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JROTC is a military recruitment program!
JROTC discriminates against queers!
(JROTC says it's OK to be gay in JROTC, but not in the military. How can that instill pride in anyone?)
JROTC costs the school district a million bucks!
JROTC MUST GO! GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
Come to a planning meeting:
Thursday, July 10, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco
Clearly, the the military is going to go on the offensive to keep JROTC in the schools permanently. Going on the offensive is what they do best, as we know. So we must be prepared to get the basic truth about JROTC out onto the streets ASAP.
Everyone should do everything they can to build this next meeting, Thursday, July 10, 7:00 P.M. Clearly we can’t rely on the Board to act so we must organize broad opposition to JROTC and military recruitment in our schools ourselves.
If a pro-JROTC measure gets on the ballot we must go out into the streets like we did to get the College Not Combat, Proposition I initiative on the ballot in 2005. In our case we must organize informational flyering telling the truth about JROTC and setting up tables in communities--at the malls where kids will hang out in the summer; at supermarkets where their parents will be; at the parks; and throughout San Francisco weekly—getting the truth out about the JROTC military recruitment program.
The encouraging thing I must tell everyone is that it was very easy to gather the signatures for Proposition I. It was inspiring how many people were opposed to any military presence in our schools. People with young children were especially opposed to the military getting their clutches on their children. We must make them aware what JROTC really is!
But we will, of course, be up against the U.S. Military and all the resources they have at their fingertips. We have quite a battle ahead of us so we have to get organized now.
What happens in San Francisco will have repercussions across the country and the world. I believe this. And that’s why I think it’s so important for us to succeed!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
P.S., This just in: I got the following from Pat Gerber letting us know that there will be at least one “antiwar” resolution on the ballot this November, filed by Chris Daly and signed by Tom Ammiano, Ross Mirkarimi and Jack McGoldrick that states:
"It is the Policy of the people of the City and County of San Francisco that:
"Its elected representatives in the United States Senate and House of Representatives should vote against any further funding for the deployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq, with the exception of funds specifically earmarked to provide for their safe and orderly withdrawal."
We don't know what the resolution ballot designation will be yet--Prop.?
We will keep you posted about the ballot designation.
JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING PAYING PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO NUMBERS 6 AND 7 BELOW:
Memo from U.S. Army Cadet Command ordering JROTC teachers to help the military recruit students into the Army. Can be used to rebut claims that JROTC is not a recruiting program.
From PROJECT YANO, The Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities
http://www.projectyano.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=62
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY HEADQUARTERS, UNITED STATES ARMY CADET COMMAND FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA 23651-5000
ATCC-ZA (145-1)
30 March 1999
MEMORANDUM FOR
Region Commanders, u.s. Army Cadet Command Brigade Commanders, U.s. Army Cadet Command Battalion Commanders, U.s. Army Cadet Command
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.s. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
1. Purpose: To provide guidance on implementation of initiatives to enhance recruiting efforts with USAREC and Cadet Command.
2. Scope: Provisions of this memorandum apply to Cadet Command elements worldwide.
3. Philosophy: The mission of the ROTC program is to commission the future officer leadership of the u.s. Army and to motivate young people to be better citizens .. The Senior ROTC program is designed to produce officers for the U.S. Army and the Junior ROTC program is designed to help young people become better citizens. While not designed to be a specific recruiting tool, there is nothing in existing law, DOD directive or Army regulations that precludes either ROTC program from facilitating the recruitment of young men and women into the U.S. Army.
4. Cadet Command elements, at all levels, will:
a. Establish forums to exchange information with USAREC and state National Guards on recruiting and enrollment programs and policies.
b. Conduct joint advertising efforts with USAREC and the National Guard when applicable and appropriate.
c. Provide leads and prospect referrals to their USAREC and National Guard counterparts obtained froITl college dropout and ROTC dropout lists. Refer qualified leads generated during off-campus visits th~ough QUEST using established procedures.
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
d. Provide USAREC and National Guard counterpart elements a listing of current ROTC Recruiting Publicity Items (RPIs).
e. Assist USAREC and National Guard recruiters in obtaining access to Army JROTC units within the local geographic area.
f. Encourage USAREC and National Guard participation in scheduled ROTC social functions.
g. Share on-campus logistical and operational assets, e.g. I5-passenger van, office space for conducting recruiting interviews, and on-campus community support/endorsement of USAREC initiatives.
5. SROTC Battalion Commander will:
a. Invite all recruiters (officer and NCO) in surrounding area to meet with ROTC Cadre at least quarterly to share information and update each other on each program.
b. Provide recruiters names of college dropouts, ROTC dropouts and graduating seniors who are not cadets.
c. Include USAREC personnel in social functions, parades and ceremonies, etc.
d. Include USAREC in all Quality of Life initiatives.
e. Recognize recruiters who provide cadets to the program.
f. In selected locations provide administrative and logistical support for recruiters working on campus in conjunction with ROTC.
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
6. JROTC SAI and AI will:
a. Actively assist cadets who want to enlist in the military. Emphasize service in the U.S. Army (all components).
b. Facilitate recruiter access to cadets in JROTC program and to the entire student body.
c. Encourage college bound cadets to enroll in SROTC.
d. Work closely with high school guidance counselors to sell the Army story. Encourage them to display RPIs and advertising material and make sure they know how to obtain information on Army opportunities, including SROTC scholarships.
7. The intent of these partnership initiatives is to promote a synergistic effort of all Army assets, maximize recruiting efforts, exchange quality referrals, and educate all on both recruiting and ROTC programs and benefits.
Stewart W. Wallace,
Major General, U.S. Army
Commanding
CF:
CG, USAREC
DCG, U.S. Army Cadet Command
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SAN FRANCISCO IS A SANCTUARY CITY! STOP THE MIGRA-ICE RAIDS!
Despite calling itself a "sanctuary city", S.F. politicians are permitting the harrassment of undocumented immigrants and allowing the MIGRA-ICE police to enter the jail facilities.
We will picket any store that cooperates with the MIGRA or reports undocumented brothers and sisters. We demand AMNESTY without conditions!
BRIGADES AGAINST THE RAIDS
project of BARRIO UNIDO
(415)431-9925
Next planning meeting Thursday June 26th 7PM at 474 Valencia St. S.F.
(near 16th St.) in Room 145
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Call for an Open U.S. National Antiwar Conference
Stop the War in Iraq! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com
FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION:
http://natassembly.org/
TO READ THE CALL:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
AN OPEN NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO SUPPORT THE DEMANDS:
Stop the War in Iraq! Bring the Troops Home NOW!
We invite everyone who opposes the war and occupation to attend an open democratic
national antiwar conference to place on the agenda of the entire US antiwar movement
a proposal for the largest possible united mass mobilization to stop the war and end
the occupation.
Saturday, June 28 & Sunday, June 29, 2008
Cleveland, Ohio
Speakers include:
Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO
Fred Mason, President of the Maryland AFL-CIO and President of the
Metro Washington D.C. Central Labor Council, one of the National
Co-Convenors of U.S. Labor Against the War
Greg Coleridge, Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends
Service Committee; Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition
Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, author, Anti-War Soldier and
co-founder of Appeal for Redress
Jeremy Scahill, Author, of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World‚s Most Powerful Mercenary Army"
Jesse Diaz, Organizer of the May 1, 2006 immigrant rights boycott
Cindy Sheehan, by video
To register and for more information, log on to: www.natassembly.org
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JROTC is a military recruitment program!
JROTC discriminates against queers!
JROTC costs the school district a million bucks!
JROTC MUST GO! GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
Come to a planning meeting:
Thursday, July 10, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco
Clearly, the the military is going to go on the offensive to keep JROTC in the schools permanently. Going on the offensive is what they do best, as we know. So we must be prepared to get the basic truth about JROTC out onto the streets ASAP.
Everyone should do everything they can to build this next meeting, Thursday, July 10, 7:00 P.M. Clearly we can’t rely on the Board to act so we must organize broad opposition to JROTC and military recruitment in our schools ourselves.
If a pro-JROTC measure gets on the ballot we must go out into the streets like we did to get the College Not Combat, Proposition I initiative on the ballot in 2005. In our case we must organize informational flyering telling the truth about JROTC and setting up tables in communities--at the malls where kids will hang out in the summer; at supermarkets where their parents will be; at the parks; and throughout San Francisco weekly—getting the truth out about the JROTC military recruitment program.
The encouraging thing I must tell everyone is that it was very easy to gather the signatures for Proposition I. It was inspiring how many people were opposed to any military presence in our schools. People with young children were especially opposed to the military getting their clutches on their children. We must make them aware what JROTC really is!
But we will, of course, be up against the U.S. Military and all the resources they have at their fingertips. We have quite a battle ahead of us so we have to get organized now.
What happens in San Francisco will have repercussions across the country and the world. I believe this. And that’s why I think it’s so important for us to succeed!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/
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Alison Bodine defense Committee
Lift the Two-year Ban
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/
Watch the Sept 28 Video on Alison's Case!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post.html
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The Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN!
Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many U.N. conferences.
[Note: the text of her speech is also available at this site...bw]
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=433
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Not So Sweet
Why Dunkin' Donuts shouldn't have caved in the controversy over Rachael Ray's 'kaffiyeh' scarf.
By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 30, 2008
Read Article [#4 Below] on line at:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/139334
Sign Petition:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr007=7nginw7ml3.app8a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=221
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MINIATURE EARTH
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
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"Dear Canada: Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
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Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California
Target: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Joe Simitian, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Assemblymember John Laird, Senator Abel Maldonado
Sponsored by: John Russo
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without-their-consent-in-california
Additional information is available at http://www.stopthespray.org
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) "Canada: Abide by resolution - Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
Dear Canada: Let Them Stay
Urgent action request—In wake of Parliament win, please sign this new letter to Canada.
By Courage to Resist
June 18, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
2) Uncle Sam wants your child.. for military service
By Jesse Muhammad
FinalCall.com, June 4, 2008
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4804.shtml
3) Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian on
"Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians"
June 10, 2008
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/10/chris_hedges_and_laila_al_arian
4) Case Dropped Against Officer Accused in Iraq Killings
By REUTERS
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/18haditha.html?ref=world
5) More Illegal Crossings Are Criminal Cases, Group Says
By JULIA PRESTON
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/18immig.html?ref=us
6) Ex-Officer Acquitted in Death of Immigrant in Westchester
By MARC SANTORA
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/nyregion/18immigrant.html?ref=nyregion
7) The Big Pander to Big Oil
Editorial
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/19thu1.html
8) Congress Reaches Deal on Wiretapping Bill
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20fisacnd.html?hp
9) Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?ref=world
10) Mexico Pursues Appeal to Stay Executions in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:17 a.m. ET
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mexico-US-Executions.html?ref=world
11) An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/us/19gitmo.html?ref=us
12) Judge Gives a Victory to Tree Sitters in Berkeley Oaks
By JESSE McKINLEY
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/us/19tree.html?ref=us
13) House Leaders Agree on War Funding
By CARL HULSE
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/washington/19spend.html?ref=us
14) Schools fear lawsuit over PE credit for JROTC
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/19/BA3V11BF04.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
15) Louisiana: National Guard to Remain in New Orleans
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/20brfs-NATIONALGUAR_BRF.html?ref=us
16) Board Backs Rise in Rent Up to 8.5%
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/nyregion/20rent.html?ref=nyregion
17) 8 Reasons You Should Not Expect an Inheritance
By RON LIEBER
Your Money
June 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/yourmoney/21money.html?ref=business
18) Court Upholds Ruling on Health Benefits
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/business/20bizcourt.html?ref=business
19) Treasury Secretary Requests Greater Powers for the Federal Reserve
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20paulson.html?ref=business
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1) "Canada: Abide by resolution - Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
Dear Canada: Let Them Stay
Urgent action request—In wake of Parliament win, please sign this new letter to Canada.
By Courage to Resist
June 18, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
With your help, we mailed over 10,000 of the original letters to Canadian officials in support of a political resolution that would allow U.S. war resisters to stay in Canada.
On June 3rd, our efforts were rewarded when the Canadian Parliament passed an historic motion to officially welcome war resisters!
It now appears, however, that the Conservative minority government may disregard the democratic decision of the House of Commons, the demonstrated opinion of the Canadian citizenry, the view of the United Nations, and millions of Americans. War resister Corey Glass is still scheduled to be deported July 10th.
We need your help once again. Please sign a new letter to “Please act immediately to implement the resolution to allow U.S. war resisters to stay in Canada… and cease deportation proceedings against Corey Glass.” (complete letter below)
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley via International First Class Mail.
--Postage donations are important so that we can continue sending these letters regardless of signers ability to contribute. You may sign the letter without making a donation by entering zero for "postage donation". If you are having technical problems with the form above, sign the letter by making a donation here in the "Canada: Let Them Stay" field.
--Encourage friends to sign the letter online. Send you own action alert, and recommend that your favorite anti-war community group do the same. "Dear Canada" leaftlet, petition, letter, web graphics and banners are available on the updated resources page.
--Write your own letter. Feel free to use the text below as a starting point for a more personalized appeal from you, your church, union, or organization. Mailing, phone, and fax info for Canadian officials at the bottom of this page.
Complete text of letter that will be sent on your behalf:
Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
Hon. Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
I am writing from the United States to ask that you abide by the June 3rd House of Commons resolution to create a program to allow conscientious objectors, including U.S. war resisters, to apply for permanent resident status in Canada and to cease all deportation and removal proceedings against them.
Please act immediately to implement the resolution to allow U.S. war resisters to stay in Canada .
When more than 50,000 Americans refused to fight in Vietnam and emigrated to Canada, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared, “[They] have my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism.”
On June 3rd, the House of Commons voted to uphold this rich tradition by passing the following historic resolution:
[It is recommended that] the government immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members (partners and dependents), who have refused or left military service related to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations and do not have a criminal record, to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada; and that the government should immediately cease any removal or deportation actions that may have already commenced against such individuals.
In addition to this Parliamentary motion, according to a recent poll nearly two of three Canadians also favor U.S. war resisters being allowed to stay. Furthermore, many wonderful Canadians have opened their homes and their hearts to U.S. war resisters.
Please continue Canada’s honorable tradition of being a refuge from militarism.
Today Canada again faces the moral choice of whether to give refuge to resisters of an unjust war. If forced back to the U.S., soldiers of conscience face years of incarceration and stigmatizing discharges. Although unlikely, even the death penalty remains as a possible penalty for desertion in wartime under the U.S. military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice.
I ask that the Canadian government respect the democratic decision of Parliament, the demonstrated opinion of the Canadian citizenry, the view of the United Nations, and millions of Americans by immediately implementing the motion and cease deportation proceedings against Corey Glass and other current and future war resisters.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Send personal appeals to:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2, CANADA
Fax: 613-941-6900
pm@pm.gc.ca
Minister of Citizenship &
Immigration Diane Finley
Citizenship & Immigration Canada
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1L1, CANADA
minister@cic.gc.ca
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2) Uncle Sam wants your child.. for military service
By Jesse Muhammad
FinalCall.com, June 4, 2008
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4804.shtml
Recruiters are pushing military service on youngsters and violating the law, says ACLU
Children as young as 11-years-old are targets of military recruiters, who dangle video games, drive flashy SUVs, spin tales of adventure, promise money for college and other pipe dreams and trinkets in a campaign to entice youngsters into military service, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The U.S. is violating its own laws in failing to safeguard children under 18 from military recruitment, while high school girls have been raped and groped by recruiters in some instances.
The report, “Soldiers of Misfortune: Abusive U.S. Military Recruitment and Failure to Protect Child Soldiers,” found military recruiting practices violate international protocols for the recruitment of child soldiers—a practice the United States routinely condemns in conflicts in Africa and other nations. The “Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict” was ratified in December 2002. It is supposed to keep children under 18 from being preyed on by recruiters and guarantees basic protections to former child soldiers seeking refugee protection in the United States or who are in U.S. custody for alleged crimes.
Victor Jackson witnessed violations firsthand after being approached by a recruiter while in high school.
“He (the Air Force recruiter) made a lot of promises to me and the only promise they kept was the part about me getting hollered at and bossed around,” said Mr. Jackson, who was discharged after serving 13 months. “He lied about the options I would have once I got in, the opportunities for me were altered and even the dream sheet they have you fill out is a lie.”
Mr. Jackson signed up to make money as he awaited the birth of his daughter, but later regretted it. “They moved me from Texas to Delaware, which wasn’t my place of choice. I was told that I would get at least 6 months to prepare myself to go overseas but within 3 months I was in Saudi Arabia. They made us watch videos to put in us hate for people across seas but I saw that everyone over there is not like that. They are a bunch of liars,” he said.
“Military recruitment tools aimed at youth under 18, including Pentagon-produced video games, military training corps, and databases of students’ personal information, have no place in America’s schools,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project. “The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics,” she said. The ACLU report was released May 13.
The report notes that recruiters disproportionately target poor and minority students and use public schools as prime recruiting grounds. The ACLU charges exaggerated promises of financial rewards, coercion, deception and sexual abuse by recruiters nullify so-called “voluntariness” of recruitment. A 2007 survey of New York City high school students by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other organizations found more than 1 in 5 students, including students as young as 14, reported the use of class time by military recruiters.
Jeremy Jenkins, a high school senior, was first approached by a Marine recruiter at 16-years-old. “They (military recruiters) are always at school career days and other events with attractive setups to entice young people. I think the national defense is important but recruiters should only impart knowledge to young people and not influence them under the age of 18,” he said.
Mr. Jenkins is on his way to the Naval Academy because of his dream to be a pilot. “It had nothing to do with a recruiter or the Jr. ROTC because I didn’t want to join on. However, the Navy has presented me with an opportunity to achieve my dream but of course they make no guarantees,” he said.
Statistics from the New York survey noted nearly 1 in 5 respondents at selected schools did not believe anyone in their school could properly advise them about the risks and benefits of military enlistment. Additionally, almost 1 in 3 students surveyed were unsure if such a person was available in their school. Nearly half of respondents did not know who should be told about military recruiter misconduct.
“I wanted to join the Marines in the 8th grade because they had brochures at the carnivals we had at school,” said Toni Cervantes, who is now college bound. “But I quickly changed my mind after hearing stories from my friends who joined and discovered that it was nothing like the recruiters promised. The so-called free ride is a long process.”
Are Blacks and Hispanics the primary recruiting targets? According to information from the Department of Defense, from 2000 to 2007, the percentage of Blacks enlisting in the various armed forces decreased by 6 percent while Hispanic enlistment jumped about 30 percent. Defense Department population studies revealed most recruits are from lower income backgrounds and only 8 percent of recruits have a parent who is a professional. With over $1 billion a year spent on recruiting efforts, the Defense Department examines long term trends in the youth population and evaluates how to increase interest in the military.
“It’s no mystery that the armed forces target the urban areas,” said an Army military recruiter in Houston and the country’s southwest region. “We go to a lot of Black and Hispanic schools for career days, programs, and other functions because we have a quota to meet every year as it relates to Blacks and Hispanics. It is true that those students are more adamant to join on with us because of the opportunities that are given to them—although many may disagree. But we do help a lot of people who don’t have any other option coming out of high school.”
School boards and local education departments are being asked by the ACLU to create a transparent, system-wide policy governing recruitment in public schools. The policy should defend students’ and parents’ rights to withhold information from the military, limit military recruiter access to high school campuses, protect student safety, and ensure educational integrity, the ACLU said. It should also clearly inform public high school students about their rights in relation to military recruitment, protect students from coercive military recruiter practices, and consistently enforce such procedures and guidelines across the school district, the civil liberties group said.
Sexual abuse by military recruiters
An CBS News investigation in 2006 reported over 100 young women who expressed interest in the military were sexually assaulted by recruiters, raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams. Many of the victims were under 17 years of age. The Army alone had 53 allegations of sexual misconduct that year but a spokesman defended that it “is not indicative of the entire command of 8,000 recruiters.”
An Associated Press investigation revealed most recruiters found guilty of sexual misconduct were only disciplined administratively, facing a reduction in rank or forfeiture of pay. Military and civilian prosecutions remain rare.
The ACLU wants the U.S. to eliminate the military recruitment provision from the No Child Left Behind Act; create accessible grievance procedures for recruiter abuses; apply meaningful punishments to recruiters who engage in abusive, harassing, or deceptive recruitment practices; and create a “Recruit’s Bill of Rights” that must be publicized and posted in recruitment stations to detail opt-out procedures and the right not to enlist.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child received the ACLU report because it oversees the relevant international protocol. The committee was to review the report before late May questioning of a U.S. government delegation on its compliance with protocol obligations in Geneva.
The report also criticizes U.S. detention of children at Guantánamo and U.S.-run facilities overseas without recognizing their juvenile status or observing international juvenile justice standards. Details of U.S. denial of asylum to former child soldiers under immigration provisions intended to bar their victimizers and child victims of human rights abuses denied protection in the U.S. are included in the report.
—FinalCall.com, June 4, 2008
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4804.shtml
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3) Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian on
"Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians"
June 10, 2008
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/10/chris_hedges_and_laila_al_arian
In their new book, journalists Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian bring us the voices of fifty American combat veterans of the Iraq War and their understanding of the US occupation and why Iraqis are so opposed to it. [includes rush transcript]
Guests:
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. He was the former Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times. He is the author of several books, including War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists. His latest book is Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
Laila Al-Arian, Freelance journalist who has written for several publications including USA Today, The Nation magazine, HuffingtonPost.com, and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. She is the co-author of Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to protest a proposed deal that would keep US troops in Iraq for years to come. More than five years after the US invasion, the Bush administration is seeking to complete a deal with the Iraqi government that would allow US forces to remain in Iraq past the UN mandate, which expires this July.
Well, a new book by journalists Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian brings us the voices of the fifty American combat vets of the Iraq War and their understanding of the US occupation and why Iraqis are so opposed to it. The book is called Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
Last July, I interviewed some of the veterans whose stories appear in this book. Staff Sergeant Timothy John Westphal served in Iraq for one year. He recalled a house raid he led in 2004 on the outskirts of Tikrit.
STAFF SGT. TIMOTHY JOHN WESTPHAL: I basically just kicked the clump of people there to wake them up, turned on my flashlight, and all my guys did the same thing. And my light happened to shine right on the face of an old man in his mid-sixties. I found out later he was the patriarch of that family. And as we scanned the cluster of people laying there, we saw two younger military age men, probably in their early twenties. Everybody else --- I’d say there were about eight to ten other individuals --- were women and children. We come to find out this was just a family. They were sleeping outside.
The terror that I saw on the patriarch’s face, like I said, that really was the turning point for me. I imagined in my mind what he must have been thinking, understanding that he had lived under Saddam’s brutal regime for many years, worried about --- you know, hearing stories about Iraqis being carried away in the middle of the night by the Iraqi secret service and so forth, to see all those lights, all those soldiers with guns, all the uniform things that we wear, as far as the helmet, the night vision goggles, very intimidating, very terrifying for the man. He screamed a very guttural cry that I can still hear it every day. You know, it was just the most awful, horrible sound I’ve ever heard in my life. He was so terrified and so afraid for his family. And I thought of my family at that time, and I thought to myself, boy, if I was the patriarch of a family, if soldiers came from another country, came in and did this to my family, I would be an insurgent, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Sergeant Bruhns also served in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib for one year beginning in April of 2003.
SGT. JOHN BRUHNS: If you’re on a patrol in a market and somebody opens fire on you and the US military, I mean, if we respond --- if we return fire in that direction with overwhelming firepower and, let’s say, a thirteen-year-old girl gets killed, you’re just going to have to assume right then and there that her father and her brother and her uncles --- they’re not going to say, you know, Saddam was a bad guy and thank the United States for coming in here and liberating us. They’re going to say, "If the United States never came here, my daughter would still be alive." And that’s going to cause them to join the resistance. And when they do join the resistance, President Bush says, "They’re al-Qaeda. They’re al-Qaeda." But they’re not. They’re just regular Iraqi people who feel occupied, and they’re reacting to an occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m joined right now by the two journalists who first spoke to Westphal, Bruhns and forty-eight other Iraq War vets. Their stories are documented in the new book Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, senior fellow at the Nation Institute, author of a number of books, including War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists, he joins us here in New York. Co-author Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist who has written for USA Today, as well as The Nation magazine, huffingtonpost.com and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, joining us from Washington, D.C.
We welcome you both. Laila Al-Arian, how unpopular, among Iraqis, is the occupation and the war? What are the numbers?
LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, Amy, the numbers are that less than one percent of the Iraqis actually support a US presence in Iraq, and this has been demonstrated time and time again in polls and also in the result when troops do withdraw from the region. For example, last December, British troops withdrew from Basra, and we saw a calm in the area and a rapid decrease in violence. Some estimates are that it was a 99 percent decrease in violence. So we do see that the results are very clear once troops do withdraw and that there is some stability in this certain region.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Hedges, you divide the book Collateral Damage into convoys, checkpoints, raids, detentions, then hearts and minds. Explain.
CHRIS HEDGES: These are the pillars of the occupation, and we wanted to give readers a kind of lens or view into the gritty details of how these mechanisms works, such as convoys. I mean, these are just freight trains of death. You have to remain moving once you leave what they call the wire, once you leave the safe perimeter of a base. And so, these heavily armored convoys will drive at breakneck speeds, fifty, sixty miles an hour down the middle of roads, smashing into Iraqi cars, shoving Iraqi vehicles to the side, running over Iraqi civilians, and then, of course, any time an IED goes off, unleashing withering --- what they call suppressing fire --- with belt-fed weapons --- these are light machine guns like SAWs, .50-caliber machine guns --- into a densely populated areas. And so, I think that rather than sort of do a Studs Terkel kind of memoir, we wanted to focus specifically on sort of key mechanisms that make the occupation work, how these mechanisms function, and the effect that these mechanisms have on Iraqi civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: For example, Haditha. That was ---
CHRIS HEDGES: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: --- this tank going through.
CHRIS HEDGES: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Gets hit.
CHRIS HEDGES: That’s exactly right.
AMY GOODMAN: Checkpoints?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, checkpoints are deadly for Iraqi civilians, in part because checkpoints are often put up very quickly, so that you can turn a corner in Baghdad, Fallujah or any other city, and there could never have been a checkpoint there, and there suddenly is a checkpoint there. Also, you know, as a kind of security measure, American forces will often put Iraqi forces before their checkpoints. So there’s actually two checkpoints. So you’ll go through the Iraqi forces, and many Iraqi civilians, by the way, are terrified, because they don’t know who those Iraqis are in the uniform. So sometimes they’ll just try and gun it, which will mean that their cars --- American forces or Iraqi forces or both will open fire on their car, or they’ll get through the Iraqi checkpoint not expecting another checkpoint, or it’s night, or their breaks don’t work. And in Iraq, the situation is so volatile and so deadly for the occupation forces that the response is to open fire repeatedly. Checkpoints are a very common form of death for Iraqi civilians, and these, you know, incidents where cars are fired upon and whole families are killed are rarely investigated or documented.
AMY GOODMAN: Laila Al-Arian, talk about the raids and then the detentions.
LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, Amy we did interview, like you said, fifty soldiers and Marines, and every single one of them that we interviewed had some kind of experience with raids. You would be hard-pressed to find one single Iraqi family who hasn’t experienced the terrifying experience of a raid. And basically, as John Bruhns described on your show a year ago, they storm into a house, they turn the entire house upside-down, making it look like a hurricane hit it. They usually separate the men from the women and children. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, they actually arrest the men. They zipcuff them, and they take them to a detention facility or a prison, which leaves the family looking for them for days.
And time and time again, the soldiers we interviewed told us that if someone did that in their own country, they would --- you know, a lot of times I was very surprised to hear that they themselves said that they would join the resistance, that they would react in a way and that it would have an effect on them, a very lasting effect.
And as far as the detentions goes, what we discovered is that Iraqi men oftentimes, especially, are detained for weeks and sometimes months at a time without their families even knowing where they are. I even interviewed an Iraqi who told me the same thing happened to him. So even though in this book we hear voices of the soldiers, the true stories are those of the Iraqis. And I think that’s what makes this book unique.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story of the Iraqis, Laila Al-Arian.
LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, the Iraqis in this story live a pretty unbearable life. They have --- as Chris described, they can’t even drive in their own streets without being confronted with checkpoints. Oftentimes if they don’t follow the rules --- sometimes they don’t even know what these rules are --- they can get shot and killed. And the vast majority of the people we interviewed told the same stories. And when they would tell these stories, they would say this is not a common incident. They would say that this is something that’s standard operating procedure, that the convoys that race down the streets, they jump over medians in the middle of the street, they drive on the wrong side of the road. They --- again, men get arrested for months, sometimes years, at a time, with their families not even knowing where they are. And this just shows that an occupation not only destroys the people that are under occupation, but the soldiers and Marines who are asked to carry out the occupation, because when these troops return from their service, they’re haunted by what they’ve seen and they’re haunted by what they’ve done.
AMY GOODMAN: Hearts and minds, Chris Hedges?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, you know, this is sort of perhaps the great irony of the occupation itself. There is an understanding --- and Petraeus wrote the counterinsurgency manual, the new one that’s used by the occupation forces --- that you can’t win an insurgency unless you win the support of the civilian population. And yet, I think as this book points out, every single mechanism used to enforce the occupation alienates and enrages the average Iraqi. It is not only a form of collective humiliation of great indignity, but violence and danger and terror is the right word. And that is the experience of these Iraqis.
I think that, you know, I’ve covered many conflicts, and you cannot understand a war or conflict unless finally you see it through the eyes of the victims, because in wartime, there is a great disparity of power, there is the all-powerful and the all-powerless. Unfortunately, the security situation in Iraq makes it now extremely difficult for a Western reporter to go in and get these kinds of stories. And so, we did it through the testimony of these courageous veterans who spoke out about atrocities that not only many of them had witnessed, but even taken part in. And so, I think if there’s a kind of summation of the book, it is that we are not a force for stability. We are not a force that in any way dampens or inhibits or minimizes violence. But we are another mix in the cauldron of horror and violence and terror, along with militias and criminal gangs and warlords that go into making Iraqi society essentially a kind of Hobbesian nightmare.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the book is dedicated, Laila, to your dad, to Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who’s been jailed in this country for more than five years, has been on two extended hunger strikes. Can you give us an update on his situation?
LAILA AL-ARIAN: Well, Amy, the update on my father’s case is that we’re still waiting to see where the government will proceed in his case. His time that he served has technically run out. He should have been deported, released and allowed to rejoin his family months ago, back in April, should have been the final date. We now fear that the government is getting ready to charge him with criminal contempt for --- after trying to force him to testify in a completely separate case. So what we fear is that they’re going to try to exact revenge and retribution for his acquittal more than two-and-a-half years ago by keeping him in jail for God knows how long. And we’re just hoping and praying that they’ll do the right thing and release him now, months after he was supposed to have been released.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is he now?
LAILA AL-ARIAN: He’s now in Portsmouth, Virginia, near Virginia Beach. And again ---
AMY GOODMAN: And what is it that gives you hope at this point?
LAILA AL-ARIAN: Honestly, just looking at the facts rationally and past precedent. What they’ve done to him for the past two-and-a-half years, it’s hard to keep hope. But our hope and faith is in God and all the support that we’ve received, not just all over the country, but all over the world.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Laila Al-Arian in Washington, Chris Hedges here in New York. Their new book together, Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
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4) Case Dropped Against Officer Accused in Iraq Killings
By REUTERS
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/18haditha.html?ref=world
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A military judge on Tuesday dismissed the case against the highest-ranking marine charged in the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005.
The judge, Col. Steven Folsom, dropped all charges against the marine, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, who was accused of violating a lawful order and dereliction of duty, at a hearing at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in Southern California. The judge found that a general who oversaw the investigation was influenced by an investigator who later became his adviser.
Colonel Chessani was one of eight marines accused of wrongdoing in the shootings in Haditha, which was portrayed by Iraqi witnesses as a massacre of unarmed civilians and brought international condemnation on American troops. The witnesses claimed that the marines killed the two dozen men, women and children in anger after a popular comrade was killed by a roadside bomb.
Defense lawyers said the civilians were killed during a battle with insurgents in and around Haditha.
Colonel Chessani is the sixth of the accused to have his charges dismissed. Another marine was cleared. Only Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, accused of being the ringleader, still faces a court-martial. The proceedings against him have been delayed pending the appeal of a pretrial ruling.
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5) More Illegal Crossings Are Criminal Cases, Group Says
By JULIA PRESTON
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/18immig.html?ref=us
Criminal prosecutions of immigrants by federal authorities surged to a record high in March, as immigration cases accounted for the majority — 57 percent — of all new federal criminal cases brought nationwide that month, according to a report published Tuesday by a nonpartisan research group.
Immigration cases also made up more than half of new federal prosecutions in February, reflecting a major emphasis on immigration by the Bush administration and a policy shift to expand the use of criminal, rather than civil, charges in its efforts to curb illegal immigration.
In March, according to the report, narcotics cases, the next largest category, were 13 percent of new prosecutions by the Justice Department. The third-largest category, weapons cases, were 5 percent.
The report, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data analysis organization affiliated with Syracuse University, was based on figures from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for United States Attorneys. The group obtained the figures through the Freedom of Information Act.
The record number of 9,350 new immigration prosecutions in March was part of a “highly unusual surge” that began in January, the report said, and represented 73 percent more new immigration cases compared with March 2007. Most cases were in districts along the border with Mexico and were part of a rapidly expanding program by the Border Patrol and the Justice Department to press criminal charges against virtually all immigrants caught crossing the border illegally in some sectors.
“We’ve never seen such a surge at the national level,” said David Burnham, a co-director of the Syracuse group. “They are deciding that the use of criminal law is the way to solve the border patrol problem.”
In a crackdown that has accelerated since last June, when immigration legislation supported by President Bush failed in Congress, the administration has sought to show it is serious about enforcing immigration laws. In a new strategy, the authorities have brought an array of criminal charges against illegal immigrants stopped at the border or rounded up in raids at factories and other workplaces. Previously, illegal immigrants were generally charged under immigration law with civil violations, not criminal ones.
Justice Department officials would not confirm the Syracuse group’s conclusions, repeating criticism they have made in the past of the group’s reports. A department spokeswoman, Carolyn M. Nelson, said in a statement that the clearinghouse “has a pattern of omitting certain statistics, resulting in misleading information regarding prosecutions.”
“Nonetheless,” Ms. Nelson said, “it is certainly true that the department has prioritized immigration-related crimes over the last few years and that we have successfully prosecuted an increasing number of these cases.”
In another striking finding, the report said that 99 percent of people referred to federal prosecutors for immigration offenses in March were charged. “Any immigration case that comes through the door is going to be prosecuted,” Mr. Burnham said. “That’s astonishing.”
But sentences for those convicted were short, with the median being one month.
Under the border program, called Operation Streamline, prosecutors have brought criminal misdemeanor charges against immigrants caught entering the country illegally for the first time. Immigrants who were caught re-entering after they had been deported have faced tough felony charges and longer sentences.
Immigration lawyers have warned that the widespread application of criminal charges has resulted in overly hasty prosecutions and undermined immigrants’ abilities to exercise their immigration rights, which might allow them to avoid deportation.
“The federal government has decided that it’s O.K. in the criminal immigration context to shortcut the normal process,” said Kathleen Campbell Walker, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national immigration bar. “What this means is, let’s just run them through, to see how fast can we expedite justice.”
Ms. Walker, a lawyer based in El Paso, said immigrants in criminal proceedings along the border might have criminal defense lawyers but often had no chance to consult immigration lawyers. “Those niceties, you don’t have time to get to them,” she said.
Border Patrol officials say Operation Streamline has reduced efforts by immigrants to cross the border illegally in the limited sectors where it has been applied. In the sector near Yuma, Ariz., one of the first places where the program was put into practice, agents detained 447 illegal immigrants crossing the border last month, down from 3,162 in May 2007.
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6) Ex-Officer Acquitted in Death of Immigrant in Westchester
By MARC SANTORA
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/nyregion/18immigrant.html?ref=nyregion
A former Mount Kisco police officer was acquitted of all charges on Tuesday in the death of an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, ending a case that roiled the Westchester County suburbs a year ago.
The verdict also put an end to a saga that had placed the former officer, George Bubaris, at the center of a larger debate about the relationship between the area’s wealthy residents and the immigrants who have flocked there to work as day laborers, struggling to eke out an existence.
“It has been a pretty emotional roller coaster of a day,” said Andrew Quinn, Mr. Bubaris’s lawyer, after the verdict was announced in State Supreme Court in White Plains. But the case itself, he said, was relatively straightforward.
“It was a medical case,” he said. “We argued, and I think convincingly, that the medical evidence introduced was inconclusive.”
The county medical examiner had ruled the death a homicide, saying that the man, Rene Javier Perez, had died of internal abdominal injuries. Prosecutors said that Mr. Bubaris had inflicted those injuries by punching Mr. Perez.
The prosecution, Mr. Quinn said, also contended that Mr. Perez’s injuries were sustained within the two hours before his death. “We introduced evidence to show that the injuries were inflicted 6 to 36 hours before” he died, Mr. Quinn said.
Just as important, he said, was the fact that the defense established that the injuries were “equally consistent with a fall” as with a beating. Mr. Bubaris, 31, who resigned from the Police Department after he was charged, originally came under suspicion because he was the last person seen with Mr. Perez.
Mr. Perez, 42, was homeless, had a history of alcoholism and a long arrest record for petty crimes, according to medical and court records.
On April 28, 2007, Mr. Bubaris was one of three officers who answered a 911 call from Mr. Perez, who was at a Mount Kisco laundry. Mr. Perez had apparently been drinking, and the 911 operator noted that his speech was slurred.
Mr. Bubaris and two other officers arrived at the laundry shortly before 11 p.m., and soon after, Mr. Bubaris radioed headquarters and reported that there was no police matter.
The two other officers with Mr. Bubaris were sent to another call.
An hour later, the driver of a catering van found Mr. Perez dying on the side of Byram Lake Road in Bedford, N.Y., six miles from Mount Vernon.
Four months later, the Westchester district attorney charged Mr. Bubaris with second-degree manslaughter, unlawful imprisonment and official misconduct. Justice Lester Adler dismissed the two lesser charges but had allowed the jurors to consider a charge of criminally negligent homicide in addition to the manslaughter charge.
There are some 10,000 people living in Mount Kisco, 40 miles north of New York City. About one-quarter of that population is Hispanic, including many Guatemalans.
The case attracted widespread attention, in part because of the questions it raised about the relationship between the growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants and the residents who share space in an affluent swath of suburban homes and horse farms.
The fact that Mr. Perez was in the country illegally heightened the tensions.
But at the trial, the focus was on Mr. Bubaris and his actions on the night Mr. Perez died.
The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, James McCarty, told the jury that a log of police calls, surveillance video and other evidence showed that only Mr. Bubaris could have taken Mr. Perez to the lonely roadside where he was found dying, according to The Associated Press.
“You can connect these dots,” Mr. McCarty said.
The jury, however, sided with the defense.
“What caused the injury is very speculative,” one juror, Richard Hodder, told The Associated Press. “We just could not come to the conclusion that the officer did something to injure him.”
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7) The Big Pander to Big Oil
Editorial
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/19thu1.html
It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.
This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.
There is no doubt that a lot of people have been discomfited and genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power — Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — exit the political stage.
The whole scheme is based on a series of fictions that range from the egregious to the merely annoying. Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, noted the worst of these on Wednesday: That a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil supply but owns only 3 percent of its reserves can drill its way out of any problem — whether it be high prices at the pump or dependence on oil exported by unstable countries in Persian Gulf. This fiction has been resisted by Barack Obama but foolishly embraced by John McCain, who seemed to be making some sense on energy questions until he jumped aboard the lift-the-ban bandwagon on Tuesday.
A lesser fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies and, to some extent, by misleading government figures, is that huge deposits of oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.
The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.
Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further, they do not seem to be doing nearly as much as they could with the land to which they’ve already laid claim. Separate studies by the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, show that roughly three-quarters of the 90 million-plus acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies onshore and off are not being used to produce energy. That is 68 million acres altogether, among them potentially highly productive leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.
With that in mind, four influential House Democrats — Edward Markey, Nick Rahall, Rahm Emanuel and Maurice Hinchey — have introduced “use it or lose it” bills that would force the companies to begin exploiting the leases they have before getting any more. Companion bills have been introduced in the Senate, where suspicions also run high that industry’s main objective is to stockpile millions of additional acres of public land before the Bush administration leaves town.
This cannot be allowed to happen. The Congressional moratoriums on offshore drilling were put in place in 1981 and reaffirmed by subsequent Congresses to protect coastal economies that depend on clean water and clean coastlines. This was also the essential purpose of supplemental executive orders, the first of which was issued by Mr. Bush’s father in 1990 after the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill the year before.
Given the huge resources available to the energy industry, there is no reason to undo these protections now.
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8) Congress Reaches Deal on Wiretapping Bill
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20fisacnd.html?hp
WASHINGTON — After months of wrangling, Democratic and Republican leaders reached a deal Thursday that would re-write the rules for the government’s wiretapping powers, and would provide what amounts to limited immunity to the telephone companies that took part in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The deal would expand the government’s powers in some key respects. It would allow intelligence officials to use broad warrants to eavesdrop on foreign targets, and to conduct emergency wiretaps on American targets without warrants if it is determined that important national security information would be lost otherwise.
The deal would also make the phone companies involved in the post-Sept. 11 program immune from legal liability if a district court determines that they received valid requests from the government directing their participation in the warrantless wiretapping operation.
Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic leader who helped draft the compromise, said he believed the proposal would give the government the surveillance tools it needs to detect terrorist threats while also incorporating more civil rights safeguards to protect against abuses. “It is the result of compromise, and like any compromise, is not perfect,” he said. “But I believe it strikes a sound balance.”
The bill could be brought to a vote on the House floor as soon as Friday, but it may face opposition from two quarters: conservatives who believe it does not give the National Security Agency enough freedom of action, and liberals who charge that it retroactively sanctions illegal conduct by the president. “No matter how they spin it, this is still immunity,” said Kevin Bankston, a senior lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that has sued over the president’s wiretapping program. “It’s not compromise, it’s pure theater.”
The government’s spying powers have been at the center of a months-long game of chicken between congressional Democrats and Republicans. House Democrats infuriated Mr. Bush in February by allowing a temporary surveillance measure to expire, leading to intense negotiations over how and whether to revive the proposal. Some critics of the administration have pushed to allow the issue to lie dormant until the next president takes office, but the White House has called that idea dangerous and unacceptable.
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9) Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.
Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.
For an industry being frozen out of new ventures in the world’s dominant oil-producing countries, from Russia to Venezuela, Iraq offers a rare and prized opportunity.
While enriched by $140 per barrel oil, the oil majors are also struggling to replace their reserves as ever more of the world’s oil patch becomes off limits. Governments in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela are nationalizing their oil industries or seeking a larger share of the record profits for their national budgets. Russia and Kazakhstan have forced the major companies to renegotiate contracts.
The Iraqi government’s stated goal in inviting back the major companies is to increase oil production by half a million barrels per day by attracting modern technology and expertise to oil fields now desperately short of both. The revenue would be used for reconstruction, although the Iraqi government has had trouble spending the oil revenues it now has, in part because of bureaucratic inefficiency.
For the American government, increasing output in Iraq, as elsewhere, serves the foreign policy goal of increasing oil production globally to alleviate the exceptionally tight supply that is a cause of soaring prices.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry, through a spokesman, said the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament.
It said the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts, and because these companies had the needed technology.
A Shell spokeswoman hinted at the kind of work the companies might be engaged in. “We can confirm that we have submitted a conceptual proposal to the Iraqi authorities to minimize current and future gas flaring in the south through gas gathering and utilization,” said the spokeswoman, Marnie Funk. “The contents of the proposal are confidential.”
While small, the deals hold great promise for the companies.
“The bigger prize everybody is waiting for is development of the giant new fields,” Leila Benali, an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said in a telephone interview from the firm’s Paris office. The current contracts, she said, are a “foothold” in Iraq for companies striving for these longer-term deals.
Any Western oil official who comes to Iraq would require heavy security, exposing the companies to all the same logistical nightmares that have hampered previous attempts, often undertaken at huge cost, to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure.
And work in the deserts and swamps that contain much of Iraq’s oil reserves would be virtually impossible unless carried out solely by Iraqi subcontractors, who would likely be threatened by insurgents for cooperating with Western companies.
Yet at today’s oil prices, there is no shortage of companies coveting a contract in Iraq. It is not only one of the few countries where oil reserves are up for grabs, but also one of the few that is viewed within the industry as having considerable potential to rapidly increase production.
David Fyfe, a Middle East analyst at the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based group that monitors oil production for the developed countries, said he believed that Iraq’s output could increase to about 3 million barrels a day from its current 2.5 million, though it would probably take longer than the six months the Oil Ministry estimated.
Mr. Fyfe’s organization estimated that repair work on existing fields could bring Iraq’s output up to roughly four million barrels per day within several years. After new fields are tapped, Iraq is expected to reach a plateau of about six million barrels per day, Mr. Fyfe said, which could suppress current world oil prices.
The contracts, the two oil company officials said, are a continuation of work the companies had been conducting here to assist the Oil Ministry under two-year-old memorandums of understanding. The companies provided free advice and training to the Iraqis. This relationship with the ministry, said company officials and an American diplomat, was a reason the contracts were not opened to competitive bidding.
A total of 46 companies, including the leading oil companies of China, India and Russia, had memorandums of understanding with the Oil Ministry, yet were not awarded contracts.
The no-bid deals are structured as service contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. The legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue sharing and other conditions.
The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.
They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.
“These are not actually service contracts,” Ms. Benali said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.
A clause in the draft contracts would allow the companies to match bids from competing companies to retain the work once it is opened to bidding, according to the Iraq country manager for a major oil company who did not consent to be cited publicly discussing the terms.
Assem Jihad, the Oil Ministry spokesman, said the ministry chose companies it was comfortable working with under the charitable memorandum of understanding agreements, and for their technical prowess. “Because of that, they got the priority,” he said.
In all cases but one, the same company that had provided free advice to the ministry for work on a specific field was offered the technical support contract for that field, one of the companies’ officials said.
The exception is the West Qurna field in southern Iraq, outside Basra. There, the Russian company Lukoil, which claims a Hussein-era contract for the field, had been providing free training to Iraqi engineers, but a consortium of Chevron and Total, a French company, was offered the contract. A spokesman for Lukoil declined to comment.
Charles Ries, the chief economic official in the American Embassy in Baghdad, described the no-bid contracts as a bridging mechanism to bring modern technology into the fields before the oil law was passed, and as an extension of the earlier work without charge.
To be sure, these are not the first foreign oil contracts in Iraq, and all have proved contentious.
The Kurdistan regional government, which in many respects functions as an independent entity in northern Iraq, has concluded a number of deals. Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, for example, signed a production-sharing agreement with the regional government last fall, though its legality is questioned by the central Iraqi government. The technical support agreements, however, are the first commercial work by the major oil companies in Iraq.
The impact, experts say, could be remarkable increases in Iraqi oil output.
While the current contracts are unrelated to the companies’ previous work in Iraq, in a twist of corporate history for some of the world’s largest companies, all four oil majors that had lost their concessions in Iraq are now back.
But a spokesman for Exxon said the company’s approach to Iraq was no different from its work elsewhere.
“Consistent with our longstanding, global business strategy, ExxonMobil would pursue business opportunities as they arise in Iraq, just as we would in other countries in which we are permitted to operate,” the spokesman, Len D’Eramo, said in an e-mailed statement.
But the company is clearly aware of the history. In an interview with Newsweek last fall, the former chief executive of Exxon, Lee Raymond, praised Iraq’s potential as an oil-producing country and added that Exxon was in a position to know. “There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq,” Mr. Raymond said. “We were part of the consortium, the four companies that were there when Saddam Hussein threw us out, and we basically had the whole country.”
James Glanz and Jad Mouawad contributed reporting from New York.
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10) Mexico Pursues Appeal to Stay Executions in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:17 a.m. ET
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mexico-US-Executions.html?ref=world
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Mexico made an emergency appeal to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the execution of its citizens on death row in the U.S.
Mexico's chief advocate Juan Manuel Gomez-Robledo said the U.S. was ''in breach of its international obligations'' by disregarding a 2004 judgment by the U.N.'s International Court of Justice, which ruled Mexicans were denied the right to consular advice after their arrests, as guaranteed by an international treaty.
The court, informally known as the World Court, has ruled that the Mexicans were entitled to ''review and reconsideration'' of their trials and sentences to determine whether the violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention affected their cases.
President Bush accepted the judgment and asked state courts to review the cases.
Texas refused, and the issue went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last March by a 6-3 vote that Bush lacked the authority to compel state courts to comply with the judgment from The Hague. The Vienna Convention cannot be binding on the states unless Congress enacts legislation enforcing it as federal law, the Supreme Court said.
Mexico asked the World Court for an ''interpretation'' of its earlier ruling to clarify what it meant when it asked the U.S. to ''review and reconsider'' the cases of the condemned prisoners, and in the meantime to order the halt of the execution timetable.
Gomez-Robledo said that without urgent action now, five Mexican nationals ''will be executed before the conclusion of these proceedings.''
U.S. representatives were due to respond later Thursday before the 13-member tribunal.
Sandra Babcock, representing Mexico, said the World Court's decision four years ago referred to 51 Mexican nationals. Since then, 33 had sought reviews of their cases in state courts.
Only one request was granted, Babcock said. A second inmate accepted a life sentence in exchange for waiving his claim for a review.
''All other efforts to enforce the judgment have failed,'' she said.
Mexico listed five of its citizens slated to die. The first, on Aug. 5, is Jose Medellin, 33, condemned in the gang rape and murder of two teenage girls 15 years ago.
Texas authorities have said Medellin's case has been reviewed by state and federal courts and that he had been given the same right as any American citizen.
But Mexico said in its appeal to the World Court that the U.S. obligation to follow international law also applies to individual states. ''The United States cannot invoke municipal law as justification for failure to perform its international legal obligations,'' it said.
The International Court of Justice is the U.N.'s judicial arm for resolving legal disputes among member states. Its decisions are binding and not subject to appeal, and only rarely have they been defied. Though it has no power of enforcement, the court can report any failure to abide by its decisions to the Security Council.
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11) An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/us/19gitmo.html?ref=us
When he speaks publicly, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, a military lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee, is careful to say his remarks do not reflect the views of the Pentagon.
As if anybody would make that mistake.
In his Navy blues, the youthful commander could pass for an eager cadet. But give him a minute on the subject of his client, a terrorism suspect named Omar Khadr, and he sounds like some 1960s radical lawyer, an apple-cheeked William Kunstler in uniform.
The Bush administration’s war crimes system “is designed to get criminal convictions” with “no real evidence,” Commander Kuebler says. Or he lets fly that military prosecutors “launder evidence derived from torture.”
“You put the whole package together and it stinks,” he said in an interview.
When President Bush announced plans for military commission trials in 2001, critics said military defense lawyers would not put up much of a fight on behalf of men labeled terrorists. “They wanted us to just be good little boys,” one of the lawyers, Maj. Michael D. Mori of the Marines, once told an interviewer.
But nearly seven years later, not one trial has been held, partly because the military defense lawyers have raised a continuous ruckus, challenging the commission system rather than simply defending their clients. After the Supreme Court said last week that the Constitution gave detainees a right to challenge their detention in federal court, some of the military defense lawyers, including Commander Kuebler, seized on the ruling as another opportunity to paralyze the war crimes system with new claims that detainees are entitled to even broader constitutional rights.
The lawyers, trained in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, were selected to defend detainees in a judicial system established especially for terrorism suspects. But many of them share a sense of indignation that Guantánamo makes military justice seem like watered-down justice. Representing detainees, said one of them, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, “is a historic opportunity to defend the rule of law.”
Commander Kuebler (pronounced KEEB-ler) is the latest example of a lawyer in uniform attacking the Pentagon’s legal system.
He is no natural agitator. At 37, he is in some ways deeply conventional. Married to the first girl he ever dated in high school, he is a self-described born-again Christian and conservative who has “never voted for a Democrat.” Tom Fleener, a former Guantánamo military defense lawyer, described Commander Kuebler, saying, “Take the average conservative guy in the street and multiply that by a million.”
Commander Kuebler is prone to begin provocative comments with a deep sigh, as if giving himself a shove.
But he has emerged recently as one of the Pentagon’s most persistent challengers, working the news media with incendiary claims about the military’s case, filing motion after motion in court and traveling to Canada to whip up support for his client, a Canadian who is charged with throwing a hand grenade that killed an American serviceman in Afghanistan in 2002 and other offenses.
The Kuebler strategy is obvious: to irritate the powers that be into sending his client, the last citizen of a Western country at Guantánamo, home to Canada. There is no sign yet of a ticket out for Mr. Khadr, 21, the son of a family once so close to Osama bin Laden that it is sometimes called Canada’s first family of terrorism.
But the irritation strategy seems to be driving the prosecutors to distraction.
The latest incident, this month, was an assertion that found a quick audience. In a news release, he described learning of a Guantánamo manual that encouraged interrogators to destroy their notes. He suggested it was to evade questions about torture. Countless news accounts carried his claims.
The military prosecutors had complained about Commander Kuebler’s tactics before, but after the torture-concealment accusations it seemed they had reached their limit.
“One defense counsel in particular,” said the chief military prosecutor, Col. Lawrence J. Morris, “has habitually flouted the rules” and was responsible for “grossly distorting” and “fabricating information.”
Commander Kuebler responded that he “abides by military commission secrecy rules, as draconian as they are.”
However scrappy he may appear, Commander Kuebler does not claim the typical lawyer’s zest for a fight for its own sake. Instead, he said, his faith and his work are intertwined.
“It is a powerful way to be a witness for Christ,” he said, “by demonstrating your capacity to not judge the way everybody else is judging and to serve unconditionally.”
His sister, Karen Picard, said his search for meaningful work began when he was in his late 20s and a business lawyer in San Diego. His mother died suddenly. He found religion. He joined the Navy. “I think he started to realize,” Ms. Picard said, “there’s more to life than driving a BMW and having your initials on your cuff.” As a Navy lawyer, his work has included criminal defense. His clients have included a sailor charged with rape.
Since he was appointed Mr. Khadr’s lawyer last year, Commander Kuebler has taken on his cause with a drip-drip-drip of attacks on the prosecution.
He has raised questions about the government’s description of the firefight in July 2002, when the American, Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, was fatally wounded. Officials have suggested that Mr. Khadr, then 15, was the last survivor of a group of anti-American fighters who “popped up and threw a grenade.”
But in February, Commander Kuebler highlighted a military report that said another enemy fighter was still alive in the compound when the grenade was thrown, suggesting that Mr. Khadr might not have been the killer.
In March, he took note of an American commander’s report that said the assailant had been killed, which would also seem to eliminate Mr. Khadr as the attacker.
He often aims at a Canadian audience as he works to pressure the Conservative government in Canada, which has been supportive of the Bush administration, to request Mr. Khadr’s return. The Toronto Star: “U.S. Doctored Evidence to Implicate Khadr, Lawyer Says.” The Edmonton Journal: “Khadr Was Likely Tortured.”
In April, Commander Kuebler appeared before a Canadian Parliament committee. “Lies have been told about Omar,” he testified.
Maj. Jeffrey D. Groharing of the Marines, the prosecutor in the Khadr case, told a military judge that “the time the defense has spent lobbying the Canadian Parliament would be better spent interviewing the witnesses.”
Asked about the role the military defense lawyers have been playing, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said military defense lawyers have a duty to represent their clients zealously and to follow the ethical standards of their profession. He added, without naming any of the lawyers, that “it is disappointing when counsel do not live up to these standards.”
But Commander Kuebler argued that such attacks on Guantánamo were necessary. “If we’re not advocating against the process,” he said, “we’re not competently representing our clients.”
Commander Kuebler’s strategy follows energetic efforts by other military lawyers to undercut the commissions.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift, who has since retired from the military, helped take the case of Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, to the Supreme Court. The ruling in 2006 invalidated the Bush administration’s first military commission system.
Commander Swift, now a visiting associate professor at Emory University, said he and other lawyers worried that focusing only on a defense in a commission trial would help the Pentagon argue that its system was fair enough to encourage zealous defense lawyers.
“We were concerned,” Professor Swift said, “that fighting would serve to validate the system.” The strategy to avoid that, he said, was: “Attack the system.”
Outsiders to the culture of military lawyers sometimes find their willingness to challenge their commanders’ system surprising. John D. Altenburg Jr., a retired major general who headed the Office of Military Commissions at the Pentagon until 2006, said administration planners of the commissions may have misunderstood military lawyers. They may have been influenced, he said, by old movies that showed quick military trials and perfunctory defense presentations. “I can just imagine,” he said, “a bunch of guys sitting around and saying, ‘Hey, I know, we can do military trials because the defense lawyers will all roll over.’ ”
The reality has been far different, said General Altenburg, a former senior Army lawyer.
Commander Kuebler said many of the lawyers feel the role they have been assigned “is not career enhancing” in climbing the Pentagon ladder. And at times, defense lawyers have been met with hostility within the military for their aggressive tactics.
Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, an Air Force reservist from Pennsylvania, was once nearly sent to the brig when she angered a military judge by asserting that legal ethics barred her from participating in the proceedings.
Commander Mizer, the fourth-generation military man in his family, challenged a Pentagon general by filing a successful claim that the general had exerted unlawful influence over the commissions.
After Major Mori made seven trips to Australia on behalf of the detainee David Hicks, an Australian Qaeda trainee, the chief military prosecutor at the time suggested that the major could be prosecuted for using “contemptuous words” against American leaders.
In Australia, Major Mori had told audiences that Guantánamo commissions were “kangaroo courts” and that Mr. Hicks was “like a monkey in a cage.” In 2007, after Australia’s prime minister at the time, John Howard, came under pressure over the case, the United States government reached a plea deal. Mr. Hicks was soon released. Major Mori was not prosecuted, and is now serving in Iraq.
As the military defense lawyers prepare for a new constitutional challenge to the Pentagon’s commissions, they are facing an unforeseen obstacle. Many detainees are refusing to cooperate with them because they see the lawyers as agents of their captors.
Mr. Khadr, however, is working with Commander Kuebler on his defense, preparing for a trial that could come as soon as this summer.
But the cooperation is not because Commander Kuebler offers any hope for a courtroom victory. If there is a trial, he said, he expects Mr. Khadr to be convicted.
“I don’t believe it is a fair process,” Commander Kuebler said.
As if anyone thought he did.
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12) Judge Gives a Victory to Tree Sitters in Berkeley Oaks
By JESSE McKINLEY
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/us/19tree.html?ref=us
BERKELEY, Calif. — A group of protesters who have occupied a stand of coastal oaks at the University of California, Berkeley, for 19 months claimed victory on Wednesday when a Superior Court judge ruled that a university project on the site must be temporarily delayed to address lingering concerns about the project.
The ruling by Judge Barbara J. Miller came at the culmination of a tense standoff between protesters and the police.
Doug Buckwald, the founder of Save the Oaks at the Stadium, said, “Because of the work of lots and lots of people in the community, in the city and in the trees, we have protected this grove.”
The university wants to cut the trees, adjacent to the football stadium, to build a $123 million athletic center. Three groups, including the City of Berkeley, have sued the university over its plans, which would also include a seismic retrofit on the 1923 stadium, which sits on the Hayward fault.
The university said the decision was only a minor setback, dealing mainly with noise and traffic issues. “We’re fully confident we can address every one of her concerns,” said Dan Moglouf, a spokesman.
Earlier Wednesday, the scene at the grove became confrontational after workers dismantled at least one platform and cut several support lines used by the tree sitters, who are sustained by supplies brought by supporters and borne aloft with an elaborate web of pulleys.
Later, workers tried to extricate a woman in a wobbly crow’s-nest attached to the top of one of the oaks, as she screamed, “Go away!” and violently shook her perch, about 100 feet high. The woman’s actions elicited gasps from a crowd that had watched the protest become increasingly heated. The workers, suspended on a platform dangling from a crane, retreated.
Mr. Moglouf said removing the protesters’ support system would make it “very difficult if not impossible to sustain an illegal occupation of university property.”
“But what we’re not doing,” he said, “is removing people.”
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13) House Leaders Agree on War Funding
By CARL HULSE
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/washington/19spend.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — House leaders struck a bipartisan deal on Wednesday night on a major spending measure that would provide money for the war in Iraq through the end of the Bush administration, establish a significant new education benefit for veterans, and meet Democratic demands for added unemployment benefits.
The bill, which could be voted on as early as Thursday in the House, would effectively bring to a close the two-year battle between President Bush and Congressional Democrats over war financing by allocating about $163 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year without imposing conditions like a withdrawal deadline.
White House officials took part in the talks that produced the agreement, suggesting the president was willing to sign the emerging legislation.
“I think we have an agreement,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, who worked out the final deal in talks with Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, as well as senior members of both parties from the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees.
The measure would entitle veterans, those who enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks and served three years or more, to what amounts to four years of college education at a state university. To win Republican support, House leaders dropped a plan to pay the $50 billion cost of the program through a tax on affluent Americans and also agreed that some of the benefits could be transferred to immediate family members.
In response to a Democratic push to aid laid-off workers whose unemployment pay is running out, the bill would extend jobless benefits for 13 weeks in all states, according to Congressional officials briefed on the contents of the measure. But in a concession, they said, the bill would drop a plan for an additional 13 weeks of benefits for the hardest-hit states and reinstate a requirement that workers must have put in 20 weeks on the job to qualify.
The bill, one of the few must-pass measures facing a highly partisan election-year Congress, would also allocate about $2.5 billion to deal with the flooding in the Midwest and provide money for the continuing recovery in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina. It would also block a series of new administration rules that lawmakers said would cut Medicaid health services for the poor.
“This bill is a real victory,” Mr. Boehner said. “It gets our troops the funding they need for success, without hamstringing our commanders in the field with politically motivated war restrictions. It provides new resources to help our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan get a better education, without raising taxes unnecessarily on the American people. It also does not include billions in unrelated wasteful Washington pork that was added by Senate Democrats.”
While the measure does not include most of the restrictions on war spending long opposed by the administration, Democratic aides said the measure would retain a prohibition on permanent American military bases in Iraq and also call on the Iraqi government to share equally in the cost of rebuilding the country.
The willingness of House Republicans and Democrats to reach a deal showed that both sides concluded it was expedient for them to dispose of politically troublesome issues like the war money and the unemployment aid. Mr. Bush, should he sign the measure, would be relenting as well since he had earlier indicated he would reject the veterans program and the unemployment aid.
Senate leaders were not directly involved in the talks, and the tentative deal does not include some of the spending programs that senators had included in their own version, leaving it in question whether the Senate would go along with the House agreement. But the plan did take into account the Senate view that the new G. I. benefit promoted by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, not be underwritten through a new tax.
“Early reports indicate the House will send us a supplemental that includes a G. I. Bill, extends unemployment insurance and provides disaster relief — three important priorities we have been pushing for some time,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “We look forward to reviewing the House’s complete proposal, and we will take it up quickly once we receive it.”
The agreement was something of a surprise because many lawmakers and aides expected the House to pass a version that would draw little Republican support, necessitating another round of negotiations and votes. But the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made it clear in recent days that she wanted a measure that Congress could pass and would be signed by the president before Congress breaks for the Fourth of July next week. The Pentagon has raised the possibility that workers might have to be furloughed if Congress did not act by then.
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14) Schools fear lawsuit over PE credit for JROTC
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/19/BA3V11BF04.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
San Francisco school officials said Wednesday a lawsuit against the district appears to be inevitable if the city's high schools continue to give physical education credit for the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps next school year.
The school board tried to eliminate PE credit for the military courses at a special meeting Tuesday, but failed in a 3-3 vote. Board member Jane Kim, who sponsored the resolution, was absent.
JROTC supporters said the surprise meeting was a new attack on the 90-year-old program.
The school board voted in 2006 to eliminate the JROTC program, which enrolls about 1,200 students in seven high schools. In a subsequent vote in December, the board decided to allow the program to remain in place until spring 2009.
A parent-sponsored group, Friends of JROTC, is collecting signatures to get a measure on the November ballot to gauge the level of community support for the program.
If students can't get required PE credit for the courses, enrollment in the program probably would plummet because many students wouldn't have room on their class schedules to take an additional elective, JROTC officials and cadets said.
The state Department of Education has said the JROTC curriculum doesn't meet state PE standards and has not been approved by the California Board of Education. State law requires high school students to take two years of physical education.
Board members said the district could face a lawsuit, because San Francisco-based Public Advocates is questioning the legality of giving gym-class credits for JROTC. The majority of school districts that offer JROTC in California also give PE credit, but no others have been contacted by Public Advocates.
School board president Mark Sanchez is worried that unless the seven-member school board votes again on the issue, a lawsuit will be filed.
"My belief is based on what our own attorneys told us and that's what they believe," Sanchez said, adding the district's lawyers predicted it would lose the legal fight.
Public Advocates staff attorney Michelle Rodriguez said a lawsuit might be filed.
"It's definitely something we're considering," she said Wednesday.
District officials are working to set up a replacement for JROTC that would be tried this fall in a couple of high schools. The idea is to create a four-year program that incorporates existing JROTC program components - including ethnic studies and service learning - to promote leadership and civic responsibility.
E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
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15) Louisiana: National Guard to Remain in New Orleans
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/20brfs-NATIONALGUAR_BRF.html?ref=us
At least 200 Louisiana National Guard troops will remain in New Orleans through 2008 for law enforcement duties as the police department tries to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Gov. Bobby Jindal said the current contingent of 360 guard members would be phased down through the rest of the year to augment the police department, which lost 500 officers after the storm. The department will continue a national recruiting drive to bolster the police force, which has about 1,470 officers, down from 1,668 before the storm. Mr. Jindal, a Republican, said the state was paying about $1 million a month to keep the guard in New Orleans. Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, head of the Louisiana National Guard, said some of the soldiers who had been stationed in the city had expressed an interest in joining the police department.
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16) Board Backs Rise in Rent Up to 8.5%
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/nyregion/20rent.html?ref=nyregion
The board that regulates rents for New York City’s one million rent-stabilized apartments approved its highest rent increases in years at a raucous meeting on Thursday, angering tenants who said high rents were forcing the poor and working class out of the city.
At a meeting punctuated by ear-splitting whistle-blowing and shouting matches between sign-waving tenants and landlords, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board authorized rent increases of up to 4.5 percent on one-year leases and 8.5 percent on two-year leases.
The board also took the unusual and controversial step of authorizing a supplemental rent increase that affected only tenants who have lived in their apartments for six years or more. Owners of buildings with those tenants have the option of charging them the approved increases, or a $45 monthly increase for one-year leases or $85 for two-year leases, whichever is greater.
The last time the board approved a set of increases that were higher was in 1989, when one-year leases saw a 5.5 percent increase and two-year leases a 9 percent increase. In 2003, one-year leases increased 4.5 percent, but two-year leases increased 7.5 percent. Last year, the board approved increases of 3 percent on one-year leases and 5.75 percent on two-year leases.
The meeting in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in the East Village was the epitome of chaos: for much of the proceedings, groups of tenants armed with whistles blew persistently and loudly, drowning out a long statement read by the board’s chairman, Marvin Markus, and the taking of the nine-member board’s 5-to-4 vote.
The noise got so loud at one point that the chairman called at least one 15-minute recess.
Some board members put their fingers in their ears to block out the high-pitched whistling. The circus atmosphere was peppered with a sarcastic and subversive brand of political theater. Tenants stood side by side and face to face with landlords, and they shouted at board members and those next to them, booing and holding brief but heated debates about the city’s affordability for renters and owners. At times, Mr. Markus and the other board members sat on the stage for long stretches just waiting for the din to die down.
“Landlords have loopholes!” shouted Barry Soltz, the legal coordinator for the tenants’ association at a rent-stabilized building in the Bronx. “Tenants have hellholes!”
“Get your own place if you don’t like it!” a Brooklyn landlord named Frank, who did not want to give his last name, screamed in his face.
In 2006, tenant organizers tried to shut down the meeting by blowing whistles and banging on homemade drums. A ban on noisemaking instruments and drums was instituted last year, but tenants came prepared this year: They sneaked about 300 earplugs and 360 plastic whistles past the metal detectors at the Great Hall.
“The point we’re making is that this is a charade,” said Michael McKee, the treasurer of Tenants Political Action Committee, part of the Real Rent Reform Campaign, which is seeking to drastically restructure the board. “This was a done deal from the beginning.”
Tenant leaders had said they would try to shut down the meeting if the supplemental rent increase was debated or discussed.
The supplemental increase was not part of the tentative range of increases approved by the board in May. Adriene L. Holder, a board member who represents tenants, said that a memorandum prepared by the board’s staff at the request of the chairman describing a supplemental increase was distributed to board members shortly after 9 a.m. on Thursday. She added that for the board to vote in haste on a 22-page memo whose analysis she found questionable was “a procedural outrage.”
The board’s vote had a mixed reaction among property owners. They said that on the one hand the increases were not enough, but that on the other hand they were pleased with the supplemental increase, which they felt would ease the burden on small-property owners who have longtime rent-stabilized tenants paying $500 or $600 a month.
“We are satisfied that for the first time, there’s a recognition by this board that percentages do not work, and that you need to drive more cash to these small-property owners,” said Joseph Strasburg, the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents thousands of landlords.
According to the landlords’ group, operating costs of rent-stabilized units have grown by more than 40 percent in the past six years, while the board’s rent increases in that time for one-year leases have risen by only 20 percent. Mr. Strasburg and the group had called on the board to pass rent increases of 10 percent to 15 percent this year.
The increases approved on Thursday apply to leases renewed between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2009. Tenants who pay for their own heat are subject to lower increases.
Mr. Markus said the minimum dollar amounts in supplemental increases had been authorized by the board numerous times, though not recently. He defended carrying on with the meeting despite the disruptions.
“I’d love not to have chaos, but unfortunately I’ve got a job to do,” he said, adding that he was not sure what the security procedures would be for next year. “We’re going to have plastic detectors,” he said.
The board’s nine members are appointed by the mayor. Two represent tenants, two represent owners, and five represent the public. Since the board was established in 1969, it has never approved a rent decrease or a rent freeze.
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17) 8 Reasons You Should Not Expect an Inheritance
By RON LIEBER
Your Money
June 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/yourmoney/21money.html?ref=business
You’ve probably heard about the bumper sticker, even if you haven’t seen it. It’s the one on Cadillacs in Florida and Lexuses in Arizona that says “I’m spending my children’s inheritance.”
We’ve laughed at that for years. But the truth is retirees have a lot of demands on their savings. Out-of-pocket health care costs, for one, are rising fast. At the same time, many people are not waiting until they die to help their children and grandchildren financially. And some are finding creative ways to draw on money that would otherwise be part of their estate.
For all these reasons and many more (I’ve ticked off a total of eight below), it would be a bad idea to plan on getting any inheritance from your older relatives.
Many people have figured this out, though not all. An AARP analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances noted that 21 percent of people born after 1964 thought they would inherit some money someday. After all, most of them still have living parents or even grandparents.
But with each passing year, the pressures on the nest eggs of those older people will only grow. The truly rich will be fine, as they usually are. But a lot of other people, even retirees with net worths well into the seven figures, could end up spending every dime before they die.
There is nothing wrong with that, by the way. This is a judgment-free column on that front. There is no moral obligation to leave a cent to the next generation. And there are some people who struggle each day to make ends meet who only wish they could leave an inheritance.
But for those who thought that they would have something to pass on, or that money would be coming to them, here are the things that may get in the way.
People who make it to 65 will live a lot longer. As of 2005, according to National Center for Health Statistics data, male 65 year olds could expect to live until 82 while for females, it was 85. That’s 37 years of living expenses for couples, and it isn’t easy or fun to scale back your standard of living.
Want to get a sense of how long you or your older relatives may live? Drop the phrase, “How long will I live,” into a search engine and play with some of the longevity questionnaires that pop up on the results page.
Social Security and Medicare will probably change. It’s hard to find anyone who thinks those programs will get much more generous. Medicare premiums will rise, and the program may cover fewer procedures or not cover emerging ones. Meanwhile, taxes on Social Security benefits may rise, and everyone may have to wait longer to collect.
Fewer people have pensions, so they’re more wedded to the markets. In 2005, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute, 63 percent of workers in the private sector worked for employers who only offered 401(k) or similar plans.
As pensions continue to disappear, retirees and those close to quitting time will depend more heavily on how their investments perform. And as large numbers bet heavily on stocks to finance 20-plus years of retirement cruises and Cadillacs, some will inevitably lose big.
Out-of-pocket health care costs for retirees may soon hit seven figures per couple. Sounds crazy, right? Sure, these post-retirement costs probably won’t get that high for people who have employer-provided retiree health insurance, though few in the private sector do anymore.
For those who don’t have such insurance and are retiring this year at age 65, the mutual fund giant Fidelity figures they will need $225,000 to cover their health care costs in retirement, though that doesn’t include over-the-counter drugs, dentistry or nursing home expenses.
For 55-year-old couples, the numbers could go much higher, according to projections by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Once these people hit 65, if they pay all Medicare costs, purchase Medigap coverage beyond that and have prescription costs higher than 90 percent of their peers, they’ll need $1,064,000 in savings to finance these costs over the rest of their lives.
Divorced individuals may pass on less money. Splitting up can be expensive in itself, and maintaining two households for decades afterward will often cost more than sharing a dwelling.
Even if the parents have money left over, the ones who didn’t have custody of the children may be less inclined to pass an inheritance on to them. “The ties that parents have with kids and their interest in supporting them could well be weakened by the fact that they haven’t spent much time with them,” said Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University and the co-author of “Spend ‘Til the End,” which gives readers a new way to think about financial planning.
It’s getting easier to drain a home’s equity. Homeowners who are 62 or older (though there are some exceptions) can take out a reverse mortgage, which is roughly akin to a home equity loan that you don’t have to pay back until you (or your heirs) sell the house. So homeowners can tap the equity in their homes without having to make monthly payments to repay the debt.
So far, borrowers have taken out roughly 450,000 of these loans since 1990, according to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. But the pace is picking up. Lenders, including mainstream operations like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, wrote more than 100,000 of them for the first time in the year ended Sept. 30, 2007.
Meanwhile, the association claims, retirees are increasingly using mortgages as a financial retirement tool — and not simply using them as a last resort to pay for health care emergencies and the like.
Indeed, there is nothing to stop people from using the loan proceeds for vacations or cars or whatever they want. Millions just may do that someday, which makes reverse mortgages a real wild card. Their growth certainly raises the likelihood that large portions of family homesteads in America will end up belonging to banks, not heirs.
Life insurance may not offer much help. It’s now possible for people to sell their life insurance policies to investors in many circumstances. For a $1 million policy, an investor would pay some fraction of that immediately to the original policy holder, then hang on to the policy to collect the full amount when the seller dies. The more people who do this, the less money any heirs will receive.
Meanwhile, the popularity of term life insurance, where policy holders are covered for 10 or 20 years or so but then get nothing afterward if they don’t get a new policy, could also have an impact. Many people stop buying term life insurance after their children become adults or once a spouse dies. Their heirs will get nothing in the way of a payout.
The transfer of wealth will increasingly happen while the older generations are still alive. People in the latter halves of their lives now find themselves financing college tuition for grandchildren, chipping in when children or grandchildren graduate with five and six figures in student loan debt, supplying down payments in a tightening mortgage market and bailing the younger generations out of a host of other financial calamities.
Sometimes, this is part of a concerted effort to reduce an estate that could be subject to taxes. Other times, it’s pure necessity.
But it may well be everything you’ll ever get. If you put it to good use now, perhaps you won’t have to choose later between selling your life insurance and draining your home equity.
Bequeath your comments to rlieber@nytimes.com
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18) Court Upholds Ruling on Health Benefits
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/business/20bizcourt.html?ref=business
Employees whose benefits claims are denied are entitled to a fuller day in court than they tend to get now, the United States Supreme Court decided Thursday, in a case that examined the conflicts of interest underlying most benefits decisions.
Until now, employees who felt wrongly deprived of benefits could expect little help in court unless they could show that their plan administrators had behaved in an arbitrary, capricious or unprincipled way.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the majority, eased that requirement, but stopped well short of setting out specific new rules for when and how employees could challenge adverse benefits decisions.
Employers said it was a ruling they could live with. “This is going to put the thumb on the scale in the employees’ favor,” said Lonie A. Hassel, a partner at the Groom Law Group in Washington who represents companies in employee benefits litigation. “But I think it’s only going to make a difference in close cases.”
But others were deeply disappointed. “We had hoped the court would give greater clarity and guidance in these cases,” said John H. Langbein, a Yale law professor who is an authority on employee benefits law. “But they did not move the ball at all.”
The Supreme Court issued its 6-to-3 ruling in favor of Wanda Glenn, an Ohio woman who worked for 14 years as a supervisor in the women’s department of a Sears store. She suffered from heart disease and took a leave of absence in 2000, providing extensive documentation from her doctor that she could not return to work.
Sears offered employees long-term disability insurance as a benefit, but the plan administrator, MetLife, said Ms. Glenn did not qualify. She sued, and the trial court rejected her complaint because she had not shown that MetLife behaved arbitrarily.
But the Appellate Court for the Sixth Circuit found in Ms. Glenn’s favor, saying that MetLife had acted under a conflict of interests. The Supreme Court’s affirmed that ruling, and Ms. Glenn will receive her benefits.
The conflict the Supreme Court observed in MetLife’s role is one that employers, employees and insurance companies have been struggling with ever since Congress enacted a landmark employee benefits law in 1974. The law requires the officials who make decisions about employee benefits, known as plan administrators, to act solely in the interest of workers, yet they are usually hired by the company that pays for the benefits, and thus share the employer’s interest in keeping costs down.
A 1989 Supreme Court decision acknowledged this potential conflict but stirred up confusion about how to address it. In the 1989 decision, the court decided that when district courts reviewed benefits disputes, they should review all the facts afresh, something called a de novo review. Employers feared this would undercut their plan administrators’ decisions and make the plans a legal battleground.
But the opinion said that if companies explicitly gave discretionary authority to their plan administrators, then judges should generally defer to the plan administrator. Companies quickly began inserting clauses into their plans making the administrators’ decisions “final,” “conclusive,” and “binding.”
But the 1989 decision also said that employees could sometimes win by showing that the plan administrator had acted under a conflict of interest.
In his majority opinion, Justice Breyer wrote that it would be inappropriate for district courts to stop treating administrators with deference, or to give every dispute a full-blown de novo review.
Instead, he called for something in between, requiring district judges to bear the administrator’s conflict in mind and factor it into their thinking.
In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia called the majority opinion “painfully opaque, despite its promise of elucidation.”
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19) Treasury Secretary Requests Greater Powers for the Federal Reserve
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20paulson.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration said Thursday that the Federal Reserve should be given sweeping new powers to protect the integrity of the financial system, contending that this year’s market turmoil had exposed a badly outdated regulatory system.
While acknowledging that debate on the issue in Congress would take time, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in a speech to a women’s banking group in Washington that the discussion should begin without delay because the stakes for the financial system were so high.
Mr. Paulson said the near collapse of Bear Stearns, once the country’s fifth-largest investment bank, had “placed in stark relief the outdated nature of our financial regulatory system.”
Because of the problems highlighted by the credit crisis, Mr. Paulson said, “We must dramatically expand our attention to the fundamental needs of our system and move much more quickly to update our regulatory structure.”
Later, responding to an audience question about how quickly the reform could be approved, Mr. Paulson said, “Do I have an expectation that it will get done this year? Probably not.”
“But it needs to be focused on soon,” he added.
The Fed provided $30 billion to facilitate the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase in March and for the first time began lending money to other investment banks.
Mr. Paulson said the country had come to rely on the Fed in times of crisis, but he said that the Fed had “neither the clear statutory authority nor the mandate to anticipate and deal with risk across our entire financial system.”
On March 31, Mr. Paulson released a blueprint that proposed the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929. It would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses, from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses to local insurance agents and mortgage brokers.
On Thursday, Mr. Paulson said that work should begin on the overhaul “very quickly” and should proceed with a sense of urgency.
Mr. Paulson proposes giving the Fed more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system, but under the plan the central bank would lose its authority to oversee day-to-day bank supervision, which would be transferred to a single bank regulatory agency, merging the powers of five current federal bank regulatory agencies.
Fed officials have said they must continue to have day-to-day supervision of commercial banks to monitor the banking system’s health.
Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House Financial Services Committee, has announced that his panel would hold hearings on Mr. Paulson’s recommendations later this year, but the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, has set no date for committee hearings. Neither panel is expected to take up legislation on the overhaul proposals until next year, when a new administration will be in office.
Democrats have complained that Mr. Paulson’s regulatory proposals do not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending, while state officials have criticized what they see as an unwanted federal intrusion on their territory.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Louisiana: Case of Ex-Black Panther [The Angola Three]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
The conviction of a former Black Panther in the killing of a prison guard in 1972 should be overturned because his former lawyer should have objected to testimony from witnesses who had died after his original trial, a federal magistrate found. The lawyer’s omission denied a fair second trial for the man, Albert Woodfox, in 1998, the magistrate, Christine Nolan, wrote Tuesday in a recommendation to the federal judge who will rule later. Mr. Woodfox, 61, and Herman Wallace, 66, were convicted in the stabbing death of the guard, Brent Miller, on April 17, 1972. Mr. Wallace has been appealing his conviction based on arguments similar to Mr. Woodfox’s. Mr. Woodfox and Mr. Wallace, with another former Black Panther, became known as the Angola Three because they were held in isolation for about three decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12brfs-CASEOFEXBLAC_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Killer Is Executed
By REUTERS
National Briefing | Southwest
A convicted killer, Karl E. Chamberlain, was put to death by lethal injection in Texas, becoming the first prisoner executed in the state since the Supreme Court lifted an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in April. Texas, the country’s busiest death penalty state, is the fifth state to resume executions since the court rejected a legal challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most executions for the past 30 years. Mr. Chamberlain, 37, was convicted of the 1991 murder of a 30-year-old Dallas woman who lived in the same apartment complex. Mr. Chamberlain was the 406th inmate executed in Texas since 1982 and the first this year.
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12brfs-KILLERISEXEC_BRF.html?ref=us
Tennessee: State to Retry Inmate
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
The Union County district attorney said the county would meet a federal judge’s deadline for a new trial in the case of a death row inmate whose trial was questioned by the United States Supreme Court. The state is facing a June 17 deadline to retry or free the inmate, Paul House, who has been in limbo since June 2006, when the Supreme Court concluded that reasonable jurors would not have convicted him had they seen the results of DNA tests from the 1990s. The district attorney, Paul Phillips, said he would not seek the death penalty. Mr. House, 46, who has multiple sclerosis and must use a wheelchair, was sentenced in the 1985 killing of Carolyn Muncey. He has been in a state prison since 1986 and continues to maintain his innocence.
May 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/29brfs-STATETORETRY_BRF.html?ref=us
Israel: Carter Offers Details on Nuclear Arsenal
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Middle East
Former President Jimmy Carter said Israel held at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a current or former American president had publicly acknowledged the Jewish state’s nuclear arsenal. Asked at a news conference in Wales on Sunday how a future president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, he sought to put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally. “The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more,” he said, according to a transcript. The existence of Israeli nuclear arms is widely assumed, but Israel has never admitted their existence and American officials have stuck to that line in public for years.
May 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/middleeast/27briefs-CARTEROFFERS_BRF.html?ref=world
Iowa: Lawsuit Filed Over Raid
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
The nation’s largest single immigration raid, in which nearly 400 workers at an Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant in Postville were detained on Monday, violated the constitutional rights of workers at a meatpacking plant, a lawsuit contends. The suit accuses the government of arbitrary and indefinite detention. A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office said he could not comment on the suit, which was filed Thursday on behalf of about 147 of the workers. Prosecutors said they filed criminal charges against 306 of the detained workers. The charges include accusations of aggravated identity theft, falsely using a Social Security number, illegally re-entering the United States after being deported and fraudulently using an alien registration card.
May 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/us/17brfs-LAWSUITFILED_BRF.html?ref=us
Senate Revises Drug Maker Gift Bill
By REUTERS
National Breifing | Washington
A revised Senate bill would require drug makers and medical device makers to publicly report gifts over $500 a year to doctors, watering down the standard set in a previous version. The new language was endorsed by the drug maker Eli Lilly & Company. Lawmakers said they hoped the support would prompt other companies to back the bill, which had previously required all gifts valued over $25 be reported. The industry says the gifts are part of its doctor education, but critics say such lavish gestures influence prescribing habits.
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/washington/14brfs-SENATEREVISE_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Sect Mother Is Not a Minor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
Child welfare officials conceded to a judge that a newborn’s mother, held in foster care as a minor after being removed from a polygamous sect’s ranch, is an adult. The woman, who gave birth on April 29, had been held along with more than 400 children taken last month from a ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was one of two pregnant sect members who officials had said were minors. The other member, who gave birth on Monday, may also be an adult, state officials said.
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14brfs-SECTMOTHERIS_BRF.html?ref=us
Four Military Branches Hit Recruiting Goals
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Washington
The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month, enlisting 2,233 people, which was 142 percent of its goal, the Pentagon said. The Army recruited 5,681 people, 101 percent of its goal. The Navy and Air Force also met their goals, 2,905 sailors and 2,435 airmen. A Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said that if the Marine Corps continued its recruiting success, it could reach its goal of growing to 202,000 people by the end of 2009, more than a year early.
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/13brfs-FOURMILITARY_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Prison Settlement Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
A federal judge has approved a settlement between the Texas Youth Commission and the Justice Department over inmate safety at the state’s juvenile prison in Edinburg. The judge, Ricardo Hinojosa of Federal District Court, signed the settlement Monday, and it was announced by the commission Wednesday. Judge Hinojosa had previously rejected a settlement on grounds that it lacked a specific timeline. Federal prosecutors began investigating the prison, the Evins Regional Juvenile Center, in 2006. The settlement establishes parameters for safe conditions and staffing levels, restricts use of youth restraints and guards against retaliation for reporting abuse and misconduct.
May 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/us/08brfs-PRISONSETTLE_BRF.html?ref=us
Michigan: Insurance Ruling
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
Local governments and state universities cannot offer health insurance to the partners of gay workers, the State Supreme Court ruled. The court ruled 5 to 2 that Michigan’s 2004 ban against same-sex marriage also blocks domestic-partner policies affecting gay employees at the University of Michigan and other public-sector employers. The decision affirms a February 2007 appeals court ruling. Up to 20 public universities, community colleges, school districts and local governments in Michigan have benefit policies covering at least 375 gay couples.
May 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/us/08brfs-INSURANCERUL_BRF.html?ref=us
Halliburton Profit Rises
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON (AP) — Increasing its global presence is paying off for the oil field services provider Halliburton, whose first-quarter income rose nearly 6 percent on growing business in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, the company said Monday.
Business in the first three months of 2008 also was better than expected in North America, where higher costs and lower pricing squeezed results at the end of 2007.
Halliburton shares closed up 3 cents, at $47.46, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Halliburton said it earned $584 million, or 64 cents a share, in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a year-earlier profit of $552 million, or 54 cents a share. Revenue rose to $4.03 billion, from $3.42 billion a year earlier.
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/business/worldbusiness/22halliburton.html?ref=business
Illegal Immigrants Who Were Arrested at Poultry Plant in Arkansas to Be Deported
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eighteen illegal immigrants arrested at a poultry plant in Batesville will be processed for deportation, but will not serve any jail time for using fake Social Security numbers and state identification cards, federal judges ruled. Magistrate Judge Beth Deere and Judge James Moody of Federal District Court accepted guilty pleas from 17 of those arrested last week at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant. Federal prosecutors dismissed the misdemeanor charges against one man, but said they planned to ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin deportation proceedings against him. The guilty pleas will give the 17 people criminal records, which will allow prosecutors to pursue tougher penalties if they illegally return to the United States. They had faced up to up to two years in prison and $205,000 in fines. Jane Duke, a United States attorney, said her office had no interest in seeing those arrested serve jail time, as they were “otherwise law-abiding citizens.”
National Briefing | South
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/22brfs-002.html?ref=us
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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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"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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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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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Award-Winning Writer/Filmmaker Donald L. Vasicek Launches New Sand
Creek Massacre Website"
May 21, 2008 -- CENTENNIAL, CO -- Award-winning filmmaker, Donald L.
Vasicek, has launched a new Sand Creek Massacre website. Titled,
"The Sand Creek Massacre", the site contains in depth witness
accounts of the massacre, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
trailer for viewing, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
documentary short for viewing, the story of the Sand Creek Massacre,
and a Shop to purchase Sand Creek Massacre DVD's and lesson
plans including the award-winning documentary film/educational DVD.
Vasicek, a board member of The American Indian Genocide Museum
(www.aigenom.com)in Houston, Texas, said, "The website was launched
to inform, to educate, and to provide educators, historians, students
and all others the accessibility to the Sand Creek Massacre story."
The link/URL to the website is sandcreekmassacre.net.
###
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
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