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JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) MUST GO! EMERGENCY!
KPFA Flashpoints interview:
Opposition to JROTC in San Francisco Schools
Mara Kubrin, Sabrina Davidson, Forest Schmidt
June 10, 2008
http://flashpoints.net/index.html#2008-06-10
Please note:
It is incorrectly stated by the interviewer
that the military subsidizes the JROTC program,
"free to taxpayers." In fact, the San Francisco
school district pays about $1 million per year
to subsidize the JROTC program.
For more information:
JROTC Must Go!
(415) 575-5543
JROTCmustgo@gmail.com
Marc Norton Online
http://www.MarcNorton.us
The next meeting of JROTC MUST GO! is:
Wednesday, June 18, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco
BIG END OF THE SCHOOL-YEAR PUSH TO END JROTC THIS YEAR!
There are still two holdouts whose votes could make the difference on whether JROTC stays in San Francisco schools for another year or whether the Board of Education sticks to their original resolution passed in 2006 to phase-out JROTC by the end of this school year, 2008.
They are:
Vice President, Ms. Kim-Shree Maufas,
MaufasKS@sfusd.edu
and
Commissioner, Ms. Jane Kim
kimj7@sfusd.edu
Board of Education
555 Franklin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-241-6427
We urge you to contact them and let them know that JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
Please note that this is really a national issue. The San Francisco Board of Education should be proud that it was the first in the country to vote to phase-out JROTC from public schools. That's why it's so important for them to carry out their original decision setting a real precedent for school districts throughout the country.
JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/
NEWS ALERT! NEW CAMPAIGN TO KEEP JROTC IN THE SCHOOLS!
Dear All,
I was contacted by KPFA radio Sunday, June 8, to comment on the news that a group calling itself "Friends of JROTC" a "volunteer group led by parents" launched a petition drive Saturday, June 7, that aims to qualify a ballot measure asking voters to express support for the military-sponsored program (see articles below.) According to the KPFA interviewer, the groups claim is that the Board doesn't have the right to kick JROTC out of our schools and they are demanding that they "have the right to choose" to keep JROTC. The initiative--an advisory ballot measure--would let the school board members how how the majority of San Franciscans feel about the JROTC program which they are sure will pass.
They are claiming that a majority vote would underscore their democratic right to participate in JROTC and that the Board and those opposed to JROTC have no right to prevent students from participating in the program they like.
When I was questioned about their "right to choose" to participate in JROTC I responded by saying that, indeed, they do have the right to participate in JROTC. No one is questioning that. But not on school grounds.
School is no place for military recruiters. I suggested that the military could establish JROTC programs off school grounds--they certainly have the budget for it. And if parents want their children to have this kind of military training they also have every right to seek it off school grounds.
Both the original Board of Education resolution and the recent, important ACLU report entitled, "Soldiers of Misfortune," clearly documents that JROTC is an important recruiting arm for the U.S. Military. The Army's own "Recruiter Training" manual also underscores this fact.
The military and J/ROTC's job is to convince students that by following the rules and obeying orders, not only will they survive anything that is thrown at them--including a military battle itself--but they will come out of the military with a high-paying career of their choice! If you haven't seen their youth recruitment propaganda just look on the GoArmy website:
http://www.goarmy.com/JobCatList.do?redirect=true
And you can read up on the U.S. Army JROTC Mission at:
http://www.jrotc.org/Army%20Program.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/new_page_9.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/new_page_10.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/
And just a sample from the Marines for your information:
“The MARINE CORPS JROTC Mission
http://www.jrotc.org/Marine%20Program.htm
[There’s the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force Programs in all.]
“Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (MCJORTC) teaches young men and women the kind of self discipline, self-confidence, and leadership skills that can help them successfully meet the challenges of adulthood.
“MCJROTC: Marine Corps Junior ROTC Leadership Education develops good citizenship, self-confidence and self-discipline. Leadership Education classes introduce cadets to the elements of Leadership, Military Customs, Drill and ceremonies, Uniform Inspections, Physical Fitness Training, Marksmanship, and Marine Corps history. Cadets are required to participate in civic service, wear a uniform and dress up at least twice a month.
“Exhibition Drill: Exhibition drill is designed for cadets who wish to participate on a drill team and perfect their skills in IDR and exhibition drill. A typical week consists of three days of Drill, an inspection and Physical Training. Cadets drill with the M-14 rifles and study General Knowledge.
“Character Development: Character Development is designed to foster citizenship and community service. The class is designed around the book: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and it's all small stuff.”
What they don’t talk about speaks volumes:
They don't concern themselves with PTSD; or amputations; or missing brain-parts; or nightmares; or depleted uranium poisoning; or the life-long guilt for the murder of millions of innocent Iraqi and Afghani people and the torture and illegal imprisonment of thousands more because you were just following orders!
And make no mistake about it--this pro-JROTC campaign is a pro-war campaign to build up the image of the military as some sort of "peace keeping" career opportunity for underprivileged kids, when it's about turning our children into lean, mean killing machines!
It is also meant to overturn the decisions already made by San Francisco voters two years in a row; who signed the petition to get Proposition I, the College Not Combat initiative, on the ballot and who voted November 5, 2005 by an overwhelming 60 percent in favor of Prop. I--to get the military out of our schools. And who also voted overwhelmingly for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just a year before that, on November 2, 2004; as well as the tens-of-thousands of San Francisco residents who have voted with their feet by participating in antiwar rallies, marches and demonstrations against the war since before it began.
JROTC MUST GO! NOW! It is clear they have already done enough damage to the children in the San Francisco Unified School District! In fact, our schools should do all they can to convince children to get an education and to discourage them from military service that practices violent solutions to problems and sacrifices children to an illegal and immoral war that trades children's blood for oil.
Get the military out of our schools NOW!
And put the money our district spends on JROTC back into our schools!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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SF Students Petition to Save JROTC
Posted: Saturday, 07 June 2008 12:36PM
http://www.kcbs.com/pages/2328075.php?
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- Several San Francisco high school students took to the streets this weekend urging the public to help save the junior ROTC program. They need 7000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
The San Francisco Board of Education decided to do away with Junior ROTC in high schools, meaning that the program ends next year.
"It teaches us leadership, life skills and values; things you need to be prepared," said Jorge Pinto a 15-year-old Mission High School student.
San Francisco Supervisor Sean Elsbernd says the petition drive has to reach all corners of the city.
"We've got to reinforce to the voters out there that this is about opportunity, this is about leadership, and this is about choice," said Elsbernd.
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Group begins signature drive to retain JROTC
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/BAVM1141B2.DTL
A group fighting to keep the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps in San Francisco high schools is beginning a campaign to take the battle to city voters in November.
Friends of JROTC, a volunteer group led by parents, will launch a petition drive Saturday that aims to qualify a ballot measure asking voters to express support for the military-sponsored program.
The school board voted in 2006 to phase out the seven JROTC programs in city high schools by this month. A separate vote in December allowed the program to continue until June 2009 while the district identified and piloted a replacement program.
The proposed ballot measure would be advisory only, meaning it couldn't save the district's JROTC program, but it would show school board members how the majority of San Franciscans feel about the program, said Mike Bernick, the campaign's co-chair.
Bernick, an attorney and former director of California's labor department, said the effort "reflects really the outpouring of support we've found among San Franciscans across the political spectrum."
The group will kick off the petition drive at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Taraval Police Station community room. To qualify for the ballot, the group must submit about 7,200 signatures by July 7, Bernick said. The group has collected about 1,000 signatures already.
Four school board seats are up for election in November, including the seats of Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez, who oppose the JROTC program and are running for the county Board of Supervisors.
Jill Wynns and Norman Yee, who voted against eliminating the program two years ago, are expected to run for re-election.
About 1,200 students are enrolled in the JROTC program this year, down from about 1,600 in 2006, said Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor at Lincoln High School.
"It's not that kids are losing interest," Powell said. "It's because they don't know whether it's going to be around or not."
Sanchez, who led the effort to eliminate JROTC, has said he opposes the program because of its ties to the military, which discriminates against gays. Other opponents have argued that the program has no place in public schools because they say it's a recruitment tool for the military.
Sanchez said he doesn't think the proposed ballot measure would pass because it's not a "salient issue for voters."
JROTC has a 90-year history in San Francisco schools and has been popular among students looking for a leadership program and, in some cases, as an alternative to required physical education classes. The program currently gives PE credit.
The school board Curriculum Committee is scheduled Monday to consider alternative programs that could replace JROTC. The committee is expected to discuss altering current courses, including ethnic studies, to include more leadership training.
E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/BAVM1141B2.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Here's an article that appeared in the BayView News:
JROTC must go now!
http://www.SFBayview.com/News/Thiswk_nopics/Our_Readers_Write.html
San Francisco made history in November 2006 when the school board voted to make this the first big city in the nation to ban JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps), one of the military’s prime recruiting tools, in June 2008.
Unfortunately, the board – except for Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar – reversed itself, extending JROTC.
In another vote this June, two progressives on the board – Kim-Shree Maufas and Green Party member Jane Kim – are critical to send the military packing.
An open letter to Jane Kim and Kim-Shree Maufas:
My name is Mara Kubrin.
I am a graduate of Lowell High School in San Francisco.
Last school year I presented the student petition to the school board in support of the resolution to phase out JROTC in the San Francisco Unified School District.
I was thrilled when the resolution passed; I had made one final contribution before heading off to college.
Unfortunately, my impression did not last.
The same issue has resurfaced just in time for me to come home and urge—no demand— that you finish what I thought we had already finished last year. JROTC must go now.
To me the issue seems so clear that I have trouble understanding your hesitation. San Franciscans have voted to prohibit recruitment in our schools. Case should be closed, but I will continue.
The anti-JROTC coalition has many concrete reasons, any of which is grounds to immediately pull JROTC out of the schools. Let me re-state them.
* The SFUSD has an anti-discrimination hiring policy. In order to be a JROTC instructor, one must have served in the military. In order to successfully serve in the military, one may not be openly homosexual. Therefore, in order to be an SFUSD JROTC teacher, one may not be openly gay. Strike one.
* State law requires that Physical Education credit only be given by properly credentialed teachers. JROTC instructors do not have these credentials, yet students get credit. Strike two.
* International law prohibits the military from trying to recruit anyone under the age of 17. Most JROTC students are well under the age of 17. Strike three.
JROTC should have been outa here a long time ago based on any one of those reasons.
So why is JROTC still here?
I have listened to supporters and I will admit that many students like JROTC. However, if schools offered a class on video games, kids would also love it. Students would rush to sign up for a class on celebrity gossip. Have we forgotten that sometimes kids are not the ones to make these decisions? The school board is here to determine the best curriculum for students.
Despite students’ enjoyment, this “class” is not beneficial to them.
What are we trying to teach here?
We are cutting music and arts, but somehow we think that learning how to salute is a good use of educational time?
Others argue that JROTC provides discipline and leadership, that it turns kids around in ways other programs can’t.
In my mind, any extra-curricular activity that requires attendance and focus, and encourages growth and maturity, will do the exact same thing.
There are plenty of available sports leagues, leadership groups, community service organizations, and clubs available to high school students. They do not need one that is explicitly a military recruitment device.
Politicians are afraid of openly opposing JROTC because of the visible student support for the program. The support is more clearly visible than the opposition because the “support” is bused in to meetings, while the opposition has been intimidated and physically threatened, myself included. Clearly, the cadets’ discipline and leadership only go so far.
So here is my suggestion:
JROTC can stay in San Francisco but not on school campuses.
JROTC is a recruitment tool, so have the program at recruitment centers.
If students are so insistent that this and only this program will provide the discipline, leadership, and family element that they want, then they can seek it out in their own time, using the military’s own funding, and on its own recruitment grounds.
The military does not belong in our schools simply based on an understanding of what is right and what is wrong, let alone the legal evidence.
Vote to make it happen.
Be the progressive you claim to be.
Kick JROTC out of our schools once and for all.
Thank you,
Mara Kubrin
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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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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) Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
June 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/09gas.html?ref=us
2) Out of Sight
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10herbert.html
3) Pakistan Says U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 of Its Soldiers
By CARLOTTA GALL and GRAHAM BOWLEY
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/asia/12pstan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
4) Merkel Backs Bush on New Sanctions Against Iran
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and NICHOLAS KULISH
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/washington/12prexy.html?hp
5) Study Shows Colorado Has Largest Rise in Child Poverty
By DAN FROSCH
June 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/us/11kids.html?ref=us
6)Rejecting the Church Pew, for the Altar of Power
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col. writ. 6/1/08] (c) '08
Prisonradio.org
7) The Vital Importance of Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Walidah Imarisha
Free Mumia Abu Jamal, June 9, 2008
http://freemumianow.blogspot.com/2008/06/vital-importance-of-mumia-abu-jamal.html
8) When Votes Matter (And When They Didn't)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 31, 2008
Prisonradio.org
9) Is Obama's Victory Ours?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 8, 2008
Prisonradio.org
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1) Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
June 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/09gas.html?ref=us
TCHULA, Miss. — Gasoline prices reached a national average of $4 a gallon for the first time over the weekend, adding more strain to motorists across the country.
But the pain is not being felt uniformly. Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.
Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.
People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.
The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline. By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent.
As a result, gasoline expenses are rivaling what families spend on food and housing.
“This crisis really impacts those who are at the economic margins of society, mostly in the rural areas and particularly parts of the Southeast,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, a fuel analysis firm. “These are people who have to decide between food and transportation.”
A survey by Mr. Rozell’s firm late last month found that the gasoline crisis is taking the highest toll, as a percentage of income, on people in rural areas of the South, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota.
With the exception of rural Maine, the Northeast appears least affected by gasoline prices because people there make more money and drive shorter distances, or they take a bus or train to work.
But across Mississippi and the rural South, little public transit is available and people have no choice but to drive to work. Since jobs are scarce, commutes are frequently 20 miles or more. Many of the vehicles on the roads here are old rundown trucks, some getting 10 or fewer miles to the gallon.
The survey showed that of the 13 counties where people spent 13 percent or more of their family income on gasoline, 5 were located in Mississippi, 4 were in Alabama, 3 were in Kentucky and 1 was in West Virginia. While people here in Holmes County spent an average of 15.6 percent of their income on gasoline, people in Nassau County, N.Y., spent barely more than 2 percent, according to the survey.
Economists say that despite widespread concern about gasoline prices, the nationwide impact of the oil crisis has so far been gentler than during the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s, when shortages caused long lines at the pump, set off inflation and drove the economy into recession.
Americans on average now spend about 4 percent of their after-tax income on transportation fuels, according to Brian A. Bethune, an economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm. That compares with 4.5 percent in early 1981, the highest point since World War II. At its lowest point, in 1998, that share dropped to 1.9 percent.
“Gas prices have doubled over the last year but the economy has not fallen off the cliff,” said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. “But for the rural lower income people, as a proportion of their income the rise of gas prices is very high.”
While people everywhere are talking about gasoline prices these days, some folks in Tchula (the T is silent) have gone beyond talking.
Anthony Clark, a farm worker from Tchula, says he prays every night for lower gasoline prices. He recently decided not to fix his broken 1992 Chevrolet Astro van because he could not afford the fuel. Now he hires friends and family members to drive him around to buy food and medicine for his diabetic aunt, and his boss sends a van to pick him up for the 10-mile commute to work.
A trip from Tchula to the nearest sizable town about 15 minutes away can cost him $25 roundtrip — for the driving and the waiting. That is about 10 percent of what he makes in a week.
Taking a break under some cottonwood trees beside a drainage ditch filled with buzzing mosquitoes, Mr. Clark and members of his work crew spoke of the big and little changes that higher gas prices have brought. The extra dollars spent at the pump mean electric bills are going unpaid and macaroni is replacing meat at supper. Donations to church are being put off, and video rentals are now unaffordable.
Cleveland Whiteside, who works with Mr. Clark and used to commute 30 miles a day, said his Jeep Cherokee was repossessed last month, because “I paid so much for gas to get to work I couldn’t pay my payments anymore.” His employer, Larry Clanton, has lent him a pickup truck so he can get to work.
Signs of pain and adaptation because of the cost of gas are everywhere. Local fried chicken restaurants are closing because people are eating out less. At the hardware store here, sales have plummeted to $30 a day from $250 a day a month ago.
“Money goes to gasoline — I know mine does,” said the hardware store’s manager, Pam Williams, who tries to attract customers by putting out choice crickets for fishing bait beside the front door.
Local governments are leaving grass high along the roads and doing fewer road repairs to save on fuel costs. The Holmes County government has cut the work week to four days to give workers gasoline relief (keeping the same total of hours), and politicians are even considering replacing sanitation workers with prison inmates on some shifts to conserve money for fuel.
The local price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was roughly $3.85 last week, slightly below the national average, but the median family income in Holmes County is about $18,500.
Nationwide, regular unleaded gasoline reached an average of $4.005 on Sunday, according to the American Automobile Association. That is the highest price ever and about a dollar higher than at the start of the year.
While looking to cut workers at his fish processing plant in nearby Isola, Miss., Dick Stevens, president of Consolidated Catfish Producers, said that 10 workers walked into his office last week and volunteered to take a buyout rather than continue commuting from Charleston, Miss., 65 miles away. “The gas ate them alive,” he said.
Workers at the plant are trying to find ways to cope. Josephine Cage, who fillets fish, said her 30-mile commute from Tchula to Isola in her 1998 Ford Escort four days a week is costing her $200 a month, or nearly 20 percent of her pay.
“I make it by the grace of God,” she said, and also by replacing meat at supper with soups and green beans and broccoli. She fills her car a little bit every day, because “I can’t afford to fill it up. Whatever money I have, I put it in.”
Sociologists and economists who study rural poverty say the gasoline crisis in the rural South, if it persists, could accelerate population loss and decrease the tax base in some areas as more people move closer to urban manufacturing jobs. They warn that the high cost of driving makes low-wage labor even less attractive to workers, especially those who also have to pay for child care and can live off welfare and food stamps.
“As gas prices rise, working less could be the economically rational choice,” said Tim Slack, a sociologist at Louisiana State University who studies rural poverty. “That would mean lower incomes for the poor and greater distance from the mainstream.”
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2) Out of Sight
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10herbert.html
When the dismal unemployment numbers were released on Friday (at the same time that oil prices were surging to record highs), I thought about the young people at the bottom of the employment ladder.
Below the bottom, actually.
A shudder went through the markets when the Labor Department reported that the official jobless rate had jumped one-half a percentage point in May to 5.5 percent — the sharpest spike in 22 years.
The young people I’m talking about wouldn’t have noticed. These are the teenagers and young adults — roughly 16 to 24 years old — who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work. The bureaucrats compiling the official unemployment rate don’t even bother counting these young people. They are no one’s constituency. They might as well not exist.
Except that they do exist. There are four million or more of these so-called disconnected youths across the country. They hang out on street corners in cities large and small — and increasingly in suburban and rural areas.
If you ask how they survive from day to day, the most likely response is: “I hustle,” which could mean anything from giving haircuts in a basement to washing a neighbor’s car to running the occasional errand.
Or it could mean petty thievery or drug dealing or prostitution or worse.
This is the flip side of the American dream. The United States economy, which has trouble producing enough jobs to keep the middle class intact, has left these youngsters all-but-completely behind.
“These kids are being challenged in ways that my generation was not,” said David Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York, which tries to develop ways to connect these young men and women with employment opportunities, or get them back into school.
It is extremely difficult because, for the most part, the jobs are not there and the educational establishment is having a hard enough time teaching the kids who are still in school.
“Schools have not made much of an effort to bring this population back in,” said Mr. Jones. “Once you fall out of the system, you’re basically on no one’s programmatic radar screen.”
So these kids drift. Some are drawn to gangs. A disproportionate number become involved in crime. It is a tragic story, and very few people are paying attention.
The economic policies of the past few decades have favored the wealthy and the well-connected to a degree that has been breathtaking to behold. The Nation magazine has devoted its current issue to the Gilded Age-type inequality that has been the result.
Just a little bit of help to the millions of youngsters trying to get their first tentative foothold in that economy should not be too much to ask.
It’s not as if these kids don’t want to work. Many of them search and search until they finally become discouraged. The summer job market, which has long been an important first step in preparing teenagers for the world of work, is shaping up this year as the weakest in more than half a century, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Now, with the overall economy deteriorating, the situation for poorly educated young people will only grow worse. As Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies, told The Times recently:
“When you get into a recession, kids always get hit the hardest. Kids always go to the back of the hiring queue. Now, they find themselves with a lot of other people in line ahead of them.”
As the ranks of these youngsters grow, so does their potential to become a destabilizing factor in the society.
More important, the U.S. needs the untapped talent (and the potential buying power) in this large pool of young people, just as it needs the talents of the many other Americans of all ages whose energy, intelligence and creativity are wasted in an economic system that is not geared toward providing jobs for everyone who wants to work.
America needs to dream bigger, and in this election year, job creation should be issue No. 1. If I were running for president, I would pull together the smartest minds I could find from government, the corporate world, the labor movement, academia, the nonprofits and ordinary working men and women to see what could be done to spark the creation of decent jobs on a scale that would bring the U.S. as close as possible to full employment.
We’ve maxed out the credit cards, floated mindlessly in stock market bubbles, refinanced mortgages to death — now’s the time to figure out how to put all Americans to work.
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3) Pakistan Says U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 of Its Soldiers
By CARLOTTA GALL and GRAHAM BOWLEY
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/world/asia/12pstan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani government on Wednesday condemned American air and artillery strikes that it said killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers during a clash on the Afghan border Tuesday night.
The Pakistani soldiers appear to have been caught up in a firefight between coalition forces and Taliban fighters in Kunar Province, on the Afghan side of the border. A spokesman for the Taliban said their forces had attacked an American and Afghan position near the border and said eight of their fighters had been killed and nine wounded in the fighting.
The American military in Afghanistan and Pentagon officials said that coalition forces responded to fire from “anti-Afghan forces,” their name for insurgents who frequently cross the border from sanctuaries in Pakistan to mount attacks in Afghanistan.
A Pentagon official in Washington said that after coalition forces returned fire on the ground, two United States Air Force F-15E fighter-bombers and one B-1 bomber dropped about a dozen bombs — mostly 500-pound laser-guided munitions — on the attackers.
“The bombs hit the target they were aimed at,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan denounced the attack in Parliament and said he had instructed the foreign ministry to make a formal protest to the American ambassador. And the Pakistani military released a statement calling the airstrikes “unprovoked and cowardly.”
The attack comes at a time of some rising tension between the United States and the new government in Pakistan, which has granted wide latitude to militants in its border areas under a new series of peace deals, drawing criticism from the United States. NATO and American commanders say cross-border attacks in Afghanistan by insurgents have risen sharply since talks for those peace deals began in March.
Condemning the American airstrike, the Pakistani military said the deaths “hit at the very basis of cooperation” in the battle against terrorism, according to an army statement quoted by news agencies. “Such acts of aggression do not serve the common cause of fighting terrorism,” it said.
The precise circumstances surrounding the reported deaths remained unclear. It was not certain from either the American or Pakistani account whether the Pakistani forces knew they were firing at the coalition forces.
News agencies earlier reported that militants based in Pakistan had sought to infiltrate Afghanistan, provoking a counter-attack late Tuesday from coalition forces within Afghanistan, during which the Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed.
The United States has about 34,000 military personnel in Afghanistan, part of an international presence totaling some 60,000.
The United States said coalition forces took fire from small-arms and rockets from within Afghanistan and “returned fire in self-defense.”
Pakistani newspapers also reported an airstrike in the area by an American drone aircraft, although it was not clear if these reports referred to the same airstrike. Such aircraft are often used for surveillance, and some are armed with air-to-ground missiles.
There have been several American strikes recently on insurgents inside Pakistani territory. In March, three bombs, apparently dropped by an American aircraft, killed nine people and wounded nine others in the tribal area of South Waziristan that officials say provides sanctuary to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In late January, one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed by two Hellfire missiles launched from a Predator surveillance aircraft.
The latest clash occurred at a border post called Chopara on the border with the Afghan province of Kunar, where American and Afghan forces have battled insurgents for several years.
The insurgents have been using Mohmand and the adjacent area of Bajaur as a base for cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.
Fighting has been reported on the Afghan side of the border between insurgents and Afghan and United States forces. According to one news report, one militant was killed and three wounded in a firefight Monday.
The dead on the Pakistani side included a major and were all from the Mohmand Rifles, a paramilitary detachment of the Frontier Corps, the force deployed in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a security official said, speaking in return for customary anonymity.
Officers in the Frontier Corps are generally assigned from the Pakistani Army.
The bodies of the dead were being flown to the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday morning, the government official said.
Among five wounded were three civilians, he said.
Local tribesmen with rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles gathered Wednesday near the checkpoint that was reportedly attacked by the airstrikes to show their outrage after the attack, Agence France-Presse reported.
Earlier this month, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said that Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan were fleeing to the Pakistani border after being routed in recent operations by the United States Marines.
The NATO commander, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, seemed to warn Pakistan to contain the threat emanating from its land, and said the Taliban and drug traffickers have long used refugee camps across the border as a sanctuary from American firepower.
He said that if the Taliban and foreign insurgents continued to enjoy free sanctuary outside Afghanistan, their numbers would continue to grow.
The new Pakistani government sought peace deals with the militants after many Pakistanis saw a drastic increase in suicide bombings in Pakistan as being in retaliation for American strikes.
Carlotta Gall reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley from New York. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington and Ismail Khan from Peshawar.
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4) Merkel Backs Bush on New Sanctions Against Iran
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and NICHOLAS KULISH
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/washington/12prexy.html?hp
MESEBERG, Germany — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany joined President Bush on Wednesday in calling for further sanctions against Iran if it does not suspend its uranium enrichment program.
But their joint news conference here, a day after Mr. Bush won general European support for consideration of additional sanctions against Iran, also illustrated the distance between them. While Mr. Bush stressed again that “all options are on the table,” which would include military force, Mrs. Merkel chose to emphasize diplomacy and the need to enforce the current sanctions.
As the calls for penalties against Iran intensified, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran responded on Wednesday by mocking attempts to rein in his country’s nuclear program, saying that the West “cannot do anything” and singling out President Bush as a lame duck who had failed at every attempt to hurt Iran.
“Bush’s time is up, and he was not able to harm even one centimeter of our land,” the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
“America wanted to harm us in the past 30 years, especially under Bush,” he said. “It went to Afghanistan and Iraq and announced that Iran was the third place, that it was their main target.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad made his remarks just days before Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, is to visit Tehran and present a new offer of incentives to try to persuade Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment.
Iran has begun transferring billions of dollars from European banks to Iranian and Asian banks, and buying gold and equities, apparently to protect its oil revenue from any new sanctions, according to reports in the Iranian media.
The deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, Mohsen Talaie, was quoted as confirming the shift, saying, “We decided to exchange our foreign assets to increase our security.”
The package of increased sanctions being considered by the United States and its European allies would include extra restrictions on Iran’s banking industry if the government rejects Mr. Solana’s incentives. In her statements on Wednesday, Mrs. Merkel strongly supported the measures, saying, “If Iran does not meet its commitments then further sanctions will simply have to follow.”
But she also seemed to signal that she did not support the kind of actions Mr. Bush has urged individual countries to take in addition to the United Nations sanctions, as for example the United States already does. Further measures “need to be negotiated in the Security Council of the United Nations,” Mrs. Merkel said.
“The more countries are in on this, the more effective the impact will be on Iran.”
Mr. Bush stated that his “first choice, of course, is to solve this diplomatically.” Responding to a question about an interview with the Times of London newspaper in which he expressed regret over his rhetoric in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, “I could have used better rhetoric to indicate that one, we tried to exhaust the diplomacy in Iraq; two, that I don’t like war,” Mr. Bush said.
But he said he still believed the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision, adding that “you don’t get to do things over in my line of work.”
He weighed in strongly on the domestic German debate over the NATO mission in Afghanistan, thanking the German people directly “for their contributions to helping the people of Afghanistan realize the blessings of a free society.”
While conceding that “this is a controversial subject here,” Mr. Bush went on to frame the German debate over sending more troops to Afghanistan in concrete, human terms by saying that he hoped “people here think of young girls who couldn’t go to school in the past but now can; or think of mothers who bring their babies to health clinics for the first time.”
Germany’s mandate for its troop deployment in Afghanistan, presently capped at a maximum of 3,500 troops, expires in October. The German government has come under significant pressure from its allies, including the United States, to deploy more troops and to send them to southern Afghanistan, where much of the fiercest fighting is taking place.
Polls here consistently show that a majority of Germans oppose the deployment in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush is on a what is all but certain to be a farewell tour of Europe, in what aides say is his last scheduled trip to the Continent as president. His visit will take him to Paris, London and Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The two leaders, who have always been on better terms than Mr. Bush was with Mrs. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, seemed comfortable together, both taking questions and walking around the gardens of a guest house outside Berlin.
According to Mrs. Merkel, the two leaders discussed a host of issues, from trade to biofuels to the Middle East.
On one of Mrs. Merkel’s signature issues, climate change, Mr. Bush signaled that there would be room for an agreement that would include not just the United States and the European Union, but also China and India.
“The objective is to be able to announce a long-term, binding goal at the G-8 as well as the major economies meeting,” Mr. Bush said, referring to next month’s meeting of the eight leading industrial economies in Japan.
Mrs. Merkel called the fact that they were talking about binding targets “already a great success.”
Before the day’s talks, Mr. Bush, known for his exercise regimen, bicycled around the grounds of the guest house Wednesday morning.
Mr. Bush and Mrs. Merkel dined together Tuesday night, and the menu included the local seasonal specialty, white asparagus.
“For those in the German press who thought I didn’t like asparagus, you’re wrong,” Mr. Bush joked. “The German asparagus are fabulous.”
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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5) Study Shows Colorado Has Largest Rise in Child Poverty
By DAN FROSCH
June 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/us/11kids.html?ref=us
DENVER — Colorado experienced the nation’s largest rate of growth in impoverished children from 2000 to 2006, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study, by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that focuses on child welfare, said that the most recent census data show that 180,000 children — 15.7 percent of the state total — were living in poverty in Colorado in 2006, a 73 percent increase since 2000.
New Hampshire and Delaware experienced the second- and third-largest rates of increase in child poverty, about 47 percent and 45 percent respectively.
No single factor can explain the increase in Colorado, the study said, but a growing number of single parent households, a shortage of jobs for lower wage workers and a low rate of high school graduation contributed.
Shifting demographics also played a role, with an increase in the number of Hispanic children, who are more likely to live in poverty or drop out of high school, the study said.
“What the data is telling us is that we’re headed in the wrong direction in terms of taking care of our lower-income population,” the president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Megan Ferland, said.
Ms. Ferland cited another contributing variable, which she called the “Colorado paradox”: well-educated transplants drawn to a state that also has many poorly educated residents.
“We have too many of our working class families who are actually slipping into low-income brackets and becoming families who are living in extreme poverty,” Ms. Ferland said.
The most pronounced rates of child poverty were found in urban centers like Denver and in southern rural areas like Alamosa and Costilla Counties.
Minority children were particularly affected. The number of the state’s American Indian children living in poverty increased by 473 percent, the report said, and the number of impoverished black children grew by 116 percent. In contrast, the number of impoverished white children grew by 57 percent, and for Asian children, it declined by 10 percent.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. called the statistics “awful” and said that “they clearly demonstrate that we have a responsibility to people who live on the margins.”
“It’s intolerable that 180,000 children are living in poverty in this state,” said Mr. Ritter, a Democrat who took office last year.
In a supplemental document, the Colorado Children’s Campaign said the state spent less per capita on its residents than its neighbors to the north and south, Wyoming and New Mexico. Those states experienced a decrease in child poverty during the same six years as the study.
Colorado ranks 44th in per capita spending, according to the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group that focuses on tax and budget issues.
“This report and this finding validate a lot of what we largely know, in that Colorado continues to lag behind in key areas of public investment,” an institute spokesman, Scott Downes, said. “That prevents us from creating the kind of future that we want for our communities, our children and generations to come.”
Mr. Downes attributed the situation in part to a “knot of fiscal restraints” like a 1992 constitutional amendment, the Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights, that was intended to restrain state spending.
Colorado remained slightly below the national rate of child poverty of about 18 percent. “But the concern is the rate at which we’re growing,” Ms. Ferland said.
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6)Rejecting the Church Pew, for the Altar of Power
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col. writ. 6/1/08] (c) '08
Prisonradio.org
The recent resignation of Sen. Barack Obama (D.-ILL.) (and all of his family) from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ is the latest scene of a tragicomic play that is as much religious as it is political.
Tragic because it is the very real parting of lifelong friends and families, as well as the severing of what seemed to be quite deep friendships between remarkable men; Sen. Obama and Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, longtime pastor at Trinity.
Comic because of how the illusory act of politics compels people to play roles to appeal to broad segments of the populace for votes, or just to assuage their fears.
The heat and light of politics does not reflect well on the inner sanctums of the Black Church, which, since its inception during the hellish depths of American slavery, had to speak in voices of pain, bitterness, truth and hope, in order to have any relevance to a people drowning in a sea of hopelessness.
The Rev. Dr. Wright spoke to this central truth when he observed at the National Press Club recently that enchained Africans in the holds of the slave ship didn't pray to the same god as those of the crew on the top decks, manning the masts. Nor, obviously, did they pray for the same thing - for one prayed for peace and a good breeze; and the other prayed for the storms and a chance to break their bonds, to make a break for freedom.
I've been struck by the role of religion in this presidential campaign, especially in light of Article VI of the Constitution, which states, quite explicitly, that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification, to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
But, if American history teaches us anything, it is that the Constitutions can be conveniently ignored, by millions.
One's church is as much a social decision as it is a religious one, but politics is the art of ego, illusion and imagery.
To gain a political office, is it necessary to reject one's church?
One of America's greatest leaders, Frederick Douglass, once wrote that one of the worst slave masters he ever experienced was the most religious: Thomas Auld of Bayside, Talbot County, Maryland. Writing of his conversion, Douglass noted: "If it made any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sanction him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty." [Douglass, F., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Mineola, NY:Dover, 1995), p. 32]
Douglass said Auld prayed night and day, but he "starved" his slaves, while he "stuffed" his church friends.
Religion is a poor barometer by which to judge a politician. For, to a politician victory is his god, and a church merely a means to that end.
--(c) '08 maj
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7) The Vital Importance of Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Walidah Imarisha
Free Mumia Abu Jamal, June 9, 2008
http://freemumianow.blogspot.com/2008/06/vital-importance-of-mumia-abu-jamal.html
Mumia Abu-Jamal, award winning journalist, activist, organizer, "voice of the voiceless" and resident of Pennsylvania's death row, was denied his appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to receive a new trial. They did uphold the decision to give him life without parole instead of the death penalty, which the state will probably appeal.
They waited almost an entire year to hand down that verdict, I remember the big protest we had outside the court the day the hearing happened (a hearing Mumia was supposed to be allowed to appear at personally, until the last minute when they wouldn't let him come. It would have been his first in-person court appearance in over a decade).
The case of Mumia is so important to justice, to the state of things, and to me personally. My first protest I ever went to, at the age of 15 in Eugene, Oregon, was a Free Mumia protest. It was such a small protest now that I have been at gatherings with hundreds of thousands. But at the time it seemed massive.
The flyer had said to gather at the entrance to the University of Oregon. Unfamiliar with activist time, I had shown up about 20 minutes early, and had seen no one. I worried if I'd gotten the location wrong, if it had been cancelled, if it was really going to happen.
I had just begun my foray into political education, thanks to an internship I stumbled onto at a local social justice organization. My time in the office set in a creaky old building with pipes that rattled set the stage for the rest of my life. It was sitting in the frayed worn couches near the bay window that I first heard the words communism and socialism as more than just some dangerous evil that would devour me if it wanted. While typing up stories for the newsletter at the antiquated box of a computer, talk of the Zapatistas, political prisoners, Sandinistas, Central America, Cuba, apartheid, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X all swirled around me. I didn't know what the hell these people were talking about. But I knew they were individuals I already respected, who knew so much about things I had never dreamed existed. I knew I had to educate myself.
I asked my mentor, a young white man who wore cardigan sweaters and converse and looked more at home in a 50s car hop poster than organizing in support of farmworkers, timidly one day if he could recommend some books for me to read. He reached up without hesitation and handed me a small black book, with a dreadlocked man staring solemnly out of the cover. "You should really check this out, I think you might find some good stuff in here."
I started Mumia's, Live From Death Row on the long bus ride home (I actually lived in another city, Springfield, so I had to transfer three times to get home). I stayed up until three in the morning, neglecting schoolwork and my favorite show on TV, to finish the book. Mumia's words were elegant, poetic, searing and undeniable. He wrote about life on death row, vignettes about the people there with him, the supposed scum of the earth, he wrote about them as humans, beautiful flawed tragic humans. He wrote about the larger prison industrial complex, wrote about why prisons exist and who benefits from them, not in safety but in real material dollars. And whose flesh is sold to make those dollars, poor and black and brown and illiterate and mentally delayed and who never had a chance—and nobody never listened to their voice. His book was not about him, he was the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth and the heart that drew it all together, linked connections I had never imagined, showed me the web of oppression that threaded through my entire life, tangling me without my realizing it. And he showed me how to begin to hack away at those threads. I believed and believe with all my heart, Mumia, when he says he's innocent. But his book and his commitment showed me that that is not the biggest question. The biggest question is who is guilty of what crimes, and why are those guilty of the worst atrocities against humanity rarely ever brought to justice?
Back at the gate to the University of Oregon, I looked up as about 10 young white people, some dreadlocked with patch work pants, a couple in all black with patches on their ripped up hoodies, came towards me, carrying signs that said "Free Mumia" and "Free All Political Prisoners." One young woman came up to me and asked, "Are you here for the Mumia protest?" I was so happy. I nodded my head vigorously. "Great," she said, handing me a sign, "We're almost ready to start."
In about 10 minutes, the group of 30 to 40 folks assembled set off down the street, marching through the business district around the University. I had never been in a crowd of people chanting and banging drums, yelling slogans, stopping traffic. I felt strong, and unstoppable. This is the power that people in the dilapidated office had talked about, the power that can stand up to bullets and batons and tanks and dictators and empires—the power of the people.
Someone pushed play on a boom-box they had brought, and Mumia's rich voice, tempered with honey and with steel, burst from the speakers, rained down on the boutiques and pizza shops and on me. I had never heard Mumia's voice before. Listening to him read one of his commentaries he had written in prison, I knew why they didn't play Mumia's voice, why they were scared to let this radio journalist's voice free from the cage. You could not listen to Mumia's voice and not be moved by the power, the rationality and most of all the humanity in it. You could never believe this man was the rabid loose-cannon, crazy-person they tried to paint him as. You couldn't hear Mumia's voice and not want to join in the fight to free him, and the fight to make sure there would be no more Mumia's on death rows ever again.
As he closed out his commentary, "Live from death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal," I hoisted my Free Mumia NOW sign as high as I could, and yelled with all my might with the dozens of throats around me, "Brick by brick, wall by wall we're going to free Mumia Abu-Jamal."
I screamed the same chant 13 years later, in front of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals last May as they heard evidence to decide Mumia's fate. What they don't understand, and what we have to, is that it is not their decision. The decision, as always, rests with the people, who have the real power. I still believe wholeheartedly in the chant, and I know you do too. Now is the time to make our voices and our determination heard.
—Free Mumia Abu Jamal, June 9, 2008
http://freemumianow.blogspot.com/2008/06/vital-importance-of-mumia-abu-jamal.html
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8) When Votes Matter (And When They Didn't)
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 31, 2008
Prisonradio.org
As national officials of the Democratic Party struggle and squabble over the votes of both Florida and Michigan, and determine the proper allocation of delegates, the ghost of the 2000 election rises again.
This may be seen most starkly in the repeated refrain of the campaign of Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D.-N.Y.) who has been so vociferous in her demand that "every vote count" that she has likened the recent campaign to the political struggle raging in Zimbabwe.
There is only one problem with this kind of born-again 'every-vote 'count' democracy.
Neither Sen. Clinton nor many of her supporters made that demand in the 2000 presidential campaign, nor did a single U.S. Senator stand with members of the Congressional Black Caucus when they, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, needed one senatorial vote to formally investigate the thousands of stolen votes, especially among Black Floridians. Not one senator. Not Sen. Clinton; not Sen, John Kerry, not Sen. John Edwards; not then Sen. Albert Gore....not one.
We don't know if it would've made a difference, but it certainly would've been better (that is, more 'democratic') than simply sweeping it under the rug.
It's been 8 years—and Florida is back with us, with a vengeance.
For many people who remembered the shenanigans of Florida, the allure of voting has lost much of its luster.
Who stood for those tens of thousands of Black voters in 2000 who were blatantly disenfranchised by dirty tricks, like the Choicepoint name checks, where people were forcibly removed from the voting lines if their names were simply similar to felons? The Congressional Black Caucus, beholden as it was to the whims of the Democratic Party, was virtually powerless. And party heads advised quiet acquiescence to this electoral theft.
What immense human suffering might've been averted -both here and in Iraq!—had people in power been willing to fight for those many people who voted for them!
But that was not to be.
That acquiescence has given birth to the present political hour, one which threatens to rend the Democratic Party in two.
As the English playwright tom Stoppard put it (in his novel Jumpers), "It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting."
Florida, like an ingrown toenail, will not be ignored.
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9) Is Obama's Victory Ours?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 8, 2008
Prisonradio.org
With the attainment of the required delegates to claim the Democratic Party's nomination for U.S. president, Sen. Barack H. Obama (D. ILL.) has written a new page in American history.
For by so doing he succeeds where Channing Phillips, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Sr., and Al Sharpton could not - by gaining the necessary delegates to demand nomination.
Of course, there have been numerous Black candidates for president, but these have been third party efforts designed more to raise issues, to organize or protest than to actually win elections. Some of the best known have been Eldridge Cleaver (former Black Panther Minister of Information), Dick Gregory, Dr. Lenora Fulani, and the former congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney.
But this is a different kettle of fish, for Obama's candidacy is the closest to make it to the winner's circle.
What also distinguishes Obama from his predecessors is he doesn't come from civil rights, Black liberation, socialist or anti war movements. (He often remarks at speeches, "I'm not against all wars, I'm just against dumb wars")
Indeed, although his detractors may try to paint him as a leftist liberal this is hardly true. On issues both foreign and domestic he would've been more at home in the Republican Party of his senatorial forebear, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. For though he is Black by dint of his African father, he has studiously avoided Black political groups in his long, harrowing climb to the rim of the White House.
He has studiously avoided the very real and long standing grievances of Black America. In fact, he tried to run a 'post-racial' campaign until Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D.N.Y.) (and her rambunctious husband, former Pres. Bill), brought race front and center during the Super Tuesday February primaries, by trying to pigeonhole him as 'the Black candidate'.
This primary wounded Obama, and as he won in the delegate count, he also lost a number of primary states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are necessary for a win in November.
Politics is the art of making people believe that they are in power when in fact, they have none.
It is a measure of how dire is the hour that they've passed the keys to the kingdom to a Black man.
As in many American cities, Black Mayors were let in when the treasuries were almost barren, and tax bases were almost at rock-bottom.
With the nation's manufacturing base also a thing of history, amidst the socioeconomic wreckage of globalization, with foreign affairs in shambles, the rulers reach for a pretty, brown face to front for the Empire.
'Real change that you could believe in' would be an end to Empire, and an end to wars for corporate greed, not just a change of the shade of the political managers.
That change, I'm afraid, is still to come.
--(c) '08 maj
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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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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