”
Ms. Doulin has an assignment performing data entry and back-office tasks for a bank. She takes the subway to work after taking her daughter, Sekai, to school. Ms. Doulin’s brother picks up Sekai after dismissal and stays with her until Ms. Doulin returns home in the evening.
Ms. Doulin has a high school diploma and a number of credits toward her college degree, but like many single parents, she does not have a lot of time for outside interests. Money is also tight. Recently, she took Sekai skating at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.
“I work and I take her around,” Ms. Doulin said. “She is my hobby.”
After meeting with a social worker from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Doulin got money from the fund to catch up on her rent in April. But a drop in work hours over the summer caused her to fall behind again this autumn. Representing herself in housing court, Ms. Doulin won some extra time to make up the missing rent payments, but is unsure how to make the money she needs.
Ms. Doulin now holds a steady long-term assignment, so right now paying the rent is not a problem. But she owes $2,500 in back rent and fees, and is worried about getting that money.
“If I could catch up, I could keep up with it,” she said. “I can’t pay the back rent and the current rent; I just can’t.”
At a hearing in housing court the day before Thanksgiving, Ms. Doulin delivered an additional $1,000 to her landlord. She plans to make smaller payments to try to make up the amount she owes, but fears she will fall further behind when the next payment comes due.
“What I will do is: Every week when I get paid I will send them something,” she said. “But then December is going to roll around.”
Ms. Doulin paused, trying to think of a solution that had evaded her so far.
“I need some help, but I don’t really know where to go,” she said softly.
Time was up, and Ms. Doulin had to hurry back to work. Rain dripped from a sidewalk shed as she hurried along Nassau Street.
“I really like the apartment I am in now,” she said. “It is really nice, and I don’t want to leave. But if it comes down to that, it is going to happen.”
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3) Advertising: The ’60s as the Good Old Days
By STUART ELLIOTT
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/business/media/10adcol.html?ref=business
IF you remember the ’60s, as a popular saying goes, you probably weren’t there. No matter. Madison Avenue is taking you back with a skein of campaigns celebrating sights and sounds of the decade.
The ads are filled with images like Volkswagen buses festooned with groovy graffiti, daisies and other power flowers, peace signs, psychedelic drawings in DayGlo colors and hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen (to quote a lyric from the era).
Music, too, is being used to invoke the 1960s. Commercials on television, radio and the Internet play tunes like “Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful (1966), “Gimme Some Lovin’ ” by the Spencer Davis Group (1967) and “On the Road Again” by Canned Heat (1968).
The trend may have started in summer 2006 when Ameriprise Financial introduced a campaign with Dennis Hopper, a symbol of the counterculture for his roles in films like “Easy Rider.” It has since expanded to brands like Geico insurance, Lucky jeans, Total cereal and U. S. Trust.
What is most intriguing about the trend is that the ads present many of the contentious aspects of the ’60s — the protests, the hippies, the challenge to authority — in a positive, even romanticized light.
For instance, a trippy-looking commercial for Total, sold by General Mills, begins, “The ’60s were about change, defying convention,” and ends by proclaiming the cereal as the best breakfast “for mind and body.”
During the ’60s, mass marketers avoided such language, fearful of alienating mainstream consumers. The approach is also a far cry from the demonization of the decade that still pervades political advertising, as evidenced by recent commercials for Senator John McCain that attacked Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a product of the ’60s culture.
•
“There are a lot of good things that came out of the ’60s,” said Larry Meli, president and chief operating officer at the AmericanLife TV Network in Washington. “It’s time to point them out.”
AmericanLife TV, which offers reruns of ’60s series like “Lost in Space” and “Mission: Impossible,” is changing its logo to a daisy from a star. The switch is meant to remind baby boomers of the “flower power” slogan as well as a commercial from the 1964 presidential campaign, titled “Daisy,” that portrayed Barry M. Goldwater, who ran against Lyndon B. Johnson, as a warmonger.
“Being more precisely relevant to the audience you’re trying to address is a good thing,” said Ted Ward, vice president for marketing at Geico in Washington, part of Berkshire Hathaway. “There’s a huge opportunity in the baby-boomer group for us to continue to grow our business.”
Geico is running a commercial and a print ad depicting a VW bus decorated with phrases like “right on” and “far out.” The ads are created by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
“Having been from that era, I can relate,” Mr. Ward said, although, he joked, “I never owned that bus.” His Volkswagens of choice, he recalled, were two Beetles and a Karmann Ghia.
U. S. Trust, part of Bank of America, also displays a VW bus in a campaign by another Interpublic agency, Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos in Boston. The ads depict a wealthy man today and flash back to show him decades ago, surrounded by friends, inside a bus on a beach.
“The most valuable car in his collection isn’t the Ferrari, the Cobra or the Aston Martin,” a headline declares, “but a 1968 bus.” (Actually, the owner seems to have borrowed parts from models from other years.)
For people in U. S. Trust’s intended audience, “the ’60s “was a formative time in their lives, their wonder years,” said Anne Finucane, chief marketing officer at Bank of America in Boston.
The bus is a symbol “of the values you grew up with, the values that made you successful and the values you want to pass on to your children,” she added.
Indeed, the children of the baby boomers are another reason it is suddenly the time of the season for the ’60s.
“The kids are realizing what that generation was all about and what their fathers and mothers contributed,” said George Lois, who with his son, Luke, is creating a campaign for AmericanLife TV that carries the theme “For baby boomers and their babies.”
The campaign, from an agency in New York aptly named Good Karma Creative, pairs parents and offspring, like the actress Susan Sarandon and her daughter, Eva Amurri; Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair magazine, and his son, Ash; and the artist James Rosenquist and his daughter, Lily.
Ms. Amurri, for example, praises the way her mother’s generation worked to “change the world” by supporting women’s liberation and opposing the Vietnam War. And Ash Carter describes how his father took part in the movements for racial equality and against the war.
The echo effect from an unpopular conflict that polarized a nation four decades ago has not gone unnoticed.
“I’d like to think that the recent trend of using hippie and flower-power songs and tracks is actually a subliminally subversive tactic,” said Josh Rabinowitz, senior vice president and director for music at the Grey Group in New York, part of the WPP Group, “tapping into a subtle yet palpable collective consumer dissent with the Iraq war.”
For those who may dispute such a political perspective, Mr. Rabinowitz offered another rationale for the music’s comeback: It sounds good.
The songs appeal to a younger demographic as much as they do to boomers, he said, because they are reminiscent of the “indie-inflected” songs heard on TV series like “Grey’s Anatomy” and in films like “Garden State.”
Reactions to the ads are so far predominantly positive, the executives say.
“A lot of people are noticing” the Total campaign, said Ann Hayden, worldwide creative director on the General Mills account at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe.
“It gives us a starting point for getting people to rethink the brand,” she added.
•
At Geico, which closely tracks the response to its campaigns, Mr. Ward said the VW bus ads “are working.”
For U. S. Trust, Ms. Finucane said, there will be “more ads coming” with a ’60s vibe because “many of our customers identify with it.”
There may also be ads aimed at wealthy investors who fondly recall the ’70s. Asked if they will use symbols of that decade, like spinning disco balls, Ms. Finucane replied, “I hope not.”
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4) Pete Seeger and the ‘One Blue Sky Above Us’
By Andrew C. Revkin
Video
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/pete-seeger-and-the-one-blue-sky-above-us/index.html?ref=science
I went to talk to a folk singer about global warming over the weekend. There are some who would say that that’s silly, even irresponsible, given the weighty scientific and economic issues that lie at the interface between energy policy and the atmosphere.
But actually, a folk singer — in this case Pete Seeger — has just as legitimate a place at the table as a first grader, a retiree, a coal-industry lobbyist, a climate scientist or one of the diplomats negotiating in Bali over how to revive an ailing climate treaty.
That’s because the debate over next steps is as much about values as data. The consequences of various decisions over greenhouse gases are framed by science. But choices made by countries, communities and individuals are being shaped by a mix of history, geographic circumstance, money and – especially – values.
Mr. Seeger, at 88, has for many decades been writing and performing songs exploring values and rights, the interplay of people and the planet, and what one community or generation owes another. Whatever you think of his views, he’s clearly part of the national and global conversation.
At a climate rally on Saturday in his hometown, Beacon, N.Y., he sang “My Rainbow Race,” a 1967 song that has become something of an anthem for climate campaigners of late because the lyrics speak of the atmosphere (and oceans) as shared resources.
One blue sky above us,
One ocean lapping all our shores,
One Earth so green and round,
Who could ask for more?
They also, in classic Pete Seeger fashion, toss a dart at those impeding change.
Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
And they speak of intergenerational obligations, which I explored here not long ago in a post asking “What does the present owe the future?”
Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all their mothers and fathers, too –
Now’s our last chance to learn to share
What’s been given to me and you.
It’s not just banner-waving environmentalists and banjo-plucking folkies who see values as a key to the climate question. Last week, Jerry Taylor, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, chided a group of climate scientists for issuing a call in Bali for sharp cuts in greenhouse gases, saying their expertise in climate science gave them no special standing to dictate how society should respond to warming.
In the meantime, how do you personally weigh the costs of changing from unfettered burning of the fuels of convenience — coal and oil — which have created so much wealth, for the sake of limiting future risks?
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5) Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue
By PETER GELLING
December 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/asia/06indo.html?ref=science
KUALA CENAKU, Indonesia, Dec. 1 — Here on the island of Sumatra, about 1,200 miles from the global climate talks under way on Bali, are some of the world’s fastest-disappearing forests.
A look at this vast wasteland of charred stumps and dried-out peat makes the fight to save Indonesia’s forests seem nearly impossible.
“What can we possibly do to stop this?” said Pak Helman, 28, a villager here in Riau Province, surveying the scene from his leaking wooden longboat. “I feel lost. I feel abandoned.”
In recent years, dozens of pulp and paper companies have descended on Riau, which is roughly the size of Switzerland, snatching up generous government concessions to log and establish palm oil plantations. The results have caused villagers to feel panic.
Only five years ago, Mr. Helman said, he earned nearly $100 a week catching shrimp. Now, he said, logging has poisoned the rivers snaking through the heart of Riau, and he is lucky to find enough shrimp to earn $5 a month.
Responding to global demand for palm oil, which is used in cooking and cosmetics and, lately, in an increasingly popular biodiesel, companies have been claiming any land they can.
Fortunately, from Mr. Helman’s point of view, the issue of Riau’s disappearing forests has become a global one. He is now a volunteer for Greenpeace, which has established a camp in his village to monitor what it calls an impending Indonesian “carbon bomb.”
Deforestation, during which carbon stored in trees is released into the atmosphere, now accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to scientists. And Indonesia releases more carbon dioxide through deforestation than any other country.
Within Indonesia, the situation is most critical in Riau. In the past 10 years, nearly 60 percent of the province’s forests have been logged, burned and pulped, according to Jikalahari, a local environmental group.
“This is very serious — the world needs to act now,” said Susanto Kurniawan, a coordinator for Jikalahari who regularly makes the arduous trip into the forest from the nearby city of Pekanbaru, passing long lines of trucks carting palm oil and wood. “In a few years it will be too late.”
The rate of this deforestation is rising as oil prices reach new highs, leading more industries to turn to biodiesel made from palm oil, which, in theory, is earth-friendly. But its use is causing more harm than good, environmental groups say, because companies slash and burn huge swaths of trees to make way for palm oil plantations.
Even more significant, the burning and drying of Riau’s carbon-rich peatlands, also to make way for palm oil plantations, releases about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year, according to Greenpeace officials.
But it is also in Riau that a new global strategy for conserving forests in developing countries might begin. A small area of Riau’s remaining forest will become a test case if an international carbon-trading plan called REDD is adopted.
REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, is to be one of the central topics of discussion at the Bali conference. Essentially, it would involve payments by wealthy countries to developing countries for every hectare of forest they do not cut down.
Indonesia, caught between its own financial interest in the palm oil industry and the growing international demands for conservation, has been promoting the carbon-trading plan for months.
But there are plenty of skeptics, who doubt it will be possible to measure just how much carbon is being conserved — and who question whether the lands involved can be protected from illegal logging and corruption.
Illegal logging is commonplace in Indonesia, and though the government has prosecuted dozens of cases in recent years, it says it cannot be everywhere. Companies in this remote area are cultivating land legally sold to them by the Indonesian government, but maps of their projects obtained by Greenpeace indicate that many of them have also moved into protected areas.
Critics say corruption is their biggest concern. The most famous illegal logger in Indonesia, Adelin Lis, who operated in North Sumatra, was arrested this year, only to be acquitted by a court in Medan, the provincial capital. He then left the country.
The attorney general’s office has opened a corruption investigation into judges and the police in Medan, and says there are many similar cases. “There are a number of ongoing investigations into corruption that has allowed illegal loggers from all over Indonesia to go free,” said Thomson Siagian, a spokesman for the attorney general. “In such a lucrative industry, payoffs are common.”
At the Bali conference, the Woods Hole Research Center, an environmental group based in the United States, has presented research showing that new satellite technology can make it more feasible to track illegal logging. Reports “show that radar imagery from new sensors recently placed in orbit can solve the problem of monitoring reductions in tropical deforestation, which previously was a major obstacle because of cloud cover that optical sensors can’t see through,” said John P. Holdren, the center’s director.
Such developments are good news to Mr. Helman, the villager in Riau who, using his wooden boat, has been ferrying a steady stream of foreign environmentalists and journalists in and out of the forest in recent weeks.
“I am so thankful for the recent attention,” he said, tinkering with the sputtering engine. “At times it seems too late. But I see some hope now.”
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6) Medicare Cuts Payout on 2 Cancer Drugs
By ALEX BERENSON
December 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/business/07drug.html?ref=health
New Medicare rules for a small but promising class of cancer drugs may cause thousands of lymphoma patients to lose access to the treatment, which in some cases is the only therapy available to them.
The drugs’ makers and patient advocacy groups say the changes will sharply cut reimbursement for the medicines next year, and they predict that many hospitals will stop offering the treatments. The Medicare changes come just as new data provides additional evidence that the medicines, called Bexxar and Zevalin, are effective.
The drugs are given to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the fifth-most-common cancer, and are usually prescribed for patients who have not responded to other therapies and who have few remaining treatment options. Clinical trial data show that they put the disease into remission for years in many of those patients.
Under the new rules, after Jan. 1, Medicare will reimburse hospitals about $16,000 for each treatment with the drugs, which a patient needs to receive only once. GlaxoSmithKline, which markets Bexxar, says it is priced at almost $30,000 a treatment, and Biogen Idec, which sells Zevalin, says it costs nearly as much. While high, such prices are not unusual for new cancer therapies, which can cost $50,000 or more for a year of treatment.
Senior Medicare officials say they are not trying to prevent hospitals from giving Bexxar and Zevalin. They say that $16,000 is a fair price and is based on the actual prices hospitals have paid for the medicines this year.
Zevalin was introduced in 2002, and Bexxar in 2003. Until now, Medicare has reimbursed each hospital claim individually, without setting a single nationwide price for the drug. The practice has resulted in wildly varying reimbursement, Medicare says.
But the companies say Medicare’s data must be inaccurate and that no hospital will offer the drugs to Medicare patients if it is losing $10,000 or more on each treatment.
Hospitals typically do not disclose their reimbursement rates, or whether they make money on any given treatment. The American Hospital Association declined to comment on the matter.
Under federal rules, hospitals that do not offer a drug to Medicare patients are barred from offering it to other patients, even if their insurers fully cover the cost of treatment. Because Bexxar and Zevalin contain radioactive material, the drugs must be administered by specially licensed technicians and doctors. They are usually given in hospitals.
Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for Glaxo, said the company had voluntarily submitted its pricing data to Medicare to prove that the hospital claims data was wrong. “Our feeling is there is a flaw in the methodology,” Ms. Alspach said.
Doctors, lymphoma patients and advocacy groups say they do not understand Medicare’s decision. About 60,000 people are diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma every year, and 20,000 people die of the disease.
“The explanation that they’re giving is really flawed,” said Dr. Mark Kaminski, the co-director of the leukemia and lymphoma transplant program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kaminski helped discover Bexxar two decades ago and receives a royalty for it.
Bexxar and Zevalin are part of a new class of drugs called radioimmunotherapies. They combine a radioactive particle with a biologically engineered molecule that attaches to cancerous white blood cells.
In clinical trials, they have proven as good as or better than standard treatments for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. In a trial of 414 patients scheduled to be discussed next Monday at a hematology conference, the combination of Zevalin and chemotherapy put lymphoma into remission for three years on average, compared with one year for chemotherapy alone.
Marion Swan, a spokeswoman for the Lymphoma Research Foundation, says the drugs are the only option for some patients. “Our No. 1 concern is that patients have access to all viable treatment options,” she said, “and it looks like this might be denying access.”
The drugs can require private cancer doctors to transfer their patients to hospitals, and the private doctors may view the hospitals as competitors. As a result, fewer than 10 percent of patients who are candidates for the drugs get them.
Advocates for the drugs had hoped that new clinical trial evidence, like the Zevalin data that will be presented next week, would persuade more doctors to prescribe them. Now they worry that Medicare’s decision will end most use of the drugs and chill the development of other radioimmunotherapies.
“If you can’t get two products that basically hit home runs into the marketplace, there’s very little incentive for further development,” Dr. Kaminski said.
Herb B. Kuhn, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency overseeing Medicare, said that the agency recognized the value of the drugs. But, he said, Medicare does not want to overpay for the medicines and believes that hospital data is the most accurate way to set reimbursement.
But most other drugs administered via injection in doctors’ offices or hospital outpatient clinics — as Bexxar and Zevalin are — are not reimbursed on the basis of what hospitals say they have paid. Instead, companies report the average price of their drugs to Medicare. Medicare then reimburses doctors and hospitals at that price, plus a 6 percent fee to cover handling costs.
GlaxoSmithKline said it had asked Medicare to switch to that system for Bexxar. So far, Medicare has refused.
Lymphoma patients, meanwhile, are anxiously watching the fight between Medicare and the companies.
Lora Beckwith, 66, first learned she had the disease in 2004. So far, her illness has progressed slowly, but last month, she was told that she would probably need treatment by February.
Because Ms. Beckwith, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., has Parkinson’s disease, she cannot receive standard chemotherapy for the disease, making Bexxar and Zevalin among her only alternatives. Now she fears she may not be able to get them.
“I’m not usually a vengeful or resentful person,” she said. “But I am feeling a bit resentful about having this taken away — if I can’t have access to a drug that would extend my life.”
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7) Justice in Sentencing
Editorial
December 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/opinion/12wed1.html?hp
With a pair of 7-2 rulings this week, the Supreme Court struck a blow for basic fairness and judicial independence. The court restored a vital measure of discretion to federal trial judges to impose sentences based on their assessment of a particular crime and defendant rather than being forced to adhere to overarching guidelines.
Beyond that, one of the rulings highlighted the longstanding injustice of federal guidelines and statutes imposing much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine, which is most often found in impoverished communities, than for offenses involving the chemically identical powdered cocaine, which is popular among more affluent users.
The rulings provide fresh impetus for Congress to rewrite the grotesquely unfair crack cocaine laws on which the federal sentencing guidelines are partly based. Those laws are a relic of the 1980s, when it was widely but wrongly believed that the crack form of cocaine was more dangerous than the powder form. We are pleased that the United States Sentencing Commission recently called for reducing sentences for some categories of offenders and has now called for applying the change retroactively. The real work still lies with Congress, which needs to rewrite the law.
Building on a 2005 decision that held the sentencing guidelines to be advisory rather than mandatory, the new rulings affirm that the guidelines are but one factor to be considered by a trial judge in arriving at an individual sentence, and that an appeals court must have a strong reason to overturn that sentence.
In one of the cases, the justices supported a district judge in Virginia who gave a military veteran convicted of crack dealing a sentence of 15 years, rather than the 19-22 years that the guidelines recommended. The ruling described the federal crack law as “disproportionate and unjust.” Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that it would not be an abuse of a discretion for a trial judge to conclude that the crack/powder disparity resulted in a longer-than-necessary sentence for a particular defendant.
In the other case, the court found that a trial judge was within his rights to impose a light sentence on a man briefly involved in selling the drug Ecstasy while in college. In reviewing sentences, wrote Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority, appellate courts must apply a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard to trial judges’ decisions.
There is a danger that the new procedures outlined by the court could end up making federal sentences unfairly disparate across the country, undermining one of the important objectives of having sentencing guidelines in the first place. If that happens, Congress will have to address the problem. For the moment, the Supreme Court’s latest adjustment in sentencing strikes us as a positive development, one with much potential for advancing justice.
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8) Wall Street's Bad Boys and Their Washington Enablers
Banksters Gone Wild
By PAM MARTENS
December 7, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens12072007.html
Imagine you moved in next door to a mischievous child. Over the years, you watched the parents scold ever so lightly as the deviant behavior grew from stealing loose change to petty larceny to bank robbery. You knew for sure the child would eventually get caught and end up in prison; but you didn't count on one thing: the parents used their political clout with each ratcheting up of the crimes to avoid prosecution, effectively turning the overseers of the public interest into criminal enablers. As the enablers "fixed" the outcome of each crime, they also sealed the records from public view and historical perspective.
That scenario typifies how criminal behavior has exploded on Wall Street and why President Bush, Congress and the regulators are stumbling around in the dark looking for cures for a financial crisis that they can neither understand nor contain: they're enablers in denial.
Nothing more dramatically illustrates the criminal contagion than the fact that for the second time in 13 years, Orange County, California has found Wall Street toxic sludge threatening its public funds.
Here's what happened the first time around: a Merrill Lynch stockbroker, Michael Stamenson, sold billions of dollars of complex securities to Orange County, which ran a pooled investment fund for close to 200 cities and school districts in the county. The county lost $1.7 billion when the highly leveraged fund imploded, the county filed bankruptcy, resulting in serious job losses and cutbacks in social services to the poor. In all, Merrill made approximately $100 million in fees with Stamenson collecting $4.3 million in just the two-year period of '93 and '94.
Stamenson was immortalized in evidence produced in court as the star of a Merrill Lynch training tape for rookie brokers where he maps out the road to success on Wall Street: '' the tenacity of a rattlesnake, the heart of a black widow spider and the hide of an alligator.''
As the evidence against Stamenson and higher ups at Merrill played out in court, Merrill Lynch continued to pay annual compensation of $750,000 to Stamenson and eventually settled the case for $400 million and sealed the documents. It also paid $30 million to the county to settle and abruptly end a grand jury investigation, leading to loud cries of foul play. Once again, the documents and testimony were sealed from public view. This is what consistently happens on settlement when a customer or employee attempts to sue a Wall Street firm and is ushered instead into a Wall Street Star Chamber called mandatory arbitration.
Today, Orange County is hardly an isolated case of banksters gone wild. The same type of sludge sits in public funds for schools, cities and pensions from coast to coast.
A Local Government Investment Pool in Florida recently saw a run on its assets after it was revealed that $1.5 billion of defaulted and downgraded debt, courtesy of Wall Street, was part of this supposedly safe money market fund for hundreds of towns and school districts in Florida.
Even four small Norwegian towns near the Artic Circle have lost $64 million from complex securities created by Citigroup and sold to them by a local broker, Terra Securities. Additionally, billions of dollars of the sludge sit stealthily in Mom and Pop money market funds at some of the largest and most prestigious financial institutions in the U.S.
And if the situation were not dangerous enough, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, has misdiagnosed the problem (wittingly or unwittingly). Mr. Paulson would have you believe that if he can help enough people avoid foreclosure on their homes, by changing their teaser mortgage rate to a fixed rate on their subprime loan, he will have taken a big step forward in alleviating the financial crisis. While any constructive step to keep people in their homes is to be applauded, what is blowing up all over the globe is not just subprime mortgages. The real problem arises from Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) and Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) which, just like Enron, hide enormous amounts of debt from public scrutiny, making companies appear more profitable and solvent than they really are.
Mainstream media has also been implanting the idea that it's all about homeowners and mortgage loans instead of banksters hiding bad debt. On December 5, 2007, the Associated Press, which is syndicated to newspapers across the country, carried this inaccurate statement: "SIVs are investment funds created by banks like Citigroup Inc. or HSBC Holdings PLC and sold to investors. The funds borrow short-term money and use it to buy mortgage debt, profiting off the difference between what they collect on the mortgage debt and what they pay to borrow." [Italicized emphasis added.]
Mortgage debt? According to Citigroup, the largest purveyor of the black hole SIVs with over $83 billion in seven SIVs as of September 30, 2007, 58% of its SIV holdings is financial institution debt, with 32% mortgage related, 5% student loans, 4% credit cards and 1% other. It goes on to say that just $70 million of this $83 billion has indirect exposure to U.S. subprime assets. On November 30, 2007, Moody's put on review for possible downgrade (as well as actual downgrades on some securities) debt totaling $64.9 billion that was issued by six Citigroup SIVs. [1]
In other words, financial institution debt, together with imploding mortgages, off balance sheet mountains of debt and the worst transparency we've had since 1929, are the full set of problems.
Why would positioning this crisis by the President or U.S. Treasury Secretary as a subprime mortgage problem be preferable to laying out the full scope of the crisis to the American people?
To state the truth would be admitting that the Bush administration and its crony capitalists failed to properly audit the largest banks in America; failed to pay attention as they stashed hundreds of billions of dollars off their balance sheets in a replay of Enronomics; failed to prosecute the banksters when they parked this toxic waste in Mom and Pop money market funds across the country; and failed to jail the banksters before they burned down the bank and became a global threat to financial stability.
Now, these very same banks don't know what's hidden off each others balance sheets, how much their largest industrial customers have hidden off balance sheet, courtesy of Citigroup's propensity to set up SPEs for others; if the bank that is a counterparty to its credit-default swaps is going to be in business when those insurance policies are most needed. Therefore, they say, we'll just stop doing business with each other since we're all guilty by association with the same corrupt enablers in Washington.
And while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Reserve Board (FRB), and Congress bear much blame for the financial crisis, the Office of the Controller of the Currency (OCC) stands out as the quintessential enabler of corruption on Wall Street.
Consider the July 25, 2007 testimony of the Consumer Federation of America on behalf of itself and other leading consumer groups to the Committee on Financial Services in the U.S. House of Representatives:
Any discussion about the quality of federal financial services regulation must begin by mentioning the “elephant in the living room....” The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Watters vs. Wachovia Bank, N.A., upheld a regulation by the Department of Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that permits operating subsidiaries of national banks to violate state laws with impunity. The court ruled that the bank’s operating subsidiary is subject to OCC superintendence – even if there effectively is none – and not the licensing, reporting and visitorial regimes of the states in which the subsidiary operates...The OCC has even sought to prevent state attorneys general and regulators from enforcing state laws that it concedes are not preempted. The recent court ruling encourages national banks and their subsidiaries to ignore even the most reasonable of state consumer laws.
To underscore that the overarching problem here is an interbank crisis of confidence over black holes of corruption and crony regulation, rather than the narrowly defined "subprime mortgage mess," let's look at the time line of what happened. Beginning this past July, the credit-default swaps of a British bank, Northern Rock, begin to tick higher; by August, they made an additional sharp move upward, signaling a solvency problem. In September, there's a run on the bank (the first in Britain since 1866). The bank collapses and the Bank of England has to use taxpayer money to bail it out to the tune of approximately 29 billion pounds or close to $60 billion.
What does that have to do with a U.S. financial crisis? As it turns out, this small bank of 6,000 employees has set up Channel Island-based debt structures called Granite, stuffed them with $104 billion of U.K. residential mortgages (which are now showing an increasing propensity to default). Adding further intrigue and local outrage, the offshore trust named a charity for Down's Syndrome children as part of its funding subterfuge, without the permission or knowledge of the charity. This has sparked a full scale investigation by British authorities.
Terrifying banks on this side of the Atlantic is the knowledge that (1) two of our biggest Wall Street firms, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, underwrote tens of billions of that Channel Island paper, Granite Master Issuer, and sold it here in the U.S.; (2) Citibank, the commercial banking unit of Citigroup, is the principal paying agent; (3) big chunks of that paper, as of SEC filings on September 30, 2007, is sitting in money markets and fixed income mutual funds in the U.S., raising some serious liability issues for Citigroup and Merrill; and (4) 30 percent of the mortgages have a loan to value (LTV) ratio of 90 to 100 percent while over 50 percent have a LTV of 80 to 100 percent. [2]
It smells Enronesque and Parmalatesque (the bankrupted Italian dairy firm) to a wide swath of the legal and banking community and given that Citigroup will finally face public trials in both of these earlier swindles next year, the timing could not be less propitious for confidence building.
The British Parliament is grilling all the players and regulators for answers to the financial crisis in public hearings while here in the U.S. we prefer to fashion remedies for a financial crisis we've yet to investigate or understand.
To recap: there has been the first bank run in 140 years in Britain. We've had the first run on a public money market fund here in Florida. The U.S. debt markets have been barely functioning for four months. Our largest banks don't trust each other.
Perhaps one of the presidential candidates could leave the campaign trail long enough to prove their leadership skills by calling for emergency hearings in Congress, the venue in which we the people pay them to do the people's work.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no securities position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.
[1] Citigroup's 3rd Quarter 10Q filing with the SEC discussing its SIV
[2] Granite Master Issuer securitization filing with the SEC:
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9) Appeals court throws out parts of anti-terror law as too vague
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
A law that makes it a crime to help groups that the U.S. government considers terrorist is unconstitutionally vague and could punish Americans for advising organizations about nonviolent methods, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco invalidates portions of a 1996 federal anti-terrorism law and a set of amendments in 2004. The law prohibits knowingly providing material support or resources to a foreign organization on the State Department's terrorist list.
Those terms are so unclear, the court said, that they might be used to prosecute and imprison those who trained members of foreign organizations on "how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve ongoing disputes," or on how to lobby the United Nations for disaster relief. Violations of the law are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
"This statute essentially allows for guilt by association," said Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. Although the court did not overturn the entire law, he said, it struck down portions that would outlaw "humanitarian aid of the sort that we would want to encourage."
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the department was reviewing the ruling.
The Bush administration has used the ban on material support to terrorist organizations in several prominent cases, including the prosecution and guilty plea of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County man who joined the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh's case is not affected by Monday's ruling, which focused on support provided through advocacy and nonviolent training.
The law, the court said, "can legitimately be applied to criminalize facilitation of terrorism" in the form of weapons and other military assistance.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of organizations and individuals seeking to provide political and financial aid to two groups on the State Department terrorist list: the Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.
Kadidal said some of the plaintiffs want to train members of both organizations in peaceful conflict resolution and advocacy before the United Nations, and others, including doctors and engineers, have been trying to bring relief to areas of Sri Lanka that have been devastated by a civil war and a December 2004 tsunami. That relief requires working with the Tamil Tigers, who are effectively functioning as the government in the northern coastal area, the lawyer said.
The suit challenged provisions in the law that defined material support to include training, expert advice and services. After a federal judge and the appeals court blocked enforcement of those sections in 2003, Congress rewrote the definitions in 2004, specifying that the ban applied only to those who knew an organization was on the terrorist list and provided instruction in specific skills or specialized knowledge.
The appeals court said the law was still so vague that a nonlawyer would have to guess about whether giving certain types of advice would be criminal.
"We find it highly unlikely that a person of ordinary intelligence would know whether, when teaching someone to petition international bodies for tsunami-related aid, one is imparting a 'specific skill' or 'general knowledge,' " Judge Harry Pregerson said in the 3-0 ruling.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
This article appeared on page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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10) Omaha Night
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 6, 2007
Prisonradio.org
A young man strolled into a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, the navel of the United States, and opens up at stunned passersby.
He has a rifle, but what arms him is a deep, abiding sense of worthlessness, depression and despair. He lost his job at a local McDonald’s; and he was recently dumped by his girlfriend.
Before the night was over, eight people, nine including this young man, would be dead.
Robert Hawkins reportedly shot himself to death to end his killing sprees. He was 19.
In a suicide note left at the place he was staying, he reportedly wrote that he wanted to be famous.
What does that say about this American life that one feels so hopeless, and so empty, at 19?
What does it say about the American fascination with fame?
And how do you get fired, from McDonald’s?
What do you think this young man had to look forward to?
Unemployed, with few serious prospects.
Feeling unloved—worthless.
The U.S. economy (for working people) has been in virtual free fall since the ravages of globalization have left a smattering of service jobs in the place of missing manufacturing jobs.
The U.S. Army, in a time when they are, quite frankly, desperate for recruits, wouldn’t accept this.
Imagine, if you will, what it must be like to be a 19-year-old Black youth in present day America—the product of an educational system that can barely qualify for the name?
What do you think that young man has to look forward to?
Both of these young men, the mall-sprayer and the imaginary one, had their educational experiences under something cynically called No Child Left Behind.
One wonders—how could they be more left behind?
One youth walks into a sprawling mall, its floors and shops chock full of shoppers trying to snag a post Black Friday bargain, knowing full well that he’ll never leave it alive.
Another gambles his life in a mindless gang banging, or the urban drug trade, willing to kill or die for a brief glimpse of a life long denied him.
It has often been observed that youth think themselves invulnerable and immortal.
In generations past, perhaps this may’ve been the case.
But as these events show, some youth are so alienated, so lost, that they look to death with longing, as an escape from a life they find intolerable.
What does that say about us?
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11) Teaching False History (And Its Consequences)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 8, 2007
Prisonradio.org
Ask any school kid in the U.S. to name the first English settlement in what we now call America, and he (or she) will probably announce, “Jamestown!” Some will add, “Virginia!” And the truly nerdy would answer, “in 1607!”
Such children of the “No Child Left Behind” generation will beam in their beautiful, childlike brilliance, for no doubt they would recall that just such answers as these earned passing grades on their history tests.
And we know that tests are right, right?
Wrong.
The first English settlement was established over a generation before Jamestown—in a place called Roanoke Island, in 1584, and 1587, off the coast of what is today called North Carolina.
Why are school kids taught about Jamestown, but rarely Roanoke Island?
Because Jamestown survived, and Roanoke vanished.
Dozens of novels and at least a half-dozen movies have been made of Roanoke Island, but the people were lost to witchcraft, to native spirits, or, in the best telling of the tale, they “went Native” and joined local tribes.
The real reason is a bit more grisly.
History lecturer and writer, William Loren Katz, in his remarkable book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), [orig. 1986] tells us that an eerily American ailment afflicted them. Katz writes:
“What the pioneers did was self-destruct over their own love of possession. When a silver cup allegedly disappeared, the Roanoke men roared out of their tiny enclave, muskets and torches in hand, to destroy their Indian neighbors’ village and crops. This blazing display of European possession -mania cut the colony off from the one local source of help. When the Spanish Armada severed the settlements’ connection to British ports, it withered and died.” [Pg. 21]
In essence, telling kids the truth about Roanoke might destroy their sense of nascent nationalism, and perhaps scare them. Instead, it’s Jamestown—or perhaps Plymouth Rock, the site of the beginning of that glorious theocracy of 1620.
If Roanoke’s story were better known, perhaps lessons would be learned that stealing from others, and raiding others isn’t a good, nor glorious thing; perhaps it would be an historical lesson about the perils of greed, or in Katz’s words, “possession-mania.”
Americans of all ages know little about the real contours of the making of America, which owed more to sheer genocide than anything else.
In this same book, Katz details how England and Spain wreaked havoc upon the indigenous people of the Americas:
“In the century following Columbus’ landing, millions of Native Americans died from a combination of European diseases, harsh treatment, and murder. Africans took their places in the mines and fields of the New World. The 80 million Native Americans alive in 1492 became only 10 million left alive a century later. But the 10,000 Africans working in the Americas in 1527 had, by the end of the century, become 90,000 people. These figures are even more striking within local areas. In 1519 when the Spaniards arrived, Mexico had a population of 25 million Indians. By the end of the century only a million were still alive. The invader calculated that more profit would be made if laborers were worked to death and replaced. In their plans pain and suffering did not count, and no cruelty was considered.” [Pg. 23]
Perhaps if kids were taught this version of history, the mad dash of imperialism that marked much of the 20th century would not have occurred.
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12) Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans
Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US
December 11, 2007
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/156081/1/
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 11 (OneWorld) - Global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions are bound to fail if the interests of indigenous communities are not taken into account, leaders of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples are warning.
"The success of efforts to lower carbon emissions from deforestation hinges primarily on whether indigenous peoples will throw their support behind proposed mechanisms," said indigenous leader Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum.
Tauli-Corpuz told the UN Summit on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, this week that indigenous communities are increasingly worried about plans by governments and international financial institutions to control forest degradation.
The indigenous communities, according to her, are particularly concerned about the World Bank's Carbon Partnership Facility, which is likely to provide large-scale incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
The tropical and subtropical forest, the subject of the Facility, is home to 160 million indigenous peoples who are seen by many scientists as custodians and managers of forest biodiversity.
"While the Facility can be a good thing, we are very apprehensive on how this will work," Tauli-Corpuz continued, "because of our negative historical and present experiences with similar initiatives."
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes native groups' right to control their lands and resources, including forests, but many governments and corporations continue to abuse the rights of forest communities.
"We remain in a very vulnerable situation," said Tauli Corpuz, "because most states do not recognize our rights to these forests and resources found therein."
Last week, a report released by an international advocacy group raised similar concerns about the role of governments and corporations.
In its report, London-based Survival International named and shamed countries where the violations of tribal peoples' rights are most egregious, including Botswana, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.
The report entitled, "The Terrible Ten: Key Abusers of Tribal Peoples' Rights in 2007" says tribal people in West Papua are facing appalling violence at the hands of Indonesia's army, including killing, torture and rape. The natives' lands are often exploited by the government and foreign companies.
In Botswana, the government continues to prevent Bushmen from returning to their home in the country's diamond-producing area, despite a landmark court ruling that declared their 2002 eviction 'unlawful and unconstitutional.'
According to Survival, cattle ranchers occupying Guarani Indian land in Paraguay are committing armed violence against the natives. This year they killed two Guarani leaders and raped two Guarani women. Fear of rape has led many women to commit suicide.
In Peru, which is home to an estimated 15 of the world's last uncontacted tribes, the government has opened up the indigenous peoples' territories to oil companies and illegal loggers. Paraguay's Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people face a similar situation.
In Malaysia, land has been taken from the Sarawak tribe to make way for logging, dam construction, and oil palm plantations. The government has told the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Penan people that they have no land rights until they 'settle down' and start farming.
Meanwhile at the UN Summit in Bali, many indigenous groups protested against their exclusion from the climate change negotiations. They wore symbolic gags that read UNFCCC, the acronym of the United UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Last week, an indigenous delegation charged that despite having received an invitation, it was forcibly barred from entering the meeting between the UNFCCC executive secretary and civil society representatives.
"There is no seat or name plate for indigenous peoples in the plenary," stated Hubertus Samangun, the representative for English-speaking Indigenous Peoples of the Global Forest Coalition.
"Indigenous peoples are not only marginalized from the discussion, but there is virtually no mention of indigenous peoples in the more that 5 million words of UNFCCC documents," argued Alfred Ilenre of the Edo People of Nigeria.
"This is occurring despite the fact that indigenous peoples are suffering the most from climate change and climate change mitigation projects that directly impact their lands," IIenre added in a statement.
UN Permanent Forum's Tauli-Corpuz demanded the governments and corporations must obtain the "free and prior" consent of indigenous peoples before taking any initiative on forest protections.
"I imagine that donors and the private sector would not like to put their resources in high-risk projects which will not genuinely involve indigenous and other forest-dwellers," she said. "If there is an acceptance of the Facility, indigenous peoples must have a representation in [its] governance."
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13) C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods
By SCOTT SHANE
December 13, 2007
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/washington/13inquire.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.
Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil.
The Justice Department, which in 2002 gave the C.I.A. legal approval for waterboarding and other tough interrogation methods, is reviewing whether agency officials broke the law by destroying videotapes of those very methods.
The Congressional intelligence committees, whose leaders in 2002 gave at least tacit approval for the tough tactics, have voted in conference to ban all coercive techniques, and they have announced investigations of the destruction of the videotapes and the methods they documented.
“Exactly what they feared is what’s happening,” Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, said of the C.I.A. officials he advised in that job. “The winds change, and the recriminations begin.”
The legal siege against the Bush administration’s counterterrorism programs goes far beyond the C.I.A., including lawsuits brought on behalf of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and more than 40 challenges in court to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.
For some at the C.I.A., the second-guessing began in 2004 with a decision by Mr. Goldsmith, now at Harvard Law School, to withdraw the 2002 opinion on interrogation, whose sweeping constitutional claims and narrow definition of torture he found fatally flawed. But he said he regretted the way the agency had been whipsawed — accused of “risk aversion” immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and now blamed for traducing American values by engaging in torture.
“Things that seemed to them five years ago to have airtight legal and political support are now under investigation,” he said, comparing this cycle to the Senate hearings into C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s and the criminal prosecution of C.I.A. officials in the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s.
Even a C.I.A. officer involved in capturing and questioning leaders of Al Qaeda expresses a striking ambivalence about the policies that were carried out.
John C. Kiriakou, who helped lead the team that caught the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002, went public on ABC News this week with such a message. He said he saw intelligence reports saying that waterboarding, a technique that induces a sense of suffocation, had caused Abu Zubaydah to start talking after 35 seconds.
But Mr. Kiriakou, a 43-year-old father of four who left the agency in 2004, also said in an interview that he believed waterboarding was torture and should never be used again, because “we Americans are better than that.” He added: “I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding.”
Legal hazards were on the minds of Bush administration officials from the beginning of the response to 9/11. The 2002 Justice Department interrogation opinion laid out some defenses interrogators might use against criminal accusations of torture.
“The administration’s success in preventing attacks has become its enemy,” said John Yoo, the former Justice official who wrote most of the 2002 opinion. Since then, he added, “The political environment has changed because people feel the threat is less than it used to be.”
Mr. Yoo’s legal opinions, though criticized as seriously flawed by some scholars, may nonetheless provide impenetrable armor for C.I.A. officers. From the beginning, wary agency officials insisted on what they called “top cover” — written Justice Department approval for what they did.
Most legal scholars say that even under a future administration, the Justice Department would not seek charges against C.I.A. officers for actions the department itself had approved.
Another obstacle to such prosecutions would be the laws passed by Congress in 2005 and 2006 granting extensive legal protection for authorized conduct. But the videotape destruction may not have such protection; the episode recalls the adage of Washington scandals — that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up that leads to trouble.
The deaths of several prisoners who had been questioned by C.I.A. officers or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — but outside the detention program for high-level Qaeda prisoners — have been referred to the Justice Department. Only one C.I.A. contractor, David A. Passaro, has been prosecuted, receiving an eight-year sentence for beating an Afghan man who later died.
Still, investigations can impose a high price no matter how they end. “It’s not just the fear of going to jail,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s the enormous expense of hiring lawyers. It’s seeing your reputation destroyed. It’s losing your career.”
Overseas, C.I.A. officers implicated in rendition cases have been sought on criminal charges in Italy and Germany, though none have been arrested. And since the international pursuit of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, human rights advocates have often sought criminal charges against former officials on the principle of “universal jurisdiction” for certain grave offenses, including torture.
The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which unsuccessfully sought charges against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a recent visit to France, has pledged to pursue criminal torture charges against former Bush administration officials when they travel abroad.
“The only way to restore the moral authority of our country,” said Michael Ratner, the group’s president, “is accountability.”
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14) Charity’s Share From Shopping Raises Concern
By STEPHANIE STROM
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13giving.html?ref=us
Shopping has become virtuous, especially at this time of year. Buy a “Better World” scarf at American Eagle Outfitters, and the retailer says $10 of the $19.95 price will go to one of three charities. Buy or lease a BMW this month, and participating dealers say they will give $25 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Consumers these days can benefit a variety of charities with their purchases. Or can they?
Increasingly, nonprofit experts are beginning to question one of the fastest-growing sectors of giving, the practice of building a donation into the purchase of items as varied as fine jewelry and Always feminine products.
They point out that such giving is unregulated and, in most cases, unaccountable — and no one knows who, if anyone, is claiming a tax deduction for it.
“It’s virtuousness as a marketing gimmick run amok,” said Lucy Bernholz, founder and president of Blueprint Research and Design, a consulting firm for nonprofit organizations, who has coined the term “embedded giving” to describe the phenomenon. “The potential for it to be a scam is huge.”
In many cases, charities and their corporate partners are unwilling to discuss the specifics of their embedded-giving programs, declining to answer questions about how much is raised and even where exactly the money is going.
Sometimes charities do not even know they are supposed to be receiving donations. For instance, some beneficiaries of an embedded-giving program in a holiday catalog from Barneys New York found out they were listed only after they were contacted by The New York Times.
The World Wildlife Fund, a major charity that works to preserve and protect animals and the environment, was among them. John Donoghue, its senior vice president, was disconcerted to learn that his organization was among a number of charities named as beneficiaries of items bought from Barneys’ “Have a Green Holiday” catalog.
“Unfortunately, just like Barneys shoppers, we’re in the dark as to how or if Barneys and the manufacturers will fulfill their commitment to donate a portion of the proceeds from these products to W.W.F.,” Mr. Donoghue said.
Experts say such loose arrangements mean that donors cannot be sure where their money is going.
“In most cases of embedded giving, the donors will have even less idea of where their money goes than they do when they give to many large charities,” said Timothy N. Ogden, chief knowledge officer at Geneva Global, a philanthropic consulting firm. “Rather than donors getting closer to what is needed and how their money is used, they’re getting farther away.”
The start of embedded giving can be traced from the early 1980s, a time when American Express developed an effort to raise money for the restorations of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island by donating one penny for every purchase charged to its credit cards, generating $1.7 million.
Experts say companies and charities have embraced it wholeheartedly, though no one keeps track. Companies feel the programs burnish their images and may help them sell more products. Many charities believe the programs make it easier for people to donate because the transaction occurs as they go about their everyday business.
But some worry that embedded giving could end up eating away at larger, more direct charitable contributions. Donors, they say, will feel they are making donations all the time and be less likely to write out big checks at the end of the year. “Once purchasing and giving are conflated, the consumer is likely to conflate retailers and charities,” Mr. Ogden said.
Probably the most successful program of this kind is (Product)RED, which was created with the backing of Bono, lead singer of U2. The organization raises money for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria through companies like Apple, Gap and Motorola, which donate part of the sales price of designated items. It has pulled in $51.7 million since it began last year. Unlike many other programs, however, a detailed contract exists between the seven companies that have signed contracts to use the (Product)RED brand. Typically up to 50 percent of profits go directly to the Global Fund, and buyers can see how much the effort is raising on the Web.
But in most cases, embedded giving raises more modest amounts. The World Wildlife Fund garners $2 million to $3 million a year from such programs done in partnership with 22 companies. Its seven-year relationship with Build-a-Bear Workshop, for instance, has raised $1.5 million, according to the fund.
Mr. Donoghue said the benefits of embedded giving can reach beyond money. For instance, he said the fund can influence the use of more environmentally sound commodities and products through its choice of partners.
And the deals can vastly expand the group’s reach. “For us to have 100,000 cool girls walking around wearing panda-branded T-shirts that have appeared in a circular that goes to 50 million people and is paid for by a corporate partner has a communications benefit we could never afford on our own,” he said.
The wildlife fund has a contract with Chaser Merchandising, which puts the organization’s panda brand on T-shirts. J. C. Penney is selling the shirts with a promise to give $1 of the proceeds to the fund, or a guaranteed minimum of $50,000.
Still, the fund is working to promote more direct types of giving. It had no idea that it was listed in the Barneys catalog, which states that Maria de la Rosa, an Italian home décor company, will donate “a portion of the proceeds” of the purchase of a $150 cosmetics bag to the wildlife fund.
Unlike the case this year, Barneys had a contract to use the World Wildlife Fund name in last year’s holiday catalog, and the organization had to wait “quite a long time” before it was paid what it was due, Mr. Donoghue said. “It wasn’t the easiest relationship,” he said.
Dawn Brown, a spokeswoman for Barneys, said that the onus to hammer out a deal with a charity was on the manufacturers whose products were featured in the catalog and that the company had reminded them of that obligation last week, after it learned from The Times that some charities were unaware of the program.
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance recommends that charities participating in embedded giving spell out how much money in a purchase will go to them. It also recommends that they spell out the duration of each campaign.
But in many cases this does not happen. In the Barneys catalog, the jewelry designer Sharon Khazzam promises “a portion of the proceeds” from the sale of a $9,100 diamond and moonstone “world” necklace to the Edible Schoolyard, a program run by the Chez Panisse Foundation, the foundation started by the celebrity chef Alice Waters.
Ms. Khazzam said in an interview that 10 percent of her gross receipts would go to the Edible Schoolyard. No contract governs her pledge, however.
Carolyn Federman, director of development for the Chez Panisse Foundation conceded there was no way for the organization to know whether it was receiving its due, but she said she trusted Ms. Khazzam.
Still, she said, most embedded giving programs are hardly worth it.
“We have people call and say they want to do this or that to benefit the foundation all the time, and we turn them down because we know what they want is to leverage your name,” Ms. Federman said.
Far more people encounter embedded giving on the grocery store checkout line, when the clerk asks them whether they would like to tack on $2 or $3 onto their bills for a specific charity.
Personal experience with such programs has caused Jack Siegel, a tax lawyer and charity governance expert, to question whether state charity regulators should be taking a closer look at them too.
“I wonder, are these charitable solicitations that would require registration with state attorneys general?” Mr. Siegel said. “You’re supposed to register if you say the money you’re raising is for a good cause.”
He started questioning embedded giving on a visit to a Whole Foods store when he was asked to donate to a breast cancer charity and refused.
“The checkout clerk then started to grill me about why I didn’t want to,” he said. “And I honestly think she handled my bananas more roughly than they usually do.”
Fred Shank, a spokesman for Whole Foods, said the chain had a policy instructing clerks not to become pushy if customers decline to give. He said the company used a computerized scanning system to track the donations.
At least grocery customers are told where their dollars are supposedly going. Some retailers just promise to give part of sales to good causes generally.
For instance, Hanna Andersson, the children’s clothing company, promises to give “a portion of the profits” from the sale of its Day for a Sleigh long johns to “organizations that provide support to kids in need.”
Alison Polenz, vice president for marketing at Hanna Andersson, said she could not provide details about how much the company gave and to whom.
“If we put a number out there, we want it to be something we are able to live up to, and we can’t always guarantee that,” Ms. Polenz said. “It’s not meant to be vague or not sharing with the customer.”
Embedded giving is also popular online. One of the best known programs, iGive.com, makes money every time a consumer who has signed on as a member shops at one of the more than 680 retailers in its network.
The site lists 39,000 “causes” that members can give to. The list is generated by members, and iGive makes it clear that not all causes are bona fide charities. One cause listed, for example, asks for money for a son’s college fund.
When an iGive member makes a purchase, the retailer gives iGive a percentage and puts a percentage into the member’s iGive account. The member then uses that account to make donations. Since it was founded in 1997, iGive has sent $2.9 million to the various causes on its list.
But members can also direct the money back to themselves, although Robert Grosshandler, the founder of iGive, says that happens rarely.
Still, some of the details, like how much each retailer pays Mr. Grosshandler, remain blurry.
Ms. Bernholz, the consultant, said embedded giving was becoming so widespread that it was starting to resemble a tax. “Maybe it’s all good,” she said. “But if it is, we should be counting it, and we’re not.”
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15) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
Distrust and racial tension among Hispanics, Asians and blacks in the United States are pressing concerns for all three groups, a new national poll conducted in English, Spanish and five Asian languages has found.
The poll, published Wednesday, found a stark gap between Hispanics and Asians, who are mainly immigrants, and African-Americans about their prospects for success.
About three-quarters of Hispanics and about two-thirds of Asians believe they will progress in this country if they work hard, the survey found. But only 44 percent of African-Americans polled said they believed that hard work would bring them success, and 66 percent of African-Americans said they did not believe that everyone in the United States had an equal opportunity to succeed.
The poll was published by New America Media, a national association of about 700 ethnic media organizations that promotes better relations among racial and ethnic groups. It was conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a polling organization in Miami.
Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll, said it was the first national survey to look into relations among the leading minority groups in the United States. The Asian languages used were Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog, which is spoken in the Philippines.
The sample of respondents reflected the demographic makeup of the three groups in the United States population, Mr. Bendixen said. About half of Hispanics and about four-fifths of Asians in this country are immigrants, while 90 percent of blacks were born here. The survey did not ask about the legal status of the immigrants.
It reported that 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African-Americans and 73 percent of Asians said racial tension was a very important problem in the United States.
But the groups’ perceptions of one another are not all negative. While 51 percent of African-Americans in the poll said Hispanic immigrants were taking jobs and political power from blacks, another large group of African-Americans — 45 percent — disagreed that they were losing ground to Hispanics. And while 44 percent of Hispanics said they feared African-Americans, identifying them with high crime rates, half of Hispanics had no such fear.
Views of the criminal justice system differ widely among the three groups. Among blacks, 71 percent said the system “favors the rich and powerful,” while 45 percent of Hispanics and only 27 percent of Asians agreed.
The three groups tend to socialize among themselves, mixing infrequently with the others. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanics and Asians and 61 percent of blacks said they had never dated someone who was from either of the two other groups or who was white.
There were signs of optimism, however. More than 60 percent of each of the three groups said they expected race relations to improve in the next decade. Large majorities of Hispanics and Asians credited American blacks and the civil rights movement with making life easier for them here.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 1,105 adults in August and September. The margin of sampling error for each group was plus or minus five percentage points.
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16) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
Fresh Direct, the online grocery delivery operation that caters to affluent and overworked New Yorkers, lost dozens of employees this week after federal immigration officials notified the company that its employee records were under investigation.
The company sent its workers a memo on Sunday and Monday saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to inspect the records of every employee and asked them to update their information and provide documents, like Social Security cards, to prove employment eligibility. At least 40 warehouse workers who could not produce proof that they were authorized to work in the United States quit or were suspended.
At the company’s warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, the work force, largely immigrants, reacted with panic and distress as news of the inquiry spread.
“Some people just walked out the door,” said Sandy Pope, president of a Teamsters local that is one of two unions competing to organize the workers. “They were sobbing, with garbage bags full of their clothes from their lockers. They didn’t feel they had any chance of fixing their paperwork, so they just left.”
Fresh Direct officials said in a statement that they were trying to comply with the government’s request and keep their employees informed about the investigation. But they would not discuss any suspensions or resignations.
The federal investigation, part of a national campaign aimed at employers who hire illegal immigrants, comes in the midst the company’s busiest season and in the middle of a conflict over efforts to unionize some 900 Fresh Direct warehouse workers. The workers are scheduled to vote on Dec. 22 and 23 on whether to affiliate with either Local 805 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or Local 348 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which recently organized Fresh Direct drivers.
Ms. Pope, the Teamsters’ president, said on Wednesday that the suspensions seemed to be an effort to thwart the union and that the company’s lawyers might have invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to scrutinize workers to weaken the union drive.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, said, “I would categorically deny that that’s the case.”
Jim Moore, the company’s senior vice president for business affairs, called the claim outrageous.
“At this point, Fresh Direct is intent on two things,” he said in a written statement. “Complying with the requirements of federal law with respect to the I.C.E. audit and ensuring that its employees know the facts and are given the opportunity to participate” in the union vote. He said the company had asked immigration officials to delay their audit until after the holidays, but they refused.
Without confirming or denying the investigation, Ms. Nantel said such audits were part of the agency’s stepped-up enforcement.
With new financing, she said, the agency recently hired 41 “forensic auditors” to scrutinize employment eligibility verification forms, known as I-9’s, that companies are required to keep on file for every employee they hire.
“Certainly an I-9 audit is one investigatory tool that we use,” Ms. Nantel said. “Depending on the results of the audit, we’ll follow that investigation to whatever next step is appropriate.”
Companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants can face fines or criminal charges, but until recently, prosecutions were extremely rare. In some workplaces elsewhere in the country, workers without proper documents were summoned to the main office without warning, and taken away in handcuffs.
Union officials said that many Fresh Direct employees, who earn between $7.50 and $9.75 an hour, were so frightened of being detained and separated from their children that they stayed home on Wednesday. Others said they were told not to come back.
Ms. Pope said that some employees were warned by company officials not to show up for their paychecks. She said the union was scrambling to find clergy members or other volunteers to collect paychecks for workers who feared going back to the warehouse.
One 41-year-old woman from Ecuador, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of deportation, said she was let go with an expression of regret when she told human resources workers at the company that the Social Security number she had been using for nearly four years was false.
“I’m really desperate now because I have no money to send to my kids,” she said, referring to four children in Ecuador. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.”
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Canada: Mounties Urged to Restrict Taser Use
By IAN AUSTEN
In a report, the watchdog commission that oversees the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recommended that Taser stun guns be used only on people who are “combative or posing a risk of death or grievous bodily harm,” much like a conventional firearm rather than a nightstick or pepper spray. The report was ordered by the government after a confused and angry Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, left, died at the airport in Vancouver after being stunned at least twice by Mounties. The report found that Tasers were increasingly being used against people who were merely resistant rather than dangerous.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/americas/13briefs-taser.html?ref=world
Greece: Tens of Thousands March in Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A one-day strike by unions representing 2.5 million workers brought Athens to a standstill. Protesting planned government changes to the state-financed pension system, an estimated 80,000 people marched through central Athens. In Thessaloniki, 30,000 people rallied, the police said. The strike shut down hospitals, banks, schools, courts and all public services. Flights were canceled, and public transportation, including boats connecting the mainland with the islands, ground to a halt. More strikes are expected next week.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/europe/13briefs-strike.html?ref=world
Senator Criticizes Genentech’s Limits on a Cheaper Drug
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Genentech’s plan to restrict the availability of Avastin so doctors cannot use it instead of a more expensive medicine for eye disease will cost taxpayers $1 billion to $3 billion a year, according to Senator Herb Kohl.
Senator Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration that Genentech’s decision to limit access to the medicine by pharmacies that repackage drugs “is of great concern.”
He also sent the company a letter saying that his staff would investigate the restrictions.
The company, based in South San Francisco, wants specialists to buy its newer treatment, Lucentis, instead of Avastin.
November 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/business/29eye.html?ref=health
Weak Dollar Propels Sales at Tiffany
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Jewelry and luxury goods retailer Tiffany & Company’s third-quarter earnings more than tripled on strong sales growth and a gain on the sale and leaseback of its Tokyo flagship store, the company said yesterday.
It also raised its earnings outlook for the full year. However, the company’s stock fell $2.32, or 5 percent, to $46.43 a share, after a morning rally, as analysts expressed caution that its Manhattan flagship store has become a temporarily disproportionate driver of sales, helped by a flood of foreign tourists who are taking advantage of the declining dollar.
The company, based in New York, said net income climbed to $98.9 million, or 71 cents a share, from $29.1 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales increased 18 percent to $627.3 million from $531.8 million a year earlier, helped by a 9 percent rise in global sales at stores open at least one year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of 25 cents a share.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01tiffany.html?ref=business
Israeli Court Upholds Gaza Fuel Cuts
By STEVEN ERLANGER
World Briefing | Middle East
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government could continue cutting fuel supplies to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which it has done since Oct. 28. But it ordered a delay on plans to cut electricity until new details are offered by the groups challenging the plan.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/world/middleeast/01briefs-gaza.html?ref=world
Canada: Man Dies After Shock From Taser
By IAN AUSTEN
World Briefing | Americas
November 23, 2007
A 45-year-old man who had been arrested on assault charges died, about a day after the police in Nova Scotia used a Taser to subdue him. The man was the third person to die in Canada in just over a month after being shocked by Tasers wielded by police officers. Justice Minister Cecil Clarke ordered a review of the use of the hand-held stun guns following the man’s death, the latest in a series of government inquiries into the use of Tasers by the police. Widespread outrage in Canada followed the broadcast of a video last month that showed another man being shocked at least twice with Tasers at a Vancouver airport by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The man, a Polish immigrant who appeared extremely confused on the video, died. A Montreal man also died last month, three days after he was subdued by the police with a Taser while being arrested for drunken driving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/world/americas/23briefs-taser.html?ref=world
California: Cards for Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lawmakers have given final approval to a law making San Francisco the nation’s largest city to issue identification cards to illegal immigrants. The Board of Supervisors voted 10 to 1 to create a municipal ID program to help residents without driver’s licenses obtain access to services and feel secure dealing with local law enforcement. The measure is modeled after a program that started last summer in New Haven, Conn. Supporters say that along with immigrants, elderly people who no longer drive and transgender individuals whose driver’s licenses no longer reflect their appearances also would benefit from having the cards. The measure goes into effect in August.
November 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/21brfs-CARDSFORIMMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Manhattan: Teachers Criticize Review Unit
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor to apologize to the city’s 80,000 teachers yesterday, a day after the chancellor sent principals an e-mail message announcing the formation of teams of lawyers and consultants meant to help principals remove poorly performing tenured teachers. Ms. Weingarten said that the message seemed timed to the release yesterday of national reading and math test scores showing little progress among New York City students. “The first speck of bad news, all of the sudden they go after teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. The mayor said yesterday that removing tenured teachers was “a last alternative.”
November 16, 2007
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/nyregion/16mbrfs-TEACHERS.html?ref=nyregion
Waterboarding and U.S. History
by William Loren Katz
"U.S. officers in the Philippines routinely resorted to what they called ‘the water cure.'"
November 14, 2007
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=1
Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
November 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/media/02cnd-hollywood.html?ref=us
Raids Traumatized Children, Report Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Hundreds of young American children suffered hardship and psychological trauma after immigration raids in the last year in which their parents were detained or deported, according to a report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute. Of 500 children directly affected in three factory raids examined in the report in which 900 adult immigrants were arrested, a large majority were United States citizens younger than 10. With one or both parents deported, the children had reduced economic support, and many remained in the care of relatives who feared contact with the authorities, the study said. Although the children were citizens, few families sought public assistance for them, the study found.
November 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01brfs-raids.html?ref=us
Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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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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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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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.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
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SAN FRANCISCO
Board approves year extension for high schools' JROTC program
Classes allowed to count for physical education credit
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/12/BAPFTSAS3.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
THE NEXT MEETING OF THE STOP JROTC COMMITTEE IS:
MONDAY,JANUARY 7, 7:00 P.M.
474 VALENCIA STREET, FIRST FLOOR, Room 145 (To the left as you come in, and all the way to the back of the long hallway, then, to the right.)
School Board Cowers Behind Phony JROTC "Task Force"
by Marc Norton
Dec. 12‚ 2007
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5194
Five members of the San Francisco School Board voted last night [Tuesday, December 11, 2007] to extend JROTC for a year. They pretended to act on the request of the JROTC Task Force for more time to work on an "alternative" to JROTC. In fact, they are taking their marching orders from the Pentagon. Only Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez had the moxie to say no to the war-makers.
Beyond Chron has acquired copies of the meeting notes of the JROTC Task Force through early October. Our review of these notes reveals that the task force is actually in the business of blocking the creation of any alternative to JROTC -- the exact opposite of its mandate. Their request for more time is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Reliable sources tell us that Sanchez admits that the board was "played" by the task force.
The School Board voted in November 2006 to phase out JROTC, and to create a task force to look for an "alternative." Then, for five long months, from November through April, nothing happened. There was no task force, no meetings, nothing.
The task force was finally convened by school district officials for the first time, on April 17 -- chosen in secret, and meeting completely outside of any public view. The task force was a collection of JROTC instructors (all retired military officers), school district bureaucrats and a couple of students. There was only one identifiable opponent of JROTC, a relatively mild-mannered gentleman from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
At this meeting, the group fumbled around with some discussion about their mission and various "protocols," and then adjourned for a month.
When they met again, on May 16, one of their first orders of business was to vote on whether to meet once or twice a month. They opted 9-0 to meet once a month, obviously not in any big hurry. They also confirmed that their meetings would remain closed to the public.
Next, Col. Powell offered that they were "developing a survey" of JROTC students. They heard a presentation from former JROTC cadet Daniel "Jane Kim needs to die" Chin. They spent a lot of time discussing whether or not JROTC instructors were certified to teach PE classes for credit, groused about the financial impact of expanded PE classes, and then adjourned for another month.
By their third meeting, on June 29, they were already complaining about not having enough time. "At the rate we are going - we will surely need more time," say the meeting notes. They also had "a discussion... regarding lack of attendance."
At this point -- the school district and the task force having done next-to-nothing to look at alternatives to JROTC for over seven months -- a motion was made to ask for a one-year extension. The motion passed 6-1.
The task force then adjourned for two months.
At their next meeting, on August 29, they had a "discussion of what surveys are available to survey students," produced a "timeline" for their work incorporating their proposed extension of JROTC, and revised the language of the proposed board resolution for the proposed extension.
They met again on October 3. This is the last meeting for which we have notes. They worked again on the "wording on the time line." The student survey had apparently not been sent out yet, as they were still discussing what questions to ask.
Having exhausted themselves with complaining about not having enough time to do their job, they finally had a couple of presentations about possible "alternative" programs. First, they heard a presentation by a retired SF police officer who teaches a "police" class at a charter school. The teacher himself stated that "he does not believe his class would work as a replacement for the JROTC programs."
They next discussed a class taught by a captain in the San Francisco fire department. The task force then left it to the AFSC member to get hard copies of the curriculum from these two programs.
They concluded this meeting with a "closing conversation," including a comment from the AFSC member that "we do not seem to be very close to having a replacement program." No kidding, Sherlock.
And so it goes. At the rate this task force is going, they will need an extension for a decade, not a year.
For all the talk about JROTC teaching "leadership," the task force set up to find an alternative has shown no leadership at all -- unless you call diddling and dallying "leadership." That seems to match just fine the kind of leadership that we see from the majority of the school board.
In the words of Henry David Thoreau: "...most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God."
It is unlikely that Thoreau, writing in 1849, had school board members Jane Kim, Kim-Shree Maufaus, Hydra Mendoza, Jill Wynns and Norman Yee in mind. But he nonetheless described them perfectly. Except, maybe, for the part about not "intending it."
Next: JROTC and military recruitment -- and the fightback.
Copyright © 2007 by Marc Norton
Marc Norton is a bellman at a small hotel in downtown San Francisco. Contact him at nortonsf@ix.netcom.com, or through his website at www.MarcNorton.us
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SUPPORT THE DAY AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
SEE THE "TODAY SHOW" STORY ON MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=31683df5-5f31-403d-a34d-2e5290d1cc02
From: LACFreeMumia@aol.com
A ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Mumia's case, based on the hearing in Philadelphia on May 17th 2007, is expected momentarily. Freeing Mumia immediately is what is needed, but that is not an option before this court. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal calls on everyone who supports Mumia‚s case for freedom, to rally the day after a decision comes down. Here are Bay Area day-after details:
OAKLAND:
14th and Broadway, near the Federal Building
4:30 to 6:30 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or on Monday if the ruling comes down on a Friday.
Oakland demonstration called by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, to be held if the Court upholds the death sentence, or denies Mumia's appeals for a new trial or a new hearing. info at (510) 839-0852 or pdcbayarea@sbcglobal.org
SAN FRANCISCO:
Federal Courthouse, 7th & Mission
5 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or Monday if the decision comes down on a Friday
San Francisco demo called by the Mobilization To Free Mumia,
info at (415) 255-1085 or www.freemumia.org
Day-after demonstrations are also planned in:
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver
and other cities internationally.
A National Demonstration is to be held in Philadelphia, 3rd Saturday after the decision
For more information, contact: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.mumia.org;
Partisan Defense Committee, www.partisandefense.org;
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), www.freemumia.com;
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS INNOCENT!
World-renowned journalist, death-row inmate and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is completely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Mountains of evidence--unheard or ignored by the courts--shows this. He is a victim, like thousands of others, of the racist, corrupt criminal justice system in the US; only in his case, there is an added measure of political persecution. Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, and is still an outspoken and active critic of the on-going racism and imperialism of the US. They want to silence him more than they want to kill him.
Anyone who has ever been victimized by, protested or been concerned about the racist travesties of justice meted out to blacks in the US, as well as attacks on immigrants, workers and revolutionary critics of the system, needs to take a close look at the frame-up of Mumia. He is innocent, and he needs to be free.
FREE MUMIA NOW!
END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FOR MASS PROTESTS AND LABOR ACTION TO FREE MUMIA!
In 1995, mass mobilizations helped save Mumia from death.
In 1999, longshore workers shut West Coast ports to free Mumia, and teachers in Oakland and Rio de Janeiro held teach-ins and stop-works.
Mumia needs powerful support again now. Come out to free Mumia!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610
510.763.2347
LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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Help end the war by supporting the troops who have refused to fight it.
Please sign the appeal online:
"DEAR CANADA: LET U.S. WAR RESISTERS STAY!"
"I am writing from the United States to ask you to make a provision for sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military servicemembers currently in Canada, most of whom have traveled to your country in order to resist fighting in the Iraq War. Please let them stay in Canada..."
To sign the appeal or for more information:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/canada
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to three key Canadian officials--Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, and Stéphane Dion, Liberal Party--via international first class mail.
In collaboration with War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), this effort comes at a critical juncture in the international campaign for asylum for U.S. war resisters in Canada.
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We, the Undersigned, endorse the following petition:
FedEx Ground: Your Drivers Deserve to be Treated Fairly!
Target: Dave Rebholz, President and CEO of FedEx Ground
Sponsor: American Rights at Work
More than 15,000 FedEx Ground drivers don't have a voice at work, or the ability to stand up to the company. These men and women work long hours, often without benefits, are frequently harassed and even fired for supporting a union.
What's more, FedEx makes the drivers lease their own trucks (which cost around $40,000) so quitting can mean losing a major personal investment. Unions are often their only recourse.
FedEx Ground advertises efficiency and professionalism, but their anti-union posters and the distribution of anti-union videos show they're more about pushing their own agenda.
A new report shows that when anti-union persuasion fails, there's outright bullying. High-level management arrive on the scene to harass, isolate, retaliate against and even fire union supporters!
Resorting to nasty labor tactics to increase company profits is just not right.
Demand that FedEx Ground give benefits and respect to the people who make the company so successful!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/625027652?z00m=11867690
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Next Antiwar Coalition meeting Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
474 Valencia St.
The OCT. 27 COALITION met Saturday, November 18. After a long discussion and evaluation of the Oct. 27 action, the group decided to meet again, Sunday, January 6, at 1:00 P.M. at CENTRO DEL PUEBLO, 474 Valencia Street, SF (Near 16th Street) to assess further action.
Everyone felt the demonstration was very successful and, in fact, that the San Francisco demonstration was the largest in the country and, got the most press coverage. Everyone felt the "die in" was extremely effective and the convergence added to the scope of the demonstration.
Please keep a note of the date of the next coalition meeting:
Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
EXPLORATORY LETTER: UNIFIED NATIONAL ACTION DURING MARCH 2008:
The regional antiwar demonstrations on October 27th were a great success.. The Boston mobilization organized by New England United (NEU) drew about 10,000 people, including many new activists and young people. Nationally, tens of thousands demanded an end to war and occupation now.
The NEU-sponsored action on October 27 was endorsed by a broad range of over 200 organizations. At a follow-up meeting, many members of NEU believed that we should build on this momentum by bringing together the antiwar movement in unified national protest in the spring for the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.
Reasons given included: 1) March will be the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and the antiwar movement must come together to demand an end to this war now; 2) The war plans against Iran are intensifying, and we have to fight now to stop a war on Iran before it's too late. At the same time, it was recognized that successful national action in the spring would require a broad base of support from antiwar organizations around the country. Therefore, NEU decided to create a working group to assess the level of support for such an action, and report back to our next general meeting in December with both an assessment of support, and a detailed proposal for a unified national mobilization in the spring. As an indication of growing interest in national action, Cindy Sheehan is convening a peace summit in San Francisco in January to help develop a unified strategy for the peace movement and to develop a plan for a unified national mobilization in DC during the March anniversary of the Iraq war.
A strong base of support from the grass-roots organizations around the country will be necessary to make unified national action a reality. If your organization is interested in planning for unified national action in March, please contact us as soon as possible at the following email address: spring2008@lists.riseup.net . Thank you. Spring Mobilization working group New England United http://www.newenglandunited.org/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Supreme Court Says Crack Sentences Can Be Reduced
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Crack-Cocaine.html?hp
2) The Neediest Cases
When Part-Time Work Isn’t Enough to Pay the Rent
By JOHN SULLIVAN
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/nyregion/10neediest.html?ref=nyregion
3) Advertising: The ’60s as the Good Old Days
By STUART ELLIOTT
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/business/media/10adcol.html?ref=business
4) Pete Seeger and the ‘One Blue Sky Above Us’
By Andrew C. Revkin
Video
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/pete-seeger-and-the-one-blue-sky-above-us/index.html?ref=science
5) Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue
By PETER GELLING
December 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/asia/06indo.html?ref=science
6) Medicare Cuts Payout on 2 Cancer Drugs
By ALEX BERENSON
December 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/business/07drug.html?ref=health
7) Justice in Sentencing
Editorial
December 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/opinion/12wed1.html?hp
8) Wall Street's Bad Boys and Their Washington Enablers
Banksters Gone Wild
By PAM MARTENS
December 7, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens12072007.html
9) Appeals court throws out parts of anti-terror law as too vague
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
10) Omaha Night
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 6, 2007
Prisonradio.org
11) Teaching False History (And Its Consequences)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 8, 2007
Prisonradio.org
12) Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans
Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US
December 11, 2007
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/156081/1/
13) C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods
By SCOTT SHANE
December 13, 2007
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/washington/13inquire.html?ref=world
14) Charity’s Share From Shopping Raises Concern
By STEPHANIE STROM
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13giving.html?ref=us
15) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
16) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
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1) Supreme Court Says Crack Sentences Can Be Reduced
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:03 p.m. ET
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Crack-Cocaine.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday said judges may impose shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes, enhancing judicial discretion to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine powder.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
''In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines' treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion.
The decision was announced ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets the guidelines, that could cut prison time for up to an estimated 19,500 federal inmates convicted of crack crimes.
The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change. Tuesday's vote is whether to apply the guidelines retroactively.
In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also said judges have discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.
The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term.
The guidelines were established by the Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction, in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.
Justice Samuel Alito, who dissented with Justice Clarence Thomas in both cases, said that after Tuesday's decisions, ''Sentencing disparities will gradually increase.''
Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder. The law also sets maximum terms.
Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms.
Kimbrough is among the remaining 30 percent who, under the guidelines, get even more time in prison because they are convicted of trafficking in more than the amount of crack that triggers the minimum sentences.
''A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion'' to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough, Ginsburg said.
In the other case, the court, also by a 7-2 vote, upheld a sentence of probation for Brian Gall for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 pills of ecstasy. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs several years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business. The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.
''The sentence imposed by the experienced district judge in this case was reasonable,'' Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens formed the majority in both cases.
The cases are Kimbrough v. U.S., 06-6330, and Gall v. U.S., 06-7949.
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2) The Neediest Cases
When Part-Time Work Isn’t Enough to Pay the Rent
By JOHN SULLIVAN
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/nyregion/10neediest.html?ref=nyregion
Some days, Adelle Doulin feels as if she is on a treadmill. No matter how fast she runs, she cannot get ahead.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Doulin left the office building where she works on lower Broadway and walked though the narrow streets of the financial district. At a coffee shop near the massive stone vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ms. Doulin worried about how she would make her monthly rent of $1,500.
“If I could just catch up,” she said.
Ms. Doulin, 45, has held clerical and administrative positions at banks and financial firms for 20 years, but a series of job losses has left her behind on her rent. Ms. Doulin, a single parent with a 10-year-old daughter, fears that if she cannot make her payments, she will be evicted from her apartment in the High Bridge neighborhood in the Bronx.
“I have lived there for 17 years,” she said. “It is a nightmare.”
She took a buyout several years ago to care for her mother, who was suffering from diabetes. After her mother died, Ms. Doulin went back to work, but could not find a full-time job. Since then, she has worked for temporary agencies.
“There are not many job openings right now,” she said. “Most companies are using temps.”
Ms. Doulin says the work is fine but temporary jobs do not offer the same benefits she received as a full-time worker.
“As a temp, I don’t get holidays or sick days,” she said. “I don’t have medical benefits. If I get sick, I would have to go to the emergency room.”
Ms. Doulin has an assignment performing data entry and back-office tasks for a bank. She takes the subway to work after taking her daughter, Sekai, to school. Ms. Doulin’s brother picks up Sekai after dismissal and stays with her until Ms. Doulin returns home in the evening.
Ms. Doulin has a high school diploma and a number of credits toward her college degree, but like many single parents, she does not have a lot of time for outside interests. Money is also tight. Recently, she took Sekai skating at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.
“I work and I take her around,” Ms. Doulin said. “She is my hobby.”
After meeting with a social worker from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Doulin got money from the fund to catch up on her rent in April. But a drop in work hours over the summer caused her to fall behind again this autumn. Representing herself in housing court, Ms. Doulin won some extra time to make up the missing rent payments, but is unsure how to make the money she needs.
Ms. Doulin now holds a steady long-term assignment, so right now paying the rent is not a problem. But she owes $2,500 in back rent and fees, and is worried about getting that money.
“If I could catch up, I could keep up with it,” she said. “I can’t pay the back rent and the current rent; I just can’t.”
At a hearing in housing court the day before Thanksgiving, Ms. Doulin delivered an additional $1,000 to her landlord. She plans to make smaller payments to try to make up the amount she owes, but fears she will fall further behind when the next payment comes due.
“What I will do is: Every week when I get paid I will send them something,” she said. “But then December is going to roll around.”
Ms. Doulin paused, trying to think of a solution that had evaded her so far.
“I need some help, but I don’t really know where to go,” she said softly.
Time was up, and Ms. Doulin had to hurry back to work. Rain dripped from a sidewalk shed as she hurried along Nassau Street.
“I really like the apartment I am in now,” she said. “It is really nice, and I don’t want to leave. But if it comes down to that, it is going to happen.”
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3) Advertising: The ’60s as the Good Old Days
By STUART ELLIOTT
December 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/business/media/10adcol.html?ref=business
IF you remember the ’60s, as a popular saying goes, you probably weren’t there. No matter. Madison Avenue is taking you back with a skein of campaigns celebrating sights and sounds of the decade.
The ads are filled with images like Volkswagen buses festooned with groovy graffiti, daisies and other power flowers, peace signs, psychedelic drawings in DayGlo colors and hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen (to quote a lyric from the era).
Music, too, is being used to invoke the 1960s. Commercials on television, radio and the Internet play tunes like “Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful (1966), “Gimme Some Lovin’ ” by the Spencer Davis Group (1967) and “On the Road Again” by Canned Heat (1968).
The trend may have started in summer 2006 when Ameriprise Financial introduced a campaign with Dennis Hopper, a symbol of the counterculture for his roles in films like “Easy Rider.” It has since expanded to brands like Geico insurance, Lucky jeans, Total cereal and U. S. Trust.
What is most intriguing about the trend is that the ads present many of the contentious aspects of the ’60s — the protests, the hippies, the challenge to authority — in a positive, even romanticized light.
For instance, a trippy-looking commercial for Total, sold by General Mills, begins, “The ’60s were about change, defying convention,” and ends by proclaiming the cereal as the best breakfast “for mind and body.”
During the ’60s, mass marketers avoided such language, fearful of alienating mainstream consumers. The approach is also a far cry from the demonization of the decade that still pervades political advertising, as evidenced by recent commercials for Senator John McCain that attacked Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a product of the ’60s culture.
•
“There are a lot of good things that came out of the ’60s,” said Larry Meli, president and chief operating officer at the AmericanLife TV Network in Washington. “It’s time to point them out.”
AmericanLife TV, which offers reruns of ’60s series like “Lost in Space” and “Mission: Impossible,” is changing its logo to a daisy from a star. The switch is meant to remind baby boomers of the “flower power” slogan as well as a commercial from the 1964 presidential campaign, titled “Daisy,” that portrayed Barry M. Goldwater, who ran against Lyndon B. Johnson, as a warmonger.
“Being more precisely relevant to the audience you’re trying to address is a good thing,” said Ted Ward, vice president for marketing at Geico in Washington, part of Berkshire Hathaway. “There’s a huge opportunity in the baby-boomer group for us to continue to grow our business.”
Geico is running a commercial and a print ad depicting a VW bus decorated with phrases like “right on” and “far out.” The ads are created by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
“Having been from that era, I can relate,” Mr. Ward said, although, he joked, “I never owned that bus.” His Volkswagens of choice, he recalled, were two Beetles and a Karmann Ghia.
U. S. Trust, part of Bank of America, also displays a VW bus in a campaign by another Interpublic agency, Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos in Boston. The ads depict a wealthy man today and flash back to show him decades ago, surrounded by friends, inside a bus on a beach.
“The most valuable car in his collection isn’t the Ferrari, the Cobra or the Aston Martin,” a headline declares, “but a 1968 bus.” (Actually, the owner seems to have borrowed parts from models from other years.)
For people in U. S. Trust’s intended audience, “the ’60s “was a formative time in their lives, their wonder years,” said Anne Finucane, chief marketing officer at Bank of America in Boston.
The bus is a symbol “of the values you grew up with, the values that made you successful and the values you want to pass on to your children,” she added.
Indeed, the children of the baby boomers are another reason it is suddenly the time of the season for the ’60s.
“The kids are realizing what that generation was all about and what their fathers and mothers contributed,” said George Lois, who with his son, Luke, is creating a campaign for AmericanLife TV that carries the theme “For baby boomers and their babies.”
The campaign, from an agency in New York aptly named Good Karma Creative, pairs parents and offspring, like the actress Susan Sarandon and her daughter, Eva Amurri; Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair magazine, and his son, Ash; and the artist James Rosenquist and his daughter, Lily.
Ms. Amurri, for example, praises the way her mother’s generation worked to “change the world” by supporting women’s liberation and opposing the Vietnam War. And Ash Carter describes how his father took part in the movements for racial equality and against the war.
The echo effect from an unpopular conflict that polarized a nation four decades ago has not gone unnoticed.
“I’d like to think that the recent trend of using hippie and flower-power songs and tracks is actually a subliminally subversive tactic,” said Josh Rabinowitz, senior vice president and director for music at the Grey Group in New York, part of the WPP Group, “tapping into a subtle yet palpable collective consumer dissent with the Iraq war.”
For those who may dispute such a political perspective, Mr. Rabinowitz offered another rationale for the music’s comeback: It sounds good.
The songs appeal to a younger demographic as much as they do to boomers, he said, because they are reminiscent of the “indie-inflected” songs heard on TV series like “Grey’s Anatomy” and in films like “Garden State.”
Reactions to the ads are so far predominantly positive, the executives say.
“A lot of people are noticing” the Total campaign, said Ann Hayden, worldwide creative director on the General Mills account at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe.
“It gives us a starting point for getting people to rethink the brand,” she added.
•
At Geico, which closely tracks the response to its campaigns, Mr. Ward said the VW bus ads “are working.”
For U. S. Trust, Ms. Finucane said, there will be “more ads coming” with a ’60s vibe because “many of our customers identify with it.”
There may also be ads aimed at wealthy investors who fondly recall the ’70s. Asked if they will use symbols of that decade, like spinning disco balls, Ms. Finucane replied, “I hope not.”
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4) Pete Seeger and the ‘One Blue Sky Above Us’
By Andrew C. Revkin
Video
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/pete-seeger-and-the-one-blue-sky-above-us/index.html?ref=science
I went to talk to a folk singer about global warming over the weekend. There are some who would say that that’s silly, even irresponsible, given the weighty scientific and economic issues that lie at the interface between energy policy and the atmosphere.
But actually, a folk singer — in this case Pete Seeger — has just as legitimate a place at the table as a first grader, a retiree, a coal-industry lobbyist, a climate scientist or one of the diplomats negotiating in Bali over how to revive an ailing climate treaty.
That’s because the debate over next steps is as much about values as data. The consequences of various decisions over greenhouse gases are framed by science. But choices made by countries, communities and individuals are being shaped by a mix of history, geographic circumstance, money and – especially – values.
Mr. Seeger, at 88, has for many decades been writing and performing songs exploring values and rights, the interplay of people and the planet, and what one community or generation owes another. Whatever you think of his views, he’s clearly part of the national and global conversation.
At a climate rally on Saturday in his hometown, Beacon, N.Y., he sang “My Rainbow Race,” a 1967 song that has become something of an anthem for climate campaigners of late because the lyrics speak of the atmosphere (and oceans) as shared resources.
One blue sky above us,
One ocean lapping all our shores,
One Earth so green and round,
Who could ask for more?
They also, in classic Pete Seeger fashion, toss a dart at those impeding change.
Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
And they speak of intergenerational obligations, which I explored here not long ago in a post asking “What does the present owe the future?”
Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all their mothers and fathers, too –
Now’s our last chance to learn to share
What’s been given to me and you.
It’s not just banner-waving environmentalists and banjo-plucking folkies who see values as a key to the climate question. Last week, Jerry Taylor, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, chided a group of climate scientists for issuing a call in Bali for sharp cuts in greenhouse gases, saying their expertise in climate science gave them no special standing to dictate how society should respond to warming.
In the meantime, how do you personally weigh the costs of changing from unfettered burning of the fuels of convenience — coal and oil — which have created so much wealth, for the sake of limiting future risks?
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5) Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue
By PETER GELLING
December 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/asia/06indo.html?ref=science
KUALA CENAKU, Indonesia, Dec. 1 — Here on the island of Sumatra, about 1,200 miles from the global climate talks under way on Bali, are some of the world’s fastest-disappearing forests.
A look at this vast wasteland of charred stumps and dried-out peat makes the fight to save Indonesia’s forests seem nearly impossible.
“What can we possibly do to stop this?” said Pak Helman, 28, a villager here in Riau Province, surveying the scene from his leaking wooden longboat. “I feel lost. I feel abandoned.”
In recent years, dozens of pulp and paper companies have descended on Riau, which is roughly the size of Switzerland, snatching up generous government concessions to log and establish palm oil plantations. The results have caused villagers to feel panic.
Only five years ago, Mr. Helman said, he earned nearly $100 a week catching shrimp. Now, he said, logging has poisoned the rivers snaking through the heart of Riau, and he is lucky to find enough shrimp to earn $5 a month.
Responding to global demand for palm oil, which is used in cooking and cosmetics and, lately, in an increasingly popular biodiesel, companies have been claiming any land they can.
Fortunately, from Mr. Helman’s point of view, the issue of Riau’s disappearing forests has become a global one. He is now a volunteer for Greenpeace, which has established a camp in his village to monitor what it calls an impending Indonesian “carbon bomb.”
Deforestation, during which carbon stored in trees is released into the atmosphere, now accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to scientists. And Indonesia releases more carbon dioxide through deforestation than any other country.
Within Indonesia, the situation is most critical in Riau. In the past 10 years, nearly 60 percent of the province’s forests have been logged, burned and pulped, according to Jikalahari, a local environmental group.
“This is very serious — the world needs to act now,” said Susanto Kurniawan, a coordinator for Jikalahari who regularly makes the arduous trip into the forest from the nearby city of Pekanbaru, passing long lines of trucks carting palm oil and wood. “In a few years it will be too late.”
The rate of this deforestation is rising as oil prices reach new highs, leading more industries to turn to biodiesel made from palm oil, which, in theory, is earth-friendly. But its use is causing more harm than good, environmental groups say, because companies slash and burn huge swaths of trees to make way for palm oil plantations.
Even more significant, the burning and drying of Riau’s carbon-rich peatlands, also to make way for palm oil plantations, releases about 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year, according to Greenpeace officials.
But it is also in Riau that a new global strategy for conserving forests in developing countries might begin. A small area of Riau’s remaining forest will become a test case if an international carbon-trading plan called REDD is adopted.
REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, is to be one of the central topics of discussion at the Bali conference. Essentially, it would involve payments by wealthy countries to developing countries for every hectare of forest they do not cut down.
Indonesia, caught between its own financial interest in the palm oil industry and the growing international demands for conservation, has been promoting the carbon-trading plan for months.
But there are plenty of skeptics, who doubt it will be possible to measure just how much carbon is being conserved — and who question whether the lands involved can be protected from illegal logging and corruption.
Illegal logging is commonplace in Indonesia, and though the government has prosecuted dozens of cases in recent years, it says it cannot be everywhere. Companies in this remote area are cultivating land legally sold to them by the Indonesian government, but maps of their projects obtained by Greenpeace indicate that many of them have also moved into protected areas.
Critics say corruption is their biggest concern. The most famous illegal logger in Indonesia, Adelin Lis, who operated in North Sumatra, was arrested this year, only to be acquitted by a court in Medan, the provincial capital. He then left the country.
The attorney general’s office has opened a corruption investigation into judges and the police in Medan, and says there are many similar cases. “There are a number of ongoing investigations into corruption that has allowed illegal loggers from all over Indonesia to go free,” said Thomson Siagian, a spokesman for the attorney general. “In such a lucrative industry, payoffs are common.”
At the Bali conference, the Woods Hole Research Center, an environmental group based in the United States, has presented research showing that new satellite technology can make it more feasible to track illegal logging. Reports “show that radar imagery from new sensors recently placed in orbit can solve the problem of monitoring reductions in tropical deforestation, which previously was a major obstacle because of cloud cover that optical sensors can’t see through,” said John P. Holdren, the center’s director.
Such developments are good news to Mr. Helman, the villager in Riau who, using his wooden boat, has been ferrying a steady stream of foreign environmentalists and journalists in and out of the forest in recent weeks.
“I am so thankful for the recent attention,” he said, tinkering with the sputtering engine. “At times it seems too late. But I see some hope now.”
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6) Medicare Cuts Payout on 2 Cancer Drugs
By ALEX BERENSON
December 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/business/07drug.html?ref=health
New Medicare rules for a small but promising class of cancer drugs may cause thousands of lymphoma patients to lose access to the treatment, which in some cases is the only therapy available to them.
The drugs’ makers and patient advocacy groups say the changes will sharply cut reimbursement for the medicines next year, and they predict that many hospitals will stop offering the treatments. The Medicare changes come just as new data provides additional evidence that the medicines, called Bexxar and Zevalin, are effective.
The drugs are given to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the fifth-most-common cancer, and are usually prescribed for patients who have not responded to other therapies and who have few remaining treatment options. Clinical trial data show that they put the disease into remission for years in many of those patients.
Under the new rules, after Jan. 1, Medicare will reimburse hospitals about $16,000 for each treatment with the drugs, which a patient needs to receive only once. GlaxoSmithKline, which markets Bexxar, says it is priced at almost $30,000 a treatment, and Biogen Idec, which sells Zevalin, says it costs nearly as much. While high, such prices are not unusual for new cancer therapies, which can cost $50,000 or more for a year of treatment.
Senior Medicare officials say they are not trying to prevent hospitals from giving Bexxar and Zevalin. They say that $16,000 is a fair price and is based on the actual prices hospitals have paid for the medicines this year.
Zevalin was introduced in 2002, and Bexxar in 2003. Until now, Medicare has reimbursed each hospital claim individually, without setting a single nationwide price for the drug. The practice has resulted in wildly varying reimbursement, Medicare says.
But the companies say Medicare’s data must be inaccurate and that no hospital will offer the drugs to Medicare patients if it is losing $10,000 or more on each treatment.
Hospitals typically do not disclose their reimbursement rates, or whether they make money on any given treatment. The American Hospital Association declined to comment on the matter.
Under federal rules, hospitals that do not offer a drug to Medicare patients are barred from offering it to other patients, even if their insurers fully cover the cost of treatment. Because Bexxar and Zevalin contain radioactive material, the drugs must be administered by specially licensed technicians and doctors. They are usually given in hospitals.
Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for Glaxo, said the company had voluntarily submitted its pricing data to Medicare to prove that the hospital claims data was wrong. “Our feeling is there is a flaw in the methodology,” Ms. Alspach said.
Doctors, lymphoma patients and advocacy groups say they do not understand Medicare’s decision. About 60,000 people are diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma every year, and 20,000 people die of the disease.
“The explanation that they’re giving is really flawed,” said Dr. Mark Kaminski, the co-director of the leukemia and lymphoma transplant program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kaminski helped discover Bexxar two decades ago and receives a royalty for it.
Bexxar and Zevalin are part of a new class of drugs called radioimmunotherapies. They combine a radioactive particle with a biologically engineered molecule that attaches to cancerous white blood cells.
In clinical trials, they have proven as good as or better than standard treatments for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. In a trial of 414 patients scheduled to be discussed next Monday at a hematology conference, the combination of Zevalin and chemotherapy put lymphoma into remission for three years on average, compared with one year for chemotherapy alone.
Marion Swan, a spokeswoman for the Lymphoma Research Foundation, says the drugs are the only option for some patients. “Our No. 1 concern is that patients have access to all viable treatment options,” she said, “and it looks like this might be denying access.”
The drugs can require private cancer doctors to transfer their patients to hospitals, and the private doctors may view the hospitals as competitors. As a result, fewer than 10 percent of patients who are candidates for the drugs get them.
Advocates for the drugs had hoped that new clinical trial evidence, like the Zevalin data that will be presented next week, would persuade more doctors to prescribe them. Now they worry that Medicare’s decision will end most use of the drugs and chill the development of other radioimmunotherapies.
“If you can’t get two products that basically hit home runs into the marketplace, there’s very little incentive for further development,” Dr. Kaminski said.
Herb B. Kuhn, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency overseeing Medicare, said that the agency recognized the value of the drugs. But, he said, Medicare does not want to overpay for the medicines and believes that hospital data is the most accurate way to set reimbursement.
But most other drugs administered via injection in doctors’ offices or hospital outpatient clinics — as Bexxar and Zevalin are — are not reimbursed on the basis of what hospitals say they have paid. Instead, companies report the average price of their drugs to Medicare. Medicare then reimburses doctors and hospitals at that price, plus a 6 percent fee to cover handling costs.
GlaxoSmithKline said it had asked Medicare to switch to that system for Bexxar. So far, Medicare has refused.
Lymphoma patients, meanwhile, are anxiously watching the fight between Medicare and the companies.
Lora Beckwith, 66, first learned she had the disease in 2004. So far, her illness has progressed slowly, but last month, she was told that she would probably need treatment by February.
Because Ms. Beckwith, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., has Parkinson’s disease, she cannot receive standard chemotherapy for the disease, making Bexxar and Zevalin among her only alternatives. Now she fears she may not be able to get them.
“I’m not usually a vengeful or resentful person,” she said. “But I am feeling a bit resentful about having this taken away — if I can’t have access to a drug that would extend my life.”
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7) Justice in Sentencing
Editorial
December 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/opinion/12wed1.html?hp
With a pair of 7-2 rulings this week, the Supreme Court struck a blow for basic fairness and judicial independence. The court restored a vital measure of discretion to federal trial judges to impose sentences based on their assessment of a particular crime and defendant rather than being forced to adhere to overarching guidelines.
Beyond that, one of the rulings highlighted the longstanding injustice of federal guidelines and statutes imposing much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine, which is most often found in impoverished communities, than for offenses involving the chemically identical powdered cocaine, which is popular among more affluent users.
The rulings provide fresh impetus for Congress to rewrite the grotesquely unfair crack cocaine laws on which the federal sentencing guidelines are partly based. Those laws are a relic of the 1980s, when it was widely but wrongly believed that the crack form of cocaine was more dangerous than the powder form. We are pleased that the United States Sentencing Commission recently called for reducing sentences for some categories of offenders and has now called for applying the change retroactively. The real work still lies with Congress, which needs to rewrite the law.
Building on a 2005 decision that held the sentencing guidelines to be advisory rather than mandatory, the new rulings affirm that the guidelines are but one factor to be considered by a trial judge in arriving at an individual sentence, and that an appeals court must have a strong reason to overturn that sentence.
In one of the cases, the justices supported a district judge in Virginia who gave a military veteran convicted of crack dealing a sentence of 15 years, rather than the 19-22 years that the guidelines recommended. The ruling described the federal crack law as “disproportionate and unjust.” Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that it would not be an abuse of a discretion for a trial judge to conclude that the crack/powder disparity resulted in a longer-than-necessary sentence for a particular defendant.
In the other case, the court found that a trial judge was within his rights to impose a light sentence on a man briefly involved in selling the drug Ecstasy while in college. In reviewing sentences, wrote Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority, appellate courts must apply a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard to trial judges’ decisions.
There is a danger that the new procedures outlined by the court could end up making federal sentences unfairly disparate across the country, undermining one of the important objectives of having sentencing guidelines in the first place. If that happens, Congress will have to address the problem. For the moment, the Supreme Court’s latest adjustment in sentencing strikes us as a positive development, one with much potential for advancing justice.
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8) Wall Street's Bad Boys and Their Washington Enablers
Banksters Gone Wild
By PAM MARTENS
December 7, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens12072007.html
Imagine you moved in next door to a mischievous child. Over the years, you watched the parents scold ever so lightly as the deviant behavior grew from stealing loose change to petty larceny to bank robbery. You knew for sure the child would eventually get caught and end up in prison; but you didn't count on one thing: the parents used their political clout with each ratcheting up of the crimes to avoid prosecution, effectively turning the overseers of the public interest into criminal enablers. As the enablers "fixed" the outcome of each crime, they also sealed the records from public view and historical perspective.
That scenario typifies how criminal behavior has exploded on Wall Street and why President Bush, Congress and the regulators are stumbling around in the dark looking for cures for a financial crisis that they can neither understand nor contain: they're enablers in denial.
Nothing more dramatically illustrates the criminal contagion than the fact that for the second time in 13 years, Orange County, California has found Wall Street toxic sludge threatening its public funds.
Here's what happened the first time around: a Merrill Lynch stockbroker, Michael Stamenson, sold billions of dollars of complex securities to Orange County, which ran a pooled investment fund for close to 200 cities and school districts in the county. The county lost $1.7 billion when the highly leveraged fund imploded, the county filed bankruptcy, resulting in serious job losses and cutbacks in social services to the poor. In all, Merrill made approximately $100 million in fees with Stamenson collecting $4.3 million in just the two-year period of '93 and '94.
Stamenson was immortalized in evidence produced in court as the star of a Merrill Lynch training tape for rookie brokers where he maps out the road to success on Wall Street: '' the tenacity of a rattlesnake, the heart of a black widow spider and the hide of an alligator.''
As the evidence against Stamenson and higher ups at Merrill played out in court, Merrill Lynch continued to pay annual compensation of $750,000 to Stamenson and eventually settled the case for $400 million and sealed the documents. It also paid $30 million to the county to settle and abruptly end a grand jury investigation, leading to loud cries of foul play. Once again, the documents and testimony were sealed from public view. This is what consistently happens on settlement when a customer or employee attempts to sue a Wall Street firm and is ushered instead into a Wall Street Star Chamber called mandatory arbitration.
Today, Orange County is hardly an isolated case of banksters gone wild. The same type of sludge sits in public funds for schools, cities and pensions from coast to coast.
A Local Government Investment Pool in Florida recently saw a run on its assets after it was revealed that $1.5 billion of defaulted and downgraded debt, courtesy of Wall Street, was part of this supposedly safe money market fund for hundreds of towns and school districts in Florida.
Even four small Norwegian towns near the Artic Circle have lost $64 million from complex securities created by Citigroup and sold to them by a local broker, Terra Securities. Additionally, billions of dollars of the sludge sit stealthily in Mom and Pop money market funds at some of the largest and most prestigious financial institutions in the U.S.
And if the situation were not dangerous enough, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, has misdiagnosed the problem (wittingly or unwittingly). Mr. Paulson would have you believe that if he can help enough people avoid foreclosure on their homes, by changing their teaser mortgage rate to a fixed rate on their subprime loan, he will have taken a big step forward in alleviating the financial crisis. While any constructive step to keep people in their homes is to be applauded, what is blowing up all over the globe is not just subprime mortgages. The real problem arises from Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) and Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) which, just like Enron, hide enormous amounts of debt from public scrutiny, making companies appear more profitable and solvent than they really are.
Mainstream media has also been implanting the idea that it's all about homeowners and mortgage loans instead of banksters hiding bad debt. On December 5, 2007, the Associated Press, which is syndicated to newspapers across the country, carried this inaccurate statement: "SIVs are investment funds created by banks like Citigroup Inc. or HSBC Holdings PLC and sold to investors. The funds borrow short-term money and use it to buy mortgage debt, profiting off the difference between what they collect on the mortgage debt and what they pay to borrow." [Italicized emphasis added.]
Mortgage debt? According to Citigroup, the largest purveyor of the black hole SIVs with over $83 billion in seven SIVs as of September 30, 2007, 58% of its SIV holdings is financial institution debt, with 32% mortgage related, 5% student loans, 4% credit cards and 1% other. It goes on to say that just $70 million of this $83 billion has indirect exposure to U.S. subprime assets. On November 30, 2007, Moody's put on review for possible downgrade (as well as actual downgrades on some securities) debt totaling $64.9 billion that was issued by six Citigroup SIVs. [1]
In other words, financial institution debt, together with imploding mortgages, off balance sheet mountains of debt and the worst transparency we've had since 1929, are the full set of problems.
Why would positioning this crisis by the President or U.S. Treasury Secretary as a subprime mortgage problem be preferable to laying out the full scope of the crisis to the American people?
To state the truth would be admitting that the Bush administration and its crony capitalists failed to properly audit the largest banks in America; failed to pay attention as they stashed hundreds of billions of dollars off their balance sheets in a replay of Enronomics; failed to prosecute the banksters when they parked this toxic waste in Mom and Pop money market funds across the country; and failed to jail the banksters before they burned down the bank and became a global threat to financial stability.
Now, these very same banks don't know what's hidden off each others balance sheets, how much their largest industrial customers have hidden off balance sheet, courtesy of Citigroup's propensity to set up SPEs for others; if the bank that is a counterparty to its credit-default swaps is going to be in business when those insurance policies are most needed. Therefore, they say, we'll just stop doing business with each other since we're all guilty by association with the same corrupt enablers in Washington.
And while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Reserve Board (FRB), and Congress bear much blame for the financial crisis, the Office of the Controller of the Currency (OCC) stands out as the quintessential enabler of corruption on Wall Street.
Consider the July 25, 2007 testimony of the Consumer Federation of America on behalf of itself and other leading consumer groups to the Committee on Financial Services in the U.S. House of Representatives:
Any discussion about the quality of federal financial services regulation must begin by mentioning the “elephant in the living room....” The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Watters vs. Wachovia Bank, N.A., upheld a regulation by the Department of Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that permits operating subsidiaries of national banks to violate state laws with impunity. The court ruled that the bank’s operating subsidiary is subject to OCC superintendence – even if there effectively is none – and not the licensing, reporting and visitorial regimes of the states in which the subsidiary operates...The OCC has even sought to prevent state attorneys general and regulators from enforcing state laws that it concedes are not preempted. The recent court ruling encourages national banks and their subsidiaries to ignore even the most reasonable of state consumer laws.
To underscore that the overarching problem here is an interbank crisis of confidence over black holes of corruption and crony regulation, rather than the narrowly defined "subprime mortgage mess," let's look at the time line of what happened. Beginning this past July, the credit-default swaps of a British bank, Northern Rock, begin to tick higher; by August, they made an additional sharp move upward, signaling a solvency problem. In September, there's a run on the bank (the first in Britain since 1866). The bank collapses and the Bank of England has to use taxpayer money to bail it out to the tune of approximately 29 billion pounds or close to $60 billion.
What does that have to do with a U.S. financial crisis? As it turns out, this small bank of 6,000 employees has set up Channel Island-based debt structures called Granite, stuffed them with $104 billion of U.K. residential mortgages (which are now showing an increasing propensity to default). Adding further intrigue and local outrage, the offshore trust named a charity for Down's Syndrome children as part of its funding subterfuge, without the permission or knowledge of the charity. This has sparked a full scale investigation by British authorities.
Terrifying banks on this side of the Atlantic is the knowledge that (1) two of our biggest Wall Street firms, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, underwrote tens of billions of that Channel Island paper, Granite Master Issuer, and sold it here in the U.S.; (2) Citibank, the commercial banking unit of Citigroup, is the principal paying agent; (3) big chunks of that paper, as of SEC filings on September 30, 2007, is sitting in money markets and fixed income mutual funds in the U.S., raising some serious liability issues for Citigroup and Merrill; and (4) 30 percent of the mortgages have a loan to value (LTV) ratio of 90 to 100 percent while over 50 percent have a LTV of 80 to 100 percent. [2]
It smells Enronesque and Parmalatesque (the bankrupted Italian dairy firm) to a wide swath of the legal and banking community and given that Citigroup will finally face public trials in both of these earlier swindles next year, the timing could not be less propitious for confidence building.
The British Parliament is grilling all the players and regulators for answers to the financial crisis in public hearings while here in the U.S. we prefer to fashion remedies for a financial crisis we've yet to investigate or understand.
To recap: there has been the first bank run in 140 years in Britain. We've had the first run on a public money market fund here in Florida. The U.S. debt markets have been barely functioning for four months. Our largest banks don't trust each other.
Perhaps one of the presidential candidates could leave the campaign trail long enough to prove their leadership skills by calling for emergency hearings in Congress, the venue in which we the people pay them to do the people's work.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no securities position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire.
[1] Citigroup's 3rd Quarter 10Q filing with the SEC discussing its SIV
[2] Granite Master Issuer securitization filing with the SEC:
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9) Appeals court throws out parts of anti-terror law as too vague
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
A law that makes it a crime to help groups that the U.S. government considers terrorist is unconstitutionally vague and could punish Americans for advising organizations about nonviolent methods, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco invalidates portions of a 1996 federal anti-terrorism law and a set of amendments in 2004. The law prohibits knowingly providing material support or resources to a foreign organization on the State Department's terrorist list.
Those terms are so unclear, the court said, that they might be used to prosecute and imprison those who trained members of foreign organizations on "how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve ongoing disputes," or on how to lobby the United Nations for disaster relief. Violations of the law are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
"This statute essentially allows for guilt by association," said Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. Although the court did not overturn the entire law, he said, it struck down portions that would outlaw "humanitarian aid of the sort that we would want to encourage."
Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the department was reviewing the ruling.
The Bush administration has used the ban on material support to terrorist organizations in several prominent cases, including the prosecution and guilty plea of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County man who joined the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh's case is not affected by Monday's ruling, which focused on support provided through advocacy and nonviolent training.
The law, the court said, "can legitimately be applied to criminalize facilitation of terrorism" in the form of weapons and other military assistance.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of organizations and individuals seeking to provide political and financial aid to two groups on the State Department terrorist list: the Kurdish Workers Party in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.
Kadidal said some of the plaintiffs want to train members of both organizations in peaceful conflict resolution and advocacy before the United Nations, and others, including doctors and engineers, have been trying to bring relief to areas of Sri Lanka that have been devastated by a civil war and a December 2004 tsunami. That relief requires working with the Tamil Tigers, who are effectively functioning as the government in the northern coastal area, the lawyer said.
The suit challenged provisions in the law that defined material support to include training, expert advice and services. After a federal judge and the appeals court blocked enforcement of those sections in 2003, Congress rewrote the definitions in 2004, specifying that the ban applied only to those who knew an organization was on the terrorist list and provided instruction in specific skills or specialized knowledge.
The appeals court said the law was still so vague that a nonlawyer would have to guess about whether giving certain types of advice would be criminal.
"We find it highly unlikely that a person of ordinary intelligence would know whether, when teaching someone to petition international bodies for tsunami-related aid, one is imparting a 'specific skill' or 'general knowledge,' " Judge Harry Pregerson said in the 3-0 ruling.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/BAK4TRLG2.DTL
This article appeared on page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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10) Omaha Night
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 6, 2007
Prisonradio.org
A young man strolled into a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, the navel of the United States, and opens up at stunned passersby.
He has a rifle, but what arms him is a deep, abiding sense of worthlessness, depression and despair. He lost his job at a local McDonald’s; and he was recently dumped by his girlfriend.
Before the night was over, eight people, nine including this young man, would be dead.
Robert Hawkins reportedly shot himself to death to end his killing sprees. He was 19.
In a suicide note left at the place he was staying, he reportedly wrote that he wanted to be famous.
What does that say about this American life that one feels so hopeless, and so empty, at 19?
What does it say about the American fascination with fame?
And how do you get fired, from McDonald’s?
What do you think this young man had to look forward to?
Unemployed, with few serious prospects.
Feeling unloved—worthless.
The U.S. economy (for working people) has been in virtual free fall since the ravages of globalization have left a smattering of service jobs in the place of missing manufacturing jobs.
The U.S. Army, in a time when they are, quite frankly, desperate for recruits, wouldn’t accept this.
Imagine, if you will, what it must be like to be a 19-year-old Black youth in present day America—the product of an educational system that can barely qualify for the name?
What do you think that young man has to look forward to?
Both of these young men, the mall-sprayer and the imaginary one, had their educational experiences under something cynically called No Child Left Behind.
One wonders—how could they be more left behind?
One youth walks into a sprawling mall, its floors and shops chock full of shoppers trying to snag a post Black Friday bargain, knowing full well that he’ll never leave it alive.
Another gambles his life in a mindless gang banging, or the urban drug trade, willing to kill or die for a brief glimpse of a life long denied him.
It has often been observed that youth think themselves invulnerable and immortal.
In generations past, perhaps this may’ve been the case.
But as these events show, some youth are so alienated, so lost, that they look to death with longing, as an escape from a life they find intolerable.
What does that say about us?
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11) Teaching False History (And Its Consequences)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
December 8, 2007
Prisonradio.org
Ask any school kid in the U.S. to name the first English settlement in what we now call America, and he (or she) will probably announce, “Jamestown!” Some will add, “Virginia!” And the truly nerdy would answer, “in 1607!”
Such children of the “No Child Left Behind” generation will beam in their beautiful, childlike brilliance, for no doubt they would recall that just such answers as these earned passing grades on their history tests.
And we know that tests are right, right?
Wrong.
The first English settlement was established over a generation before Jamestown—in a place called Roanoke Island, in 1584, and 1587, off the coast of what is today called North Carolina.
Why are school kids taught about Jamestown, but rarely Roanoke Island?
Because Jamestown survived, and Roanoke vanished.
Dozens of novels and at least a half-dozen movies have been made of Roanoke Island, but the people were lost to witchcraft, to native spirits, or, in the best telling of the tale, they “went Native” and joined local tribes.
The real reason is a bit more grisly.
History lecturer and writer, William Loren Katz, in his remarkable book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), [orig. 1986] tells us that an eerily American ailment afflicted them. Katz writes:
“What the pioneers did was self-destruct over their own love of possession. When a silver cup allegedly disappeared, the Roanoke men roared out of their tiny enclave, muskets and torches in hand, to destroy their Indian neighbors’ village and crops. This blazing display of European possession -mania cut the colony off from the one local source of help. When the Spanish Armada severed the settlements’ connection to British ports, it withered and died.” [Pg. 21]
In essence, telling kids the truth about Roanoke might destroy their sense of nascent nationalism, and perhaps scare them. Instead, it’s Jamestown—or perhaps Plymouth Rock, the site of the beginning of that glorious theocracy of 1620.
If Roanoke’s story were better known, perhaps lessons would be learned that stealing from others, and raiding others isn’t a good, nor glorious thing; perhaps it would be an historical lesson about the perils of greed, or in Katz’s words, “possession-mania.”
Americans of all ages know little about the real contours of the making of America, which owed more to sheer genocide than anything else.
In this same book, Katz details how England and Spain wreaked havoc upon the indigenous people of the Americas:
“In the century following Columbus’ landing, millions of Native Americans died from a combination of European diseases, harsh treatment, and murder. Africans took their places in the mines and fields of the New World. The 80 million Native Americans alive in 1492 became only 10 million left alive a century later. But the 10,000 Africans working in the Americas in 1527 had, by the end of the century, become 90,000 people. These figures are even more striking within local areas. In 1519 when the Spaniards arrived, Mexico had a population of 25 million Indians. By the end of the century only a million were still alive. The invader calculated that more profit would be made if laborers were worked to death and replaced. In their plans pain and suffering did not count, and no cruelty was considered.” [Pg. 23]
Perhaps if kids were taught this version of history, the mad dash of imperialism that marked much of the 20th century would not have occurred.
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12) Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans
Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US
December 11, 2007
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/156081/1/
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 11 (OneWorld) - Global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions are bound to fail if the interests of indigenous communities are not taken into account, leaders of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples are warning.
"The success of efforts to lower carbon emissions from deforestation hinges primarily on whether indigenous peoples will throw their support behind proposed mechanisms," said indigenous leader Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum.
Tauli-Corpuz told the UN Summit on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, this week that indigenous communities are increasingly worried about plans by governments and international financial institutions to control forest degradation.
The indigenous communities, according to her, are particularly concerned about the World Bank's Carbon Partnership Facility, which is likely to provide large-scale incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
The tropical and subtropical forest, the subject of the Facility, is home to 160 million indigenous peoples who are seen by many scientists as custodians and managers of forest biodiversity.
"While the Facility can be a good thing, we are very apprehensive on how this will work," Tauli-Corpuz continued, "because of our negative historical and present experiences with similar initiatives."
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes native groups' right to control their lands and resources, including forests, but many governments and corporations continue to abuse the rights of forest communities.
"We remain in a very vulnerable situation," said Tauli Corpuz, "because most states do not recognize our rights to these forests and resources found therein."
Last week, a report released by an international advocacy group raised similar concerns about the role of governments and corporations.
In its report, London-based Survival International named and shamed countries where the violations of tribal peoples' rights are most egregious, including Botswana, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.
The report entitled, "The Terrible Ten: Key Abusers of Tribal Peoples' Rights in 2007" says tribal people in West Papua are facing appalling violence at the hands of Indonesia's army, including killing, torture and rape. The natives' lands are often exploited by the government and foreign companies.
In Botswana, the government continues to prevent Bushmen from returning to their home in the country's diamond-producing area, despite a landmark court ruling that declared their 2002 eviction 'unlawful and unconstitutional.'
According to Survival, cattle ranchers occupying Guarani Indian land in Paraguay are committing armed violence against the natives. This year they killed two Guarani leaders and raped two Guarani women. Fear of rape has led many women to commit suicide.
In Peru, which is home to an estimated 15 of the world's last uncontacted tribes, the government has opened up the indigenous peoples' territories to oil companies and illegal loggers. Paraguay's Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people face a similar situation.
In Malaysia, land has been taken from the Sarawak tribe to make way for logging, dam construction, and oil palm plantations. The government has told the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Penan people that they have no land rights until they 'settle down' and start farming.
Meanwhile at the UN Summit in Bali, many indigenous groups protested against their exclusion from the climate change negotiations. They wore symbolic gags that read UNFCCC, the acronym of the United UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Last week, an indigenous delegation charged that despite having received an invitation, it was forcibly barred from entering the meeting between the UNFCCC executive secretary and civil society representatives.
"There is no seat or name plate for indigenous peoples in the plenary," stated Hubertus Samangun, the representative for English-speaking Indigenous Peoples of the Global Forest Coalition.
"Indigenous peoples are not only marginalized from the discussion, but there is virtually no mention of indigenous peoples in the more that 5 million words of UNFCCC documents," argued Alfred Ilenre of the Edo People of Nigeria.
"This is occurring despite the fact that indigenous peoples are suffering the most from climate change and climate change mitigation projects that directly impact their lands," IIenre added in a statement.
UN Permanent Forum's Tauli-Corpuz demanded the governments and corporations must obtain the "free and prior" consent of indigenous peoples before taking any initiative on forest protections.
"I imagine that donors and the private sector would not like to put their resources in high-risk projects which will not genuinely involve indigenous and other forest-dwellers," she said. "If there is an acceptance of the Facility, indigenous peoples must have a representation in [its] governance."
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13) C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods
By SCOTT SHANE
December 13, 2007
News Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/washington/13inquire.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.
Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil.
The Justice Department, which in 2002 gave the C.I.A. legal approval for waterboarding and other tough interrogation methods, is reviewing whether agency officials broke the law by destroying videotapes of those very methods.
The Congressional intelligence committees, whose leaders in 2002 gave at least tacit approval for the tough tactics, have voted in conference to ban all coercive techniques, and they have announced investigations of the destruction of the videotapes and the methods they documented.
“Exactly what they feared is what’s happening,” Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, said of the C.I.A. officials he advised in that job. “The winds change, and the recriminations begin.”
The legal siege against the Bush administration’s counterterrorism programs goes far beyond the C.I.A., including lawsuits brought on behalf of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and more than 40 challenges in court to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.
For some at the C.I.A., the second-guessing began in 2004 with a decision by Mr. Goldsmith, now at Harvard Law School, to withdraw the 2002 opinion on interrogation, whose sweeping constitutional claims and narrow definition of torture he found fatally flawed. But he said he regretted the way the agency had been whipsawed — accused of “risk aversion” immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and now blamed for traducing American values by engaging in torture.
“Things that seemed to them five years ago to have airtight legal and political support are now under investigation,” he said, comparing this cycle to the Senate hearings into C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s and the criminal prosecution of C.I.A. officials in the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s.
Even a C.I.A. officer involved in capturing and questioning leaders of Al Qaeda expresses a striking ambivalence about the policies that were carried out.
John C. Kiriakou, who helped lead the team that caught the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002, went public on ABC News this week with such a message. He said he saw intelligence reports saying that waterboarding, a technique that induces a sense of suffocation, had caused Abu Zubaydah to start talking after 35 seconds.
But Mr. Kiriakou, a 43-year-old father of four who left the agency in 2004, also said in an interview that he believed waterboarding was torture and should never be used again, because “we Americans are better than that.” He added: “I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding.”
Legal hazards were on the minds of Bush administration officials from the beginning of the response to 9/11. The 2002 Justice Department interrogation opinion laid out some defenses interrogators might use against criminal accusations of torture.
“The administration’s success in preventing attacks has become its enemy,” said John Yoo, the former Justice official who wrote most of the 2002 opinion. Since then, he added, “The political environment has changed because people feel the threat is less than it used to be.”
Mr. Yoo’s legal opinions, though criticized as seriously flawed by some scholars, may nonetheless provide impenetrable armor for C.I.A. officers. From the beginning, wary agency officials insisted on what they called “top cover” — written Justice Department approval for what they did.
Most legal scholars say that even under a future administration, the Justice Department would not seek charges against C.I.A. officers for actions the department itself had approved.
Another obstacle to such prosecutions would be the laws passed by Congress in 2005 and 2006 granting extensive legal protection for authorized conduct. But the videotape destruction may not have such protection; the episode recalls the adage of Washington scandals — that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up that leads to trouble.
The deaths of several prisoners who had been questioned by C.I.A. officers or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — but outside the detention program for high-level Qaeda prisoners — have been referred to the Justice Department. Only one C.I.A. contractor, David A. Passaro, has been prosecuted, receiving an eight-year sentence for beating an Afghan man who later died.
Still, investigations can impose a high price no matter how they end. “It’s not just the fear of going to jail,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s the enormous expense of hiring lawyers. It’s seeing your reputation destroyed. It’s losing your career.”
Overseas, C.I.A. officers implicated in rendition cases have been sought on criminal charges in Italy and Germany, though none have been arrested. And since the international pursuit of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, human rights advocates have often sought criminal charges against former officials on the principle of “universal jurisdiction” for certain grave offenses, including torture.
The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which unsuccessfully sought charges against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a recent visit to France, has pledged to pursue criminal torture charges against former Bush administration officials when they travel abroad.
“The only way to restore the moral authority of our country,” said Michael Ratner, the group’s president, “is accountability.”
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14) Charity’s Share From Shopping Raises Concern
By STEPHANIE STROM
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13giving.html?ref=us
Shopping has become virtuous, especially at this time of year. Buy a “Better World” scarf at American Eagle Outfitters, and the retailer says $10 of the $19.95 price will go to one of three charities. Buy or lease a BMW this month, and participating dealers say they will give $25 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Consumers these days can benefit a variety of charities with their purchases. Or can they?
Increasingly, nonprofit experts are beginning to question one of the fastest-growing sectors of giving, the practice of building a donation into the purchase of items as varied as fine jewelry and Always feminine products.
They point out that such giving is unregulated and, in most cases, unaccountable — and no one knows who, if anyone, is claiming a tax deduction for it.
“It’s virtuousness as a marketing gimmick run amok,” said Lucy Bernholz, founder and president of Blueprint Research and Design, a consulting firm for nonprofit organizations, who has coined the term “embedded giving” to describe the phenomenon. “The potential for it to be a scam is huge.”
In many cases, charities and their corporate partners are unwilling to discuss the specifics of their embedded-giving programs, declining to answer questions about how much is raised and even where exactly the money is going.
Sometimes charities do not even know they are supposed to be receiving donations. For instance, some beneficiaries of an embedded-giving program in a holiday catalog from Barneys New York found out they were listed only after they were contacted by The New York Times.
The World Wildlife Fund, a major charity that works to preserve and protect animals and the environment, was among them. John Donoghue, its senior vice president, was disconcerted to learn that his organization was among a number of charities named as beneficiaries of items bought from Barneys’ “Have a Green Holiday” catalog.
“Unfortunately, just like Barneys shoppers, we’re in the dark as to how or if Barneys and the manufacturers will fulfill their commitment to donate a portion of the proceeds from these products to W.W.F.,” Mr. Donoghue said.
Experts say such loose arrangements mean that donors cannot be sure where their money is going.
“In most cases of embedded giving, the donors will have even less idea of where their money goes than they do when they give to many large charities,” said Timothy N. Ogden, chief knowledge officer at Geneva Global, a philanthropic consulting firm. “Rather than donors getting closer to what is needed and how their money is used, they’re getting farther away.”
The start of embedded giving can be traced from the early 1980s, a time when American Express developed an effort to raise money for the restorations of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island by donating one penny for every purchase charged to its credit cards, generating $1.7 million.
Experts say companies and charities have embraced it wholeheartedly, though no one keeps track. Companies feel the programs burnish their images and may help them sell more products. Many charities believe the programs make it easier for people to donate because the transaction occurs as they go about their everyday business.
But some worry that embedded giving could end up eating away at larger, more direct charitable contributions. Donors, they say, will feel they are making donations all the time and be less likely to write out big checks at the end of the year. “Once purchasing and giving are conflated, the consumer is likely to conflate retailers and charities,” Mr. Ogden said.
Probably the most successful program of this kind is (Product)RED, which was created with the backing of Bono, lead singer of U2. The organization raises money for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria through companies like Apple, Gap and Motorola, which donate part of the sales price of designated items. It has pulled in $51.7 million since it began last year. Unlike many other programs, however, a detailed contract exists between the seven companies that have signed contracts to use the (Product)RED brand. Typically up to 50 percent of profits go directly to the Global Fund, and buyers can see how much the effort is raising on the Web.
But in most cases, embedded giving raises more modest amounts. The World Wildlife Fund garners $2 million to $3 million a year from such programs done in partnership with 22 companies. Its seven-year relationship with Build-a-Bear Workshop, for instance, has raised $1.5 million, according to the fund.
Mr. Donoghue said the benefits of embedded giving can reach beyond money. For instance, he said the fund can influence the use of more environmentally sound commodities and products through its choice of partners.
And the deals can vastly expand the group’s reach. “For us to have 100,000 cool girls walking around wearing panda-branded T-shirts that have appeared in a circular that goes to 50 million people and is paid for by a corporate partner has a communications benefit we could never afford on our own,” he said.
The wildlife fund has a contract with Chaser Merchandising, which puts the organization’s panda brand on T-shirts. J. C. Penney is selling the shirts with a promise to give $1 of the proceeds to the fund, or a guaranteed minimum of $50,000.
Still, the fund is working to promote more direct types of giving. It had no idea that it was listed in the Barneys catalog, which states that Maria de la Rosa, an Italian home décor company, will donate “a portion of the proceeds” of the purchase of a $150 cosmetics bag to the wildlife fund.
Unlike the case this year, Barneys had a contract to use the World Wildlife Fund name in last year’s holiday catalog, and the organization had to wait “quite a long time” before it was paid what it was due, Mr. Donoghue said. “It wasn’t the easiest relationship,” he said.
Dawn Brown, a spokeswoman for Barneys, said that the onus to hammer out a deal with a charity was on the manufacturers whose products were featured in the catalog and that the company had reminded them of that obligation last week, after it learned from The Times that some charities were unaware of the program.
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance recommends that charities participating in embedded giving spell out how much money in a purchase will go to them. It also recommends that they spell out the duration of each campaign.
But in many cases this does not happen. In the Barneys catalog, the jewelry designer Sharon Khazzam promises “a portion of the proceeds” from the sale of a $9,100 diamond and moonstone “world” necklace to the Edible Schoolyard, a program run by the Chez Panisse Foundation, the foundation started by the celebrity chef Alice Waters.
Ms. Khazzam said in an interview that 10 percent of her gross receipts would go to the Edible Schoolyard. No contract governs her pledge, however.
Carolyn Federman, director of development for the Chez Panisse Foundation conceded there was no way for the organization to know whether it was receiving its due, but she said she trusted Ms. Khazzam.
Still, she said, most embedded giving programs are hardly worth it.
“We have people call and say they want to do this or that to benefit the foundation all the time, and we turn them down because we know what they want is to leverage your name,” Ms. Federman said.
Far more people encounter embedded giving on the grocery store checkout line, when the clerk asks them whether they would like to tack on $2 or $3 onto their bills for a specific charity.
Personal experience with such programs has caused Jack Siegel, a tax lawyer and charity governance expert, to question whether state charity regulators should be taking a closer look at them too.
“I wonder, are these charitable solicitations that would require registration with state attorneys general?” Mr. Siegel said. “You’re supposed to register if you say the money you’re raising is for a good cause.”
He started questioning embedded giving on a visit to a Whole Foods store when he was asked to donate to a breast cancer charity and refused.
“The checkout clerk then started to grill me about why I didn’t want to,” he said. “And I honestly think she handled my bananas more roughly than they usually do.”
Fred Shank, a spokesman for Whole Foods, said the chain had a policy instructing clerks not to become pushy if customers decline to give. He said the company used a computerized scanning system to track the donations.
At least grocery customers are told where their dollars are supposedly going. Some retailers just promise to give part of sales to good causes generally.
For instance, Hanna Andersson, the children’s clothing company, promises to give “a portion of the profits” from the sale of its Day for a Sleigh long johns to “organizations that provide support to kids in need.”
Alison Polenz, vice president for marketing at Hanna Andersson, said she could not provide details about how much the company gave and to whom.
“If we put a number out there, we want it to be something we are able to live up to, and we can’t always guarantee that,” Ms. Polenz said. “It’s not meant to be vague or not sharing with the customer.”
Embedded giving is also popular online. One of the best known programs, iGive.com, makes money every time a consumer who has signed on as a member shops at one of the more than 680 retailers in its network.
The site lists 39,000 “causes” that members can give to. The list is generated by members, and iGive makes it clear that not all causes are bona fide charities. One cause listed, for example, asks for money for a son’s college fund.
When an iGive member makes a purchase, the retailer gives iGive a percentage and puts a percentage into the member’s iGive account. The member then uses that account to make donations. Since it was founded in 1997, iGive has sent $2.9 million to the various causes on its list.
But members can also direct the money back to themselves, although Robert Grosshandler, the founder of iGive, says that happens rarely.
Still, some of the details, like how much each retailer pays Mr. Grosshandler, remain blurry.
Ms. Bernholz, the consultant, said embedded giving was becoming so widespread that it was starting to resemble a tax. “Maybe it’s all good,” she said. “But if it is, we should be counting it, and we’re not.”
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15) Survey Points to Tensions Among Chief Minorities
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13race.html?ref=us
Distrust and racial tension among Hispanics, Asians and blacks in the United States are pressing concerns for all three groups, a new national poll conducted in English, Spanish and five Asian languages has found.
The poll, published Wednesday, found a stark gap between Hispanics and Asians, who are mainly immigrants, and African-Americans about their prospects for success.
About three-quarters of Hispanics and about two-thirds of Asians believe they will progress in this country if they work hard, the survey found. But only 44 percent of African-Americans polled said they believed that hard work would bring them success, and 66 percent of African-Americans said they did not believe that everyone in the United States had an equal opportunity to succeed.
The poll was published by New America Media, a national association of about 700 ethnic media organizations that promotes better relations among racial and ethnic groups. It was conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a polling organization in Miami.
Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll, said it was the first national survey to look into relations among the leading minority groups in the United States. The Asian languages used were Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog, which is spoken in the Philippines.
The sample of respondents reflected the demographic makeup of the three groups in the United States population, Mr. Bendixen said. About half of Hispanics and about four-fifths of Asians in this country are immigrants, while 90 percent of blacks were born here. The survey did not ask about the legal status of the immigrants.
It reported that 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African-Americans and 73 percent of Asians said racial tension was a very important problem in the United States.
But the groups’ perceptions of one another are not all negative. While 51 percent of African-Americans in the poll said Hispanic immigrants were taking jobs and political power from blacks, another large group of African-Americans — 45 percent — disagreed that they were losing ground to Hispanics. And while 44 percent of Hispanics said they feared African-Americans, identifying them with high crime rates, half of Hispanics had no such fear.
Views of the criminal justice system differ widely among the three groups. Among blacks, 71 percent said the system “favors the rich and powerful,” while 45 percent of Hispanics and only 27 percent of Asians agreed.
The three groups tend to socialize among themselves, mixing infrequently with the others. Nearly three-quarters of Hispanics and Asians and 61 percent of blacks said they had never dated someone who was from either of the two other groups or who was white.
There were signs of optimism, however. More than 60 percent of each of the three groups said they expected race relations to improve in the next decade. Large majorities of Hispanics and Asians credited American blacks and the civil rights movement with making life easier for them here.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 1,105 adults in August and September. The margin of sampling error for each group was plus or minus five percentage points.
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16) Warehouse Workers Quit in Immigration Inquiry
By NINA BERNSTEIN
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/nyregion/13fresh.html?ref=nyregion
Fresh Direct, the online grocery delivery operation that caters to affluent and overworked New Yorkers, lost dozens of employees this week after federal immigration officials notified the company that its employee records were under investigation.
The company sent its workers a memo on Sunday and Monday saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to inspect the records of every employee and asked them to update their information and provide documents, like Social Security cards, to prove employment eligibility. At least 40 warehouse workers who could not produce proof that they were authorized to work in the United States quit or were suspended.
At the company’s warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, the work force, largely immigrants, reacted with panic and distress as news of the inquiry spread.
“Some people just walked out the door,” said Sandy Pope, president of a Teamsters local that is one of two unions competing to organize the workers. “They were sobbing, with garbage bags full of their clothes from their lockers. They didn’t feel they had any chance of fixing their paperwork, so they just left.”
Fresh Direct officials said in a statement that they were trying to comply with the government’s request and keep their employees informed about the investigation. But they would not discuss any suspensions or resignations.
The federal investigation, part of a national campaign aimed at employers who hire illegal immigrants, comes in the midst the company’s busiest season and in the middle of a conflict over efforts to unionize some 900 Fresh Direct warehouse workers. The workers are scheduled to vote on Dec. 22 and 23 on whether to affiliate with either Local 805 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or Local 348 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which recently organized Fresh Direct drivers.
Ms. Pope, the Teamsters’ president, said on Wednesday that the suspensions seemed to be an effort to thwart the union and that the company’s lawyers might have invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to scrutinize workers to weaken the union drive.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, said, “I would categorically deny that that’s the case.”
Jim Moore, the company’s senior vice president for business affairs, called the claim outrageous.
“At this point, Fresh Direct is intent on two things,” he said in a written statement. “Complying with the requirements of federal law with respect to the I.C.E. audit and ensuring that its employees know the facts and are given the opportunity to participate” in the union vote. He said the company had asked immigration officials to delay their audit until after the holidays, but they refused.
Without confirming or denying the investigation, Ms. Nantel said such audits were part of the agency’s stepped-up enforcement.
With new financing, she said, the agency recently hired 41 “forensic auditors” to scrutinize employment eligibility verification forms, known as I-9’s, that companies are required to keep on file for every employee they hire.
“Certainly an I-9 audit is one investigatory tool that we use,” Ms. Nantel said. “Depending on the results of the audit, we’ll follow that investigation to whatever next step is appropriate.”
Companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants can face fines or criminal charges, but until recently, prosecutions were extremely rare. In some workplaces elsewhere in the country, workers without proper documents were summoned to the main office without warning, and taken away in handcuffs.
Union officials said that many Fresh Direct employees, who earn between $7.50 and $9.75 an hour, were so frightened of being detained and separated from their children that they stayed home on Wednesday. Others said they were told not to come back.
Ms. Pope said that some employees were warned by company officials not to show up for their paychecks. She said the union was scrambling to find clergy members or other volunteers to collect paychecks for workers who feared going back to the warehouse.
One 41-year-old woman from Ecuador, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of deportation, said she was let go with an expression of regret when she told human resources workers at the company that the Social Security number she had been using for nearly four years was false.
“I’m really desperate now because I have no money to send to my kids,” she said, referring to four children in Ecuador. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.”
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Canada: Mounties Urged to Restrict Taser Use
By IAN AUSTEN
In a report, the watchdog commission that oversees the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recommended that Taser stun guns be used only on people who are “combative or posing a risk of death or grievous bodily harm,” much like a conventional firearm rather than a nightstick or pepper spray. The report was ordered by the government after a confused and angry Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, left, died at the airport in Vancouver after being stunned at least twice by Mounties. The report found that Tasers were increasingly being used against people who were merely resistant rather than dangerous.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/americas/13briefs-taser.html?ref=world
Greece: Tens of Thousands March in Strike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A one-day strike by unions representing 2.5 million workers brought Athens to a standstill. Protesting planned government changes to the state-financed pension system, an estimated 80,000 people marched through central Athens. In Thessaloniki, 30,000 people rallied, the police said. The strike shut down hospitals, banks, schools, courts and all public services. Flights were canceled, and public transportation, including boats connecting the mainland with the islands, ground to a halt. More strikes are expected next week.
December 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/world/europe/13briefs-strike.html?ref=world
Senator Criticizes Genentech’s Limits on a Cheaper Drug
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Genentech’s plan to restrict the availability of Avastin so doctors cannot use it instead of a more expensive medicine for eye disease will cost taxpayers $1 billion to $3 billion a year, according to Senator Herb Kohl.
Senator Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration that Genentech’s decision to limit access to the medicine by pharmacies that repackage drugs “is of great concern.”
He also sent the company a letter saying that his staff would investigate the restrictions.
The company, based in South San Francisco, wants specialists to buy its newer treatment, Lucentis, instead of Avastin.
November 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/business/29eye.html?ref=health
Weak Dollar Propels Sales at Tiffany
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Jewelry and luxury goods retailer Tiffany & Company’s third-quarter earnings more than tripled on strong sales growth and a gain on the sale and leaseback of its Tokyo flagship store, the company said yesterday.
It also raised its earnings outlook for the full year. However, the company’s stock fell $2.32, or 5 percent, to $46.43 a share, after a morning rally, as analysts expressed caution that its Manhattan flagship store has become a temporarily disproportionate driver of sales, helped by a flood of foreign tourists who are taking advantage of the declining dollar.
The company, based in New York, said net income climbed to $98.9 million, or 71 cents a share, from $29.1 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales increased 18 percent to $627.3 million from $531.8 million a year earlier, helped by a 9 percent rise in global sales at stores open at least one year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of 25 cents a share.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01tiffany.html?ref=business
Israeli Court Upholds Gaza Fuel Cuts
By STEVEN ERLANGER
World Briefing | Middle East
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government could continue cutting fuel supplies to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which it has done since Oct. 28. But it ordered a delay on plans to cut electricity until new details are offered by the groups challenging the plan.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/world/middleeast/01briefs-gaza.html?ref=world
Canada: Man Dies After Shock From Taser
By IAN AUSTEN
World Briefing | Americas
November 23, 2007
A 45-year-old man who had been arrested on assault charges died, about a day after the police in Nova Scotia used a Taser to subdue him. The man was the third person to die in Canada in just over a month after being shocked by Tasers wielded by police officers. Justice Minister Cecil Clarke ordered a review of the use of the hand-held stun guns following the man’s death, the latest in a series of government inquiries into the use of Tasers by the police. Widespread outrage in Canada followed the broadcast of a video last month that showed another man being shocked at least twice with Tasers at a Vancouver airport by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The man, a Polish immigrant who appeared extremely confused on the video, died. A Montreal man also died last month, three days after he was subdued by the police with a Taser while being arrested for drunken driving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/world/americas/23briefs-taser.html?ref=world
California: Cards for Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lawmakers have given final approval to a law making San Francisco the nation’s largest city to issue identification cards to illegal immigrants. The Board of Supervisors voted 10 to 1 to create a municipal ID program to help residents without driver’s licenses obtain access to services and feel secure dealing with local law enforcement. The measure is modeled after a program that started last summer in New Haven, Conn. Supporters say that along with immigrants, elderly people who no longer drive and transgender individuals whose driver’s licenses no longer reflect their appearances also would benefit from having the cards. The measure goes into effect in August.
November 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/21brfs-CARDSFORIMMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Manhattan: Teachers Criticize Review Unit
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor to apologize to the city’s 80,000 teachers yesterday, a day after the chancellor sent principals an e-mail message announcing the formation of teams of lawyers and consultants meant to help principals remove poorly performing tenured teachers. Ms. Weingarten said that the message seemed timed to the release yesterday of national reading and math test scores showing little progress among New York City students. “The first speck of bad news, all of the sudden they go after teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. The mayor said yesterday that removing tenured teachers was “a last alternative.”
November 16, 2007
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/nyregion/16mbrfs-TEACHERS.html?ref=nyregion
Waterboarding and U.S. History
by William Loren Katz
"U.S. officers in the Philippines routinely resorted to what they called ‘the water cure.'"
November 14, 2007
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=1
Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
November 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/media/02cnd-hollywood.html?ref=us
Raids Traumatized Children, Report Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Hundreds of young American children suffered hardship and psychological trauma after immigration raids in the last year in which their parents were detained or deported, according to a report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute. Of 500 children directly affected in three factory raids examined in the report in which 900 adult immigrants were arrested, a large majority were United States citizens younger than 10. With one or both parents deported, the children had reduced economic support, and many remained in the care of relatives who feared contact with the authorities, the study said. Although the children were citizens, few families sought public assistance for them, the study found.
November 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01brfs-raids.html?ref=us
Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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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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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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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.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">