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JROTC MUST GO! Meeting reminder and comments about the miserable Board of Education meeting last evening that failed to pass a resolution disallowing Physical Education credits for JROTC, which would have drastically reduced enrollment in the program, thus saving students from the grasp of these unscrupulous military recruiters:
Meeting reminder:
TONIGHT!
Wednesday, June 18, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco
Dear All:
Without a doubt, the lowest point at the Board of Education meeting last evening, Tuesday, June 17, was when the board failed to pass a motion to end PE credits for JROTC, which would mean that ninth and tenth-graders could no longer get PE credits for enrollment in the military recruiting program in the new, 2009 school year. They could still take JROTC but they would have to satisfy their PE credits with a PE class.
It’s not just a matter of JROTC either. The schools are embedded with military recruiters throughout the system. Hanging around the counseling offices bringing whips and jingles to hand out to students extolling all the wonderful career opportunities they can have in the military.
Clearly, we can’t depend on this Board of Education to carry through with their own resolutions let alone respecting the wishes of the voters of San Francisco to get the military out of our schools!
Over and over at these board meetings I have heard the Board members, in long, droning, self-congratulating comments, patting themselves on the back for creatively cutting back programs to conform to an increasingly shrinking school budget--SHRINKING BECAUSE OF THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT MURDERING THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AND ELSEWHERE ACROSS THE GLOBE--yet they refuse to rescue the million dollars that the district spends on JROTC’s military recruitment program!
No one will ever convince me that this meeting wasn’t a set-up. How convenient for one board member, in this case, Jane Kim, to be missing from the meeting to break a tie! Whether it was she who was missing or someone else--of course they knew it would be a tie-vote and the resolution to end PE credit for JROTC would, indeed, fail.
If there is one thing I have learned in my 62-plus years of life is that you can never out maneuver or manipulate politicians to do the right thing! They have to be forced by massive, independent, pressure from the people to do it!
Now we are faced with the possibility there will be a measure on the ballot this November to keep JROTC in San Francisco schools permanently. And with the trillion-dollar military budget behind them they will most certainly succeed in getting the measure on the ballot. And, when it’s on the ballot they will have that multi-billion dollar advertising budget to play with—and they will try and convince the voters of San Francisco that first and foremost, JROTC is not a recruiting tool, but a splendid community service program for needy San Francisco children! They will pile on all the lies and twisted logic they have already infused into the students under their tutelage. The damage they have done to these children is astounding! And the San Francisco Board of Education should be ashamed to show their faces!
They’re wonderful kids and they are being profoundly brainwashed and damaged by the U.S. Military. And they are being got-at at an earlier and earlier age—ninth-graders are 14 and 15 years old. And those students—dressed in full regalia--are routinely paraded around kids in kindergarten and grade school to start the indoctrination as young as possible!
The antiwar movement has to get its stuff together and do all we can to tell the truth to the children and parents of the district and to the people of San Francisco who’s children will now be in more danger from the grasp of the military and their lies.
And, an increasingly deteriorating economy will push more children toward their promises of the military as an escape out of poverty, a road to the career of their choice, U.S. citizenship, an education of their choice, and to live the American Dream happily ever after.
But how many kids will they kill today in Iraq; Afghanistan; Palestine; the Congo; Haiti; and the hundreds of locations around the world that the U.S. Military is currently occupying by force of violence and the displacement of, and/or murder of, the native populations that these bases have been built upon. And who is carrying this horror against innocent people all out? Our beautiful children--captured, chewed up, used up and expended by the U.S. military in their plunder on behalf of U.S. corporate commanders!
It is up to us! JROTC MUST GO—GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS NOW!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
Here’s the article from the Chronicle:
S.F. schools' PE credit for JROTC survives
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/18/BASO11ANOA.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
(06-17) 23:03 PDT San Francisco -- The San Francisco school board's surprise attempt to eliminate physical education credit for the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps failed during a special meeting Tuesday.
If passed, the resolution would have drastically reduced enrollment in the popular program.
The school board gave only the required 24-hour notice for the meeting, leaving both proponents and opponents of the JROTC program little time to react. To make matters worse, the special meeting didn't have an official start time; it followed a previously scheduled 6 p.m. committee meeting.
But the board split the vote 3-3, defeating a plan to end the credit - with dozens of JROTC supporters in the audience, said district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.
Board members Norman Yee, Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar voted for the resolution, and Hydra Mendoza, Jill Wynns and Kim-Shree Maufas voted against it. Board member Jane Kim, who co-sponsored the resolution, was absent.
The school board voted in 2006 to eliminate the district's 90-year-old 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.
If students can't get required PE credit for the course, enrollment probably would plummet, supporters had said. Students currently get either PE credit or elective credit for JROTC, but many have said they wouldn't have time in their schedule if they don't get PE credit.
Supporters of JROTC were livid earlier Tuesday, saying the board scheduled the meeting after school let out for the year and didn't put it on a regular board meeting agenda, which requires 72 hours public notice.
"Regardless of whether you support JROTC or not, in a city where open government, choice and community involvement is so important, it is astonishing that our own elected school board members would use such underhanded and strong-arm tactics to achieve its ends," said Quincy Yu, a parent and member of Friends of JROTC, in a statement.
The board suspended its rules to allow a vote on the issue on first reading.
School board members said earlier Tuesday afternoon that logistics and potential lawsuits prompted the special meeting, not guile.
"I know, I know. It does look bad," said Yee, who sponsored the resolution to eliminate the PE credit for JROTC courses. "But I'm being a fiscal conservative. We would not want us to get into a predicament of getting sued."
The district has been threatened with a lawsuit, with San Francisco-based Public Advocates questioning the legality of giving gym-class credits for JROTC.
State law requires high school students to take two years of physical education. The majority of school districts offering JROTC in California also give PE credit, but Public Advocates singled out San Francisco in questioning the practice.
In a letter, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell told JROTC officials in April that the practice appears to violate California Education Code because the curriculum isn't aligned with state physical education standards. Also, the curriculum created by the military hasn't been approved by the California Board of Education.
However, O'Connell added, it is up to local school boards to determine which courses meet graduation requirements.
San Francisco School Board President Sanchez, who led the fight to eliminate JROTC from city schools, said he supported the special meeting Tuesday. A decision was needed to give high school principals enough time to plan before they leave for vacation on Friday, Sanchez said.
He said the board met in closed session Thursday to discuss the potential lawsuit about the issue and decided to take up the issue this week.
"It wasn't my intention to have it noticed this way," he said. "It just ended up being that way, unfortunately."
Earlier this month, a volunteer group led by parents, Friends of JROTC, launched a petition drive to get a measure on the November ballot asking voters whether they support the high school program. The measure couldn't save JROTC, but it would advise board members on the extent of community support for the program, organizers said.
E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/18/BASO11ANOA.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/
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Thurs. June 19, Noon-1:30pm
Moscone Center West, Howard St. at 4th St., SF
Rally for Healthcare
Healthcare YES!
Insurance Companies NO!
Join the ANSWER Coalition and others on June 19th at the convention of the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), San Francisco at 12 noon for a rally in support of HR 676 and SB 840, and against the insurance industry.
From June 18-20, 2008, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) will be meeting at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. Their Thursday, June 19 program features former U.S. Senators John Breaux and Bill Frist; past Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tommy Thompson: former counselor to President Bush, Dan Bartlett; and former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe. All these speakers oppose proposals that remove the health insurance industry from our healthcare.
Sponsored by the Single Payer Health Care Coalition
For more information visit: http://www.singlepayernow.net/ or call 415-695-7891.
Carpools are also available from various locations: Call CARA at 510-663-4086.
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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) Letters From Vermont
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/opinion/14herbert.html?hp
2) A Moment of Clarity in Baghdad
Editorial
"It is anyone’s guess how Mr. McCain would continue to pay the multi-billion-dollar bill for the [Iraq] war (Mr. Bush has borrowed tremendously from future generations) or deal with the other security challenges facing the United States, including the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/opinion/14sat1.html?hp
3) 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
4) Legal Update on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row, Pennsylvania
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 10, 2008
RobertRBryan@aol.com
5) A Sportscaster Revealed a Dictator’s Human Side
By EMILIE DEUTSCH
June 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/sports/15mckay.html
6) Obama Calls for More Responsibility From Black Fathers
[Makes no mention of incarceration rate; unemployment; police occupation...etc...bw]
By JULIE BOSMAN
June 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/us/politics/16obama.html
7) Background on the Bayh-Carper Welfare Proposal
by NOW Staff
May 2, 2002
http://www.now.org/issues/economic/welfare/bayh-carper.html
8) No Human Being Is Illegal
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Monthly Review
June 2008
http://monthlyreview.org/080616garcia.php
9)Federal prosecution of illegal immigrants soars
The White House lauds the dramatic increase, but critics cite higher priorities.
By Nicole Gaouette
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 18, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig18-2008jun18,0,1067111.story
10) Operation Against Taliban Begins
By TAIMOOR SHAH and CARLOTTA GALL
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?hp
11) U.S. Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated
DOJ Report Reveals Record Numbers in Prisons Last Year, With Huge Economic Impacts
By PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN
June 6, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1
12) 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
13) Pakistani Fury Over Airstrikes Imperils Training
By JANE PERLEZ
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?ref=world
14) 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
15) 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
16) 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
17) Offer to Drop Charges in Sean Bell Protests
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/nyregion/18bell.html?ref=nyregion
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1) Letters From Vermont
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/opinion/14herbert.html?hp
Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety — and even dread, in some cases — that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class.
Working families are not just changing their travel plans and tightening up on purchases at the mall. There is real fear and a great deal of suffering out there.
A man who described himself as a conscientious worker who has always pinched his pennies wrote the following to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont:
“This winter, after keeping the heat just high enough to keep my pipes from bursting (the bedrooms are not heated and never got above 30 degrees) I began selling off my woodworking tools, snowblower, (pennies on the dollar) and furniture that had been handed down in my family from the early 1800s, just to keep the heat on.
“Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged. I am thankful that the winter cold is behind us for a while, but now gas prices are rising yet again. I just can’t keep up.”
The people we have heard the least from in this epic campaign season have been the voters — ordinary Americans. We get plenty of polling data and alleged trends, but we don’t hear the voices of real people.
Senator Sanders asked his constituents to write to him about their experiences in a difficult economy. He was blown away by both the volume of responses and “the depth of the pain” of many of those who wrote.
A 55-year-old man who said his economic condition was “very scary,” wrote: “I don’t live from paycheck to paycheck. I live day to day.” He has no savings, he said. His gas tank is never more than a quarter full, and he can’t afford to buy the “food items” he would like.
His sense of his own mortality was evident in every sentence, and he wondered how long he could continue. “I am concerned as gas prices climb daily,” he said. “I am just tired. The harder that I work, the harder it gets. I work 12 to 14 hours daily, and it just doesn’t help.”
A working mother with two young children wrote: “Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that’s all I have.”
Another woman said she and her husband, both 65, “only eat two meals a day to conserve.”
A woman who has been trying to sell her house for two years and described herself as “stretched to the breaking point,” told the senator, “I don’t go to church many Sundays because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there.”
Many of the letters touched on the extremely harsh winter that pounded Vermont and exacerbated the economic distress. With fuel prices sky-high, many residents turned to wood to heat their homes. A woman with a 9-year-old son wrote:
“By February, we ran out of wood and I burned my mother’s dining room furniture. ... I’d like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the Capitol building. ... We are certainly a country in distress.”
Senator Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, remarked on the disconnect between the harsh economic reality facing so many Americans and the Pollyanna claims of the Bush administration and others over the past several years.
The assertion that the economy was strong and getting stronger, repeated with the frequency of a mantra, hid the reality that working Americans have been taking a real beating, said Senator Sanders.
He pointed out that over the past seven or eight years, millions of Americans have lost health insurance coverage, lost pensions, and become deeply mired in debt. During that period, the median annual household income for working-age Americans fell by about $2,400.
“Americans work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world,” the senator said. “We even surpassed Japan.”
But despite all that hard work — despite explosive improvements in technology and increased worker productivity — the middle class is struggling, losing ground and there’s a very real possibility that the next generation of workers will have a lower standard of living than today’s.
The letters to Senator Sanders offer a glimpse into the real lives of ordinary people in an economic environment that was sculpted to favor the very rich. One of the letters was from a woman in central Vermont who said she and her husband are in their mid-30s, are college-educated and have two young children.
“We are feeling distraught,” she said, “that we may never ‘get ahead’ but will always be pedaling to just keep up.”
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2) A Moment of Clarity in Baghdad
Editorial
"It is anyone’s guess how Mr. McCain would continue to pay the multi-billion-dollar bill for the [Iraq] war (Mr. Bush has borrowed tremendously from future generations) or deal with the other security challenges facing the United States, including the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/opinion/14sat1.html?hp
The disconnect between Washington’s stay-the-course Republicans — President Bush and Senator John McCain, in particular — and the Iraqi government has grown too wide to ignore. As the administration pushes for a legal agreement to extend the American military presence in Iraq, the Iraqis are pushing back. That is a positive sign.
The United Nations resolution authorizing the American role in Iraq expires at the end of this year. Since December, the two governments have been quietly negotiating their own deal.
Despite the importance of this issue, the White House is refusing to divulge details of its position. But according to Iraqi leaders, who went public with their complaints this week, Washington has been insisting on keeping more than 50 long-term bases in Iraq. The Iraqis also say that Washington is insisting that American forces have a free hand in launching military operations when and wherever they want.
If true — and a lot of this sounds disturbingly plausible — the Iraqis are right to object, and so should Congress and the American public.
These steps appear calculated to keep American troops in Iraq indefinitely — exactly the wrong course for both countries. Any talk of long-term basing rights, in particular, will only feed popular resentments. And the suggestion that America is prepared to continue the war indefinitely will, once again, relieve Iraq’s leaders of any pressure to take responsibility for their own security or their political future.
President Bush has made clear that he plans to keep American troops in Iraq for as long as he is in office. But this deal appears to be an especially cynical attempt to tie his successor to his failed Iraq policy.
Oddly, by pushing so hard, Mr. Bush may achieve that which seemed impossible: unity among Iraq’s disparate ethnic and political groups. But the last thing the United States needs is another country held together by its fury with the United States.
Like Mr. Bush, Senator McCain is clearly not listening to the Iraqis any more than he is listening to the American people.
When asked on NBC’s “Today” show this week if he knew when American troops could start retuning home, he replied: “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.”
His preference for a never-ending military deployment is also well known, but his words must have stung all those service members and their families, who have endured three and even four tours in Iraq.
It is anyone’s guess how Mr. McCain would continue to pay the multibillion-dollar bill for the war (Mr. Bush has borrowed tremendously from future generations) or deal with the other security challenges facing the United States, including the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
What makes this all the more confusing is that in recent months there has been some tentative progress in Iraq. American and Iraqi casualties have declined, and there are signs that the central government is beginning to assert its authority against Shiite militias in Basra and Sadr City and against allies of Al Qaeda in Mosul. Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain cannot have it both ways: insisting that American troops must stay if things go badly, and that they must stay if they go well.
Mr. Bush should start preparing now for an orderly withdrawal — and for a strategic review of America’s relationship with Iraq. Since he stubbornly refuses to do that, he should negotiate an extension of the United Nations mandate and leave any deal on future American-Iraqi relations to his successor.
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3) 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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4) Legal Update on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row, Pennsylvania
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 10, 2008
RobertRBryan@aol.com
This Legal Update is made on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on Pennsylvania‚s death row.
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit entered an order extending the due date for submitting the Petition for Rehearing En Banc on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal. We will file it on June 27, 2008.
There apparently is still confusion regarding the March 27 federal decision. A new jury trial was ordered on the question of whether the penalty should be life or death. The court did not rule that Mumia should receive a life sentence as some have stated. The penalty-phase was reversed because the trial judge gave misleading and unconstitutional jury instructions. Nonetheless, I expect far greater gains.
There was a lengthy dissenting opinion on the issue of racism in jury selection. It found that there was prima facie evidence of the prosecutor engaging in racism. He removed prospective African-American jurors for no reason other than the color of their skin. That violates the United States Constitution. This extraordinary dissent goes to the core of our effort to secure an entirely new trial. The first step in that process is what we presently are about˜convincing the entire federal court that the case should be reheard and full relief granted. This dissent serves as the basis for that effort and, if need be, going to the United States Supreme Court.
Mumia remains on death row. The prosecution has vowed to appeal and continue its quest to see him executed. I will not let that happen.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the United States The only way to ensure that donations in the U.S. go only to the legal defense is to make checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible. Checks should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion This case can be won. In over three decades of successfully defending people in capital murder cases, I have not seen one more compelling. Racism is a thread that has run through the case since its inception. My objective remains to obtain a new jury trial in which Mumia will be acquitted by a jury so that he can return to his family, a free person.
On behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, I thank you.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[RobertRBryan@aol.com]
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5) A Sportscaster Revealed a Dictator’s Human Side
By EMILIE DEUTSCH
June 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/sports/15mckay.html
In the summer of 1991, ABC Sports packed a 423-foot cargo ship with 15 mobile units, 40 cameras, 20 miles of cable, 50 videotape machines, 5 satellite dishes and enough food to feed 350 people for three weeks, and shipped it to Havana to cover the most important sporting event to take place in Cuba — the Pan American Games.
Because of the trade embargo, ABC had received special permission from the United States government to do business with the Cubans under the condition that absolutely nothing — not a videotape, not a monitor, not a stopwatch — be left behind.
What does remain from that special sporting event is an interview conducted by the ABC Sports commentator Jim McKay with Fidel Castro, Cuba’s president at the time.
When the camera crew arrived for the interview at the former presidential palace at 5 p.m., the Cubans insisted on inspecting every bag and taking apart anything they could figure out how to open, to make sure that no explosives or guns had been packed among the gear. A phalanx of Cuban security guards took the equipment into the interview area piece by piece, slowing the setup to a crawl.
Castro’s aides peeked into the room at 8:30 to see if all was ready, and when it clearly was not, he was escorted back to his office until the setup was complete.
At 10 p.m., Castro strode into the room, a charismatic presence in green fatigues and his trademark scraggly gray beard hanging five inches below his chin. He reached out to shake McKay’s hand, and although he was the more imposing figure, taller by almost a foot, it was clear that he was honored to be in the presence of the well-known American sportscaster, whom he had followed through the years on the anthology series “Wide World of Sports.”
The two sat and faced each other, Castro’s interpreter sitting just off-camera. It was a striking tableau — two men in their 60s, one a sports journalist in coat and tie, the other a Communist dictator in uniform, raised in different cultures but both educated by Jesuits and able to find a common ground in sport.
For four hours, McKay interviewed Castro in a wide-ranging discussion that included the downfall of the Soviet Union, Castro’s take on the eight American presidents who had been in office during his reign through 1991 and the advantages of wood bats over aluminum. In his comfortable, conversational way, McKay guided the discussion skillfully, using his simple, poignant questions to transform the blustery Castro into a regular person.
“I would like to know more about you as a man, and I’m sure the American people would, too,” McKay said. “How would you describe yourself as a person?”
At another point when McKay had asked about the influences in his life, and Castro responded by discussing Jesus Christ and the political theorists José Martí and Karl Marx, McKay interjected: “But those are all famous political and religious figures. Is there anyone you knew personally who had a great influence on you?” (Che Guevara was the answer.)
Castro had been an excellent athlete, and was named Cuba’s national high school athlete of the year in his youth. It was rumored that he had been offered $5,000 to play professional baseball in the United States. When McKay noted that George H. W. Bush, the American president at the time, had also been quite the ballplayer, Castro responded, “I would have preferred him as an important professional athlete because as a president, he has not shown to be very friendly toward us!”
McKay queried Castro about his feelings when John F. Kennedy, the president with whom he had sparred over the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, was assassinated.
“What I felt when I heard that news is someone who has an adversary, someone who respects his adversary and all of a sudden, someone else kills his adversary,” Castro said. “A boxer in the ring for example, and the adversary is shot to death in the middle of the boxing match. I believe Kennedy was the most brilliant of all. The most brilliant. I believe he was a brilliant man with a great charisma.”
As the interview concluded at 2 a.m., and Castro’s staff rolled a cart of sandwiches and bottles of American liquors as well as Cuban rum into the room, the dictator and the sportscaster bent over a baseball and Castro showed McKay the grip of his famous curve. All around them, the camera crew was taking down the lights and people were milling about sipping rum and eating Cuban sandwiches. But McKay and Castro remained locked in conversation about the Jesuits, and wood bats, great athletes and the impending Pan Am Games.
Then Castro bid the group farewell, shook hands and disappeared.
In his final question, McKay asked Castro, “Can you see in your lifetime and mine any way that the U.S. and Cuba can assume normal relations?” Castro responded, “Everything will depend, my friend, on the amount of years we both live.”
On Tuesday, they laid Jim McKay to rest in a private burial ground on his farm in Maryland. The great storyteller and humanizer did not live to see a thaw in United States-Cuba relations, but he left behind an enduring legacy of making the most celebrated and famous people, whether athletes or dictators, familiar to the rest of us.
Emilie Deutsch directed and produced Jim McKay’s interview with Fidel Castro in 1991. She is currently the vice president for original programming at CBS College Sports.
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6) Obama Calls for More Responsibility From Black Fathers
[Makes no mention of incarceration rate; unemployment; police occupation...etc...bw]
By JULIE BOSMAN
June 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/us/politics/16obama.html
CHICAGO — Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city’s largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to black men, saying “we need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.”
In an address that was striking for its bluntness and where he chose to give it, Mr. Obama directly addressed one of the most delicate topics confronting black leaders: how much responsibility absent fathers bear for some of the intractable problems afflicting black Americans. Mr. Obama noted that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” a number that he said had doubled since his own childhood.
“Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Mr. Obama said to a chorus of approving murmurs from the audience. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”
Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who sat in the front pew, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult for a white candidate to make, telling the mostly black audience not to “just sit in the house watching ‘SportsCenter,’ ” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.
“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said, bringing many members of the congregation to their feet, applauding. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”
His themes have also been sounded by the comedian Bill Cosby, who has stirred debate among black Americans by bluntly speaking about an epidemic of fatherlessness in African-American families while suggesting that some blacks use racism as a crutch to explain the lack of economic progress.
Mr. Obama did not take his Father’s Day message to Trinity United Church of Christ, where he resigned as a member in May after a series of disputes over controversial remarks by the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Instead, he chose the 20,000-member Apostolic Church of God, a vast brick structure on the South Side near Lake Michigan. The church’s pastor, Byron Brazier, is an Obama supporter.
The address was not Mr. Obama’s first foray into the issue. On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has frequently returned to the topic of parenting and personal responsibility, particularly for low-income black families. Speaking in Texas in February, Mr. Obama told the mostly black audience to take responsibility for the education and nutrition of their children, and lectured them for feeding their children “cold Popeyes” for breakfast.
“I know how hard it is to get kids to eat properly,” Mr. Obama said at the time.
The remarks Sunday were Mr. Obama’s first since he claimed the nomination that have addressed the problems confronting blacks in a comprehensive and straightforward way. While Mr. Obama’s remarks were directed at a black, churchgoing audience, his campaign hopes they resonate among white social conservatives in a race where these voters may be up for grabs.
On Friday, Mr. Obama said he would co-sponsor a bill, with Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, that his campaign said would address the “national epidemic of absentee fathers.” If passed, the legislation would increase enforcement of child support payments and strengthen services for domestic violence prevention.
“We need families to raise our children,” he said at the service on Sunday. “We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception. That doesn’t just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
Mr. Obama spoke of the burden that single parenthood placed on his mother, who raised him with the help of his maternal grandparents.
“I know the toll it took on me, not having a father in the house,” he continued. “The hole in your heart when you don’t have a male figure in the home who can guide you and lead you. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle — that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my children.”
But Mr. Obama also acknowledged his own flaws as a father, citing the breakneck schedule of the campaign and the rare days he spends with his children.
“I say this knowing that I have been an imperfect father,” he said, “knowing that I have made mistakes and I’ll continue to make more, wishing that I could be home for my girls and my wife more than I am right now.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and an Obama supporter, said he welcomed not only the message the speech sent to black Americans, but also how it laid bare Mr. Obama’s own struggles growing up and, now, as the father of two children.
“I have been saying for some time now that he needs to talk more about his life experiences and what it means to be raised by a single mother,” Mr. Clyburn said. “He opened up.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton called the remarks on absent black fathers “courageous and important,” but cautioned that Mr. Obama’s words would not be embraced by all segments of the black community.
“There are a lot of those who will say that he should not be airing dirty laundry, those that will say he’s beating up on the victims,” Mr. Sharpton said in a telephone interview. “This will not be something that will be unanimously applauded, but I think that not discussing it is not going to make it go away.”
The Obama campaign added the speech to Mr. Obama’s schedule on Saturday, when he returned to Chicago after a campaign swing through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, took the day off from campaigning, but met privately in Washington with Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister.
The church did not publicize Mr. Obama’s visit in advance, and carried no mention of it on the its Web site.
But word had clearly gotten out, and by 11 a.m., as a musician warmed up on the timpani, thousands of people had filed through metal detectors at the church entrance and filled the pews, saving seats for latecomers with pocketbooks and hymnals. Even those who arrived an hour before the service milled around the church searching for empty seats.
Mr. Obama sprinkled his roughly 30-minute address with moments of levity. He said that when he asked his wife why Mother’s Day produced so much more “hoopla” than Father’s Day, she reminded him of his special status.
“She said, ‘Let me tell you, every day is Father’s Day,’ ” he said. “ ‘Every day you’re getting away with something. You’re running for president.’ ”
Michael Falcone contributed reporting from Washington.
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7) Background on the Bayh-Carper Welfare Proposal
by NOW Staff
May 2, 2002
http://www.now.org/issues/economic/welfare/bayh-carper.html
Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) recently unveiled their welfare proposal, which sadly mirrors the mean-spirited welfare reauthorization legislation backed by George W. Bush. The Bayh-Carper bill tells poor parents they should just work harder and get married, while limiting their access to education, training and other critical work supports.
Currently, other senators are considering signing on to this legislation as co-sponsors. Calls from grassroots organizers have already convinced Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) to withdraw his support from this punitive proposal that, like Bush's welfare scheme, denies desperately needed assistance to low-income parents and families.
Among the worst provisions in the Bayh-Carper proposal:
* The Bayh-Carper bill unrealistically raises the work requirement participation rates for states and recipients. This proposal would require that at least 70 percent (up from 50) of a state's caseload participate in a "work" activity — which does not include education, training, or caring for kids or disabled family members — for at least 40 hours per week (up from 30 hours). While it may not appear to be unreasonable, this proposal ignores the fact that most of those still on welfare face multiple barriers — such as mental health problems, substance abuse problems and handicapped children — that prevent them from obtaining or holding down a full-time job. In order to meet these requirements, many states will have to force poor moms into workfare or community service jobs, which fail to adequately prepare them for the workplace and which fail to provide basic workplace rights to workers. In many cases, the increased work requirements will only prevent low-income parents from overcoming the barriers that prevent their successful entry to the workforce.
* While insisting that poor parents work harder, the Bayh-Carper bill fails to provide adequate funding for childcare. Their proposal would provide an additional $1 billion for the Child Care Development Block Grant, a paltry sum that will fund childcare for only a fraction of the low-income families that will need it under the tougher work rules. The lack of adequate childcare prevents many parents from complying with these new standards. The Bayh-Carper proposal also fails to increase funding for other work supports — such as training and transportation — that are vital to recipients moving out of poverty and into self-sufficiency.
* The Bayh-Carper proposal further siphons money away from custodial parents (usually women) for programs benefiting non-custodial parents (mostly men). Studies show that increasing income to non-custodial fathers does not increase their voluntary child support. Yet, the Bayh-Carper bill diverts welfare funds from the children who need it to programs promoting marriage and fatherhood. Using taxpayer dollars to persuade poor women to marry as a solution to their poverty is not only bad public policy which the majority of taxpayers oppose, but it also invites higher rates of violence against women and their children, as many women turn to TANF to escape their partners' violence.
* The Bayh-Carper proposal retains the arbitrary and unwarranted caps on training and education. Although training and education are recognized as the most important predictors of success for individuals getting off welfare, the Bayh-Carper bill does not extend the limited training and education opportunities available to low-income parents.
The purpose of welfare is to move recipients off the rolls and into self-sufficiency, not into poverty-wage jobs. Only through increased education and training opportunities can we ensure such goals will come to fruition.
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8) No Human Being Is Illegal
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Monthly Review
June 2008
http://monthlyreview.org/080616garcia.php
Crowded on the beaches were the inductees, some twenty million silent black men, women, and children, including babes in arms. As the sun rose, the Space Traders directed them, first, to strip off all but a single undergarment; then, to line up; and finally, to enter those holds which yawned in the morning light like Milton’s “darkness visible.” The inductees looked fearfully behind them. But, on the dunes above the beaches, guns at the ready, stood U.S. guards. There was no escape, no alternative. Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forbears had arrived.
So ends Derrick Bell’s Space Traders, a fictional account of racism and deportation, which depicts a world where aliens from outer space arrive on the shores of the United States in the midst of a deep and steadily worsening economic crisis. The aliens offer a panacea—the promise of enough gold to quiet all fears of economic catastrophe. All they ask for in return is every last black person in the country.
After a national referendum, the results fall directly along racial lines—white people, even the liberals who claimed to be antiracists, vote to trade blacks for gold; black people vote no. No concern is given to the unknown fate of these deportees. They are simply sacrificial victims—welcomed while useful, disposable when convenient—of the coercive arm of the state. Bell’s story is all too fitting in the current climate of immigration round-ups. As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, continues its raids on homes and workplaces throughout the nation, immigrants—those perennial sacrificial lambs to capitalism—are again transformed from useful laborers to convenient, and therefore disposable, scapegoats. ICE recently announced that in the 2007 fiscal year it deported more than 220,000 people. Like Bell’s story that stands as a scathing critique of the intractability of racism in the United States, the current round of ICE raids is a reminder of the inherent cruelty of deportation.
Families are divided, individuals uprooted, communities destroyed—all part of a recurring theme of xenophobia and nativism, and all conducted routinely with the sanction of law. So long as the nation’s immigration law is intended to allow some people into the country while keeping most outside its borders, indiscriminate raids will occur.
To wrest control of the immigration discourse away from the policy makers intent on superficial adjustments of immigration law enforcement, we must uncover what former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, in The Nature of the Judicial Process, aptly described as the law’s “subconscious,” the underlying philosophy that gives coherence to its thought and action. This article examines the racist foundation of the modern immigration law regime in the United States, with an emphasis on laws governing deportation, and urges the left to begin an earnest discussion of immigration policy outside the liberal promotion of a guest worker program. The left’s immediate goal must be to shift the debate toward a wholesale revision of the urgent care strategy employed by immigrants’ rights advocates in the wake of recent raids. Such criticism is necessary, but insufficient. Meanwhile, the left’s ultimate goal should be to replace the current model of immigration control with a radically different model premised on the inherent right to travel and thrive, even across borders.
Rooted in Racism
The border and the Border Patrol are children of the same xenophobia, justified by the pseudoscience of eugenics. In 1882 Congress responded to widespread hostility to Chinese immigrants by enacting the first law that effectively excluded all members of a particular nationality from the United States. By 1911 eugenics had gained so much support within policy-making circles that the Senate’s Dillingham Commission concluded that the country would be debased unless migration from southern and eastern Europe—mainly Italians, Jews, and Poles—was substantially curtailed. At roughly the same time, Immigration Commissioner William Williams boasted of using immigration laws to bar “the riffraff and the scum which is constantly seeking to enter.”1
The visions of the invading hordes that policy makers imagined eventually led to a permanent police presence along the nation’s political boundaries. Prior to the 1920s the border was almost entirely porous. A few informal agents trolled the border mainly in an effort to keep out would-be Chinese newcomers. In 1924, however, the federal government created the Border Patrol—the predecessor of today’s ICE and its cousin along the border, the Customs and Border Protection Agency—and in the process, according to historian Mae M. Ngai, raised the border as a genuine obstacle to human migration.
Nowhere was the shift to an increasingly militarized boundary more visible than along the southern border after the 1920s. The Border Patrol started as a loose bunch of young gunslingers, many affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, patrolling the Mexican border. From the beginning, the agency, through trigger-happy agents and official policies, represented the worst excesses of the expansionist nation. The first leader of the Border Patrol’s El Paso office, Clifford Perkins, recalled that some agents “were a little too quick with the gun, or given to drinking too much, too often.” Meanwhile, official policy required a medical inspection of all entering Mexicans. These inspections, waived for all Europeans and Mexicans entering through first-class trains, demanded that Mexican laborers remove their clothes for fumigation and walk before a medical officer. Within a few years the country was in the midst of the Great Depression and Mexicans proved an available scapegoat.2
Plenary Power Doctrine
Historically, immigration law has been used as a mechanism of social control. According to law professor Daniel Kanstroom, social control deportation laws treat all non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents (i.e., green card holders) as “eternal guests.” Their presence is “legal” or not depending on the whims of the citizenry.3 In practice, this means that non-citizens are in the country at the whim of Congress and the executive branch, buttressed by a compliant Supreme Court.
In a recent case, Demore v. Kim, the Supreme Court clearly explained the key distinction between immigration law and all other aspects of the U.S. legal apparatus. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority of the Court, explained: “this Court has firmly and repeatedly endorsed the proposition that Congress may make rules as to aliens that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.” Rehnquist cited cases stretching back more than fifty years, but he could have reached even further. In Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, decided in 1892, the Court outlined the foundation of what has come to be known as the plenary power doctrine. This doctrine gives Congress the power to do almost anything it wants regarding admission, exclusion, and deportation. “It is an accepted maxim of international law,” the Court wrote, “that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or admit them only in such cases and in such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”
The plenary power doctrine renders immigration law, including the procedures governing deportation, quasi-judicial. Immigration courts and judges are part of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, an arm of the Department of Justice; they are not part of the federal court system. More fundamentally, immigration law lacks basic procedures commonly associated with judicial proceedings. Most notable among these are a lack of due process protections, a lack of protection against dispensation of disproportionate punishments for an illegal act, and a lack of legal representation in immigration proceedings.
The due process protections normally afforded to defendants in judicial proceedings are derived from the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee due process before the federal and state governments can deprive any person of “life, liberty, or property.” In 1950, the Supreme Court clarified that due process protections do not apply in the immigration context.
In United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, a case arising under the War Brides Act, a law that gave preferential treatment to the foreign wives and children of Second World War veterans, the Court considered a situation in which Ellen Knauff, the German-born wife of an army veteran, petitioned for entry into the United States. Knauff had gone from Germany to Czechoslovakia after the Nazis took power. Eventually, she fled Czechoslovakia and entered England as a refugee. There she worked in the Royal Air Force for three years. After the war, she took a job at the U.S. War Department in Germany. Both Knauff and her husband had received positive work reviews. Their marriage was even sanctioned by the military’s commanding general in Frankfurt. Nonetheless, she was barred from entering the United States “upon the basis of confidential information.”
Justice Minton explained the majority’s reasoning in words as succinct as they are indicative of the Court’s disregard for due process in immigration law: “Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned.” In other words, Congress can choose any criteria for excluding foreigners—no matter how arbitrary or irrational—and the Court will uphold the decision. More than half a century later, the special agent in charge of a recent ICE raid on Long Island evidenced the enduring legacy and real–world implications of Minton’s words when he explained ICE’s decision to conduct raids without warrants: “We didn’t have warrants. We don’t need warrants to make the arrests. These are illegal immigrants.”4
Further expanding Congress’s power is the law’s view, developed in cases stretching as far back as 1882, that deportation is not a punishment for crime. It does not matter to the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly endorsed this position, that deportation often means banishment from the community in which the deported individual has lived for years and where she has important family ties. The popular maxim that the punishment should fit the crime does not apply, since deportation is not legally defined as punishment. Individuals can be deported for such petty crimes as shoplifting or possession of small amounts of marijuana. Though infractions such as these usually lead to minimal jail stays or less, in the immigration context they often result in permanent banishment.
Moreover, immigrants in deportation proceedings are not entitled to legal representation. Though they are allowed to hire a lawyer, the constitutional guarantee of effective counsel does not apply to most civil proceedings, including immigration matters where the defendant faces permanent banishment. According to a study conducted by the National Lawyers Guild in 2005, almost half of all immigration detainees in the Boston area had no legal representation.
A Nation Divided
The closing lines of “Mojado,” a song by the popular musicians from Guatemala and Texas, respectively, Ricardo Arjona and Intocable, asks a question of immense relevance to activists resisting the recent surge of immigration raids and border militarization projects: “¿Por qué te persiguen, mojado, si el consul de los cielos ya te dio permiso?” (“Why do they chase you, wetback, if the consul of the heavens has already given you permission?”) The answer lays in the function of our immigration law regime.
Political expediency practiced by policy makers explains many of the irrationalities and eccentricities of immigration law and enforcement. Exemplifying the irrationality of enforcement, Asa Hutchinson, former under secretary for border and transportation security for the Department of Homeland Security, admitted that there is more evidence of terrorist activity along the Canadian border than the Mexican border in the same breath that he announced that “[t]he best border security on the northern border is the grandmother who has lived in her house on the border for seventy years. She sits in her home and watches that border and calls border patrol when she sees something suspicious.”5 Meanwhile, the Border Patrol is in the midst of an enormous push to hire six thousand new agents, promising to fast-track Spanish-speaking recruits to place them in the field—presumably along the southern, not the northern, border—faster than the standard training process allows.
The Supreme Court played an important role in constructing distinct border policies for the Mexican and Canadian borders in its 1976 decision United States v. Martinez-Fuerte. In that case, the Court granted Border Patrol agents the right to stop and question people “of apparent Mexican ancestry” located anywhere within approximately a hundred miles of the border. No other criterion is necessary. In south Texas, where approximately 90 percent of the population is of Mexican descent, and therefore is presumably “of apparent Mexican ancestry,” agents are legally entitled to stop almost everyone in sight. This unprecedented power to police the southern border region uniquely positions the Border Patrol within border life. Unlike other law enforcement agencies that are prohibited from engaging in racial profiling, the Border Patrol is constitutionally entitled to do so.
While the Supreme Court continues to follow its deferential stance toward Congress’s power to control all immigration matters, the immigration court system remains plagued by blatant political peddling and shoddy decision making. Federal courts have occasionally found that immigration judges rule out of personal bias rather than legal doctrine. For example, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last year overturned an immigration judge’s denial of asylum to a Chinese applicant because the judge’s “apparent bias and hostility toward Huang...were at least inappropriate and at worst indicative of bias against Chinese witnesses.”6 Another immigration judge was found to have “express[ed] prejudiced opinions about various ethnic groups” and “us[ed] profanity in the courtroom.”7 Even former attorney general Alberto Gonzales admitted that immigration court proceedings leave much to be desired when he noted that many immigration judges exhibit “intemperate or even abusive” behavior toward immigrants.8
In Need of a New Critique
In the aftermath of ICE’s March 2007 raid of a manufacturing plant in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a city with a substantial immigrant population, politicians from across the state rushed to condemn the federal government’s poor planning and inexcusable disregard for the children of detained immigrants. Edward Kennedy, the state’s senior senator, decried the raid for its “insensitivity.” The state’s head of public safety, Kevin Burke, under fire for revelations that the administration of Governor Deval Patrick was informed of the raid several months earlier, said, “We were assured there wouldn’t be any problems....Next time, the state will press more for details in the beginning.”9 In a recent ruling dismissing complaints brought by victims of that raid, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals added its voice to the debate by criticizing the manner in which ICE performed the raid.
While it is important to criticize the most egregious consequences of the immigration raids and the Bush administration’s anti-immigrant strategy, immigrants’ rights advocates should prevent the oppositional discourse from dissolving into political posturing. Instead, advocates must contextualize any political strategy in Cardozo’s subconscious of law—the racist ideological foundations of immigration jurisprudence and enforcement from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the current round of raids.
The story of immigration law is a story of deportation. Immigration law, as presently conceived, cannot be divorced from deportation law. As the existing immigration law scheme requires welcoming some immigrants while excluding others, the constant threat of banishment is present through each wave of immigration, regardless of racial or national origin. No amount of pre-raid planning or political good will can eliminate the destructive consequences of deportation. On the contrary, an immigration regime that distinguishes between favored and disfavored people requires policing the nation to expunge anyone deemed excludable. This is not an extraordinary operation of law, but an entirely ordinary and logical extension of a bifurcated legal apparatus.
As a former high–ranking immigration official, Hutchinson’s perspective is instructive: immigration law enforcement pits “the rule and integrity of the law versus the compassion of our country.” In the end, he said, “The rule of law must prevail.” Any reassurances derived from references to the rule of law are illusory at best when those laws were born of late nineteenth-century racist, xenophobic hysteria. Given that these laws were then embraced for over a century by a deferential judiciary intent on granting plenary authority to politicians while depriving immigrants of the guarantees provided by much of the Constitution, immigrants and their allies are unwise to set mere ameliorative measures as goals.
The bifurcated regime that identifies some immigrants as “legal” necessarily designates others as “illegal.” These “illegal” residents become the perfect scapegoats for xenophobes who have converted them into criminals in the popular consciousness. Meanwhile, our generations-old immigration law regime refuses them the constitutional protections that they would receive if they were charged with an actual crime and subject to legally cognizable punishment. Further, this scapegoating blurs the distinction between “legal” and “illegal” to the point that a simple minor infraction—for example, failure to report an address change; or doing something that years later may become grounds for deportation even if at the time it was not—can leave a person without legal authority to remain in the country. As long as laws sanction the presence of some people while condemning the presence of others, deportations—or, at least, the threat of deportations—will persist.
For immigrants’ rights advocates to adopt the existing bifurcated position, even in a more humanitarian version, is to concede that the exclusionary rhythm that has guided immigration law for over a century—yesterday targeting Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Irish, and Italians, today targeting Latina/os and Arabs—is acceptable. It is not.
No matter how carefully orchestrated, deportation dehumanizes people who come to this country to work hard. Through their labor, they produce the many luxuries to which we have grown accustomed—clean offices and classrooms, tasty and inexpensive food at restaurants and in grocery stores, new homes, and a well-equipped military (courtesy, in part, of the New Bedford workers).
As Marx and Engels noted in the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, the economy of the United States rests on the labor of immigrants. At the time of their writing, the new immigrant was Europe’s “surplus proletarian.” Earlier, in the first volume of Capital, Marx had already argued that capital accumulation itself produces a “surplus-population,” that is, more laborers than it needs. Today, the U.S. economy continues to lure immigrants—now primarily from Latin America—with promises of employment. Upon arrival, these immigrants are reminded that they are nothing more than, to borrow from Marx, superfluous laborers.
Instead of limiting criticism to the most unpleasant consequences of deportation, the very premise of deportation—that some people are worthy of inclusion while others are not—must be discredited. In its place is needed a radically reformulated scheme of laws that will abolish the distinction between the favored and the disfavored. Since the advent of modern immigration law over a century ago, the left has yet to develop and advance its own immigration framework. This work is long overdue and urgently needed.
Whatever the specific contours of a left platform, this new immigration law regime must be rooted in the activist contention that no human being is illegal. That is, human prosperity must not be viewed as a zero sum game that pits insiders against outsiders. A fitting beginning might be the vision offered by lawyer-turned-poet Martín Espada who dreamed of “refugees deporting judges, immigrants crossing the border to be greeted with trumpets and drums.”
Notes
1. Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 10.
2. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 68.
3. Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 6.
4. Nina Bernstein, “Official Calls for Inquiry After Antigang Raids,” New York Times, October 3, 2007.
5. Asa Hutchinson, “Keynote Address,” American University Washington College of Law, March 20, 2007, Administrative Law Review 59 (2007): 533, 541.
6. Huang v. Gonzales, 453 F.3d 142, 148 (2nd Cir. 2006).
7. Levinsky v. Department of Justice, 208 Fed. Appx. 925, 926 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
8. Memorandum from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Immigration Judges (January 9, 2006), http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/06202-asy-ag-memo-ijs.pdf.
9. Eileen McNamara, “A Lapse in Planning,” Boston Globe, March 14, 2007.
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9)Federal prosecution of illegal immigrants soars
The White House lauds the dramatic increase, but critics cite higher priorities.
By Nicole Gaouette
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 18, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig18-2008jun18,0,1067111.story
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has sharply ratcheted up prosecutions of illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year, with increases so dramatic that immigration offenses now account for as much as half the nation's federal criminal caseload.
In the widening crackdown, administration officials prosecuted 9,350 illegal immigrants on federal criminal charges in March, up from 3,746 a year ago and an all-time high, according to statistics released Tuesday. Those convicted have received jail sentences averaging about one month.
The prosecutions are among the most visible steps in a larger effort that includes work-site raids, increased border patrols and the use of technology and fences. Often controversial, the patchwork of measures represents the administration's response to failed congressional attempts last summer to overhaul federal immigration laws.
Administration officials and conservative groups have lauded the increase in prosecutions. But critics say data show illegal immigrants are still trying to enter the country. And some lawyers argue that the push is overwhelming a federal court system with limited resources and higher priorities.
Even so, administration officials announced this month that they would be funneling more resources toward the effort, called Operation Streamline.
"The results of this criminal prosecution initiative have been striking," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Chertoff's agency and the Justice Department, which oversee the effort, recently announced a plan to assign 64 attorneys and 35 staff members to prosecutions along the Southwest border.
The program began as a pilot around Del Rio, Texas, in 2005 and spread to other areas. Officers and prosecutors participating in it practice "zero tolerance," and jail times can range from two weeks to six months.
"The reason this works is because these illegal migrants come to realize that violating the law will not simply send them back to try over again but will require them to actually serve some short period of time in a jail or prison setting, and will brand them as having been violators of the law," Chertoff said. "That has a very significant deterrent impact."
The statistical analysis released Tuesday was compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, considered an authoritative source for such figures. It called the increase "highly unusual."
Operation Streamline's larger aim is to give the administration another tool to use in its crackdown on illegal immigration, said Susan B. Long, a TRAC co-director and Syracuse University professor.
"This is an effort to use the federal criminal justice system in immigration enforcement," Long said. "What it means is that immigration cases are dominating the federal court system these days. The volume of cases is really huge. This is a big deal."
Of 16,298 federal criminal prosecutions recorded nationwide in March, immigration cases accounted for more than half, Long said. The next-highest number, 2,674, was for drug offenses, followed by 702 for white-collar crime.
TRAC researchers found that all but 142 of the 9,350 new federal immigration prosecutions in March occurred in certain areas along the border with Mexico. Texas was most active, followed by Southern California.
California is not formally a part of the program. But prosecutions of people who smuggle illegal immigrants across the state's border have increased sharply in the last five years, nearly doubling to 118 cases in March.
The deluge of prosecutions is overwhelming some lawyers involved in the process.
Heather Williams, a federal public defender in Tucson, said the operation had a crushing effect when it was begun this year on a limited basis.
Defense attorneys fear for clients who are hustled into court, en masse, after spending days crossing the desert.
"We have to be concerned our clients are competent to plead, that they understand what's going on," Williams said.
Other immigrant advocates were critical of the increase in federal prosecutions.
"It doesn't mean we have an end to illegal immigration or a way of dealing with it," said Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center.
A recent study showed that would-be border crossers were more concerned about heat and harsh conditions than border enforcement, she said. The study, by Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego, found that 98% of immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca were eventually able to enter the U.S.
But groups that want to see immigration tightly controlled applauded the new statistics.
"It sounds like very good news," said Roy Beck, director of NumbersUSA, which advocates stricter immigration controls.
"It's part of a pattern we've seen since last August where the administration, on the border and in the interior, seems almost monthly to be tightening the vise," he said.
nicole.gaouette@latimes.com
Times staff writers Richard Marosi in San Diego and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
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10) Operation Against Taliban Begins
By TAIMOOR SHAH and CARLOTTA GALL
June 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?hp
ARGANDAB, Afghanistan — NATO and Afghan forces battled Taliban insurgents in the strategic district of Argandab just a few miles north of the city of Kandahar on Wednesday morning. Two Afghan soldiers and an estimated 23 Taliban fighters and two commanders were killed in the fighting, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. Three Afghan soldiers were also wounded, the provincial governor said.
The operation, which NATO officials said would last several days, is to clear out Taliban insurgents who have swarmed into the northwestern part of the district, causing villagers to flee and threatening government control. The security of the district is critical to that of Kandahar city, the capital of southern Afghanistan.
NATO and Afghan officials were upbeat and said they expected the operation to clear the Taliban out would take only three days. The Taliban “do not appear to have the foothold that they have apparently claimed,” Lt. Col. Dave Corbould, commanding officer of the Canadian battle group in Kandahar, said in a statement issued by the NATO force.
The Taliban were already on the defensive and would not resist much longer, the governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khaled, said at a news conference in Kandahar on Wednesday evening. “We are taking many precautions not to hurt civilians and that’s why the operation is slow,” he said.
Helicopters flying high over the Argandab River valley fired rockets at Taliban positions just a mile or so west of the river, indicating that insurgents were much closer to the district center than NATO and Afghan officials have admitted.
More helicopters flew in low up the valley, and others landed at the heavily guarded district center of Argandab. The shops in the bazaar were closed and the streets were heavily guarded by soldiers of the Afghan National Army. NATO armored vehicles were moving through the area.
After airstrikes on two villages of Kohak and Nagan, the bodies 16 Taliban fighters, including foreign Pakistani and Arab fighters, were found, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in one of several news statements released during the day. In the southern part of Argandab, three Taliban were killed, including a commander named Mullah Abdul Shokor, the ministry said.
Subsistence farmers trying to bring in the wheat harvest in this fertile valley said they had been ordered out of their fields by Afghan troops. One farmer, Abdul Khaliq, said he was harvesting wheat by hand in his fields with several laborers when Afghan forces advanced and fighting broke out. “We ran away,” he said. “I don’t know what the casualties were. Both sides were firing seriously, it lasted for 20 minutes.”
Mr. Khaliq said he had evacuated his family to the city the previous day but had returned to his village, Tabin, because the wheat was ripe. “What can we do,” he said. “I am very worried about my wheat harvest, if fighting is prolonged we will lose the harvest.” Muhammad Salim, 40, from the village of Charqulba, said he left everything in his home when he fled Tuesday but took his herd of cattle, even though Afghan troops tried to stop him. “I told them they are so expensive and if I don’t bring them down they will die,” he said. “If they die it means my family will die because they are the only resource that my family relies on.”
He added: “Hundreds of families have left the area, and left everything behind. The wheat is ready to be harvested and the grapes are going to be ripe, and it is the vegetable season too, they are ready to be sold. What crimes did we commit?”
Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council, said thousands of families had fled Argandab district for the city in the last few days. The council was drawing up lists and would provide them with assistance, he said.
Other casualties around the country indicated the rising level of Taliban attacks across the south and southeast.
The governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khaled, said there was a clash with Taliban fighters in the district of Maiwand, and that families had also been displaced there.
The British Defense Ministry reported that four more British soldiers had been killed in another part of southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, bringing the total to 106 just days after Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he was sending extra forces.
“The soldiers were taking part in a deliberate operation east of Lashkar Gah when the vehicle in which they were traveling was caught in an explosion,” the ministry said in a statement in London.
NATO also reported that two more soldiers of its force in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, were killed in the southeastern province of Paktika, and 10 others were wounded while on patrol.
A suicide bomber attacked a NATO military in the western province of Farah, killing three civilian bystanders and wounding 10 others, the Interior Ministry reported.
Taimoor Shah reported from Argandab and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad. Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Alan Cowell from London.
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11) U.S. Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated
DOJ Report Reveals Record Numbers in Prisons Last Year, With Huge Economic Impacts
By PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN
June 6, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1
The Justice Department has released a new report showing the nation's prison and jail population reached a record 2.3 million people last year.
The report notes that in the 10 largest states, prison populations increased "during 2006 at more than three times (3.2 percent) the average annual rate of growth (0.9 percent) from 2000 through 2005."
The new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in the first half of 2007 the growth rate slowed, but prison admissions growth outpaced the number of prison releases. The report provides a breakdown, noting "of the 2.3 million inmates in custody, 2.1 million were men and 208,300 were women. Black males represented the largest percentage (35.4 percent) of inmates held in custody, followed by white males (32.9 percent) and Hispanic males (17.9 percent)."
The United States leads the industrialized world in incarceration. In fact, the U.S. rate of incarceration (762 per 100,000) is five to eight times that of other highly developed countries, according to The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice think tank.
Some of the key factors for the record imprisonment rate include:
Race: Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4 percent of the jail and prison population even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall U.S population. Four percent of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanic males and .7 percent of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.
Immigration: Is it an emerging crime trend or is this the result of more local police and federal targeting of illegal immigrants? Non-U.S. citizens accounted for nearly 8 percent of the jail population at midyear 2007, the new Justice Department report noted. "From mid-year 2000 through midyear 2007, Hispanic men (120,000) represented the largest increase to the custody population," it said.
Locking up these prisoners comes with huge economic costs. The Sentencing Project estimates that cost to be $60 billion per year for federal, state and local prison systems.
Many states, facing budget crises, are struggling to pay for their corrections systems. As a result, many state programs are being slashed, with some states looking to release certain convicts early.
No fewer than eight states have recently contemplated releasing prisoners early. Others are planning to push some categories of newly convicted criminals into rehabilitation programs. Kentucky, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, South Carolina and Vermont are among the states wrestling with these issues.
"The unrivaled growth of the United States' incarcerated population over 30 years casts a great burden on this nation," said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project. "The country's $60 billion prison budget results in less money for education, health care and child services. Communities need the resources to prevent crime by investing in youth and families."
In California, the governor had considered a massive plan to release tens of thousands of prisoners, but recently decided against the proposal. Local jail officials continued to reduce the inmate population by approving early releases where appropriate.
In Kentucky, where they have been facing a billion-dollar deficit, corrections officials told ABC News they are looking at a variety of measures to reduce their state prison population, including early release of some non-violent offenders and expanding the home incarceration plan which allows inmates to be released for substance-abuse treatment and to seek employment.
In Michigan, it costs $2 billion to run the corrections system. An increasing number of state leaders say they really can't afford to pay that kind of money.
"Our efforts to grow Michigan's economy and keep our state competitive are threatened by the rising costs in the Department of Corrections," Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently told The Detroit News. "We spend more on prisons than we do on higher education, and that has got to change."
According the News, the Michigan Corrections Department already devours 20 cents of every tax dollar in the state's general fund and employs nearly one in every three state government workers, compared with 9 percent of the work force 25 years ago.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
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12) 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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13) Pakistani Fury Over Airstrikes Imperils Training
By JANE PERLEZ
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?ref=world
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military is so angry over the American airstrikes here last week that it is threatening to postpone or cancel an American program to train a paramilitary force in counterinsurgency for combating Islamist militants, two Pakistani government officials said.
Some Pakistani officials are convinced that the Americans deliberately fired on their military, killing 11 men from the very paramilitary force the Americans want to train, an accusation the Americans deny.
The uncertainty over the program reflects how deeply scarred the United States’ alliance with Pakistan, already strained, has been since the June 10 airstrikes, Pakistani officials and Western diplomats said.
The $400 million training program is intended to combat militancy by fielding a paramilitary force, called the Frontier Corps, from among the tribes that live in the border areas. It was a compromise between American and Pakistani officials looking for the least intrusive way to fortify security in an area where the Pakistani government has rejected the idea of American soldiers and where even the regular Pakistani Army is often not welcome.
Ending or delaying the program, which is already under way, would deny the United States what little leverage it has in the tribal areas to combat a rising number of cross-border attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan against American and NATO forces this year.
The United States military said the airstrikes had been carried out in self-defense against militants who had attacked American forces in Afghanistan and then fled into Pakistan. But the Pakistanis continue to dispute important parts of the American account.
“This is the first time the United States has deliberately targeted cooperating Pakistani forces,” said Jehangir Karamat, a former chief of the Pakistani Army and a former ambassador to the United States. “There has been no statement by the United States that this was ‘friendly fire’ and that the intention was not to target Pakistani forces.”
The recriminations have exposed the underlying mistrust in the alliance, which has been held together in large part by the personal relationship between President Pervez Musharraf and President Bush, the Pakistani officials and diplomats said.
As the two men fade from power, the alliance is finding it difficult to quell the threat to the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan from a growing array of Taliban and Qaeda cells that are dug into Pakistan’s tribal areas, the officials and diplomats said.
A senior Pakistani government official with long experience in military affairs, one of the two Pakistani officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, summed up the feeling of many in the Pakistani military, saying the strikes appeared deliberate — despite American denials — and intended to “punish” Pakistan for not preventing Islamist militants from crossing into Afghanistan.
“Such types of incidents may affect the training program by the United States for the Frontier Corps,” the spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said Monday.
In Washington, the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, expressed regret but did not acknowledge any American culpability pending an investigation by senior Pakistani, Afghan and American officers. "As we said last week, every indication we have still is that this was a legitimate attack by U.S. forces acting in self-defense, that all procedures and regulation and coordination had been followed," Mr. Morrell told reporters.
The American, Afghan and Pakistani militaries have agreed to hold a joint investigation into the strikes. That inquiry will now have to sort out the conflicting accounts in an extremely charged atmosphere.
American military spokesmen said a Pakistani liaison officer had been informed of the American intention to strike over the highly disputed border between Kunar Province in Afghanistan and the Mohmand agency, one of seven agencies in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, after American forces were attacked.
The Pakistanis vehemently deny the claim. They say the American bombs were not used in self-defense, but were aimed at a Frontier Corps post at Gora Parai, about 100 miles northwest of the town of Ghalanai.
A stone hut and seven of nine bunkers in which the soldiers were seeking cover were destroyed, the Pakistanis say. The coordinates of the post were clearly marked and were known to NATO and American forces, they say.
The senior Pakistani government official with military experience said the strikes were “too accurate and too intense” to have been an accident.
A senior American officer in the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, rejected the Pakistani allegations that American aircraft had deliberately attacked Pakistani soldiers.
“Undoubtedly the lack of recognized border markings, porous terrain where bad guys travel back and forth, known weaknesses of Frontier Corps to control border area and intermingled people, and tight terrain all are variables,” the officer said. “Deliberate retaliation was not a cause.”
Whatever the case, the fury over the airstrikes was such that Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the new military chief, who the Americans hoped would be a dependable successor to Mr. Musharraf, personally approved an unusually strong statement last week from the Pakistani military, which called the strikes “cowardly and unprovoked,” the Pakistani officials said.
General Kayani has refused every suggestion of letting American forces operate in the tribal areas, even on an advisory basis, American officials have said. A plan for American trainers to accompany Pakistani troops on missions to root out insurgents in the tribal areas was ruled out completely, a senior Pakistani military official said.
The plan for American military advisers to instruct Pakistani trainers, who would in turn train Frontier Corps units in counterinsurgency tactics, was accepted by General Kayani as a light-footed alternative, American officials have said.
Even so, there is considerable skepticism in Washington and among United States military commanders about the value of the training, and the strains caused by the airstrikes have now brought into the open blunt expressions of dissatisfaction with the Pakistanis that officials had kept mostly private.
Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the American commander who stepped down as the leader of NATO forces in Afghanistan this month, said Friday that the Frontier Corps was not up to the job of fighting Pakistan’s Islamist militants. “My experience is it takes well-trained, well-equipped forces — disciplined — to take this thing on,” he said.
He described the corps as “pretty much tribals themselves,” a reference to the fact that the Frontier Corps men are recruited from the Pashtuns, the dominant tribe, which lives in Pakistan’s tribal areas as well as across the border in southern Afghanistan.
The American grievance about the Frontier Corps, which is under the overall command of the Pakistani Army, is largely based on the conviction that the corps allows Islamic militants to cross the porous border from Pakistan into Afghanistan with impunity to fight NATO forces.
There were 50 percent more cross-border attacks in April compared with a year before. The increase was “directly attributable to the lack of pressure on the other side of the border,” General McNeill said, referring to the fact that the Pakistani Army is now observing a cease-fire with the militants, and leaving the prime responsibilities to the Frontier Corps.
One of the Pakistani government officials acknowledged that the area around the Frontier Corps post that was hit by the Americans has been under the control of the Pakistani Taliban since 2006.
After a visit to Pakistan in late May, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, questioned whether the Frontier Corps was reliable enough for the United States to bother training, given what he called its poor record in defending the 1,600-mile border and the apparent affinity of some in the corps with the extremists.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Mr. Levin said he wanted financing for the Frontier Corps to be made dependent on an “explicit commitment” by the Pakistanis to “halt cross-border attacks by Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists into Afghanistan.”
Pakistani officials said Sunday that such a commitment had now been included in a peace deal with the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud. But Mr. Levin said “it remains to be seen if this is more than words, especially in light of previous unkept commitments along this line.”
After The New York Times sought an interview with Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador in Islamabad, an embassy spokeswoman asked that it first get permission from the State Department. Sean McCormack, the department spokesman, gave the go-ahead, but Ms. Patterson declined.
One of the senior Pakistani government officials said the alliance forged between Washington and Islamabad immediately after 9/11 had been imbued with mutual suspicion “since Day 1.”
A major reason for the distrust of the Americans among the Pakistani military came from the belief that Pakistan was unfairly blamed by Washington for the American and NATO difficulties in the war in Afghanistan.
The struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan was faltering not only because Taliban forces from Pakistan were crossing the border into Afghanistan, the Pakistani government official said. “Pakistan thinks you have screwed up in Afghanistan and made Pakistan the fall guy,” the official said.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
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14) 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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15) 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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16) 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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17) Offer to Drop Charges in Sean Bell Protests
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/nyregion/18bell.html?ref=nyregion
The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, announced on Tuesday that his office was prepared to drop all charges against 28 people arrested on May 7 in connection with protests against the acquittals of the officers charged in the shooting death of Sean Bell.
All 28 people had been charged with disorderly conduct because they had blocked traffic or refused orders to disperse. They will be offered the chance to have their cases adjourned in contemplation of dismissal, Mr. Hynes’s office said in a statement. If they stay out of trouble, the charges will be dismissed in six months.
The statement was released shortly after Councilman Charles Barron, a Brooklyn Democrat who was among the 28 arrested, held a protest outside the district attorney’s office to criticize what he called the slow handling of the cases.
In all, at least 224 people were arrested on May 7 in Manhattan and Brooklyn in a series of carefully coordinated, nonviolent demonstrations at major intersections that disrupted traffic..
Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said charges were still pending against the 196 people arrested in Manhattan.
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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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