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Leonard Peltier Health Alert
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 15:36:41 -0400
Subject: Write and Keep Writing
From: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
- Please Post Widely -
Dear Friends and Supporters,
The U.S. penitentiary at Lewisburg is in lockdown for the fifth consecutive day. Lockdowns, especially those that last a long while, are dangerous. Why? First, it's common for Leonard not to receive his medications at such times. Second, the prison has told all of us that Leonard has access to a diabetes testing kit in the infirmary. Right? Unfortunately, during a lockdown, Leonard isn't allowed to go to the infirmary at all. There's no way for him to test his blood glucose level.
Please help us ensure that Leonard receives proper medical care.
1. Leonard must receive his medications as prescribed.
2. Leonard also still needs access to a diabetes testing kit. Leonard should be allowed his own kit at the pharmacy for accurate readings, as well as easy and regular access. In this way, he'll be able to test himself three or four times a day and hopefully achieve a balanced blood glucose level.
3. Leonard needs diabetic shoes that will help him with his diabetes-related foot problems.
If the prison cannot provide a kit and/or a proper pair of shoes, the family will work with an approved medical supply company to see to it that Leonard gets what he needs.
All supporters are requested to continue to contact:
Warden Bledsoe
USP Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
2400 Robert F. Miller Drive
Lewisburg, PA 17837
Phone: 570-523-1251
Fax: 570-522-7745
E-mail: lew/execassistant@bop.gov
Also contact:
D. Scott Dodrill, Regional Director
Northeast Regional Office
US Custom House
2nd & Chesnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-521-7301
E-mail: nero/execassistant@bop.gov
Harley G. Lappin, Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First Street., NW
Washington, DC 20534
Phone: 202-307-3198
Thank you for your concern.
Betty Ann Peltier Solano
Coordinator
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
Phone: 701/235-2206
E-mail: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Web: www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
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JROTC MUST GO!
Come to a planning meeting to celebrate our measured victory
and take stock of where we are now--especially with regard to the pro-JROTC initiative likely to be on the November ballot (see article here):
Thursday, July 10, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco
JROTC is a military recruitment program!
JROTC discriminates against queers!
(JROTC says it's OK to be gay in JROTC, but not in the military. How can that instill pride in anyone?)
JROTC costs the school district a million bucks!
JROTC MUST GO! GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
S.F. JROTC likely to be on November ballot
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/08/BAVQ11L52D.DTL&hw=jrotc&sn=001&sc=1000
(07-07) 17:31 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco voters will have a chance in November to weigh in on the fate of a military-education program that has become an issue not only in the city schools, but in local politics.
On Monday, dozens of high school students handed in more than 13,600 signatures they collected to place a nonbinding measure on the ballot urging the Board of Education to reverse its decision to dishonorably discharge the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.
The students - all cadets from the seven high schools with JROTC programs - needed only 7,200 signatures. If the city Department of Elections verifies that at least that many signatures are valid, the measure will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The students said they had found broad support from the political right and left alike.
"A lot of people said they were anti-military and anti-JROTC, but they said they wanted students to have a choice," said Neal Jaranilla, 16, who will be a junior at Balboa High School this fall. He spent the past five weeks collecting signatures.
The school board voted in 2006 to ax the 90-year-old program on the grounds that it is operated by the U.S. military, which bars gays and lesbians, and that the board has no say over who is hired as an instructor.
The board then voted to let the program continue through spring 2009. But in June, the board said it would no longer grant physical-education credit for the program, a move that will make it impossible for most students to fit JROTC into their schedules next school year.
Until its future became uncertain, the JROTC attracted about 1,600 students a year. It has since lost about 400 participants.
The ballot measure declares that JROTC supporters oppose the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allows gays and lesbians to be expelled from the armed services, and have expressed that view to Congress.
The measure says JROTC "teaches students discipline, leadership skills and the importance of civic responsibility," and notes that cadets put in "hundreds of community service hours" and that most are students of color.
Mayor Gavin Newsom surprised the students Monday by joining them and their supporters on the steps of City Hall. He told The Chronicle he was very disappointed by the school board's decisions to drop JROTC and remove the PE credit.
"You don't do that to these kids," he said. "I think the opportunity here is for a new school board."
Two members, Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar, have led the 4-3 opposition to JROTC. Both are running for open seats on the Board of Supervisors - Sanchez for District Nine in the left-leaning Bernal Heights and Mission neighborhoods, and Mar in District One, the more centrist Richmond.
"I don't expect his support," Sanchez said of the mayor. In fact, Newsom is endorsing Eva Royale, a community leader, in District Nine, and former Planning Commissioner Sue Lee in District One.
Sanchez said he was aware that the JROTC issue has already bled beyond school district boundaries and become a factor in the supervisor races. But he said he hoped it would work to his benefit.
"I'm very proud of what I've done with JROTC," he said, noting that even though the program does not discriminate against gay people, it is run by the military, which does.
"As a gay man and as president of the Board of Education, that's the main reason" for opposing JROTC, Sanchez said.
He said that even if the measure is approved in November, he would consider voters' 2005 opposition to military recruitment in the schools as a better indication of their views on the subject.
JROTC supporters said Sanchez, Mar and other board members are putting politics ahead of students.
Even though the JROTC ballot measure wouldn't have the force of law, it would help guide voters in choosing new school board members, said Steve Ziman, a co-chairman of Choice for Students, which is organizing the campaign to save JROTC.
"It will basically help us organize the city to really look at the candidates," he said. "Most people don't know who they're voting for."
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http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING PAYING PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO NUMBERS 6 AND 7 BELOW:
Memo from U.S. Army Cadet Command ordering JROTC teachers to help the military recruit students into the Army. Can be used to rebut claims that JROTC is not a recruiting program.
From PROJECT YANO, The Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities
http://www.projectyano.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=62
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY HEADQUARTERS, UNITED STATES ARMY CADET COMMAND FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA 23651-5000
ATCC-ZA (145-1)
30 March 1999
MEMORANDUM FOR
Region Commanders, u.s. Army Cadet Command Brigade Commanders, U.s. Army Cadet Command Battalion Commanders, U.s. Army Cadet Command
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.s. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
1. Purpose: To provide guidance on implementation of initiatives to enhance recruiting efforts with USAREC and Cadet Command.
2. Scope: Provisions of this memorandum apply to Cadet Command elements worldwide.
3. Philosophy: The mission of the ROTC program is to commission the future officer leadership of the u.s. Army and to motivate young people to be better citizens .. The Senior ROTC program is designed to produce officers for the U.S. Army and the Junior ROTC program is designed to help young people become better citizens. While not designed to be a specific recruiting tool, there is nothing in existing law, DOD directive or Army regulations that precludes either ROTC program from facilitating the recruitment of young men and women into the U.S. Army.
4. Cadet Command elements, at all levels, will:
a. Establish forums to exchange information with USAREC and state National Guards on recruiting and enrollment programs and policies.
b. Conduct joint advertising efforts with USAREC and the National Guard when applicable and appropriate.
c. Provide leads and prospect referrals to their USAREC and National Guard counterparts obtained froITl college dropout and ROTC dropout lists. Refer qualified leads generated during off-campus visits th~ough QUEST using established procedures.
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
d. Provide USAREC and National Guard counterpart elements a listing of current ROTC Recruiting Publicity Items (RPIs).
e. Assist USAREC and National Guard recruiters in obtaining access to Army JROTC units within the local geographic area.
f. Encourage USAREC and National Guard participation in scheduled ROTC social functions.
g. Share on-campus logistical and operational assets, e.g. I5-passenger van, office space for conducting recruiting interviews, and on-campus community support/endorsement of USAREC initiatives.
5. SROTC Battalion Commander will:
a. Invite all recruiters (officer and NCO) in surrounding area to meet with ROTC Cadre at least quarterly to share information and update each other on each program.
b. Provide recruiters names of college dropouts, ROTC dropouts and graduating seniors who are not cadets.
c. Include USAREC personnel in social functions, parades and ceremonies, etc.
d. Include USAREC in all Quality of Life initiatives.
e. Recognize recruiters who provide cadets to the program.
f. In selected locations provide administrative and logistical support for recruiters working on campus in conjunction with ROTC.
SUBJECT: Policy Memorandum 50 - U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives
6. JROTC SAI and AI will:
a. Actively assist cadets who want to enlist in the military. Emphasize service in the U.S. Army (all components).
b. Facilitate recruiter access to cadets in JROTC program and to the entire student body.
c. Encourage college bound cadets to enroll in SROTC.
d. Work closely with high school guidance counselors to sell the Army story. Encourage them to display RPIs and advertising material and make sure they know how to obtain information on Army opportunities, including SROTC scholarships.
7. The intent of these partnership initiatives is to promote a synergistic effort of all Army assets, maximize recruiting efforts, exchange quality referrals, and educate all on both recruiting and ROTC programs and benefits.
Stewart W. Wallace,
Major General, U.S. Army
Commanding
CF:
CG, USAREC
DCG, U.S. Army Cadet Command
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STOP WAR ON IRAN !
An Emergency Call to Action AUGUST 2:
• An Attack could be Imminent
• We Can’t Afford to Wait
• Take It to the Streets This Summer
• U.S. out of Iraq, Money for human needs, not war!
MASS MARCH IN NYC
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2
Assemble 12 p.m.
at Times Square
43rd St. & Broadway
AN APPEAL TO ORGANIZERS AND ACTIVISTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND AROUND THE WORLD:
Consider as soon as possible if you can organize a STOP WAR ON IRAN protest in your locality during the weekend of August 2 – 3. Let us know
YET ANOTHER U.S. WAR?
The U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is hated by the people there. These wars have no support at home and are ruining the domestic economy. Instead of pulling out, the Bush administration is preparing for still another warÅ]this time against Iran . This must be stopped!
AGRESSION TOWARDS IRAN IS ESCALATING
On June 4, George Bush, with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at his side, called Iran a “threat to peace.” Two days before, acting as a proxy for the Pentagon, Israel used advanced U.S. fighter planes to conduct massive air maneuvers, which the media called a “dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran ’s nuclear facility. Under pressure from the U.S. , the European Union announced sanctions against Iran on June 23. A bill is before Congress for further U.S. sanctions on Iran and even a blockade of Iran.
IRAN “THREATS” A HOAX
Iran as a “nuclear threat” is as much a hoax as Bush’s claim of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq used to justify the war there. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which inspects Iran ’s nuclear facilities, says it has no weapons program and is developing nuclear power for the days when its oil runs out. Even Washington ’s 16 top spy agencies issued a joint statement that said Iran does not have nuclear weapons technology!
U.S. and Israel are the real nuclear danger. The Pentagon has a huge, nuclear-capable naval armada in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, with guns aimed at Iran . Israel , the Pentagon’s proxy force in the Middle East , has up to 200 nuclear warheads and has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran did sign it.
WAR HURTS U.S. ECONOMY
While billions of dollars go to war, at home the unemployment rate had the biggest spike in 23 years. Home foreclosures and evictions are increasing; fuel and food prices are through the roof. While the situation is growing dire for many, Washington ’s cuts to domestic programs continue. A new U.S. war will bring only more suffering.
WHAT WE DO RIGHT NOW CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
While the summer is a difficult time to call protests, the August recess of Congress gives the White House an opportunity for unopposed aggression against Iran . We must not let this happen! From the anti-war movement and all movements for social change, to religious and grassroots organizations, unions and schools, let us join forces to demand “No war on Iran, U.S. out of Iraq, Money for human needs not war! “
This call to action is issued by StopWarOnIran.org
Endorse the Emergency Call to Action for August 2 at
http://stopwaroniran.org/aug22008endorse.shtml
List your local action at
http://stopwaroniran.org/aug22008volorgcent.shtml
Sign the Petition at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml
Make an Emergency Donation at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
Tell a Friend
http://stopwaroniran.org/friend.shtml
Sign up for updates
http://stopwaroniran.org/updates.shtml
DONATE
Please help build a grassroots campaign to Stop War on Iran
http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
• Endorse the Emergency Call to Action for August 2
• List your local action
• Sign the Petition
• Make an Emergency Donation
• Tell a Friend
• Sign up for updates
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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
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"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
"Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
"Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home." by: Tecumseh -(1768-1813) Shawnee Chief
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Torture
On the Waterboard
How does it feel to be “aggressively interrogated”? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. Related: “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” from the August 2008 issue.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808
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Indicted, Sami Al-Arian Faces Possible Life Imprisonment new
John Halliwell, July 1, 2008
Last March, Sami Al-Arian was given a choice: 1) damned if you do; and 2) damned if you don't; he chose "damned if you don't". Finally, a full three months after making that decision, he was formally charged last Thursday with contempt of court, a crime which has no maximum penalty. In other words, Dr. Al-Arian - a man whose innocence has been grudgingly admitted by even his worst enemies* - is now facing the possibility of life in jail all because he had the guts to stand up for what he believes in--read more at: http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm
1. Call Senator Patrick Leahy ((202) 224- 4242) and Congressman John Conyers ((202) 225-5126) - the Judicial Committee chairmen of the Senate and House respectively - and ask them to meet with the Attorney General and have him stop Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg from going forward with this unlawful indictment. Even if you are not their constituent, they are obliged to listen to your opinion since their duties extend to all Americans.
2. Fax a letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the US Department of Justice: (202) 514-5050.
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"Canada: Abide by resolution - Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
Dear Canada: Let Them Stay
Urgent action request—In wake of Parliament win, please sign this new letter to Canada.
By Courage to Resist
June 18, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
Canada ruling boosts US deserter
By Lee Carter
BBC News, Toronto
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7491060.stm
A Canadian court has ordered the country's refugee board to re-examine an American deserter's rejected attempt for asylum in Canada.
The court ruled that the board made mistakes when it turned down Joshua Key's claim for asylum.
Mr Key served in Iraq in 2003 before deserting to Canada with his family while on leave in the US.
The ruling could affect scores of other US soldiers sheltering in Canada who have refused to fight in Iraq.
Possible deportations
Joshua Key served in Iraq as a US combat engineer in Iraq in 2003.
He claims that he witnessed several cases of abusive acts against civilians and the killing of innocent people.
While on leave at home in Oklahoma, he decided that he would not return to duty and took his family to Canada where he applied for asylum.
Although the Canadian refugee board found Mr Key credible, it rejected his application, saying that unless his claims of abuse constituted a war crime, they did not justify his desertion from the US army.
In its ruling, the federal court has disagreed with that analysis, saying that being forced to participate in military misconduct, even if it stops short of a war crime, may support a claim to protection in Canada.
There are at least 200 American war deserters in Canada and many face deportation after their asylum cases were also rejected.
Joshua Key's lawyer said that the ruling may help their cases.
The Canadian government is reviewing the court's decision and has not said whether it will appeal.
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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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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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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Shipping companies file charges over longshore May Day anti-war strike
Report by Greg Dropkin
Published: 01/07/08
http://www.labournet.net/world/0807/ilwu1.html
2) Man-Made Hunger
Editorial
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/opinion/06sun1.html?hp
3) Afghans Say Civilians Killed in U.S. Strike
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?hp
4) Hippie Arrests Draw A.C.L.U.’s Attention
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/us/06rainbow.html?ref=us
5) An Old Sound in Harlem Draws New Neighbors’ Ire
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/nyregion/06drummers.html?ref=nyregion
6) Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens Requiring Immediate Action
By President Bush, Prime Minister Brown, and Prime Minister Olmert
Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD. former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium project
June 11, 2008
Dlind49@aol.com wrote:
please diitribute this world wide...
Sat Jul 5, 2008 13:20
http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=119614;title=APFN
7) U.S. Helps Remove Uranium From Iraq
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?ref=world
8) A Life Celebrated, and a City Criticized
By CARA BUCKLEY
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/nyregion/07funeral.html?ref=nyregion
9) After the Battle, Fighting the Bottle at Home
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
July 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/us/08vets.html?hp
10) Partnership for Civil Justice Files Lawsuit to Strike Down DC’s Checkpoint Program
Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of Stops and Data Collection
http://www.justiceonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=DC_checkpoints
11) Class Action Filed Over Checkpoints
Rights Group Calls Police Activity in Trinidad Neighborhood Unconstitutional
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2008; B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062001954.html
12) National Antiwar Conference Does the Right Thing
By Carole Seligman
July/August Socialist Viewpoint
socialistviewpoint.org
13) Evaluation of the June 28-29, 2008 National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
By Jerry Gordon, Marilyn Levin, and Jeff Mackler
Members of the Administrative Committee of the Assembly’s 50-Member Coordinating Committee
natassembly.org [VIA Email]
14) Senate Backs Wiretap Bill to Shield Phone Companies
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
July 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html?hp
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1) Shipping companies file charges over longshore May Day anti-war strike
Report by Greg Dropkin
Published: 01/07/08
http://www.labournet.net/world/0807/ilwu1.html
US West Coast dockers who struck against the war on May 1st now face a legal threat from their employers. The Pacific Maritime Association has asked the National Labor Relations Board to file charges against the union. The employers’ move, initiated in late May, comes in the midst of ongoing contract talks.
The threat was revealed to several hundred trade unionists at the National Shop Stewards Network annual conference in London on Saturday. Four delegates from the ILWU – Samantha Levens (IBU), Robert Irminger (IBU), Anthony Leviege (ILWU Local 10) and Jack Heyman (ILWU Local 10) – were greeted with a standing ovation as they entered the hall. In workshops and informal discussion, they explained how their historic strike had been organised.
The NSSN is the first non-party inter-union coordination of rank and file trade unionists in Britain for many years. Initiated by the RMT, it now involves members spread across most major unions in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Platform speakers on Saturday included the RMT General Secretary Bob Crow, POA General Secretary Brian Caton, and PCS President Janice Goodrich. Interest in the ILWU story was intense. Jack Heyman told the final plenary that imperialist wars abroad meant repression at home, and ending the war would benefit all workers.
The strike had its origins in the Labor Conference to Stop the War, held in San Francisco last October and to which the RMT sent 6 delegates. Conference called on individual unions to establish policy in favour of industrial action against the war. In February, the ILWU Longshore Caucus debated a resolution from Local 10. Vietnam veterans spoke in that debate, and swung the vote to overwhelming support for workers’ action to stop the war. While the original motion called for a 24 hour stoppage, the union opted for 8 hours and then tried to use the normal facility of a monthly stop-work meeting. However, the employers refused to grant this facility and the stoppage went ahead without their permission.
First ever US strike against war
The longshore action on International Workers Day was the first ever US strike against war, closed all 29 West Coast ports and inspired a solidarity stoppage in the Iraqi Port of Basra. The PMA claims it constituted an “unlawful secondary boycott”.
The legal threat may be a ploy in contract talks. The current agreement expired today (1st July). During previous negotiations in 2002, the then Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield warned the union that industrial action would constitute a threat to national security, and theatened to bring troops to occupy the docks in the event of a strike over the contract.
In their submission to the NLRB filed on 27 May, the PMA declared:
On or about February 8, 2008, and at all times thereafter, the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union (“ILWU“) has engaged in the planning, coordination and publication of a work stoppage scheduled to occur on or about May 1, 2008 at ports throughout the West Coast. On May 1, 2008, the threatened work stoppage occurred and caused the closure of virtually every major port in California, Oregon and Washington. The ILWU did not have a dispute with PMA, a multi-employer bargaining association, or any of PMA’s approximately 70 member stevedoring, terminal and shipping companies, all of whom employ ILWU members. Rather, according to the Union’s public statements, the purpose for the work stoppage was to protest the United States Government and its current military policy, specifically regarding the war in Iraq.
The ILWU’s actions in connection with the May 1, 2008 work stoppage constituted an unlawful secondary boycott in violation of the Section 8 (b) (4) (B) of the Act. The ILWU induced and encouraged its members to refuse to perform their jobs and threatened and restrained PMA and its member companies with the work stoppage. In doing so, the ILWU prevented PMA and its member companies from doing business and dealing with other employers and persons, as well as each other.
Section 8 (b) (4) (B) bars labour actions aimed to force a boycott of other companies or to compel another employer to recognise a union.
It is highly debatable whether the action constituted a “secondary boycott”. The ILWU stoppage came after the PMA refused a normal union request that the monthly facility for stop-work meetings be granted for the day shift on May 1st.
The NLRB must now decide whether to proceed with charges against the union.
Send solidarity messages to:
Bob McEllrath, International President, ILWU, 1188 Franklin Street, San Francisco, California 94109. Tel: (+1 415) 775 0533 Fax: (+1 415) 775 1302. Email: robert.mcellrath@ilwu.org
Send protests to:
PMA public relations consultant, Steve Getzug, at (310) 633-9444 or steve.getzug@hillandknowlton.com
PMA Headquarters
555 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94105-2800
Phone: (415) 576-3200 Main FAX: (415) 348-8392
and to
NLRB San Francisco
901 Market Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94103-1735
Regional Director: Joseph P. Norelli Hours of Operation: 8:30 am - 5:00 pm (PST)
TEL: 415-356-5130 FAX: 415-356-5156
or use the email form for the NLRB information office:
www.nlrb.gov/about_us/news_room/contact_the_division_of_information.aspx
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2) Man-Made Hunger
Editorial
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/opinion/06sun1.html?hp
Thirty countries have already seen food riots this year. The ever higher cost of food could push tens of millions of people into abject poverty and starvation.
To a large degree, this crisis is man-made — the result of misguided energy and farm policies. When President Bush and other heads of state of the Group of 8 leading industrial nations meet in Japan this week, they must accept their full share of responsibility and lay out clearly what they will do to address this crisis.
To start, they must live up to their 2005 commitment to vastly increase aid to the poorest countries. And they must push other wealthy countries, like those in the Middle East, to help too. That will not be enough. They must also commit to reduce, or even better, do away with their most egregious agricultural and energy subsidies, which contribute to the spread of hunger throughout the world.
In the last year, the price of corn has risen 70 percent; wheat 55 percent; rice 160 percent. The World Bank estimates that for a group of 41 poor countries the combined shock of rising prices of food, oil and other raw materials over the past 18 months will cost them between 3 and 10 percent of their annual economic output.
Some of the causes are out of governments’ control, including the rising cost of energy and fertilizer, and drought in food exporters like Australia. Higher consumption of animal protein in China and India has also driven demand for feed grains. Wrongheaded policies among rich and poor nations are also playing a big role.
Of those, perhaps the most wrongheaded are the tangle of subsidies, mandates and tariffs to encourage the production of biofuels from crops in the United States and the European Union. According to the World Bank, almost all of the growth in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 was devoted to American ethanol production — pushing up corn and animal feed prices and prompting farmers to switch from other crops to corn.
Long-standing farm subsidies in the rich world have also contributed to the crisis, ruining farmers in poor countries and depressing agricultural investment.
Rich countries are not the only culprits. At least 30 developing countries have imposed restrictions or bans on the export of foodstuffs. Importing countries are now stockpiling supplies, which takes more food from global markets. Export barriers also reduce farmers’ profits and discourage them from investing in more production.
So far there is no sign that the leaders of the developed countries are ready to do what is needed. The United States and Europe have refused to curtail their bio-fuel subsidies or their lavish farm subsidies. They are also falling far short of their aid commitments.
At the 2005 G8 summit meeting, leaders said that by 2010 wealthier nations would increase annual development aid to poor countries by $50 billion. Yet aid has increased by only $11 billion. And there is suspicion that the G8 nations, who were to provide the lion’s share of the increase, want to wiggle out of their commitment.
We welcome President Bush’s pledge to provide $5 billion this year and next to “fight global hunger,” but much more must be done. The United States remains the stingiest of rich nations when it come to foreign aid.
In a letter to heads of state of the G8, Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, estimated that the bank needs $3.5 billion to provide immediate food aid and seed and fertilizer in poor countries. The International Monetary Fund and the World Food Program estimate they need $6.5 billion more in the short term to help feed vulnerable populations. This does not even count the need for essential longer-term investments to increase farm productivity in poor nations in Africa and elsewhere.
As Mr. Zoellick wrote, the food crisis is a test of the world’s willingness to help the most vulnerable. The leaders gathered in Japan must rise to the challenge.
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3) Afghans Say Civilians Killed in U.S. Strike
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 6 — Local officials in eastern Afghanistan said Sunday that an American airstrike killed at least 27 civilians at a wedding, most of them women and children and including the bride. Coalition officials disputed the report, though, saying that the airstrike killed militants and that there was no evidence of women and children at the scene.
The airstrike, in the Deh Bala district of Nangarhar Province early Sunday morning, was the second in the past three days in which large numbers of civilian deaths were reported. President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into a helicopter airstrike in Nuristan Province on Friday in which the provincial governor said that 22 civilians had been killed and 7 wounded. The American military has also disputed that account, saying that only people who had been firing on coalition forces were hit.
The governor of Deh Bala district, Hamisha Gul, said that the airstrike on Sunday came while a group of women and children were walking from the bride’s village, Kamalai, to the groom’s home. Tradition holds that women and children walk with the bride separately from the men.
Mr. Gul said that residents had reported finding “so far 27 bodies, including two men, and the others are all women and children.”
“The new bride is among the deaths,” he added.
A member of Parliament from the area, Babrak Shinwary, said in an interview in Kabul that he had received phone calls from his constituents with similar reports.
Dr. Ajmal Pardis, director of public health in Nangarhar Province said that the hospital in Jalalabad, the province capital, had received five people, three women and two men, wounded in the airstrike.
A statement from United States-led coalition forces in Afghanistan said that several militants were killed in the airstrike after intelligence reports of a large gathering of combatants in Deh Bala.
“We have no reports of civilian casualties, and there were no women and children there,” said Capt. Christian Patterson, a coalition spokesman.
Civilian casualties have been an ongoing issue in Afghanistan, and President Karzai has rebuked American and NATO forces for what he has called carelessness in their military operations.
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
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4) Hippie Arrests Draw A.C.L.U.’s Attention
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/us/06rainbow.html?ref=us
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union said on Saturday that it would investigate the actions of federal officers who had arrested five members of the Rainbow Family in western Wyoming during the group’s annual gathering.
The federal Forest Service said a mob of about 400 members of the Rainbow Family, a group of hippie types and eccentrics who hold a weeklong national gathering on public land each year, threw rocks and sticks at Forest Service officers who tried to arrest a member of the group. The agency would not give a reason for the original arrest.
About 60 federal and local officers responded, Forest Service officials said, and fired pepper balls — pellets that disperse a pepper solution — at the crowd.
As many as 7,000 members of the Rainbow Family camped out this year on Forest Service land.
Linda Burt, executive director of the A.C.L.U.’s Wyoming affiliate, said on Saturday that the organization planned to accept collect calls from Rainbow Family members for the next two weeks to hear their version of events.
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5) An Old Sound in Harlem Draws New Neighbors’ Ire
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
July 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/nyregion/06drummers.html?ref=nyregion
It is Saturday evening, the second day of summer, and the air around Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem is filled with the scent of blossoming linden trees and the sound of West African drums.
Across the street from the park is 2002 Fifth Avenue, a new seven-story cream and red brick luxury co-op with a doorman, $1 million apartments and a lobby with a fireplace.
The drummers in the park are African-American and from Africa and the Caribbean. They form a circle and have played in the park, in one form or another, since 1969, when the neighborhood was a more dangerous place. The musicians, who play until 10 p.m. every summer Saturday, are widely credited with helping to make the park safer over the years.
Their supporters, who acknowledge that the drumbeats can pierce walls and windows, regard the musicians as part of the city’s vibrant and often noisy cultural mix. But some in the building at 2002 Fifth Avenue, most of them young white professionals, have a different perspective: When the drummers occupy a spot nearby, residents say, they are unable to sleep, hear their television sets, speak on the telephone, or even have conversations with their spouses without shouting. Some say they cannot even think straight.
And so in this corner of Harlem, which is known as Mount Morris Park, two sides have formed, each with complaints that many agree are legitimate. The stalemate has bubbled over into a dispute about class, race and culture and has become a flash point in the debate over gentrification.
It is the talk of the neighborhood, and even beyond. The conflict received news media attention, but since then it has taken a darker turn: A racist e-mail message was circulated among residents advocating violence against the musicians, and the New Black Panther Party, which espouses anti-white ideals, has marched in support of the drummers.
Mount Morris Park is a tight-knit Harlem neighborhood where brownstones dating from the Gilded Age have been lovingly restored. It is also a place where black and white residents have lived harmoniously for years.
“The drummers are our friends, neighbors and brothers, and are an important cultural part of our neighborhood,” said Donald K. Williams, president of the Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association. “But the new residents have said, ‘We have the right to live here too, and the right to have some aural privacy,’ and they do.”
Mr. Williams, 59, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years, hesitated, before adding: “People get emotional around cultural issues. And they get emotional around sleep deprivation issues.”
Though few of the drummers’ critics say they want the musicians removed entirely from the 20-acre park, they say residents should not have to suffer for the sake of tradition.
“Everything, after four hours — even if it’s Mozart — is pure, unadulterated noise,” said a resident of a building on the park who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “The community is right: The drummers have been doing this for more than 30 years. But no one told me there would be unremitting noise every Saturday for the rest of my life.”
The view from the drum circle is quite different. The musicians emphasize the spiritual and cultural elements of African drumming, an activity that was banned during slavery.
“This is the only place we can come — this is our watering hole,” said Hru Assaan, 33, whose father, Baba Jeremiah, 59, also takes part. “It’s important to us. People come to Harlem because it has a certain vibration to it. This is part of that vibration. No one’s excluded. Anyone can bring a drum and sit in or bring a blanket and watch.”
For many years, Marcus Garvey Park was an uninviting place littered with garbage, home to squatters who lived in the landmark Fire Bell Tower, and beset by muggers and drug dealers. On some days, the musicians would drum for as long as 10 hours, which provided a window of time for the neighborhood’s children to play in safety, residents said.
In recent years, conditions in the park have vastly improved. The 47-foot cast-iron tower has been repaired, and the park is clean, filled with linden and sweet gum trees, families who come to barbecue and teenagers playing basketball.
On Saturdays, a core group of 30 men and women drum or provide accompaniment on trumpets, flutes, spoons, cowbells, gourd rattles and tambourines. Others, including European tourists, sit in at times. The group has no leader and no requirements to join. When a drummer feels a rhythm, he or she pounds out a beat. Others accept or reject it, adding their own flourishes. Once a cohesive rhythm has been established, African women wearing brightly colored gowns called boubous dance inside the circle.
Most of the residents of the luxury co-op have purchased apartments that cost from about $500,000 to $1.3 million. Like thousands of others who have moved to Harlem during the past several years, the residents, among them lawyers, artists and financial industry employees, have come seeking large apartments that, while still expensive, are as much as one-third cheaper than in much of the rest of Manhattan.
Complaints about the drum circle began long before the co-op was built two years ago. In the past, however, if neighbors objected, the drummers simply found a new place in the park without engendering ill will, longtime residents said.
But since receiving noise complaints from the co-op last summer, the city’s parks department has relocated the drummers within the park twice.
The current location, not far from the co-op, is marked with a parks department sign that reads “Drummers Circle,” which is propped up by a pile of paving stones.
During a brief telephone conversation last month, Barry W. Segen, president of the co-op’s board, said that neither he nor any other residents would discuss the drummers.
A few minutes later, Mr. Segen sent residents an e-mail message titled “Urgent!!!” The message, which a resident later forwarded to The New York Times, read in part: “Please do not speak with the press on this issue. As we have determined in the past there is no benefit to the building or the community in speaking with the press.”
But some residents did speak, on the condition of anonymity. Most residents, they said, wanted to reach a compromise.
“Some people in the building don’t seem to understand the sensitive nature of what is going on here,” one resident said in an e-mail message. “Our building is not united against the drummers, and many of us think it is important to respect the drummers’ rights as residents of Harlem, and as musicians who are an important part of the Mount Morris community and who are practicing something they feel passionately about.”
Sylvester Wise, 68, a sociology professor who is one of the few black residents at 2002 Fifth Avenue, said some of his neighbors had called the police to complain about the drummers and become involved in arguments with them. While acknowledging that the drumming can be loud, he said the sound “adds flavor” to the neighborhood.
“There have been times when the drums have been annoying, but it’s a cultural thing,” said Professor Wise, whose penthouse apartment overlooking the park is filled with African-inspired prints and sculpture.
Last October, an e-mail message was sent to residents from the address of one of the co-op’s residents. “Why don’t we just get nooses for everyone of those lowlifes and hang them from a tree? They’re used to that kind of treatment anyway!” read the message, a copy of which was provided to The Times.
It added: “I hope you all agree that the best thing that has happened to Harlem is gentrification. Let’s get rid of these ‘people’ and improve the neighborhood once and for all.”
Professor Wise filed a complaint with the police about the e-mail message and other incidents he believed were forms of harassment, but he said he was told by a detective that there was little the police could do. Last week, the Police Department’s press office did not respond to a request for additional information about the matter.
(The resident with the e-mail address from which the message was sent did not return calls seeking comment. Other residents said he told people that he had not sent the message, and that his computer had been hacked into).
State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the area and has tried to mediate the dispute, said many of the co-op’s residents were new to Harlem and unaccustomed to the neighborhood’s vigorous — and often loud — street life.
“I think it is part of the change drama in Harlem, which manifests itself in a number of ways,” Mr. Perkins said. “This is part of folk learning to live together.”
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6) Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens Requiring Immediate Action
By President Bush, Prime Minister Brown, and Prime Minister Olmert
Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD. former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium project
June 11, 2008
Dlind49@aol.com wrote:
please diitribute this world wide...
Sat Jul 5, 2008 13:20
http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=119614;title=APFN
During the summer of 1991, the United States military had
collected artillery, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles,
conventional and unconventional munitions, trucks, etc. at
Camp Doha in Kuwait. As result of carelessness this weapons
depot caught fire with consequent catastrophic explosion
resulting in death, injury, illness and extensive
environmental contamination from depleted uranium and
conventional explosives. Recently the emirate of Kuwait
required the United States Department of Defense to remove
the contamination. Consequently, over 6,700 tons of
contaminated soil sand and other residue was collected and
has been shipped back to the United States for burial by
American Ecology at Boise Idaho. When Bob Nichols, an
investigative journalist, and I contacted American Ecology
we found out that they had absolutely no knowledge of U.S.
Army Regulation 700-48, U.S. Army PAM 700-48, U.S. Army
Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, and all of the medical orders
dealing with depleted uranium contamination, environmental
remediation procedures, safety, and medical care . They had
never heard of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
guidelines for dealing with mixed – hazardous waste such as
radioactive materials and conventional explosives
byproducts. (reference "Approaches for the Remediation of
Federal Facility Sites Contaminated with Explosives or
Radioactive Wastes", EPA/625/R-93/013, September 1993). The
shipment across the ocean, unloading at Longview,
Washington State port, transport by rail, and burial in
Idaho endangers not only the residents of these areas but
poses a significant agricultural threat through introduction
of pests, microbes, etc. foreign to our nation.
Sadly the known adverse health and environmental hazards
from uranium weapons contamination are in our own backyard.
The EPA has listed the former Nuclear Metals- Starmet
uranium weapons manufacturing site in Concord Ma. On EPA’s
Superfund National Priority List because it poses a
significant risk to public health and the environment.
Consequently the community in which our nation was born on
April 18, 1775 is now the location of America’s own closed
dirty bomb factory that will endanger the health and safety
of the descendants of our original patriots- “the
Minutemen”.
The previous delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters
bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United
States and their use by Israel against Lebanese targets has
resulted in additional radioactive and chemical toxic
contamination with consequent adverse health and
environmental effects throughout the middle east. Israeli
tank gunners are also using depleted uranium tank rounds as
photographs verify.
Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are
using illegal uranium munitions- America's and England's
own "dirty bombs" while U.S. Army, U.S. Department of
Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and British Ministry of
Defence officials deny that there are any adverse health and
environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture,
testing, and/or use of uranium munitions to avoid liability
for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic
material - depleted uranium.
The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a
crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the
world and all governments must force cessation of uranium
weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical
care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU
contamination.
U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply
with their own regulations, orders, and directives that
require United States Department of Defense officials to
provide prompt and effective medical care to "all" exposed
individuals. Reference: Medical Management of Unusual
Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93,
Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted
Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29
April 2004, and section 2-5 of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48.
Israeli officials must not do so now.
They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive
Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48:
"Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium
or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The
Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army
Technical Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe
Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents
Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain
Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army,
Washington, D.C., JULY 1996). Specifically section 2-4 of
United States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated September 16,
2002 requires that:
(1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate,
secure, and label all RCE" (radiologically contaminated
equipment).
(2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will
be implemented as soon as possible."
(3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally
disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration,
destruction in place, or abandonment" and
(4) "All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will
be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and
released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48"
(Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F).
DOD leaders are not showing the DU training tapes to
military personnel. These three video tapes: (1) "Depleted
Uranium Hazard Awareness", (2) "Contaminated and Damaged
Equipment Management", and (3) "Operation of the AN/PDR 77
Radiac Set" are essential to understanding the hazards from
the use of uranium weapons and management of uranium weapons
contamination. DOD leaders must show these tapes to all
military personnel involved in the use of uranium weapons
and the consequent management of uranium contamination.
The previous and current use of uranium weapons, the release
of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign
military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical,
research facility radioactive materials have resulted in
unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be
completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and
should include releases of all radioactive materials
resulting from military operations.
The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of
uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones
in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan but includes
facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured
or tested including Vieques; Puerto Rico; Colonie, New
York; Concord, MA; Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana; and
Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Therefore medical care must be
provided by the United States Department of Defense
officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing,
testing, and/or use of uranium munitions. Thorough
environmental remediation also must be completed without
further delay.
I am amazed that fifteen years after was I asked to clean up
the initial DU mess from Gulf War 1 and over ten years
since I finished the depleted uranium project that United
States Department of Defense officials and others still
attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring
mandatory requirements. I am dismayed that Department of
Defense and Department of Energy officials and
representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence
or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care
be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental
remediation is completed in compliance with U.S. Army
Regulation 700-48. But beyond the ignored mandatory actions
the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and
chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is
illegal (http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf
) and just does not even pass the common sense test and
according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS,
is a dirty bomb. DHS issued "dirty bomb" response
guidelines,
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html
, on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States
but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD
regulations. These guidelines specifically state that:
"Characteristics of RDD and IND Incidents: A radiological
incident is defined as an event or series of events,
deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or
potential release, into the environment of radioactive
material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of
protective actions. Use of an RDD or IND is an act of
terror that produces a radiological incident." Thus the use
of uranium munitions is "an act or terror" as defined by
DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March
1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure
continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified.
In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W.
Bush, the Prime Minister of Great Britain-Gordon Brown, and
the Prime Minister of Israel Olmert must acknowledge and
accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium
munitions- their own "dirty bombs"- resulting in adverse
health and environmental effects.
President Bush, Prime Minister Brown, and Prime Minister
Olmert should order:
1. medical care for all casualties,
2. thorough environmental remediation,
3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who
demand compliance with medical care and environmental
remediation requirements,
4. and stop the already illegal the use (UN finding) of
depleted uranium munitions.
References- these references are copies the actual
regulations and orders and other pertinent official
documents:
http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html
http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html
http://cryptome.org/dhs010306.txt
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/15/razing_urged_for_waste_site/
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/29/area_news/doc4816651072f72767559743.txt
Photo by David Silverman (Getty Images ) Image 71440735 http://editorial.gettyimages.com
RE: DU ALERT....
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/du.htm
DU ALERT 2 ....
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/du2.htm
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7) U.S. Helps Remove Uranium From Iraq
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — American and Iraqi officials have completed nearly the last chapter in dismantling Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program with the removal of hundreds of tons of natural uranium from the country’s main nuclear site.
The uranium, which was removed several weeks ago, arrived in Canada over the weekend, according to officials. The removal was first reported by The Associated Press.
Although the material cannot be used in its current form for a nuclear weapon or even a so-called dirty bomb, officials decided that in Iraq’s unstable environment, it was important to make sure it did not fall into the wrong hands.
There are also health dangers associated with concentrated forms of natural uranium, and since little is secure in Iraq, officials wanted to remove it.
American military personnel helped move about 600 tons of uranium in the form called yellowcake. It had been stored at Tuwaitha, an installation 12 miles south of Baghdad, which had been the site of Iraq’s nuclear program.
Cameco, a Canadian company that produces uranium and sells it around the world, bought the material, according to foreign officials knowledgeable about the transaction.
“The Iraqi government requested our help; we helped them,” said Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy in Baghdad. “It was their decision and we were happy to assist, at their request. This is a good example of Iraqis working with international companies to get done what they want to get done.”
There has been a continuing international effort to remove nuclear material from countries that are no longer using it. The International Atomic Energy Agency has helped a number of countries, including Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, get rid of highly enriched uranium and spent nuclear fuel.
The yellowcake removed from Iraq — which was not the same yellowcake that President Bush claimed, in a now discredited section of his 2003 State of the Union address, that Mr. Hussein was trying to purchase in Africa — is used in an early stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only after intensive processing does it become low-enriched uranium, which can fuel reactors producing power. Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear bombs.
The only neighboring country known to have the technology to process yellowcake is Iran, but Iran has its own stores of the uranium. A State Department official said that there was no indication that Iran had been seeking the material or was interested in using it.
This was not the first time that the United States intervened to remove potentially harmful nuclear material from Iraq. Just a few days before the Americans formally transferred sovereignty back to Iraq in June 2004, they removed 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium, as well as other radioactive sources, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The material was taken to the United States.
The vast Tuwaitha site has been bombed repeatedly since 1981, when Israeli warplanes destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor there before it could be used to make weapons-grade uranium. American warplanes bombed the site in 1991 during the first gulf war.
After the American invasion in 2003, Tuwaitha was looted. Barrels used to store the yellowcake were stolen and sold to local people, who used them to store water and food and to wash clothes, according to a report by the atomic energy agency.
Most of the barrels have been recovered, but there is still concern that people might become ill by ingesting food or water stored in the barrels and from contamination in the area around Tuwaitha, where more than 1,000 people live, according to the atomic energy agency.
The final step in closing down Mr. Hussein’s nuclear program will be the cleanup of any traces of radioactive contamination at Tuwaitha.
In other developments on Sunday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was canceling nearly $7 billion of Iraqi debt, making it the first Arab nation on the Persian Gulf to do so.
The United States has been pressing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab gulf states to forgive Iraqi debt. While most of Iraq’s international debt has been forgiven, much of what remains is owed to countries in the gulf region.
There was also scattered violence in Iraq on Sunday. A bomb exploded in a parked car in Shaab, a neighborhood in Baghdad, killing six civilians and wounding 14 people, according to the Interior Ministry. The bomb was apparently intended for an Iraqi police convoy, and three police commandos were among the wounded.
In Diyala Province, Muhammed Ramadan Isa, a local official for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was killed by a roadside bomb as he headed to a village in the northern part of the province, a local police official said.
The explosion also killed five of Mr. Isa’s family members, including his wife and three children, as well as two bodyguards.
And in Salahuddin Province, an Iraqi Army captain was killed by gunmen while on the way home to Dhuluiya, north of Baghdad, according to a local police official. Two suspects were arrested.
Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad, Kut, Baquba and Salahuddin Province, Iraq.
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8) A Life Celebrated, and a City Criticized
By CARA BUCKLEY
July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/nyregion/07funeral.html?ref=nyregion
Songs of joy, cries of sorrow and sharp words of condemnation for the city’s failings filled a tiny, overcrowded Brooklyn chapel on Sunday. At the Jesus is Lord Sanctuary in Canarsie, congregants filled all 132 seats, lined the walls and spilled onto the sidewalk for the funeral of Esmin Elizabeth Green, whose death on June 19 ignited a firestorm of criticism against Kings County Hospital Center.
Ms. Green, 49, an immigrant from Jamaica and devout churchgoer, suffered from depression, and had been admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric ward on June 18. Twenty-four hours later, having yet to be seen by hospital staff, she collapsed onto a waiting room floor, where she lay, ignored, for nearly an hour. She died soon after. The cause of her death was still under investigation.
The episode was captured on a surveillance video that showed a security guard leaning over Ms. Green, and then walking away, and a hospital staffer later tapping her with her foot.
The day after her death, three hospital workers were fired and three others were suspended, hospital officials said. On Sunday, Ms. Green’s longtime friends painted a portrait of a deeply religious, if sometimes troubled, woman, who left Jamaica for New York in the late 1990s to earn money for her six children back home. She worked as a caregiver for the elderly, and at a day care center for children, friends said, though she had recently lost her job.
“Her children were her life,” said Marlene Sterling, who lives in an apartment above the church, and who rented a room there to Ms. Green for three years. “She came here for the same reason that we all come here: for a better life.”
Ms. Green was from a small country village, Lluidas Vale, in Jamaica, according to an obituary printed by the church, and had 13 brothers and sisters. When Ms. Green moved to New York, one of her sisters cared for her children in Jamaica, Ms. Sterling said. Ms. Green pined for her children constantly, Ms. Sterling said, calling them, wiring them money and sending them large barrels filled with groceries and gifts for the holidays. She threw herself into church activities, working with its children’s workshops, her friend said, and organizing trips.
“The church was her family,” Ms. Sterling said.
Eleanor Ramsaran, a chaplain and a longtime friend to Ms. Green, said that over the course of four years, Ms. Green accompanied her when Ms. Ramsaran gave sermons in the chapel at Kings County, the very hospital where Ms. Green would later collapse and die.
“That’s what caused our hearts to be knitted together,” Ms. Ramsaran said, “We thought that everyone could be saved.”
People close to Ms. Green also spoke of her dark days, long stretches of depression that would last for weeks at a time.
“Whenever she was getting sick, she would not eat, she would walk back and forth on the street, or stay in her room,” Ms. Sterling said. Ms. Green moved out of Ms. Sterling’s home and into her own apartment, nearby, in January.
Ms. Green had grown despondent of late, Ms. Sterling said; she had no work, was on the verge of losing her apartment and could no longer send money home.
One of Ms. Green’s daughters came from Jamaica for the funeral. She arrived with one of Ms. Green’s sisters and a sister-in-law in a blue Super Shuttle minibus shortly before the funeral began. Upon entering the church, two other women collapsed, wailing, onto the church’s seats.
After the service began, women in brilliantly hued straw hats clapped and held their hands aloft, singing joyously. It was only after the hymns ended that the sounds of mourning, sobs and wails could be heard. Meanwhile, a scrum of television crews and reporters were at the sidewalk outside.
Elected and other officials spoke harshly about Kings County Hospital and the city. Geneive Brown Metzger, the consul general of Jamaica in New York, deplored the “appalling conditions” at the hospital, adding that Ms. Green would not have died in vain if her death brought about changes in how the poor were cared for in public hospitals.
“She was disregarded, disrespected and discarded,” said Representative Yvette D. Clarke, who represents the 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, also spoke. The civil liberties union has filed a federal lawsuit against Kings County, which it has accused of systematic neglect.
“She went to the hospital for care and met a system pervaded by indifference, disdain and abuse,” Ms. Lieberman said. “Today, let the world meet her as we celebrate her: as a beautiful, deeply religious woman with a loving and devoted family, and as a human being who didn’t deserve to die.”
After the civil liberties union released the security tape showing Ms. Green’s collapse, the New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees Kings County, agreed to better care for patients at the hospital’s psychiatric ward.
Ms. Green’s family planned to return to Jamaica on Wednesday with Ms. Green’s body to bury her there.
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9) After the Battle, Fighting the Bottle at Home
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
July 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/us/08vets.html?hp
Most nights when Anthony Klecker, a former marine, finally slept, he found himself back on the battlefields of Iraq. He would awake in a panic, and struggle futilely to return to sleep.
Days were scarcely better. Car alarms shattered his nerves. Flashbacks came unexpectedly, at the whiff of certain cleaning chemicals. Bar fights seemed unavoidable; he nearly attacked a man for not washing his hands in the bathroom.
Desperate for sleep and relief, Mr. Klecker, 30, drank heavily. One morning, his parents found him in the driveway slumped over the wheel of his car, the door wide open, wipers scraping back and forth. Another time, they found him curled in a fetal position in his closet.
Yet only after his drunken driving caused the death of a 16-year-old cheerleader did Mr. Klecker acknowledge the depth of his problem: His eight months at war had profoundly damaged his psyche.
“I was trying to be the tough marine I was trained to be — not to talk about problems, not to cry,” said Mr. Klecker, who has since been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. “I imprisoned myself in my own mind.”
Mr. Klecker’s case is part of a growing body of evidence that alcohol abuse is rising among veterans of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them trying to deaden the repercussions of war and disorientation of home. While the numbers remain relatively small, experts say and studies indicate that the problem is particularly prevalent among those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, as it was after Vietnam. Studies indicate that illegal drug use, much less common than heavy drinking in the military, is up slightly, too.
Increasingly, these troubled veterans are spilling into the criminal justice system. A small fraction wind up in prison for homicides or other major crimes. Far more, though, are involved in drunken bar fights, reckless driving and alcohol-fueled domestic violence. Whatever the particulars, their stories often spool out in unwitting victims, ruptured families, lost jobs and crushing debt.
With the rising awareness of the problem has come mounting concern about the access to treatment and whether enough combat veterans are receiving the help that is available to them.
Having cut way back in the 1990s as the population of veterans declined, the Veterans Health Administration says it is expanding its alcohol- and drug-abuse services. But advocacy groups and independent experts — including members of a Pentagon mental-health task force that issued its report last year — are concerned that much more needs to be done. In May, the House and Senate passed bills that would require the veterans agency to expand substance-abuse screening and treatment for all veterans.
“The war is now and the problems are now,” said Richard A. McCormick, a senior scholar for public health at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who served on the Pentagon task force. “Every day there is a cohort of men and women being discharged who need services not one or two or five years from now. They need them now.”
For active-duty service members, the military faces a shortage of substance-abuse providers on bases across the country, while its health insurance plan, Tricare, makes it difficult for many reservists and their families to get treatment.
In the breach, a few states, including California, Connecticut and Minnesota, have passed laws or begun programs to encourage alternative sentences, often including treatment, for veterans with substance-abuse and mental-health problems.
In recent years, the military has worked to transform a culture that once indulged heavy drinking as part of its warrior ethos into one that discourages it and encourages service members to seek help.
“The Army takes alcohol and drug abuse very seriously and has tried for decades to deglamorize its use,” said Lt. Col. George Wright, an Army spokesman. “With the urgency of this war, we continue to tackle the problem with education, prevention and treatment.”
That is a tricky mission in time of war.
“The problem in today’s military is soldiers have to be warriors, killers, do war, but we don’t allow them any releases like we used to,” said Bryan Lane, a former special forces sergeant who sustained a traumatic brain injury in Iraq and has post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. “You can’t go out and drink, you can’t get into a fight. It’s completely unrealistic.”
The military, he said, is trying to create a contradiction: “a perfect warrior, and then a perfect gentleman.”
Warning Signs Grow
Fort Drum, in the North Country of New York just outside Watertown, is home to the Army’s most-deployed brigade — the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division. Late last year, several thousand soldiers returned after 15 months in Iraq. Some had served three, even four, tours, and they quickly overwhelmed the base’s mental health system. A study by an advocacy group, Veterans for America, found the demand for psychological help was so great, and the system so overburdened, that soldiers often waited a month to be seen.
Many also did what generations of homecoming soldiers have done: they salved their wounds in local bars. With drinking off-limits in Iraq, at least openly, they were that much more likely to binge, that much less able to tolerate it.
The base’s commander, Maj. Gen. Michael L. Oates, says that since his arrival in early 2007, misconduct related to substance abuse has reached “unacceptable” levels, despite a toughened regimen of education, designated-driver programs and penalties.
“The rate of illegal drug use is slightly up; the rate of alcohol is more than slightly up,” General Oates said. “I’m not a teetotaler. I’m not against people drinking. I’m against misconduct.”
By last March, he had seen enough. He ordered the base’s newspaper, The Fort Drum Blizzard, to publish the names and photographs of all soldiers charged with drunken driving. To date, at least 116 have appeared. Half were combat veterans who had returned in the last year, the general said, though others may have deployed earlier.
Most returning soldiers readjust after a few months. But the general estimated that at least 20 percent turned to heavy drinking or drugs — typically “the first signal that there is something wrong.”
Across the military, the precise dimensions of the problem are elusive, especially since the different branches largely keep their own statistics. Many studies do not distinguish between service members who have seen battle and those who have not. What is more, behavior becomes far harder to track when service members leave the military.
Even so, a variety of surveys, as well as anecdotal evidence and rising alarm in many military communities, indicate growing substance abuse among recent combat veterans. Of particular concern are members of the National Guard and reserves, as well as recently discharged service members, who can lose their bearings outside the camaraderie and structure of the military.
In the Army, which has the bulk of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s most recent survey of health-related behavior, conducted in 2005 but released last year, found that for the first time in more than 20 years, roughly a quarter of soldiers surveyed considered themselves regular heavy drinkers — defined as having five or more drinks at least once a week. The report called the increase — to 24.5 percent in 2005, from 17.2 percent in 1998 — “an issue of concern.”
Perhaps the best monitor of recent combat veterans’ mental health is the Pentagon’s postdeployment survey. Reflecting concern about heavy drinking, the latest report, published last November, introduced a question about drinking habits. Of the 88,235 soldiers surveyed in 2005 and 2006, three to six months after returning from war, 12 percent of active-duty troops and 15 percent of reservists acknowledged having problems with alcohol.
While drug use decreased substantially after 1980, when the military cracked down, it has increased slightly in the Army and the Marines since 2002, the behavioral survey said. Experts say that, in some cases, troubled combat veterans are more prone to use drugs after leaving the military.
In general, studies find that drinking is more prevalent in the military than in the civilian population; the behavioral survey reported that heavy drinking among 18- to 25-year-old men in the Army and the Marines was almost twice as common as among their civilian counterparts.
Heavy drinking or drug use frequently figures in what law enforcement officials and commanders at military bases across the country say is a rising number of crimes and other examples of misconduct involving soldiers, marines and recent veterans.
“Alcohol and drug use starts a cascade of worse problems,” said Dr. McCormick, the task force member, who recently retired as director of mental health for the state veterans affairs system in Ohio. “It’s like throwing gasoline on fire.”
Most cases involve low-level misconduct. From 2005 to 2006, for example, “alcohol-related incidents” — mostly drunken or reckless driving and disorderly conduct — more than tripled at Fort Hood, Tex., according to information released to the Pentagon task force. Other statistics showed a similar pattern throughout the Army, a task force member said.
The Marines, filled with young men drawn by the corps’ hard-charging image, have traditionally had the military’s highest drinking rates. While the behavior survey showed a slight decrease in heavy drinking after 2002, it showed an increase in binge drinking. The Marines also reported a rise in alcohol-related incidents.
Sometimes, though, substance abuse becomes a factor in major crimes. This year, a New York Times examination of killings in this country by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan found that drinking or drug use was frequently involved in the crimes. Last month, a soldier at Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, was charged with killing a woman in a drunken-driving accident — the third intoxicated soldier there accused of killing a civilian in six months, said the commander, Maj. Gen. Harold B. Bromberg.
Substance abuse frequently figures in suicides, which reached a high in the Army last year; alcohol or drugs were cited in 30 percent of those 115 cases, the Pentagon reported.
Running through many of these soldiers’ lives is combat trauma or other mental scars of war.
Research has shown that the likelihood of mental health problems rises with the intensity of combat exposure. (In a recent RAND Corporation study, one in five veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of combat stress or major depression.) In turn, service members with such problems more often report heavy drinking or illicit drug use.
In part, this dynamic is rooted in the warrior code. Trained to be tough and ignore their fear, many combat veterans are reluctant to acknowledge psychic wounds. Or they worry that getting help will damage their careers. And so, like Mr. Klecker, they treat themselves with the liquor bottle or illegal drugs.
Raising Awareness
In the last decade, the military has rolled out a number of programs to deal with excessive drinking. Soldiers carry call-a-cab cards. One base hands out portable breathalyzers. A new online campaign pokes fun at “That Guy,” a military man who drinks too much and ends up embarrassing himself and in trouble.
Yet many experts and veterans advocates, as well as some military and government officials, agree that treatment continues to lag behind awareness — in terms of access, but also in the willingness to use what is there. Studies showing the prevalence of alcohol problems also consistently show how few of those problem drinkers receive treatment.
In the Pentagon’s postdeployment survey, for example, fewer than a 10th of those reporting alcohol problems had been referred for treatment; only a small fraction received treatment within 90 days. Similarly, in the Pentagon task force data from Fort Hood, only 41 percent of those involved in alcohol-related incidents were referred to the alcohol program.
Mental health experts call these results unsurprising. Just as many combat veterans self-medicate by drinking to quiet their mental storms, so they are loathe to acknowledge their drinking problems and seek treatment.
Military policy can also hold them back. Service members are increasingly encouraged to seek treatment, without fear of punishment. Even so, signing up automatically alerts a commander. That certainty can stir fears of reprisal and discourage others, like chaplains or marital counselors, from referring troops for treatment.
The Pentagon task force recommended changing this policy for soldiers who seek help early, before the drinking or drug use crosses into addiction.
“It is a very difficult problem,” said Shelley M. MacDermid, a co-chairwoman of the panel and director of the Center for Families at Purdue University. “The likely result is that there are folks who want and need treatment who are not getting it, about whom commanders know nothing.”
For users of hard drugs, treatment within the military is rare. The military generally discharges them, arguing that they can no longer do their jobs, and refers them to veterans clinics. However, some experts argue that the military should treat some who started using drugs after fighting in war. At Fort Drum, General Oates says he sometimes gives second chances to some soldiers who test positive.
The Army has increased its substance-abuse budget from $38 million in 2004 to $51 million this year. The Marine Corps says its budget is rising, too. Still, recruiting treatment professionals “continues to be a challenge,” said Col. Elspeth C. Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general. Colonel Ritchie said the Army was recruiting overseas and at home for 330 jobs, and had filled slightly more than half.
In the veterans health system, the cutbacks of the 1990s left only a small network of programs for the most extreme addicts. Today, veterans service organizations say, the system still needs more modern programs offering intense outpatient treatment, detoxification and stabilization services. Some smaller clinics offer bare-bones treatment or none at all, they say, and veterans in rural areas are hard-pressed to find help near home.
At the veterans agency, officials say they share Congress’s goal of expanding programs.
Dr. Antonette Zeiss, the deputy chief consultant for mental health, said the agency had “rebuilt” its programs in the last three years, adding that it had hired 510 counselors and has programs in 90 to 100 of its larger facilities, with 28 more to be added soon. It is also trying to address what many experts say is a growing need: programs for both substance abuse and combat stress.
That need was underscored by a New Jersey study of 292 National Guard members who had returned from Iraq in the last year. The researchers found that 37 percent had experienced “problem drinking”; for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, the figure rose to 55 percent. Yet among those reporting both, 41 percent received mental health treatment but only 9 percent received help for substance abuse.
Substance abuse, though, must often be treated first, experts say, since it is hard to treat someone for combat stress who is drinking or using drugs. Getting help can be difficult for many combat veterans who rely on the military’s Tricare health plan — reservists and National Guard members living far from veterans clinics or military bases, along with some retirees — the Pentagon task force found. Finding treatment programs that accept Tricare often ends in frustration, and few residential rehabilitation programs have the accreditation required by the plan.
A small but growing number of state and local authorities are trying to bridge the gaps.
Last January, a city court judge in Buffalo, Robert T. Russell, noticed a surge of recent veterans with substance-abuse and mental-health problems in the city’s courtrooms. He created the nation’s first Veterans Court, where, instead of jail, veterans arrested for low-level crimes, mostly tied to alcohol or drugs, are enrolled in treatment.
Among them is Garry Pettengill.
When Mr. Pettengill, 25, was medically discharged from the Army in 2006, he had been drinking heavily to cope with a back injury and insomnia. Back home with his wife and three children, he came further unglued. He could not keep a job. While his drinking abated, he said, he started smoking marijuana every day and then began selling it. Last February, he was arrested; out on bail, he fantasized about jumping out windows or hanging himself. A call to a suicide hot line sent him to a veterans hospital for nine days.
Then he landed in Veterans Court. He has been clean for five months.
“I get punished, obviously,” he said, “but they want to make sure I do get a job and don’t sell drugs and get the substance-abuse treatment I need.”
A Troubled Return Home
Anthony Klecker experienced the brutality of war early, enduring ambushes and firefights as one of the first marines to fight from Kuwait to Baghdad and on to Tikrit. What torments him most, though, is the uncertainty.
As the gunner on the rear Humvee in a First Marine Division convoy, Corporal Klecker was charged with making sure that nothing — no cars, no Iraqis — came too close. In the distance, he saw a man in farmer’s robes running toward his convoy and fired a warning. Suddenly, a white civilian van came hurtling up the road. Mr. Klecker fired another warning, then let loose several bursts of machine-gun fire at the van and the man. The van stopped.
Mr. Klecker said he did not know if he had killed them — though he assumed he did — or if they were innocent Iraqis. Still, he says: “I was proud. I had a lot of adrenaline. I did my job.”
Later, though, the incident no longer seemed so clear-cut. “I started to feel a sense of shame,” he said, “shame about if I did the right thing or didn’t.”
Before joining the Marines, Mr. Klecker drank and smoked marijuana, but not heavily, said his lawyer, Brockton Hunter. He was once stopped for drinking and driving, but the charge was downgraded to careless driving because his blood-alcohol level was just over the limit.
After Iraq, he shipped out to Okinawa and did what many marines do there: he drank — a lot. But it was not until he left the Marines and returned home to suburban St. Paul that his panic attacks, nightmares and insomnia worsened. So did his drinking. He rarely spoke about the war, and only to other veterans.
Soon he racked up arrests for drinking and fighting, and Mr. Hunter persuaded him to go to the Veterans Affairs center for help. As often happens, the experience did not take. Mr. Klecker says he was shuttled from one counselor to another. Trying to talk about Iraq threw him into a panic.
He hit bottom on Oct. 28, 2006, when he drunkenly drove into a highway divider. It dislodged, trapping another driver, Deanna Casey, 16, of Minneapolis, who was killed when a tractor-trailer rammed her small car.
“If I could switch my life with Deanna’s, I would in a heartbeat,” Mr. Klecker said. “I didn’t ask for help, and I should have.”
Afterward, Mr. Klecker received a full veterans disability rating for combat stress. At Mr. Klecker’s trial for vehicular manslaughter, the judge recognized the war’s role in his disintegration and accepted his lawyer’s request for a special deal: After a year in jail, Mr. Klecker moved into an intensive inpatient program at the St. Cloud veterans facility to deal first with his drinking and then his combat stress.
Deanna’s mother, Catherine Casey, a Minneapolis police officer, did not welcome the sentence. “There are a lot of young men and women who saw horrible things and have done terrible things and have to live with that,” she remembered thinking. “I thought, ‘Suck it up, Mr. Klecker.’ ”
In time, though, she came to see him as “a good kid” who made “bad choices.” In prison, she said, he would get worse.
Counselors say Mr. Klecker was a model patient. But he hit a rough patch during the four-week lull — a result of scheduling conflicts — between alcohol treatment and therapy for combat stress.
Last November, still untreated for combat trauma, Mr. Klecker grew agitated and pulled a pocket knife on a fellow patient after an argument.
He was forced to leave the inpatient program and wait for an outpatient slot. In February, the judge ruled that Mr. Klecker could not serve his sentence at home and returned him to prison for 19 months.
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10) Partnership for Civil Justice Files Lawsuit to Strike Down DC’s Checkpoint Program
Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of Stops and Data Collection
http://www.justiceonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=DC_checkpoints
The Partnership for Civil Justice, a Washington DC-based public interest law firm, filed a class action lawsuit today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeking an injunction against the Metropolitan Police Department’s Neighborhood Safety Zone checkpoint program.
The lawsuit asserts that the roadblock program instituted in recent weeks is an unconstitutional suspicionless seizure of persons traveling on public roadways in the District of Columbia. The lawsuit also challenges the District’s use of these mass civil rights violations to collect and aggregate data on the movements, activities and associations of law abiding residents and visitors to the District and seeks expungement of this information.
The checkpoints are an extraordinary expansion of police power to stop, seize and interrogate individuals without any probable cause or suspicion of illegal activity. They are also ineffective at stopping crime.
“People want their children to be able to walk the streets in their neighborhood in a safe and secure environment. The District’s military-style roadblock system was deployed, in part, to give the appearance that the government is addressing this deeply felt need. But it is neither constitutional, nor effective. There is an urgent need to tackle the problems of violence, street crime, unemployment and education. This roadblock does not address any of them,” states the Class Action Complaint.
Copies of the Class Action Complaint, Mills v. District of Columbia and the Memorandum of Law in Support of a Preliminary Injunction links can be accessed at:
http://www.justiceonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=DC_checkpoints
The attorneys on the lawsuit are Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo, co-founders of the Partnership for Civil Justice.
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11) Class Action Filed Over Checkpoints
Rights Group Calls Police Activity in Trinidad Neighborhood Unconstitutional
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2008; B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062001954.html
A civil rights group filed a federal lawsuit yesterday to halt the D.C. police department's new checkpoint initiative, arguing that it is unconstitutional to screen motorists and prevent some from entering certain neighborhoods.
The Partnership for Civil Justice filed the suit on behalf of four District residents who alleged that the checkpoints, set up after a stretch of deadly violence in Northeast Washington, led to "widespread civil rights violations." The suit seeks to bar police from using the program anywhere in the city.
"It is very clear that the District of Columbia is engaged in an unprecedented and unconstitutional system of suspicionless stops and seizures," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney with the civil rights group, said in an interview.
Responding to a spate of shootings, including a triple homicide, D.C. police set up a checkpoint in the Trinidad area of Northeast Washington to prevent potential gunmen from entering the neighborhood in cars. At random times during a six-day period that ended June 12, officers questioned drivers to make sure they had a "legitimate" purpose for heading into the neighborhood. Some were denied entry. D.C. police hailed the program as a success, noting that no one was killed in the area while the program was running.
Nevertheless, the suit says the tactics were "neither constitutional, nor effective."
"The District's military-style roadblock system was deployed, in part, to give the appearance that the government is addressing" residents' hopes for safe neighborhoods, the suit states.
The lawsuit was filed as a class action to cover all people affected by the program. It also is seeking to stop a years-long initiative in which D.C. police use an array of checkpoints to collect information from drivers and their passengers all over the city. That information is entered into police computer systems used by law-enforcement officials.
D.C. police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said that she worked with the D.C. attorney general's and the U.S. attorney's offices on the checkpoint program and that she had a "legal sufficiency memo" before she went forward with the plan. She has said the Neighborhood Safety Zones could be set up in other areas if the need arises.
"I count on the attorneys to give me guidance. I don't ever act in a vacuum," Lanier said. "I run everything I do by them if I have any concern at all to make sure I do things the right way."
Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles has said that he thoroughly vetted the plan. But at a hearing this week, some D.C. Council members said they had doubts about its legality.
Nickles said yesterday that he had reviewed the lawsuit and that it "seems like an academic treatise that is heavy on the rhetoric but not very heavy on any analysis" of the law. He reiterated his belief that the law is on the city's side.
The lawsuit alleges that four D.C. residents were among those blocked from entering. Caneisha Mills, a Howard University student and hotel worker, said in the suit that she was turned away from Trinidad on June 7 when she refused to give police her identity or information about her activities.
Sarah Sloan, 27, a volunteer for the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, an antiwar and social advocacy group, reported that she was turned away June 11. In an interview, she said she was prevented from entering Trinidad when she refused to give officers details about who she was planning to meet.
"They asked me what I was doing, and I said I was going to a political meeting," Sloan said. "They asked me to give them more information about that meeting, but I didn't feel like I had to give them more details."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which monitored some of the activity, also has been considering a lawsuit. But one of the group's lawyers said yesterday that a lawsuit might be premature.
"We had been of the view that, given the fact that the police department had suspended activity in Trinidad and had no current plans to continue the activity, it may be better to wait and see if they undertake some future action," said Johnny Barnes, executive director of the ACLU National Capital Area. He added that ACLU lawyers would be in contact with the Partnership for Civil Justice and could join the litigation later.
Staff writer Allison Klein contributed to this report.
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12) National Antiwar Conference Does the Right Thing
By Carole Seligman
July/August Socialist Viewpoint
socialistviewpoint.org
The National Assembly to End the War in Iraq held on June 28 and 29 in Cleveland, Ohio, was successful in advancing the antiwar cause. Over 300 people participated in decision making, listened to educational speeches from a cross section of the leadership of the various national antiwar organizations, and participated in many workshops. The purpose of the conference—to bring the existing antiwar organizations together for stronger, united demonstrations for the U.S. to get out of Iraq (and Afghanistan)—was achieved.
Inspiring and moving speeches were presented to the crowd by Gold Star mother, Cindy Sheehan (by video); Navy antiwar soldier, Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto; Sr.; Elaine Johnson, who for the first time in public told exactly how her son died (and all his grievous wounds) when his helicopter was shot down in Iraq; Lynn Stewart, the attorney on trial for her own work as a committed defense lawyer. Clarence Thomas, representing the International Long Shore and Warehouse Union inspired the attendees with his report of the May 1 West Coast Long Shore coast-wide work stoppage to protest both the Iraq and Afghan wars.
The moving force in calling and organizing this conference was the venerable Jerry Gordon, 79 years old, who many of the participants remembered and respected as a key leader in building the coalitions and mass actions against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s. Several labor leaders, such as Donna DeWitt, of the South Carolina AFL-CIO and Fred Mason, of the Maryland and Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO participated.
Two pressing and controversial issues at the conference could have prevented participants from making a meaningful contribution to the antiwar movement. These were the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the Israeli attack on the Palestinians. The conference organizers wanted to focus solely on the war on Iraq. Pre-conference meetings and written resolutions specifically avoided calling for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, even in the face of the recent Congressional vote to continue the massive funding for both wars, the U.S. bombing attacks on Afghan civilians, and the escalating U.S. casualties. They avoided the issue of Israel and Palestine although Israel’s assault on the Palestinians and their violation of Palestinian self-determination could not happen without U.S. military and financial support; despite the multiple links of Israel to U.S. plans to dominate the Middle East; and despite U.S. and Israel’s threats against Iran.
The conference leadership’s reasoning was their intention to make the conference decisions appeal to labor officials in the antiwar movement at a time when these leaders are heavily involved in the presidential elections and especially unwilling to adopt positions that oppose or differ with the Democratic Party politicians they support. This was an accommodation to Senator Obama, Congresswoman Pelosi, and other Democratic Party candidates and office holders who have spoken out against the Iraq war, but continue to fund it; who support the war against Afghanistan; and who compete with each other to be the most uncritical, adulatory supporters of the state of Israel. In this regard, Jonathan Hutto, Sr., the Navy petty officer, author of Anti-War Soldier, and co-founder of Appeal for Redress—the petition to the U.S. Congress by active duty soldiers to redress grievances—called Senator Obama “the greatest threat to the movement.” The conference participants rejected this accommodation.
A high point of the conference was a speech by Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He presented in rapid-fire fashion how the U.S. is contracting out many aspects of the wars to private contractors, who are reaping huge profits, are completely unaccountable for the atrocities they commit, and enjoy immunity from the U.S. and Iraqi governments from prosecution for their crimes.
Blackwater is an armed wing of the Bush administration, said Scahill, who called the private military contracts the “greatest transfer of public funds to the private sector,” and said that 70 percent of U.S. intelligence gathering is now done by private contractors. He also said that the military industrial corporations are giving more money to Democrats in this election period than they are giving to the Republicans and that Barack Obama, when elected President, will “bring more business to them.” Obama, said Scahill, “has no intention of ending the occupation of Iraq by 2009, or even by the end of his first term,” and he wants to send 7,000 more troops into Afghanistan! Obama now has “all the old hands of war from the Clinton regime” working as advisors, said Scahill.
A Saturday evening rally featured speakers from several of the most effective and largest antiwar organizations including antiwar mom and independent candidate for Congress, Cindy Sheehan; Brian Becker, of A.N.S.W.E.R.; Clarence Thomas of the ILWU; Jorge Mujica of the Chicago area immigrant rights movement; Leslie Cagan, of United for Peace and Justice; and Larry Holmes, a National Coordinator of the Troops Out Now Coalition. All of these speakers were very positive toward the National Assembly and its call for all the groups to work productively together on common actions in the Fall of this year and in Spring of 2009. Holmes put forward a wonderful slogan, “Foreclose the war, Not our homes!” which was enthusiastically received by the conference participants. Most of the speakers spoke against the war on Afghanistan.
Sunday morning the conference was addressed by Veterans for Peace President, Elliott Adams; attorney Lynne Stewart, who compared the current attack on immigrants to the Jim Crow era, calling their recruitment to fight the U.S. wars “Juan Crow;” and Jesse Diaz, Co-founder of the Los Angeles March 25 Coalition and facilitator of the 2006 immigrant rights demonstration in Los Angeles of over one million people, who advocated collaboration of the antiwar and immigrant rights movement, saying “Imagine if all of us stopped for one day [May 1, 2009]!”
The conference adopted a stronger position of opposition to Israel’s assault on the Palestinians than the conference organizers proposed. The organizers wanted only to say that the issues of Israel and Palestine are “interrelated” to the U.S. war on Iraq, but the conference majority took a stronger stand in opposition to Zionism and U.S. support of Israel.
A strong conference majority voted to add Afghanistan to the call for U.S. Out Now, adding opposition to the Afghanistan war to the name of the National Assembly group and to the action resolution. This was a vindication for those who had pushed for the conference to represent the real desires of the antiwar movement’s activist majority, who see the two wars as prongs of the War on Terror—both illegal, both immoral, both based on lies of the Bush administration, and both completely indefensible.
The conference took a strong stand to oppose any steps toward a war against Iran. This was not a controversial issue at the conference and there was a lot of interest in adding a statement strengthening the organizers’ resolution with respect to Iran.
A proposal to elect a 9-person coordinating committee was expanded to a 13-member committee and several people who had supported adding Afghanistan and Palestine to opposition to the Iraq war were voted onto the committee as well as the nine recommended by the conference organizers.
Hopefully, the National Assembly conference will mean that the antiwar movement, which has been badly sidetracked by the elections and false hopes of many antiwar people in Senator Obama’s rhetoric about ending the Iraq war, will come roaring back onto the streets, at least after the election is over. That will be long overdue, but most necessary.
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13) Evaluation of the June 28-29, 2008 National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
By Jerry Gordon, Marilyn Levin, and Jeff Mackler
Members of the Administrative Committee of the Assembly’s 50-Member Coordinating Committee
natassembly.org [VIA Email]
Our overall assessment is that the conference was an overwhelming success. Over 400 people from many parts of the country and Canada attended, including a bus of 44—mostly youth—from Connecticut (see breakdown by states below*). The conference met its main objective, which was to urge united and massive mobilizations in the spring to “Bring the Troops Home Now,” as well as supporting actions that build towards that date. It also provided a prototype for how an antiwar movement can function effectively and democratically. The one person-one vote voting formula made everyone feel involved, able to have a voice, and capable of influencing decisions on critical issues. People left the conference sky high, and with renewed energy and determination to build the movement.
Conference highlights included the following:
1. Ensured that it was action oriented by urging support for demonstrations at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions (September 1-4, 2008 and August 25-28, 2008 respectively), other actions preceding the elections—especially those called for October 11—and proposing December 9-14 as dates for local actions across the country demanding the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. These December actions provide the best potential for uniting the entire movement in the months ahead. ANSWER and the Troops Out Now Coalition have endorsed them and the hope is that UFPJ will do the same. The need now is to take these proposed dates to local antiwar coalitions; labor groups, especially U.S. Labor Against the War; veterans and military families organizations: the faith community; Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Muslim and other nationalities, racial and ethnic groups; students; women’s peace organizations; the Moratorium; and all other social forces that can be drawn into antiwar activities. All actions are viewed as springboards for building massive, united, independent and bi-coastal Spring 2009 demonstrations against the war.
2. Expressed its strong opposition to attacks against Iran, as well as sanctions and other forms of intervention into that country’s internal affairs; registered determination to join other antiwar forces in massive united, protest actions in the event that the U.S. or its proxy, Israel, bombs Iran; and urged that if this occurs an emergency meeting of all the major antiwar forces be called to plan such actions.
3. Added Afghanistan to the name of the Assembly because the U.S. is fighting two unjust, illegal and brutal wars simultaneously and both must be opposed. We are now the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations.
4. Voted to integrate the issue of Palestine into the broader antiwar struggle and to challenge U.S. support for the Israeli occupation.
5. Included in the conference program and agenda a number of workshops of interest to attendees, with the workshops designed to show the interconnection between the wars and occupations and other issues of concern. Here is the list of workshops: The Cost of the War and the Deepening Economic Crisis; War Rages While Racism, Anti-Immigrant Attacks and the War at Home Escalate; Building the Antiwar Movement in Labor Organizations: International Solidarity and the Common Needs of U.S. and Iraqi Workers; Lessons From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement; Students, the Economic Draft and Military Recruitment in Our Schools; Confronting the Assault on Civil Liberties and the U.S. Constitution: the War on Terror—Today’s Justification for Washington’s Wars at Home and Abroad; Palestine, the Middle East and Iraq: Drawing the Connections; The Critical Role of Veterans and Military Families Opposed to the War; Latin America and the Caribbean: the Next U.S. War of Intervention?; The Next Oil Wars: Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the Expansion of U.S. Military Intervention in Africa; This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Effective Lobbying to End the Occupation; Local Organizing and the Iraq Moratorium; Nonviolent Direct Action: Is It Effective?; Outsourcing Our Sovereignty: Blackwater and the Privatization of War with Public Money; War, Militarism, Violence Against Women, and Women’s Resistance; The St. Paul Republican National Convention Protest; and the Movement and the Media.
6. Attracted a broad range of movement activists as well as the leadership of the nation’s most prominent antiwar coalitions—UFPJ, ANSWER and TONC—as well as leaders and representatives of U.S. Labor Against the War, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.
7. Featured an impressive array of speakers representing critical constituencies, several of whom pledged future collaboration. These included: Donna Dewitt, President of the South Carolina AFL-CIO and Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Fred Mason, President, Maryland AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace (by video tape); Jonathon Hutto,Navy Petty Officer, Author of Anti-War Soldier and Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Elliott Adams, President, Veterans for Peace; Beth Lerman, Coordinator of Military Families Speak Out in Ohio; Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice; Jesse Diaz, Organizer of the May 1, 2006 immigrant rights boycott; Marilyn Levin, Boston United for Justice with Peace, New England United, and Middle East Crisis Coalition; Brian Becker, National Coordinator, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition; Colia Lafayette Clark, Richard Wright Centennial Committee; Jorge Mujica, Chicago March 10 Coalition; Jeremy Scahill, Author, of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army; Clarence Thomas, Executive Board Member, ILWU Local 10, the trade union that initiated the May 1 one-day antiwar strike that closed all U.S. West Coast ports from Canada to Mexico; Riham Barghouti, Adalah, New York City; Lynne Stewart, attorney and 30-year veteran of civil liberties and civil rights defense work; Josh Davidson, Shaker Heights High School Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Larry Holmes, Coordinator, Troops Out Now Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Coordinating Committee, National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation; and Jerry Gordon, Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War and Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-era National Peace Action Coalition. Saturday Night Performer: Son of Nun.
8. Projected an atmosphere where spirited and sometimes sharp debate could take place in a civil manner on substantive issues. The few attempts to deprecate groups or individuals encountered a strong negative response.
9. Voted to maintain the Assembly as a network with its mission intact and continuing: to be a catalyst and unifier, striving always to unite the movement in the streets. Our abiding conviction is that a united movement is a stronger movement and one better able to reach out to and involve the broader forces that must be won if we are to put an end to the wars and occupations.
10. Elected a 13-member Administrative Body (AB), composed of Zaineb Alani, Colia Clark, Greg Coleridge, Donna Dewitt, Jamilla El-Shafei, Mike Ferner, Jerry Gordon, Jonathan Hutto, Marilyn Levin, Jeff Mackler, Fred Mason, Mary Nichols-Rhodes and Lynne Stewart.
11. Raised enough money to pay all the bills for what was a very expensive undertaking, with the total cost being an estimated $23,500.
Hitches Along the Way
Of course, there were flaws in the planning and preparation for the conference and, in retrospect; there were things we would have done differently. The most serious problem was not making it clear beforehand what was meant by an action proposal as differentiated from requests for endorsements of events, minor word changes, and proposals outside the realistic scope of the conference. This resulted in an avalanche of proposals and later of amendments to the action proposal the conference voted to focus on. Because all of these amendments could not be taken up in the allotted time, many were referred to the incoming Administrative Body.
Then, too, the Saturday night program lasted too long and the concluding speakers, as well as Son of Nun, who performed magnificently at the end, were heard by dwindling numbers. We also underestimated the turnout and although we prepared 400 kits going into the conference at a time when registrations totaled about 300, there were not enough kits to go around (especially since a number of people took more than one so they could pass them along to activists back home).
We will learn from all this and make the necessary changes the next time around. After all, this was the Assembly’s founding conference. We are confident the next one will be bigger and better.
Where Does the Assembly Go from Here?
As we see it, the immediate priorities are completing work on the action and structure proposals and posting them on the Assembly website; circulating them widely throughout the movement; securing endorsements for the December 9-14 actions and acting as a clearinghouse for listing and promoting the December actions; encouraging groups which are in agreement with the five points that unite us—”Out Now!” as the movement’s unifying demand, mass action as the central strategy, unity of the movement, democratic decision making, and independence from all political parties—to elect representatives to the Assembly’s Continuations Body and help guide us as we move forward; and preparing a DVD featuring highlights of the conference for distribution and sale.
Was the conference a success? This will be determined less by what we discussed and voted upon there and more by what conference attendees do in the aftermath. If those who went through the experience of the conference are vocal and assertive in not only pressing for united actions in the future but demanding them and if, as a result, our fractured antiwar movement at last comes together in the streets, and stays there until the U.S. stops waging war on the peoples of the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan, then it may truly be said that the June 28-29 conference held in Cleveland, Ohio was, indeed, an historic event.
* Conference attendance: 417 people registered, 12 who did register did not come, so the total attendance was 405. One person came from Arizona, 29 from California, one from Colorado, 41 from Connecticut, 7 from Washington, D.C., 2 from Florida, 27 from Illinois, one from Indiana, 16 from Massachusetts, 5 from Maryland, 17 from Michigan, 14 from Minnesota, 6 from Missouri, 1 from North Carolina, 10 from New Jersey, 39 from New York, 140 from Ohio, 1 from Oregon, 21 from Pennsylvania, 6 from Rhode Island, 2 from South Carolina, 1 from Texas, 1 from Utah, 4 from Virginia, 3 from Washington State, 6 from Wisconsin, 4 from Ontario, Canada.
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14) Senate Backs Wiretap Bill to Shield Phone Companies
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
July 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html?hp
WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program.
The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had urged Democratic leaders to stand firm against the White House after a months-long impasse.
“I urge my colleagues to stand up for the rule of law and defeat this bill,” Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in closing arguments.
But Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there was nothing to fear in the bill “unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.”
Supporters of the plan, which revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, said that the final vote reflected both political reality and legal practicality. Wiretapping orders approved by a secret court under the previous version of the surveillance law were set to begin expiring in August unless Congress acted, and many Democrats were wary of going into their political convention in Denver next month with the issue hanging over them—handing the Republicans a potent political weapon.
So instead, Congress approved what amounted to the biggest restructuring of federal surveillance law in 30 years, giving the government more latitude to eavesdrop on targets abroad and at home who are suspected of links to terrorism.
The issue put Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in a particularly precarious spot. After long opposing the idea of immunity for the phone companies in the wiretapping operation, he voted for the plan on Wednesday. His reversal last month angered many of his most ardent supporters, who organized an unsuccessful drive to get him to reverse his position once again. And it came to symbolize what civil liberties advocates saw as “capitulation” by Democratic leaders to political pressure from the White House in an election year.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who was Mr. Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted against the bill.
The surveillance plan, which Mr. Bush is expected to sign into law quickly, was the product of months of negotiations between the White House and Democratic and Republican leaders, earning the grudging support of some key Democrats.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the intelligence committee and helped broker the deal, said modernizing the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was essential to protecting national security and giving intelligence officials the technology tools they need to deter another terrorist strike. But he said the plan “was made even more complicated by the president’s decision, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to go outside of FISA rather than work with Congress to fix it.”
He was referring to the secret program approved by Mr. Bush weeks after the Sept. 11 that allowed the National Security Agency, in a sharp legal and operational shift, to wiretap the international communications of Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda without first getting court orders. Disclosure of the program in December 2005 by The New York Times led tolawsuits and condemnation from critics, including one federal judge who ruled that the program was illegal, only to be overruled on appeal. It also set off many rounds of abortive attempts in Congress to find a legislative solution.
The key stumbling block in the congressional negotiations was the insistence by the White House that any legislation include legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The program itself ended in January 2007, when the White House agreed to bring it under the auspices of the special court set up by the earlier surveillance law, known as the F.I.S.A. court. Still, more than 40 lawsuits continued churning through federal courts, charging AT&T, Verizon and other major carriers with breaking the law and violating their customers’ privacy by agreeing to the White House’s requests to conduct wiretaps without a valid court order.
The deal approved on Wednesday, which passed the House on June 20, effectively ends those lawsuits. It includes a narrow review by a district court to determine whether in fact the companies being sued received formal requests or directives from the administration to take part in the program. The administration has already acknowledged that those directives exist. Once such a finding is made, the lawsuits “shall be promptly dismissed,” the bill says. Republican leaders say they regard the process as a formality in ensuring that the phone carriers are protected from any legal liability over their participation.
Liberal Democrats in the Senate, led by Senators Feingold and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, sought in vain to pare down the proposal. An amendment sponsored by Mr. Dodd to strip the immunity provision from the bill was defeated, 66 to 32.
Two other amendments were also rejected. One, offered by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, would have required that a district court judge assess the legality of warrantless wiretapping before granting immunity. It lost by 61 to 37. The other, which would have postponed immunity for a year pending a federal investigation, was offered by Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico. It was defeated by 56 to 42.
Lawyers involved in the lawsuits against the phone companies promised to challenge the immunity provision in federal court, although their prospects appeared dim.
“The law itself is a massive intrusion into the due process rights of all of the phone subscribers who would be a part of the suit,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer who represents several hundred plaintiffs in one lawsuit against Verizon and other companies. “It is a violation of the separation of powers. It’s presidential election-year cowardice. The Democrats are afraid of looking weak on national security.”
The legislation also expands the government’s power to invoke emergency wiretapping procedures. While the National Security Agency would be allowed to seek court orders for broad groups of foreign targets, the law creates a new, 7-day period for targeting foreigners without a court order in “exigent” circumstances if government officials assert that important national security information would be lost otherwise. The law also expands from three to seven days the period in which the government can conduct emergency wiretaps without a court on Americans if the attorney general certifies that there is probable cause to believe the target is linked to terrorism.
Democrats pointed to some concessions they had won from the White House in the lengthy negotiations. The final bill includes a reaffirmation that the surveillance law is the “exclusive” means of conducting intelligence wiretaps — a provision that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats insisted would prevent Mr. Bush or any future president from evading court scrutiny in the way that the N.S.A. program did.
The measure will also require reviews by the inspectors general from several agencies to determine how the program was operated. Democrats said that the reviews should provide accountability that had been missing from the debate over the wiretaps.
David Stout contributed reporting.
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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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