BAUAW Newsletter: 06/08/2008

Saturday, June 14, 2008

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2008

Friday, June 13, 2008

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2008

Legal Update on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row, Pennsylvania
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
June 10, 2008
RobertRBryan@aol.com

This Legal Update is made on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on Pennsylvania‚s death row.

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit entered an order extending the due date for submitting the Petition for Rehearing En Banc on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal. We will file it on June 27, 2008.

There apparently is still confusion regarding the March 27 federal decision. A new jury trial was ordered on the question of whether the penalty should be life or death. The court did not rule that Mumia should receive a life sentence as some have stated. The penalty-phase was reversed because the trial judge gave misleading and unconstitutional jury instructions. Nonetheless, I expect far greater gains.

There was a lengthy dissenting opinion on the issue of racism in jury selection. It found that there was prima facie evidence of the prosecutor engaging in racism. He removed prospective African-American jurors for no reason other than the color of their skin. That violates the United States Constitution. This extraordinary dissent goes to the core of our effort to secure an entirely new trial. The first step in that process is what we presently are about˜convincing the entire federal court that the case should be reheard and full relief granted. This dissent serves as the basis for that effort and, if need be, going to the United States Supreme Court.

Mumia remains on death row. The prosecution has vowed to appeal and continue its quest to see him executed. I will not let that happen.

Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the United States The only way to ensure that donations in the U.S. go only to the legal defense is to make checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). The donations are tax deductible. Checks should be mailed to:

Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012

Conclusion This case can be won. In over three decades of successfully defending people in capital murder cases, I have not seen one more compelling. Racism is a thread that has run through the case since its inception. My objective remains to obtain a new jury trial in which Mumia will be acquitted by a jury so that he can return to his family, a free person.

On behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, I thank you.

Yours very truly,

Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117

Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[RobertRBryan@aol.com]

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JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) MUST GO! EMERGENCY!

KPFA Flashpoints interview:
Opposition to JROTC in San Francisco Schools
Mara Kubrin, Sabrina Davidson, Forest Schmidt
June 10, 2008

http://flashpoints.net/index.html#2008-06-10

Please note:

It is incorrectly stated by the interviewer
that the military subsidizes the JROTC program,
"free to taxpayers." In fact, the San Francisco
school district pays about $1 million per year
to subsidize the JROTC program.

For more information:
JROTC Must Go!
(415) 575-5543
JROTCmustgo@gmail.com

Marc Norton Online
http://www.MarcNorton.us

The next meeting of JROTC MUST GO! is:

Wednesday, June 18, 7:00 P.M.
ANSWER Office
2489 Mission Street, Rm. 28
(Near 21st Street)
San Francisco

BIG END OF THE SCHOOL-YEAR PUSH TO END JROTC THIS YEAR!

There are still two holdouts whose votes could make the difference on whether JROTC stays in San Francisco schools for another year or whether the Board of Education sticks to their original resolution passed in 2006 to phase-out JROTC by the end of this school year, 2008.

They are:

Vice President, Ms. Kim-Shree Maufas,
MaufasKS@sfusd.edu

and

Commissioner, Ms. Jane Kim
kimj7@sfusd.edu

Board of Education
555 Franklin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-241-6427

We urge you to contact them and let them know that JROTC MUST GO! NOW!
Please note that this is really a national issue. The San Francisco Board of Education should be proud that it was the first in the country to vote to phase-out JROTC from public schools. That's why it's so important for them to carry out their original decision setting a real precedent for school districts throughout the country.

JROTC MUST GO! NOW!

http://www.jrotcmustgo.blogspot.com/

NEWS ALERT! NEW CAMPAIGN TO KEEP JROTC IN THE SCHOOLS!

Dear All,

I was contacted by KPFA radio Sunday, June 8, to comment on the news that a group calling itself "Friends of JROTC" a "volunteer group led by parents" launched a petition drive Saturday, June 7, that aims to qualify a ballot measure asking voters to express support for the military-sponsored program (see articles below.) According to the KPFA interviewer, the groups claim is that the Board doesn't have the right to kick JROTC out of our schools and they are demanding that they "have the right to choose" to keep JROTC. The initiative--an advisory ballot measure--would let the school board members how how the majority of San Franciscans feel about the JROTC program which they are sure will pass.

They are claiming that a majority vote would underscore their democratic right to participate in JROTC and that the Board and those opposed to JROTC have no right to prevent students from participating in the program they like.

When I was questioned about their "right to choose" to participate in JROTC I responded by saying that, indeed, they do have the right to participate in JROTC. No one is questioning that. But not on school grounds.

School is no place for military recruiters. I suggested that the military could establish JROTC programs off school grounds--they certainly have the budget for it. And if parents want their children to have this kind of military training they also have every right to seek it off school grounds.

Both the original Board of Education resolution and the recent, important ACLU report entitled, "Soldiers of Misfortune," clearly documents that JROTC is an important recruiting arm for the U.S. Military. The Army's own "Recruiter Training" manual also underscores this fact.

The military and J/ROTC's job is to convince students that by following the rules and obeying orders, not only will they survive anything that is thrown at them--including a military battle itself--but they will come out of the military with a high-paying career of their choice! If you haven't seen their youth recruitment propaganda just look on the GoArmy website:

http://www.goarmy.com/JobCatList.do?redirect=true

And you can read up on the U.S. Army JROTC Mission at:

http://www.jrotc.org/Army%20Program.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/new_page_9.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/new_page_10.htm
http://www.jrotc.org/

And just a sample from the Marines for your information:

“The MARINE CORPS JROTC Mission
http://www.jrotc.org/Marine%20Program.htm
[There’s the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force Programs in all.]

“Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (MCJORTC) teaches young men and women the kind of self discipline, self-confidence, and leadership skills that can help them successfully meet the challenges of adulthood.

“MCJROTC: Marine Corps Junior ROTC Leadership Education develops good citizenship, self-confidence and self-discipline. Leadership Education classes introduce cadets to the elements of Leadership, Military Customs, Drill and ceremonies, Uniform Inspections, Physical Fitness Training, Marksmanship, and Marine Corps history. Cadets are required to participate in civic service, wear a uniform and dress up at least twice a month.

“Exhibition Drill: Exhibition drill is designed for cadets who wish to participate on a drill team and perfect their skills in IDR and exhibition drill. A typical week consists of three days of Drill, an inspection and Physical Training. Cadets drill with the M-14 rifles and study General Knowledge.

“Character Development: Character Development is designed to foster citizenship and community service. The class is designed around the book: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and it's all small stuff.”

What they don’t talk about speaks volumes:

They don't concern themselves with PTSD; or amputations; or missing brain-parts; or nightmares; or depleted uranium poisoning; or the life-long guilt for the murder of millions of innocent Iraqi and Afghani people and the torture and illegal imprisonment of thousands more because you were just following orders!

And make no mistake about it--this pro-JROTC campaign is a pro-war campaign to build up the image of the military as some sort of "peace keeping" career opportunity for underprivileged kids, when it's about turning our children into lean, mean killing machines!

It is also meant to overturn the decisions already made by San Francisco voters two years in a row; who signed the petition to get Proposition I, the College Not Combat initiative, on the ballot and who voted November 5, 2005 by an overwhelming 60 percent in favor of Prop. I--to get the military out of our schools. And who also voted overwhelmingly for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, just a year before that, on November 2, 2004; as well as the tens-of-thousands of San Francisco residents who have voted with their feet by participating in antiwar rallies, marches and demonstrations against the war since before it began.

JROTC MUST GO! NOW! It is clear they have already done enough damage to the children in the San Francisco Unified School District! In fact, our schools should do all they can to convince children to get an education and to discourage them from military service that practices violent solutions to problems and sacrifices children to an illegal and immoral war that trades children's blood for oil.

Get the military out of our schools NOW!

And put the money our district spends on JROTC back into our schools!

In solidarity,

Bonnie Weinstein

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SF Students Petition to Save JROTC
Posted: Saturday, 07 June 2008 12:36PM
http://www.kcbs.com/pages/2328075.php?

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- Several San Francisco high school students took to the streets this weekend urging the public to help save the junior ROTC program. They need 7000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

The San Francisco Board of Education decided to do away with Junior ROTC in high schools, meaning that the program ends next year.

"It teaches us leadership, life skills and values; things you need to be prepared," said Jorge Pinto a 15-year-old Mission High School student.

San Francisco Supervisor Sean Elsbernd says the petition drive has to reach all corners of the city.

"We've got to reinforce to the voters out there that this is about opportunity, this is about leadership, and this is about choice," said Elsbernd.

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Group begins signature drive to retain JROTC
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/BAVM1141B2.DTL

A group fighting to keep the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps in San Francisco high schools is beginning a campaign to take the battle to city voters in November.

Friends of JROTC, a volunteer group led by parents, will launch a petition drive Saturday that aims to qualify a ballot measure asking voters to express support for the military-sponsored program.

The school board voted in 2006 to phase out the seven JROTC programs in city high schools by this month. A separate vote in December allowed the program to continue until June 2009 while the district identified and piloted a replacement program.

The proposed ballot measure would be advisory only, meaning it couldn't save the district's JROTC program, but it would show school board members how the majority of San Franciscans feel about the program, said Mike Bernick, the campaign's co-chair.

Bernick, an attorney and former director of California's labor department, said the effort "reflects really the outpouring of support we've found among San Franciscans across the political spectrum."

The group will kick off the petition drive at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Taraval Police Station community room. To qualify for the ballot, the group must submit about 7,200 signatures by July 7, Bernick said. The group has collected about 1,000 signatures already.

Four school board seats are up for election in November, including the seats of Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez, who oppose the JROTC program and are running for the county Board of Supervisors.

Jill Wynns and Norman Yee, who voted against eliminating the program two years ago, are expected to run for re-election.

About 1,200 students are enrolled in the JROTC program this year, down from about 1,600 in 2006, said Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor at Lincoln High School.

"It's not that kids are losing interest," Powell said. "It's because they don't know whether it's going to be around or not."

Sanchez, who led the effort to eliminate JROTC, has said he opposes the program because of its ties to the military, which discriminates against gays. Other opponents have argued that the program has no place in public schools because they say it's a recruitment tool for the military.

Sanchez said he doesn't think the proposed ballot measure would pass because it's not a "salient issue for voters."

JROTC has a 90-year history in San Francisco schools and has been popular among students looking for a leadership program and, in some cases, as an alternative to required physical education classes. The program currently gives PE credit.

The school board Curriculum Committee is scheduled Monday to consider alternative programs that could replace JROTC. The committee is expected to discuss altering current courses, including ethnic studies, to include more leadership training.

E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/BAVM1141B2.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Here's an article that appeared in the BayView News:

JROTC must go now!
http://www.SFBayview.com/News/Thiswk_nopics/Our_Readers_Write.html

San Francisco made history in November 2006 when the school board voted to make this the first big city in the nation to ban JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps), one of the military’s prime recruiting tools, in June 2008.

Unfortunately, the board – except for Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar – reversed itself, extending JROTC.

In another vote this June, two progressives on the board – Kim-Shree Maufas and Green Party member Jane Kim – are critical to send the military packing.

An open letter to Jane Kim and Kim-Shree Maufas:

My name is Mara Kubrin.

I am a graduate of Lowell High School in San Francisco.

Last school year I presented the student petition to the school board in support of the resolution to phase out JROTC in the San Francisco Unified School District.

I was thrilled when the resolution passed; I had made one final contribution before heading off to college.

Unfortunately, my impression did not last.

The same issue has resurfaced just in time for me to come home and urge—no demand— that you finish what I thought we had already finished last year. JROTC must go now.

To me the issue seems so clear that I have trouble understanding your hesitation. San Franciscans have voted to prohibit recruitment in our schools. Case should be closed, but I will continue.

The anti-JROTC coalition has many concrete reasons, any of which is grounds to immediately pull JROTC out of the schools. Let me re-state them.

* The SFUSD has an anti-discrimination hiring policy. In order to be a JROTC instructor, one must have served in the military. In order to successfully serve in the military, one may not be openly homosexual. Therefore, in order to be an SFUSD JROTC teacher, one may not be openly gay. Strike one.

* State law requires that Physical Education credit only be given by properly credentialed teachers. JROTC instructors do not have these credentials, yet students get credit. Strike two.

* International law prohibits the military from trying to recruit anyone under the age of 17. Most JROTC students are well under the age of 17. Strike three.

JROTC should have been outa here a long time ago based on any one of those reasons.

So why is JROTC still here?

I have listened to supporters and I will admit that many students like JROTC. However, if schools offered a class on video games, kids would also love it. Students would rush to sign up for a class on celebrity gossip. Have we forgotten that sometimes kids are not the ones to make these decisions? The school board is here to determine the best curriculum for students.

Despite students’ enjoyment, this “class” is not beneficial to them.
What are we trying to teach here?

We are cutting music and arts, but somehow we think that learning how to salute is a good use of educational time?

Others argue that JROTC provides discipline and leadership, that it turns kids around in ways other programs can’t.

In my mind, any extra-curricular activity that requires attendance and focus, and encourages growth and maturity, will do the exact same thing.

There are plenty of available sports leagues, leadership groups, community service organizations, and clubs available to high school students. They do not need one that is explicitly a military recruitment device.

Politicians are afraid of openly opposing JROTC because of the visible student support for the program. The support is more clearly visible than the opposition because the “support” is bused in to meetings, while the opposition has been intimidated and physically threatened, myself included. Clearly, the cadets’ discipline and leadership only go so far.

So here is my suggestion:

JROTC can stay in San Francisco but not on school campuses.

JROTC is a recruitment tool, so have the program at recruitment centers.

If students are so insistent that this and only this program will provide the discipline, leadership, and family element that they want, then they can seek it out in their own time, using the military’s own funding, and on its own recruitment grounds.

The military does not belong in our schools simply based on an understanding of what is right and what is wrong, let alone the legal evidence.

Vote to make it happen.

Be the progressive you claim to be.

Kick JROTC out of our schools once and for all.

Thank you,

Mara Kubrin

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SAN FRANCISCO IS A SANCTUARY CITY! STOP THE MIGRA-ICE RAIDS!

Despite calling itself a "sanctuary city", S.F. politicians are permitting the harrassment of undocumented immigrants and allowing the MIGRA-ICE police to enter the jail facilities.

We will picket any store that cooperates with the MIGRA or reports undocumented brothers and sisters. We demand AMNESTY without conditions!

BRIGADES AGAINST THE RAIDS
project of BARRIO UNIDO
(415)431-9925

Next planning meeting Thursday June 26th 7PM at 474 Valencia St. S.F.
(near 16th St.) in Room 145

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Call for an Open U.S. National Antiwar Conference
Stop the War in Iraq! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com
FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION:
http://natassembly.org/
TO READ THE CALL:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

AN OPEN NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO SUPPORT THE DEMANDS:
Stop the War in Iraq! Bring the Troops Home NOW!

We invite everyone who opposes the war and occupation to attend an open democratic
national antiwar conference to place on the agenda of the entire US antiwar movement
a proposal for the largest possible united mass mobilization to stop the war and end
the occupation.

Saturday, June 28 & Sunday, June 29, 2008
Cleveland, Ohio

Speakers include:

Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO

Fred Mason, President of the Maryland AFL-CIO and President of the
Metro Washington D.C. Central Labor Council, one of the National
Co-Convenors of U.S. Labor Against the War

Greg Coleridge, Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends
Service Committee; Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition

Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, author, Anti-War Soldier and
co-founder of Appeal for Redress

Jeremy Scahill, Author, of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World‚s Most Powerful Mercenary Army"

Jesse Diaz, Organizer of the May 1, 2006 immigrant rights boycott

Cindy Sheehan, by video

To register and for more information, log on to: www.natassembly.org

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Alison Bodine defense Committee
Lift the Two-year Ban
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/

Watch the Sept 28 Video on Alison's Case!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post.html

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The Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN!
Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many U.N. conferences.
[Note: the text of her speech is also available at this site...bw]
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=433

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Not So Sweet
Why Dunkin' Donuts shouldn't have caved in the controversy over Rachael Ray's 'kaffiyeh' scarf.
By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 30, 2008
Read Article [#4 Below] on line at:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/139334
Sign Petition:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr007=7nginw7ml3.app8a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=221

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MINIATURE EARTH
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm

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"Dear Canada: Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/

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Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California
Target: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Joe Simitian, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Assemblymember John Laird, Senator Abel Maldonado
Sponsored by: John Russo
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without-their-consent-in-california

Additional information is available at http://www.stopthespray.org

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ARTICLES IN FULL:

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1) Until Sudden Death, an Immigrant Worker Toiled Six Days a Week
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/nyregion/12worker.html?ref=nyregion

2) Commodity Prices Show No Letup
By DAVID STREITFELD and JAD MOUAWAD
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/business/12crop.html?ref=business

3) Cuba deports American fugitive on sex charges
By ANITA SNOW
Friday, June 13, 2008
(06-13) 10:17 PDT HAVANA, Cuba (AP)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/13/international/i082033D57.DTL

4) Bad Cow Disease
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13krugman.html?hp

5) Justice 5, Brutality 4
Editorial
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13fri1.html?hp

6) Oil and Food Push Consumer Prices Higher in May
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/business/14econ.html?hp

7) Iraq Says U.S. Security Pact Talks at Impasse
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?ref=world

8) Fuel Protests Intensify Across Asia
By CHOE SANG-HUN
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/world/asia/14korea.html?ref=world

9) Detention Camp Remains, but Not Its Rationale
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
News Analysis
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/13gitmo.html?ref=us

10) Mixed Feelings as Change Overtakes 125th St.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Harlem Journal
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/nyregion/13journal.html?ref=nyregion

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1) Until Sudden Death, an Immigrant Worker Toiled Six Days a Week
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/nyregion/12worker.html?ref=nyregion

The routine never changed. Six days a week, Lauro Ortega shuttled from pit to pit, taking another construction job. At the end of each week, he sent more than half of his weekly salary of about $700 to his wife and two children in Ecuador. On Sunday, he went to church and prayed.

Mr. Ortega, who came to the United States four years ago as an illegal immigrant, was 30 when he was killed in March by rubble that fell from the wall of a house and partially buried him. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged the man who hired him with manslaughter.

Mr. Ortega’s life showed the lengths to which some immigrants go to send a slice of prosperity to their families thousands of miles away. They sacrifice leisure for long work weeks, watch their children grow up in snapshots sent across seas, and take on risky jobs that pay relatively well — and in cash.

Born in Cuenca, Ecuador, Mr. Ortega, who had three brothers and two sisters, was an unassuming, outgoing child, said one of his brothers, Leonardo Ortega, also a construction worker in New York. He was a year short of completing high school but always sought a life of comfort, his brother said.

Mr. Ortega left his country four years ago to escape dreary economic conditions. The son of a farmer, Mr. Ortega quickly learned the importance of hard work as a formula for survival.

As a child, he was forced to help his family recover from economic devastation after his father died, his brother said.

Mr. Ortega wrestled with the decision to leave his family for the United States, accepting it only after he saw it as the only way to bring his family out of near-poverty, his brother said.

When he joined two of his brothers in New York in 2004, Mr. Ortega began work as a day laborer, hopping between construction jobs. He quickly found himself engulfed in work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

“He came to this country to work,” his brother said, speaking in Spanish. “He liked to do it. That was his love.”

Mr. Ortega left few tracks, living alone in an apartment in Ridgewood across from a curbside mechanic.

Several of his neighbors said on Wednesday that they were unaware that he had lived nearby, and the lawyer representing his family said he knew only basic details of Mr. Ortega’s life.

In between the demands of work, Mr. Ortega made time for daily calls to his wife, Blanca Guarango, and their 10-year-old daughter, Beatriz, and 8-year-old son, Roberto, Leonardo Ortega said.

“He made money for the people he loved,” the brother said.

Now, with no more weekly envelopes from New York, Mr. Ortega’s family in Ecuador is struggling to live comfortably, his brother said.

Mr. Ortega spent his free hours studying Bible verses and was particularly close to his brothers, Leonardo Ortega said.

“If one of us got sick, he was there to help out,” Mr. Ortega said. “We always kept in touch.”

Mr. Ortega’s brother said Wednesday that the family honored his life in March with services in both New York and Ecuador.

He said news of the indictment was encouraging. “I was happy to hear it,” he said. “I just want justice for my family.”

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2) Commodity Prices Show No Letup
By DAVID STREITFELD and JAD MOUAWAD
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/business/12crop.html?ref=business

CHICAGO — Commodity prices went wild on Wednesday, with the price of corn shooting through the $7 barrier for the first time, soybeans and wheat moving up sharply and oil jumping more than $5 a barrel.

Corn prices, which have been hitting new highs for a week, are reacting to six weeks of heavy rains and cool weather in the Midwest. That prevented planting in some areas, leading some farmers to abandon the crop in the last few days. It is still raining.

The bad weather comes as supplies of corn, wheat and other staples are already tight thanks to soaring global demand.

The higher commodity prices are likely to add to a worldwide inflationary picture that seems to worsen by the day. Prices of many grocery items in the United States have been rising briskly, with some goods like eggs and milk — produced from animals fed with corn — up by 13 to 30 percent in the past year.

“You know those complaints you’ve been hearing about high food prices? They’ve just begun,” said Jason Ward, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis.

Corn for July delivery closed on the Chicago Board of Trade at $7.03 a bushel, up 30 cents. Next year’s corn was trading even higher, finishing at $7.47 a bushel and above. Soybeans, which rose 70 cents, to $15.16 a bushel, are now less than a dollar short of their winter record.

Even wheat, which had fallen in recent months as traders and growers predicted a big crop, rose 60 cents to $8.69 a bushel.

Meanwhile, oil futures jumped $5.07 to close at $136.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The immediate catalyst was an Energy Department report showing commercial oil stockpiles in the United States fell 4.56 million barrels, to 302.2 million last week, a much bigger drop than analysts had expected.

In the previous two days, oil prices had retreated from Friday’s record of $138.54 a barrel. Some traders say that the market is now gearing for a quick rise to $150 a barrel.

The high oil prices are translating into acute pain at the pump, with gasoline hitting a nationwide average of $4.05 a gallon on Wednesday, a record. Diesel hit $4.79 a gallon, also a record.

A steep drop in the dollar this year has pushed up prices for oil, gold and other commodities as investors seek assets that provide a hedge against the falling American currency. Not coincidentally, the dollar, which had appreciated in recent days, fell against the euro on Wednesday.

“This is just crazy volatility,” said Stephen Schork, an independent energy analyst. “At this point, this is absolutely a bubble. High prices have become a justification for higher prices and $150 a barrel is quickly turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Not all analysts believe the oil price is a bubble, however. Many point to frenzied growth in oil consumption in Asia, which they fear will outstrip the ability of oil companies to add new supplies.

While demand has been falling in the United States, global oil consumption is still expected to rise this year because of growing demand from emerging economies that subsidize fuel prices, like China and some Middle Eastern countries.

On Wednesday, China said that its crude oil imports had surged 25 percent last month as the country coped with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck in May.

“What we’re seeing is a very painful experiment to see what price will get demand to slow down,” said Adam E. Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank. “Four dollars a gallon is slowing consumption in the United States. But there is an awful lot of people in the developing world and they all want a car and they all want a better diet. That is putting a lot of pressure on food and energy prices.”

After years of oversupply, there is now not enough food to go around. Expectations for the 2008 harvest are rapidly declining.

The Agriculture Department this week cut its yield expectations for corn by 5 bushels an acre, to 148.9 bushels, a big drop for a growing season that has just begun. It now estimates the 2008 crop at 11.7 billion bushels, down 390 million bushels from what it was expecting last month.

Since the rain has not yet let up, these figures could prove optimistic. In its weekly crop rating, the Agriculture Department said that the quality of the corn was notably lower this year, with the amount deemed “excellent” only half that of the 2007 crop.

Rick Corners of Centralia, Ill., had to replant all 500 acres of his corn after it rotted, something he had never done in 33 years of farming. He finished last week, a month behind schedule, and considered himself lucky.

“I heard about a farmer in northern Illinois who had to plant his corn three times, and now he’s under water again,” Mr. Corners said.

Soybeans are generally planted after corn but their price is also being pushed up by the weather and other developments, including a report that China increased its soybean imports in May by 45 percent from the previous month. A strike by Argentine farmers is also serving to limit the world’s supply.

Palle Pedersen, an agronomist at Iowa State University in Ames, said 20 percent of the soybean crop in the state still had to be planted or replanted.

“Every day it rains, the chances of an average crop get smaller and smaller,” Mr. Pedersen said.

The abundance of rain in the corn and soybean belt for the last six weeks — accompanied until recently by chilly temperatures that impeded crop progress — was highly unusual, said Dale Mohler, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com. “A wet spell of this magnitude in the Midwest probably only happens once every 50 years,” he said.

However belated, relief might be on the way for beleaguered farmers. The meteorologist said he expected drier weather to prevail next week.

The crop news is not entirely bleak. This week, the Agriculture Department raised by 2 percent its forecast for the size of the winter wheat harvest, which is now under way.

David Streitfeld reported from Chicago, and Jad Mouawad from New York.

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3) Cuba deports American fugitive on sex charges
By ANITA SNOW
Friday, June 13, 2008
(06-13) 10:17 PDT HAVANA, Cuba (AP)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/13/international/i082033D57.DTL

Cuba on Friday turned over to U.S. authorities an American fugitive sought on charges of sexual abuse of a minor and possession of child pornography.

Cuban authorities said they arrested Leonard B. Auerbach, a 61-year-old mortgage specialist from Orinda, California, on the island on May 7, acting on information from U.S. officials.

Auerbach is the fourth American fugitive Cuba has deported to the United States since President Raul Castro first took provisional power from his ailing brother Fidel in July 2006.

The U.S. complains there are dozens more U.S. fugitives on the island that Cuba has not deported, including several former Black Panthers accusing of killings and other violent acts in the 1960s and 1970s.

Among those fugitives is former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur — also known as Joanne Chesimard — convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey state trooper.

U.S. immigration officials in Miami and authorities at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana did not respond to calls regarding Auerbach's deportation. Efforts to locate an attorney representing Auerbach were unsuccessful.

Cuban authorities say the investigation showed that Auerbach arrived on the island on April 8, and he was deported Friday. Such cooperation is unusual between the U.S. and Cuba, which have no extradition treaty.

Cuba said it decided to deport Auerbach to the U.S. because the crimes he is charged with "are of a grave character and strongly fought by our authorities."

Auerbach was named on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "most wanted" list for charges he had sex with a girl in Costa Rica, after he failed to appear for arraignment in U.S. federal court in Oakland, California, near his hometown.

The charges against Auerbach stemmed from a U.S. investigation that began almost two years ago.

Search warrants, including one executed at his Orinda residence, showed that Auerbach traveled to Costa Rica approximately 40 times between 2003 and 2007, according to an earlier statement from U.S. immigration authorities.

According to court documents filed in the case, during those searches, agents discovered computers and thumb drives containing images of Auerbach with a female minor.

Auerbach is charged with one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and one count of possession of child pornography.

The sex tourism charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine. The maximum penalty for possession of child pornography is 10 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine.

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4) Bad Cow Disease
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13krugman.html?hp

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines — tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes. The declining credibility of U.S. food regulation has even led to a foreign-policy crisis: there have been mass demonstrations in South Korea protesting the pro-American prime minister’s decision to allow imports of U.S. beef, banned after mad cow disease was detected in 2003.

How did America find itself back in The Jungle?

It started with ideology. Hard-core American conservatives have long idealized the Gilded Age, regarding everything that followed — not just the New Deal, but even the Progressive Era — as a great diversion from the true path of capitalism.

Thus, when Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.”

The late Milton Friedman agreed, calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. It was unnecessary, he argued: private companies would avoid taking risks with public health to safeguard their reputations and to avoid damaging class-action lawsuits. (Friedman, unlike almost every other conservative I can think of, viewed lawyers as the guardians of free-market capitalism.)

Such hard-core opponents of regulation were once part of the political fringe, but with the rise of modern movement conservatism they moved into the corridors of power. They never had enough votes to abolish the F.D.A. or eliminate meat inspections, but they could and did set about making the agencies charged with ensuring food safety ineffective.

They did this in part by simply denying these agencies enough resources to do the job. For example, the work of the F.D.A. has become vastly more complex over time thanks to the combination of scientific advances and globalization. Yet the agency has a substantially smaller work force now than it did in 1994, the year Republicans took over Congress.

Perhaps even more important, however, was the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses.

Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist. And the department’s response to the crisis — which amounted to consistently downplaying the threat and rejecting calls for more extensive testing — seemed driven by the industry’s agenda.

One amazing decision came in 2004, when a Kansas producer asked for permission to test its own cows, so that it could resume exports to Japan. You might have expected the Bush administration to applaud this example of self-regulation. But permission was denied, because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit.

When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.

Eventually, the department did expand its testing, and at this point most countries that initially banned U.S. beef have allowed it back into their markets. But the South Koreans still don’t trust us. And while some of that distrust may be irrational — the beef issue has become entangled with questions of Korean national pride, which has been insulted by clumsy American diplomacy — it’s hard to blame them.

The ironic thing is that the Agriculture Department’s deference to the beef industry actually ended up backfiring: because potential foreign buyers didn’t trust our safety measures, beef producers spent years excluded from their most important overseas markets.

But then, the same thing can be said of other cases in which the administration stood in the way of effective regulation. Most notably, the administration’s refusal to countenance any restraints on predatory lending helped prepare the ground for the subprime crisis, which has cost the financial industry far more than it ever made on overpriced loans.

The moral of this story is that failure to regulate effectively isn’t just bad for consumers, it’s bad for business.

And in the case of food, what we need to do now — for the sake of both our health and our export markets — is to go back to the way it was after Teddy Roosevelt, when the Socialists took over. It’s time to get back to the business of ensuring that American food is safe.

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5) Justice 5, Brutality 4
Editorial
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/opinion/13fri1.html?hp

For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label “unlawful enemy combatants” and throw into never-ending detention.

Twice the Supreme Court swatted back his imperial overreaching, and twice Congress helped Mr. Bush try to open a gaping loophole in the Constitution. On Thursday, the court turned back the most recent effort to subvert justice with a stirring defense of habeas corpus, the right of anyone being held by the government to challenge his confinement before a judge.

The court ruled that the detainees being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have that cherished right, and that the process for them to challenge their confinement is inadequate. It was a very good day for people who value freedom and abhor Mr. Bush’s attempts to turn Guantánamo Bay into a constitutional-rights-free zone.

The right of habeas corpus is so central to the American legal system that it has its own clause in the Constitution: it cannot be suspended except “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Despite this, the Bush administration repeatedly tried to strip away habeas rights. First, it herded prisoners who were seized in Afghanistan, and in other foreign countries, into the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay and claimed that since the base is on foreign territory, the detainees’ habeas cases could not be heard in the federal courts. In 2004, the court rejected that argument, ruling that Guantánamo, which is under American control, is effectively part of the United States.

In 2006, the court handed the administration another defeat, ruling that it had relied improperly on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 to hold the detainees on Guantánamo without giving them habeas rights. Since then, Congress passed another law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that tried — and failed horribly — to fix the problems with the Detainee Treatment Act.

Now, by a 5-to-4 vote, the court has affirmed the detainees’ habeas rights. The majority, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the Military Commissions Act violates the Suspension Clause, by eliminating habeas corpus although the requirements of the Constitution — invasion or rebellion — do not exist.

The court ruled that the military tribunals that are hearing the detainees’ cases — the administration’s weak alternative to habeas proceedings in a federal court — are not an adequate substitute. The hearings cut back on basic due process protections, like the right to counsel and the right to present evidence of innocence.

It was disturbing that four justices dissented from this eminently reasonable decision. The lead dissent, by Chief Justice John Roberts, dismisses habeas as “most fundamentally a procedural right.” Chief Justice Roberts thinks the detainees receive such “generous” protections at their hearings that the majority should not have worried about whether they had habeas rights.

There is an enormous gulf between the substance and tone of the majority opinion, with its rich appreciation of the liberties that the founders wrote into the Constitution, and the what-is-all-the-fuss-about dissent. It is sobering to think that habeas hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court of the United States — a reminder that the composition of the court could depend on the outcome of this year’s presidential election. The ruling is a major victory for civil liberties — but a timely reminder of how fragile they are.

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6) Oil and Food Push Consumer Prices Higher in May
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/business/14econ.html?hp

Inflation hit hard in May as prices for a wide swath of consumer goods rose at their fastest pace in six months, underscoring warnings from central bankers and adding to a growing consensus that the Federal Reserve might raise interest rates by the end of the year.

The Consumer Price Index, which measures prices of a batch of common household products, rose 0.6 percent last month, as Americans were forced to cope with a sharp increase in fuel costs. The report, released Friday by the Labor Department, is considered a benchmark measure of inflation.

On Wall Street, the major stock indexes rose after the report, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index up 0.76 percent in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones industrials, which had gained more than 140 points, in morning trading was up about 80 points.

The index, which rose more than economists had forecast, comes on the heels of repeated warnings about inflation from the world’s central banks. Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, joined other top officials this week in focusing on higher prices, citing the economic damage wrought by the record run-up in food and oil prices around the world.

The speeches have fueled a growing sense on Wall Street that the Fed has shifted its focus from supporting growth to fighting inflation. The May C.P.I. will probably heighten expectations that higher interest rates, which tend to hold down prices, may be in the offing.

In May, gasoline prices rose 5.2 percent, and were up 21 percent compared with a year ago, according to the report. They may rise again in June: the nationwide average for gasoline topped $4 a gallon last weekend as the price of oil leaped to a new high.

The cost of eating rose, as well, as Americans paid 5 percent more for foods and beverages in May than a year ago.

On an annual basis, inflation worsened for the first time in three months, reversing a downward trend. Inflation ran at 4.2 percent in May compared with a year ago.

High oil prices also pushed up costs for other products, as businesses, squeezed by higher shipping and production costs, sought to raise the prices paid by their customers. Prices for transportation, commodities, tobacco and utility fuels all increased for the month. Excluding the cost of food and gasoline, inflation ran at 0.2 percent for the month.

“Both consumers and financial market participants are becoming sensitized to large headline price rises, and were especially ready this month amid heightened inflation anxiety,” Peter Kretzmer, an economist at Bank of America, wrote in a note.

Consumers, however, do not appear content with rising prices. A measure of Americans’ confidence in the economy fell to its lowest level since 1980, another period of high inflation and slow growth. The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence survey dropped to 56.7 in June, the fifth consecutive month of decline.

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7) Iraq Says U.S. Security Pact Talks at Impasse
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?ref=world

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s negotiations with the United States on a security agreement governing America’s long-term involvement in the country are at an impasse because America’s demands infringe upon Iraqi sovereignty, the country’s prime minister said Friday.

The comments were the first by the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, in which he explicitly detailed the main points of contention between the United States and the Iraqi government in the negotiations for the security agreement.

The new agreement would authorize American forces and operations in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year.

In a meeting with newspaper editors in Jordan, Mr. Maliki said the current draft of the agreement reached during the ongoing negotiations was unacceptable. “The American version of the agreement infringes hugely on the sovereignty of Iraq and this is something that we cannot ever accept,” he said.

American officials said their own unofficial translation of Mr. Maliki’s remarks suggested that he was referring to an initial draft of the security agreement, not the current one, and that the United States had made concessions to address Iraqi concerns about sovereignty.

Many of Mr. Maliki’s concerns have been voiced publicly over the last several weeks by prominent Shiite politicians in Iraq, some of them from his own Dawa Party. But this is the first time that the prime minister has raised the same points and described the major differences between the two nations.

Mr. Maliki said there were four areas in which proposed versions of the agreement failed to give sufficient deference to Iraqi sovereignty.

“Iraq rejects Washington’s insistence on granting their forces immunity from Iraqi laws and courts,” he said. “We reject Washington’s demand to have a free hand in undertaking military operations without cooperation with the Iraqi government.”

He added: “We cannot give permission to the American forces independent right to arrest Iraqis or execute operations against terrorism. We cannot allow them to use the Iraqi skies and waters at all times.”

The question of immunity for American contractors accused of killing a number of Iraqi civilians unprovoked is a particularly sensitive point with Iraqis who want to be able to bring the wrongdoers to trial in Iraqi courts.

Mr. Maliki had a somewhat firmer tone on Friday than similar comments made on Thursday after he met with King Abdullah in Jordan.

Then, Mr. Maliki emphasized that the talks with the United States negotiators were continuing and that there were many possible ways to proceed.

“There is no agreement yet; there are many drafts, many thoughts,” he said in comments to the press that were broadcast on Radio Sawa, an Iraqi network. “But we have different visions.”

Although he made clear at the time that there were deep disagreements between the United States and Iraq, he also said the talks were far from over.

“The important thing is that the conversation between us and the United States is still going on but there are many disagreements and different visions between us but we continue in our discussions,” he said on Thursday.

He added that the agreement was “not close” to being signed.

President Bush this week expressed confidence that his administration would reach a new agreement with Iraq. The negotiations face opposition in Congress and, increasingly, in Iraq.

Within Iraq, different Iraqi political factions hold varying views — Sunnis and Kurds, for instance are more open to an agreement, while some of the Shiite factions, which are closer to Iran, are more critical of it. But they all emphasize the importance of Iraq’s sovereignty rights. Iran’s supreme leader has warned Mr. Maliki not to ratify an agreement.

During a sermon Friday in the holy city of Karbala, an aide to the Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged Iraqi negotiators to protect the national interest, The Associated Press reported.

“Iraq’s sovereignty and economy must be protected," the aide, Ahmed al-Safi, told worshipers.

Meanwhile, hundreds of followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr — long an opponent of American involvement in Iraq — also rallied in Karbala in protest against the agreement.

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8) Fuel Protests Intensify Across Asia
By CHOE SANG-HUN
June 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/world/asia/14korea.html?ref=world

SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of South Korean truck drivers went on strike Friday to protest rising fuel prices, threatening to paralyze the country’s ports and challenging the already unpopular government of President Lee Myung-bak.

Across Asia, sharp rises in fuel prices continued to stoke public anger. In Malaysia and Thailand, consumers and truckers demanding bigger fuel subsidies from their governments threatened to strike and Thai fishermen warned that they would burn their boats.

More than 5,000 truckers blocked entrances to ports and cargo terminals in South Korea, demanding that the government increase subsidies, authorize higher freight charges and introduce a minimum wage. The government warned that it would punish drivers if they attempted to block non-striking truckers from picking up cargo. The Transport Ministry confirmed on Friday that it would immediately revoke striking truckers’ annual fuel subsidy payments of about 15 million won, or $14,500.

“The government intends to use whatever means to end this transportation crisis as soon as possible and minimize its impact on the national economy,” said Prime Minister Han Seung-soo.

Tension escalated around major ports as police planned to escort non-striking drivers through the blockades.

“If the government arrests any of the striking truckers, our member unions will immediately launch nationwide strikes,” said Lee Seok-haeng, head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which controls unions in auto, construction and other key industries. A two-week truckers’ strike in 2003 cost exporters 540 billion won, or $519 million at Friday’s exchange rates, Mr. Han said, citing figures from the Korea International Trade Association.Mr. Han predicted that the current strike will cause 128 billion won in export losses a day.

The government said it would use military vehicles and increase rail service to keep the country’s factories running and ease the paralysis at the ports. But rail unions said on Friday that they would not cooperate.

With the country’s traditional negotiating season starting, unions seized on President Lee’s unpopularity to boost their leverage. Mr. Lee’s administration has been shaken by weeks of anti-government protests against a decision in April to resume the import of American beef.

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi faced rising public discontent as the opposition said it would draw 20,000 people to a march in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to protest fuel costs.

“The people are angry,” said Safarizal Saleh, a leader of the youth wing of the Parti Islam Semalaysia, the main Islamist party and one of the organizers of the rally, Reuters reported.

Gasoline prices have in Malaysia have jumped by 41 percent and diesel 63 percent as crude oil costs have surged.

In Thailand, the Land Transport Federation of Thailand gave the government until Tuesday to subsidize fuel for truckers or face 100,000 vehicles rumbling into already traffic-clogged Bangkok.

Also protesting or planning to stage demonstrations in this still heavily agricultural nation were garlic, cabbage and rice farmers, along with fishermen, The Associated Press reported.

“The government is trying its best to reduce the immediate problem of the various groups of protesters,” said Natawut Saikau, a government spokesman, according to the AP.

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9) Detention Camp Remains, but Not Its Rationale
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
News Analysis
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/13gitmo.html?ref=us

The Guantánamo Bay detention center will not close today or any day soon.

But the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday stripped away the legal premise for the remote prison camp that officials opened six years ago in the belief that American law would not reach across the Caribbean to a United States naval station in Cuba.

“To the extent that Guantánamo exists to hold detainees beyond the reach of U.S. courts, this blows a hole in its reason for being,” said Matthew Waxman, a former detainee affairs official at the Defense Department.

And without that, much will change.

The decision granted detainees the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, meaning that federal judges will now have the power to check the government’s claims that the 270 men still held there are dangerous terrorists. That will force officials to answer questions about evidence that they have long deflected despite international criticism and expressions of support, from President Bush on down, for closing the camp.

Some cases, though no one can be sure how many, are likely to result in court orders freeing detainees. The government said Thursday that its prosecutions before military commissions at Guantánamo would continue, but habeas corpus suits resulting from the justices’ decision are certain to complicate the 19 war crimes cases under way, giving detainees’ lawyers a vehicle to try to stop those proceedings.

Just as important, some lawyers said, defending scores of cases will be a huge burden for the government, most likely increasing pressure inside the Bush administration to send detainees back to their home countries.

Nearly 100 of the 270 detainees are Yemenis. American officials have said they have not repatriated many of them because of fears that they would be released quickly. The decision Thursday, several lawyers said, could encourage American officials to take their chances, shrinking the population by a third or more.

Detainees’ lawyers have long claimed that the government will not be able to justify the detention of many of the men. Pentagon officials, on the other hand, have maintained that classified evidence establishes that many of them are dangerous. The federal courts will now have the power to sort through those claims.

But the justices’ decision did not change some realities that have long made it easier to say that the Guantánamo detention center should be closed than to figure out how. Just last month Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who advocates closing the camp, told Congress that “we’re stuck” in Guantánamo.

One military official said Thursday that those complications remained as confounding after the ruling as they were before. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the court ruling and spoke on condition of anonymity, noted that practical difficulties had stalled plans for an alternative to Guantánamo. Among those is the question of where to put detainees whom the administration views as too dangerous to release.

Under the decision, it appears that the detainees will have the same rights to challenge their status whether they are at Guantánamo or at a military base or prison inside the United States. “If the detainees have constitutional habeas rights at Guantánamo,” the official said, “what incentive is there to go through the logistical, fiscal and legislative pain of bringing them to the U.S.?”

The 5-to-4 defeat for the administration’s detention policies was unqualified: a majority of the justices said the Constitution applied at Guantánamo.

“Liberty and security can be reconciled,” the majority opinion said.

But lawyers said many questions remained unanswered, including the breadth of the detainees’ protections.

The question of whether detainees have habeas rights has long been a central issue in the battle over Guantánamo. Scores of such cases had been in the courts before Congress sought to strip federal judges of the power to hear them. Habeas suits by virtually all the 270 detainees are now expected to commence or be revived, lawyers said.

Such cases give federal judges broad powers to review the government’s reasons for holding a prisoner. But once a judge is satisfied that there is a legitimate basis, a case can end quickly with a ruling in the government’s favor.

“Habeas is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a detainees’ lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It just provides a fair, legitimate and independent sorting process to determine who should and who should not be held.”

Mr. Bush on Thursday appeared to hold open the possibility of a new legislative effort to alter the decision’s result. But for the moment, the administration seemed tangled in a dilemma of its own making, left with a detention camp housing some admitted architects of terror, including the 2001 attacks on the United States, but with the idea evidently dead that the camp was beyond the reach of the courts.

In his testimony to Congress last month, Secretary Gates said the Pentagon had “a serious ‘not in my backyard’ problem” in finding a substitute for Guantánamo. He also listed other concerns that the administration says have kept it from coming up with a plan for closing the detention camp.

Among those, he said, is a Pentagon conclusion that some 8o detainees cannot be charged with war crimes, perhaps because the evidence is not strong enough, but are nonetheless considered too dangerous to release. About 80 other detainees are to be charged with war crimes, the Pentagon has said.

Some administration supporters argued that Thursday’s ruling provided unrealistic protections for men captured during war. Under such circumstances, the government cannot be expected to present orderly evidence justifying detention as it would in civilian cases, said David B. Rivkin, a lawyer who served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration.

“The level of due process they require,” Mr. Rivkin said, “will be impossible to meet and therefore will result in the release of a substantial number of enemy combatants.”

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

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10) Mixed Feelings as Change Overtakes 125th St.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Harlem Journal
June 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/nyregion/13journal.html?ref=nyregion

It isn’t news that just two or three years ago, Harlem had a paucity of bank branches, grocery stores and other basic amenities, or that now that more affluent people have started to move there, upscale shops and restaurants have followed.

But change can have surprising results. While welcoming safer, cleaner streets, longtime residents have found themselves juggling conflicting emotions. And those who enjoyed a measure of stability in the old Harlem now long for the past — not necessarily because it was better but because it was what they knew.

“The majority of the stores, the 99-cent stores, they’re gone,” said Gwen Walker, 55, a longtime resident of the General Grant Houses in West Harlem, giving one view. “The Laundromat on the corner is gone. The bodegas are gone. There’s large delis now. What had been two for $1 is now one for $3. My neighbor is a beer drinker, and he drinks inexpensive beer, Old English or Colt 45 or Coors — you can’t even buy that in the stores. The stores have imported beers from Germany. The foods being sold — feta cheese instead of sharp Cheddar cheese. That’s a whole other world.”

Gentrification, it turns out, can have an odd psychological effect on those it occurs around. No one — almost no one — is wishing for a return of row upon row of boarded-up buildings or the summer mornings when lifeless bodies turned up in vestibules, or the evenings when every block seemed to have its own band of drug dealers and subordinate crackheads.

But residents say they do miss having a neighborhood with familiar faces to greet, familiar foods to eat, and no fear of being forced out of their homes.

It was Dr. Mindy Fullilove, a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, who called the feeling “root shock” because, she said, its effects are similar to what happens to uprooted plants. She describes it as “the pain of losing one’s beloved neighborhood.”

The psychological hold Harlem has on African-Americans has endured even as the neighborhood’s devolution became so complete that between about 1960 and 1990, Harlem had lost a third of its population and half of its housing stock.

In 1990, during the height of the crack epidemic, 261 people were murdered in the police precincts that cover Harlem. Last year, there were about 500 murders in the entire city.

Those who stayed during the worst years say they developed an even stronger psychological attachment to Harlem, its flaws not unlike their own. The perceived diminution of that neighborhood, caused in part by an influx of middle class people of all races, can feel like a loss of self, they say.

Ms. Walker, who has lived in the sprawling General Grant Houses, a public housing complex, on and off since the 1950s, said she often sat talking with her neighbors about their changing surroundings, wondering whether any of them will be there in three to five years.

She said they speculated that by then, they will have been relocated to “a rural area in the Bronx” — even though a city housing project would seem to be safe from gentrification. “Change is good, and progress is inevitable,” she said. “But the feeling is, ‘What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?’”

During the past several months, Harlem residents have sought to slow the pace of change via lawsuits, protests, calls for economic boycotts, public denunciations of elected officials and town-hall-style meetings with names like “The State of Black Harlem.” A large march and rally that organizers say will be “against displacement and gentrification” is scheduled for the neighborhood on June 21.

Apprehension about gentrification has become a constant, and is now a common theme at Sunday church services and a standard topic of conversation in barber shops and beauty salons, on street corners, in bars, at public housing community rooms and among the doormen of the neighborhood’s new condominium buildings. This spring, there have been as many as three or four community meetings each week in which gentrification has been discussed — and roundly denounced.

Social service organizations in the neighborhood said that they have noted an uptick in clients complaining about insomnia and hypertension related to fears about losing their homes, even when there is no indication that they will be evicted.

To be sure, these emotions can be expressed in terms that sound extreme. An example came after street shootings wounded eight young people in the neighborhood on Memorial Day.

“I was praying something like this would happen to keep them out,” Calvin Hunt, 45, a longtime resident with a drastic view, said of the newcomers the morning after the shootings. “When crack was happening, you could have bought these brownstones for $1. Now they cost $1 million.”

Then, last month, the City Council approved another significant change: the rezoning of 125th Street, Harlem’s central artery, to allow for high-rise office towers and some 2,100 new market-rate condominiums. About 70 small businesses might be closed and some residents displaced.

In East Harlem, East River Plaza, a $300 million shopping mall anchored by Home Depot, is being built on the site of a long-abandoned wire factory. Two blocks away, glass-walled $1 million condominiums are rising next to six-story tenement buildings.

Earlier this year, the average price for new condominium apartments in Harlem hit $900,000, although average household income remains less than $25,000.

The Rev. Dr. Charles A. Curtis, senior pastor of Mount Olivet Baptist Church, one of Harlem’s oldest black churches, said that people feel powerless when they see change that they believe is not intended to benefit them.

“There are great developments going on,” said Pastor Curtis. “You can see things in your sight, but they’re just out of reach.”

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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