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Free Ehren Watada!
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada ).
For updates on the Campaign to Free Ehren Watada, go to
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
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April 28, 2009 SF Workers Memorial Day
Meeting At ILWU Local 34
http://www.transportworkers.org/node/1046
April 28, 2009 Workers Memorial Day
Speak-Out To Protect Health And Safety On The Job
Commemorate Workers Injured and Killed On the Job
Workers Memorial Day was established to commemorate and defend workers injured and killed on the job. This year, the California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day (CCWMD) will also focus on the need for health and safety protection, regulation and standards for new industries such as biotechnology and nanotechnology.
These industries are not properly regulated with strong health and safety standards. The CCWMD is calling for national Congressional hearings on these issues and also for the defense of injured workers who face a deregulated workers comp system in which seriously injured workers are not able to get proper healthcare and compensation. We need to get the insurance industry out of healthcare, so all workers can get healthcare.
The elimination of all doctors at Ca-Osha is another dangerous threat that threatens the health and safety of 17 million workers of California particularly those facing the use of new technology in the workplace. Many dangerous toxic sites in Northern California and around the country have been privatized and labeled "Brownfield" sites. Workers, veterans and community people have also been sickened by the failure to clean these sites.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
3:00 PM - Press Conference
At front of Pfizer Research Facility - 455 Mission Bay Boulevard South at 3rd St., SF, next to the New UCSF Biotech China Basin building.
7:00 PM Speak-Out
At ILWU Local 34 - 2nd St/Embarcadero on the left side of AT&T Park
Free Parking at ILUW Local 34
Speakers including: Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition, Daniel Berman, author of Death on The Job, Becky McClain, injured Pfizer micro biologist, Dina Padilla injured Kaiser worker, Carl Bryant, NALC Local 214, Mike Daley, Iron Workers Local 377 on 9/11 NYC First Responders, also representatives from the ILWU and other unions, injured workers and their families.
California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day (CCWMD)
P.O. Box 720027, San Francisco, CA 94172
www.workersmemorialday.org
(415) 867-0628
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May Day Immigrant Rights Marches 2009
http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2009/
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Bail Out Working People -- NOT the Banks!
Join us on May 9 in San Francisco for a
TEACH-IN & MASS MOBILIZATION PLANNING MEETING
Without joining together for our common interests, we don't have the strength to change our government's priorities. We must begin to build a massive movement that will have the power to impact government policy and give people genuine hope for a better future.
Help organize a mass mobilization and ongoing action campaign around the following demands:
- No layoffs. Massive job-creation program.
- Tax the rich -- don't bail out the banks.
- Pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Single-payer healthcare for all.
- Affordable housing for all. Tenants' rights. Moratorium on foreclosures & evictions.
- Funding for jobs and for social services & infrastructure, not for war.
- Stop the ICE raids and deportations. Legalization for all!
Speakers:
- Art Pulaski, Secretary-Treasurer, California Federation of Labor;
- N'tanya Lee, Executive Director, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth;
- Mark Dudzic, National Organizer, Labor for Single Payer Healthcare Campaign (Washington, D.C.);
- Rosie Martinez, SEIU Local 721 (Los Angeles);
- Steve Williams, Executive Director, POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights);
- Conny Ford, Vice President, San Francisco Labor Council;
- Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10;
- Jack Rasmus, Professor of economics St. Mary's College and Santa Clara Univ.;
- Alan Benjamin, Executive Committee, San Francisco Labor Council and Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign;
- Student representative, City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus.
ALSO:
Extended remarks from Bay Area labor and community leaders -- and ample time for dialogue among teach-in participants.
AND:
Spoken Word performance by YOUNG PLAYAZ
SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009 - 1 to 5 p.m.
(registration begins at 12:30 p.m.)
Plumbers Hall,
1621 Market St. @ Franklin St.
San Francisco
Initiated by the San Francisco Labor Council, South Bay Labor Council, and Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign
(list of dozens of teach-in endorsers in formation)
Donations will be requested at door to defray cost of renting the hall, printing leaflets and posters, and copying teach-in packets for all participants. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
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Call for May 9 Teach-In:
Bail Out Working People, NOT the Banks!
The severity of the economic crisis we are currently facing is predicted to rival the magnitude of the Great Depression. Some say it could be even worse. Over 6 million jobs have already been eliminated since the current recession began. Millions of working people have lost their homes to foreclosures and evictions, and many more homes are in or near default, while housing remains unaffordable to millions of people. The ranks of those without health insurance continue to grow. But even these statistics fail to reflect the growing insecurity and stress of working people across the country as we wonder when we, too, might be next.
Meanwhile, the federal government has showered billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars on financial institutions in the form of bailouts. In other words, working people, who are bearing the brunt of the crisis, are being required to shoulder an additional burden. Our tax dollars are being funneled to the very financial institutions and wealthy investors whose reckless gambling in pursuit of unbridled profit was responsible for driving the economy over the cliff. They have refused to say what they've done with trillions. Worse still, to emphasize their contempt for public opinion, these priests of high finance have spent some of the bailout money on huge bonuses, office decorations and the purchase of more CEO jets.
In response to this unprecedented crisis, many organizations have emerged that are addressing specific issues. Some are fighting foreclosures. Others are fighting for a single-payer healthcare system that would guarantee health coverage for everyone. Still others are pressing for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which, if passed, will greatly facilitate the ability to form unions.
Although our problems take many forms, most of them stem from a single source. During the past three decades, the inequality in wealth has surged to historic proportions not seen since the 1920s. The hourly wage of working people has actually declined, forcing many additional family members into the workforce just to make ends meet. Aggressive campaigns by employers have created additional barriers to unionizing, resulting in a sharp decline in the percentage of unionized workers. Without unions, workers have not had the means to struggle successfully for higher wages, healthcare coverage, pensions and other benefits.
Given these conditions, can there be any wonder that we have a housing crisis and a healthcare crisis? And during this same period, the taxes on corporations and on the rich in general have dramatically declined, thereby accelerating the accumulation of unprecedented wealth, on the one hand, and the decline of tax dollars for public infrastructure and services, on the other.
In order to have any chance of altering these trends, given the magnitude of the crisis we confront and the forces we're up against, we need to come together, unite all our separate organizations and mount a collective struggle around our common concerns. Without joining together for our common interests, we don't have the strength to change our government's priorities. Only in this way can we begin to build a massive movement that will have the power to impact government policy and give people genuine hope for a better future.
We working people constitute the vast majority of the population. We need to ensure that our society operates in the interests of the majority. But we can only succeed if we stand together in solidarity with each other's demands and struggles.
The goal of the May 9 teach-in is to inspire other teach-ins. It is aimed at organizing massive Solidarity DAYS OF ACTION in support of our common demands. By bringing huge numbers of people together in common actions, people will realize through their own experience that they do not stand alone, and they will gain the confidence that by uniting we can begin to exercise real power.
- Join us and help build a movement.
- Together we can prevail.
- An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!
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ATTEND THE JULY 10 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CONFERENCE IN PITTSBURGH!
REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE and DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE BROCHURE (8.5 X 14) at:
https://natassembly.org/Home_Page.html
In the aftermath of the March 21 and April 3-4 demonstrations, a number of critical questions must be addressed by the antiwar movement: What next for the movement? Where do we go from here? How can we broaden the movement and win new forces to our cause? How can we help ensure that our next demonstrations are larger than the ones organized in March and April and that the ones organized after those will be even larger?
We who are supporters of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations believe these questions can best be answered by convening a national antiwar conference open to all peace activists who will have the opportunity to share their ideas and proposals, be part of a broad ranging discussion and debate, and help make decisions based on one person, one vote.
Such a conference will be held at La Roche College in Pittsburgh on July 10-12, 2009.
The National Assembly was established nearly a year ago at a national conference attended by over 400 people, including top leaders of the antiwar movement as well as activists from many states. One of the main decisions that conference made was to do everything possible to unite the movement in urgently needed visible street actions.
Now we look to the July conference, which will provide a forum for dealing with crucial issues as Washington escalates its wars, occupations, bombing attacks, sanctions, threats and illegal interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere. We need your ideas, your input and your presence to help make this conference a success. Please join us in Pittsburgh on July 10-12. Bring all the troops home now!
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Courage to Resist
Resister to be courts-martialed Tuesday
Cliff Cornell was denied sanctuary in Canada; will face general courts-martial Tuesday, April 28 at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. Donate to Cliff's legal defense here:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=25410
--56 people have given $2,270 of Cliff's $3,000 legal expenses thusfar.
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EMERGENCY UPDATE: Bad news for Troy Davis
ANOTHER INNOCENT MAN ON DEATH ROW
Amnesty International USA
alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org
Dear Readers,
It's not the end of the road for Troy Davis, but the news is not good.
Yesterday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Troy Davis' bid for a new trial. In a 2-1 vote, the court cited technical reasons to reject Davis' petition for a hearing.
But all hope is not lost. Troy has 30 days to file another petition with the US Supreme Court.
Troy and his lawyers are doing everything they can to fight this decision from the inside. It is up to us to turn up the pressure on the outside. Even if you've taken action before, keep flooding Governor Perdue's office with emails demanding justice for Troy. And pass the action on to everyone you know. There is power in numbers and when you stand behind Troy Davis, you make the fight for justice even stronger!
We can't thank you enough.
In solidarity,
Sue, Brian, Jessie, and the rest of the Death Penalty Campaign team
P.S. Save the date - National Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis coming in May. We'll be in touch soon to let you know how you can support Troy in your own community!
To send a message to Governor Perdue:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12168
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Please spread the message where ever you will be during the next weeks!
Thank you so much,
Annette in Heidelberg - Germany
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia
Dear co-strugglers for Mumia,
This is our call for action - sign the online-petition to the Justices of the US Supreme Court.
We launched it at the beginning of March in Germany and Austria - and it is growing fast now.
It was already signed by Noam Chomsky, Frances Goldin, Robert Meeropol, Harold Wilson, Colin Firth, Anthony Arnove, Marc Taylor, Julia Wright, Pam Africa, Veronica Jones and so many others.
The updated letter with the 3500th signature was sent to the Justices this Easter Monday, April 13.
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/supreme/petition.html
Support Mumia in this most dangerous state of his life.
Please spread it as far as you can! Post it, send it around, use all your powerful means of creating news and attention.
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.inprisonmywholelife.com
www.mumia-hoerbuch.de
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Sign Petition:
Reinstate Anti-War Opinion Editor
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/reinstate-anti-war-opinion-editor
To The Recorder Staff--
It has come to our attention that on Tuesday, March 10, 2009, Central Connecticut State University's newspaper The Recorder's Opinion Editor, student Marissa Blaszko, was fired from her position for an alleged conflict of interest. The Recorder's editor-in-chief called Marissa into a private meeting and presented her with an ultimatum to quit campus activism or resign her position with the student newspaper. Marissa refused to make a choice. She was later locked out of the office and fired.
The editor-in-chief told Marissa that she was being fired for her prominence in campus activism and her membership in the Youth for Socialist Action club, and not based on her job performance. It was explained to her that editors are forbidden to participate in campus protests against the Iraq war, or bring to campus the author of a new book on the frame-up of journalist and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.
We declare as invalid any internal code or policy of The Recorder which presumes to grant its editor-in-chief the authority to purge the staff of such political convictions and activities as he or she finds disagreeable. Such an absurd claim to power contradicts every official policy of the University, every civil liberties egal precedent of the past 40 years, not to mention the animating spirit of our state and federal constitutions.
We consider Marissa's firing and any internal policy which its perpetrators would produce in an attempt to justify it as a subversion of basic democratic rights. Under no circumstances does an employer ever have the right to fire an employee for legally exercising her constitutional rights.
We demand Marissa's immediate and unconditional reinstatement to her position at The Recorder, along with a reaffirmation from the newspaper editors that it will not tolerate discrimination against its staff on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual preference, personal views or affiliations, or any other conditions established by the law.
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Global Economy Called Worst Since 1945
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/economy/23outlook.html?ref=world
2) After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children
By GINGER THOMPSON
April 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23children.html?ref=world
3) Study Cites Dire Economic Impact of Poor Schools
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/nyregion/23klein.html?ref=us
4) Rice gave early 'waterboarding green light'
by Michael Mathes
Thu Apr 23, 7:28 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090423/ts_alt_afp/usattacksmilitaryjusticecongresszubaydah
5) Unemployment in Spain Hits 17.4%
By VICTORIA BURNETT
April 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/business/global/25euecon.html?ref=business
6) Exceptions to Iraq Deadline Are Proposed
By ROD NORDLAND
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/middleeast/27withdraw.html
7) Money for Nothing
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html
8) Malcolm X's daughter: 'Zionist agitators' bothered at Durban II
By Michael J. Jordan
April 24, 2009
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/24/1004634/malcom-xs-daughter-complains-of-zionist-agitators-at-durban-ii
9) U.S. Soldier Who Killed Herself--After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo, I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson.
By Greg Mitchell
April 23, 2009
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003965876
10) Geithner, as Member and Overseer, Forged Ties to Finance Club
By JO BECKER and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/business/27geithner.html?hp
11) After a U.S. Raid: 2 Iraqis Dead, Protests and Regrets
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?ref=world
12) More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?ref=us
13) Seeing Warning Signs of Outbreak, School Nurse Set Response in Motion
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27response.html?ref=nyregion
14) Advocates Fear City Budget Cuts Will Put Children at Risk
By JULIE BOSMAN
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27acs.html?ref=nyregion
15) Chrysler and Union Agree to Deal Before Federal Deadline
By NICK BUNKLEY and BILL VLASIC
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/business/27chrysler.html?ref=business
16) And So It Goes ...
By Dahr Jamail
Truthout, April 27, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/042709R?print
17) Web-savvy Japanese Communist party's message of welfare and jobs lures young voters away from sleazed-mired political mainstream
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk
Monday 27 April 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/japanese-communist-party-resurgence
18) Free Ehren Watada!
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada ).
For updates on the Campaign to Free Ehren Watada, go to
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
19) Persistent Racial Gap Seen in Students' Test Scores
By SAM DILLON
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/education/29scores.html?hp
20) British Court Clears 3 Men on Terrorism Charges
By ALAN COWELL
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/europe/29britain.html?hp
21) Group Sounds Alarm on European Bee Industry
By REUTERS
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/europe/28bees.html?ref=world
22) On Voting Rights, Test of History v. Progress
By ADAM LIPTAK
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28voting.html?ref=us
23) Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARJORIE CONNELLY
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/politics/28poll.html?ref=us
24) People With Service Jobs Feel Economic Pain Early
By HILLARY CHURA
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/28worker.html?ref=business
25) Group Advises Stopping Flow of Gifts to Doctors
By GARDINER HARRIS
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/health/policy/29drug.html?ref=health
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1) Global Economy Called Worst Since 1945
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/economy/23outlook.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The global economy will most likely contract this year for the first time since World War II, and the recovery will take longer than expected, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.
The I.M.F. projected a 1.3 percent decline in global economic activity for 2009, down sharply even from the modest 0.5 percent growth it had projected in January. In the United States, still the "epicenter" of the crisis, according to the fund, economic contraction would be even greater, at 2.8 percent this year, with zero growth for 2010.
Separately, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, cautioned against expecting a quick recovery, underscoring the complications of the world's increasingly interwoven economies and financial systems.
"Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by a confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are now living through," he said in a speech before the Economic Club of Washington.
The international fund said that it expected global growth to resume in 2010, but only at a 1.9 percent rate, notably sluggish compared with past recoveries. In normal times, growth would be closer to 4 percent.
"The recovery may actually be slower than usual, leading to a slow decrease in unemployment," said Olivier Blanchard, director of the I.M.F.'s research department, at a news conference at the fund's headquarters in Washington. "Our forecasts imply that unemployment will crest only at the end of 2010."
Mr. Blanchard, in unveiling the World Economic Outlook, said that the United States unemployment rate was likely to peak around 10 percent. It is currently 8.5 percent, after months of relentless job losses. The International Labor Organization has estimated that world unemployment could rise to 7 percent this year, up from about 6 percent in 2008.
"The current outlook is exceptionally uncertain," said the executive summary of the I.M.F. report, "with risks still weighing to the downside."
The report was issued as finance ministers and central bankers from around the world were beginning to gather in Washington for the spring meetings of the I.M.F. and the World Bank. On the sidelines of those meetings, officials of the Group of 7 industrialized nations and the Group of 20, an expanded group that also includes the major emerging economies, will meet for continued discussions on the economic crisis.
Even among the details of a largely cautionary report, I.M.F. officials saw some signs of hope, largely because of the forceful fiscal steps and other measures taken by the United States, some European governments, and also by China.
Mr. Blanchard said that the fiscal responses of several major countries had made "a gigantic difference."
"If there had been no fiscal stimulus across the world, world growth in 2009 would be 1.5 to 2 percent less," he said. "We would be in the middle of something very close to a depression."
While saying that "there is light at the end of this long tunnel," he cautioned against seeing, in mixed economic data, reason for complacency. "The need for strong policies on both the macro and especially the financial fronts is as acute as ever," he said.
Mr. Geithner said that only 17 of the 182 economies followed by the I.M.F. are expected to grow at faster rates this year than last, and 30 of the 34 advanced economies are expected to shrink, amid a collapse in world trade that "will likely be the worst since the end of World War II."
Even as globalization speeds the flow of economic benefits in good times, he said, "now we are learning that in times of contraction, globalization transmits trouble with enormous speed and force, affecting economies around the world - the relatively strong as well as the more vulnerable."
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2) After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children
By GINGER THOMPSON
April 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23children.html?ref=world
CARTHAGE, Mo. - When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.
One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos's mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail's rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.
In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.
"The only certainties in the biological mother's future," he wrote, "is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter."
It is unclear how many children share Carlos's predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.
"The struggle in these cases is there's no winner," said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.
He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do "conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do."
"Then things spiral out of control," Mr. Huck added, "and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations."
Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.
And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.
Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried "to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border."
"I've asked them, 'What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?' " Ms. Ravenhorst said. "We'd coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can't we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?"
Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.
Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos's adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail's rights to Carlos.
In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail's deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail's lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late.
The lawyer for Carlos's adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos's privacy.
Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George's Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.
Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.
When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.
The women - each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money - said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers' aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.
Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.
"My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone," Ms. Bail recalled. "I was not going to give my son to anyone either."
An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.
"I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone," she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. "I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son."
For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.
Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos's adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. "We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English," Mr. Hensley said.
Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos's whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. "I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son," she said. "But no one helped me."
Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later - she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia - it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.
"Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child," the judge wrote in his decision. "A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run."
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3) Study Cites Dire Economic Impact of Poor Schools
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/nyregion/23klein.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The lagging performance of American schoolchildren, particularly among poor and minority students, has had a negative economic impact on the country that exceeds that of the current recession, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The study, conducted by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, pointed to bleak disparities in test scores on four fronts: between black and Hispanic children and white children; between poor and wealthy students; between Americans and students abroad; and between students of similar backgrounds educated in different parts of the country.
The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day.
This was the second report on education issues by the firm's social sector office, which said it was not commissioned by any government, business or other institution. Starting in fall 2008, the researchers reviewed federal and international tests and interviewed education researchers and economists.
In New York City, an analysis of 2007 federal test scores for fourth graders showed strikingly stratified achievement levels: While 6 percent of white students in city schools scored below a base achievement level on math, 31 percent of black students and 26 percent of Hispanic students did. In reading, 48 percent of black students and 49 percent of Hispanic students failed to reach that base level, but 19 percent of white students did.
The New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, who introduced the findings at the National Press Club in Washington, said the study vindicated the idea that the root cause of test-score disparities was not poverty or family circumstances, but subpar teachers and principals. He pointed to an analysis in the report showing low-income black fourth graders from the city outperformed students in all other major urban districts on reading (they came in second in math).
"Schools can be the game changer," he said. "We are able to get very, very different results with the same children."
On Tuesday, Mr. Klein was in Albany attempting to persuade legislators to leave control of the city's schools in the hands of the mayor, a governance model adopted by the state in 2002 that is due to expire in June. A crucial measurement of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's seven years at the helm will be Mr. Klein's progress in narrowing the achievement gap in a city where 32 percent of students are black and 40 percent are Hispanic.
While state test scores have shown improvement since Mr. Klein took office, eighth-grade scores on federal math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, have not shown significant increases since 2002.
In an interview after the speech here, Mr. Klein said he would be the first to acknowledge that the city was not where it needed to be in closing the gap, particularly in middle schools. But, he added, there have been signs of progress among younger students, and he believed the city's four-year graduation rates - 69 percent for white students, 47 percent for black students and 43 percent for Hispanic students - could reach state averages within five or six years.
He said it would require a focus on finding ways to recruit high-quality teachers.
Nationally, the gap in test performance between white and Hispanic students grows by 41 percent from Grade 4 through 12, and between white and black students it grows 22 percent, the report said. Students educated in different regions also showed marked variation in test performance, despite having similar demographic backgrounds. In Texas, for instance, schools are given about $1,000 less per student than California schools, but Texas children are on average one to two years of learning ahead of their counterparts in California.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, Mr. Klein's partner in leading an alliance that is attempting to electrify the cause of making radical changes in education, criticized those who opposed their efforts.
"There are no sacred cows in this," Mr. Sharpton said to the audience of 200 education leaders at the press club.
Arne Duncan, the federal secretary of education, told the audience that the report showed the need for robust data systems to track student and teacher performance; for alignment of American standards with those in other countries; and for incentives to keep good teachers and principals.
"In many situations, our schools are perpetuating poverty and are perpetuating social failure," he said, adding that the federal education bureaucracy had often hindered past efforts.
He expressed support for the idea of radically restructuring the bottom 1 percent of schools in the country, possibly by closing and reconstituting them.
The writers of the study pointed to signs of optimism amid the dreary numbers. Byron G. Auguste, the director of the social sector office at McKinsey, which produced the study, said there was evidence that two dozen countries over the past two decades had significantly overhauled their educational systems and closed achievement gaps. He also pointed to high-performing systems in the United States, like those in Massachusetts and Texas. The trick, he said, would be to share effective strategies.
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4) Rice gave early 'waterboarding green light'
by Michael Mathes
Thu Apr 23, 7:28 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090423/ts_alt_afp/usattacksmilitaryjusticecongresszubaydah
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The CIA first sought in May 2002 to use harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding on terror suspects, and was given key early approval by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a US Senate intelligence document said.
The agency got the green light to use the near-drowning technique on July 26, 2002, when attorney general John Ashcroft concluded "that the use of waterboarding was lawful," the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a detailed timeline of the "war on terrorism" interrogations released Wednesday.
Nine days earlier, the panel said, citing Central Intelligence Agency records, Rice had met with then-director George Tenet and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," the agency's first high-value Al-Qaeda detainee, pending Justice Department approval.
Rice's nod is believed to be the earliest known approval by a senior official in the administration of George W. Bush of the intelligence technique which current Attorney General Eric Holder has decried as "torture."
The Senate panel narrative is the most comprehensive declassified chronology to date of the Bush administration's support for the highly controversial tactics.
According to the Senate narrative, Rice was among at least half a dozen top Bush officials, including vice president Dick Cheney, who were in 2002 or 2003 debating, approving or reaffirming the legality of the interrogation practices used on Zubaydah and two other terror suspects.
After a July 2003 meeting in which Tenet briefed Rice, Cheney, Ashcroft, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and others on the use of waterboarding and other interrogation methods, "the principals reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy," according to the panel report.
The revelations come amid a raging controversy over whether President Barack Obama would seek prosecutions of Bush officials who devised legal cover for the interrogation tactics.
Last week Obama blew the lid on harsh CIA terror interrogations approved by Bush by releasing four so-called "torture memos" prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that detailed the tactics, including waterboarding as well as the use of insects and sleep deprivation.
Obama said operatives who carried out the interrogations would not be prosecuted, saying they acted on orders and were defending their country.
The CIA had asked to be able to waterboard Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian whose real name is Zayn Al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, fearing he was withholding information about "imminent" terrorist attacks, the panel said.
The committee did not wade into the growing controversy over whether so-called "enhanced interrogation" methods used on Zubaydah -- who was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002 -- yielded solid information.
US forces captured Zubaydah in a late March 2002 firefight in Pakistan, tended to his serious injuries, and began to question him, according to the timeline.
The agency asked senior officials in Washington, including Rice, in mid-May 2002 to discuss the possibility of using methods, including waterboarding, that were rougher than traditional interrogation methods.
The CIA made the request because it "believed that Abu Zubaydah was withholding imminent threat information during the initial interrogation sessions."
The US Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel orally advised the CIA on July 26, 2002, "that the use of waterboarding was lawful," a finding it put in writing on August 1, 2002, the timeline said.
A US congressman, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, spoke out Thursday in an opinion piece against Obama's decision to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, saying "members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002."
"We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (of 2001) to keep our nation safe," Republican Hoekstra wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
"After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses."
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5) Unemployment in Spain Hits 17.4%
By VICTORIA BURNETT
April 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/business/global/25euecon.html?ref=business
MADRID - The number of unemployed people in Spain rose to a record four million in the first quarter as the economy continued to shed jobs created over the last decade by inexpensive credit and a real estate bubble.
The Spanish unemployment rate climbed to 17.4 percent, from 13.9 percent in the final quarter of 2008, or more than twice the European Union average, the National Statistics Institute said Friday. The 802,800 increase in the ranks of the jobless was the largest quarterly increase in more than 30 years.
"These figures are bad and worse than expected," the finance minister, Elena Salgado, said. The sharp quarterly increase was a sign of "how severe and how deep the crisis is," she said.
Spain's grim employment news came as Britain's national statistics office on Friday reported a 1.9 percent drop in gross domestic product in the first quarter from a year earlier, the largest quarterly decline in output recorded since 1979.
It was the third successive quarter of economic contraction in the British economy and cast doubt on projections last week by Alistair Darling, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, that the economy would start to recover by 2010 after shrinking 3.5 percent this year.
"These figures make his forecasts very difficult to achieve," said James Knightley, a senior economist for ING in London. He said he expected the British economy to shrink 4 to 4.5 percent this year and predicted that Britain's broad-based decline, with a steep 6.2 percent drop in manufacturing, would be reflected across Europe and the United States.
Amid the gloom from Britain and Spain, data from Germany offered a bright spot Friday, suggesting that confidence in the economy might be turning the corner. The Ifo Institute in Munich said corporate sentiment rose in April to its highest level in five months. The business climate index, based on a poll of around 7,000 companies, rose to 83.7, from 82.2 in March, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced a plan to spend more than 1 billion euros ($1.32 billion), on youth job initiatives in a move to counter a potentially explosive rise in unemployment among people under 25, Reuters reported on Friday.
In Spain, Ms. Salgado said she expected unemployment to rise more slowly in the coming months as government employment programs took effect. The government has announced stimulus measures of about 71 billion euros this year in an effort to replace jobs lost in construction and help businesses get credit.
But economic analysts said the government's optimism had little credibility given the consistent discrepancy between its projections and the economic reality. The labor minister, Celestino Corbacho, predicted in January that unemployment would not reach four million, while the central bank this month said it would reach a maximum of 17.1 percent this year.
Debate continued this last week in Spain - and elsewhere - about how much the government could afford to stretch its budget deficit to stimulate the economy and cover the costs of supporting the unemployed.
The Bank of Spain has warned of little room for additional spending, with Spain's public sector deficit on track to hit 8.3 percent of G.D.P. this year and its ratio of debt-to-G.D.P. set to reach 50 percent. The bank's governor, Miguel Fernández Ordóñez has said that the social security system could go into deficit this year.
But José Antonio Herce, chief economist at Analistas Financieros Internacionales, a financial consultancy, said new stimulus packages were needed.
"There is a little margin to spend more, and what margin there is should be exhausted on productive infrastructure that will help the economy in the long term," he said, adding that there was room to increase Spain's budget deficit by about two more points of G.D.P. "What we need next is for the government to produce a clear plan which explains to the taxpayer how it is going to fix this mess - going all the way through till 2019."
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6) Exceptions to Iraq Deadline Are Proposed
By ROD NORDLAND
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/middleeast/27withdraw.html
BAGHDAD - The United States and Iraq will begin negotiating possible exceptions to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraqi cities, focusing on the troubled northern city of Mosul, according to military officials. Some parts of Baghdad also will still have combat troops.
Everywhere else, the withdrawal of United States combat troops from all Iraqi cities and towns is on schedule to finish by the June 30 deadline, and in many cases even earlier. But because of the level of insurgent activity in Mosul, United States and Iraqi military officials will meet Monday to decide whether to consider the city an exception to the deadline in the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, between the countries.
"Mosul is the one area where you may see U.S. combat forces operating in the city" after June 30, the United States military's top spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. David Perkins, said in an interview.
In Baghdad, however, there are no plans to close the Camp Victory base complex, consisting of five bases housing more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops. Although Victory is only a 15 minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city's boundary, Iraqi officials say they have agreed to consider it outside the city.
In addition, Forward Operating Base Falcon, which can hold 5,000 combat troops, will also remain after June 30. It is just within Baghdad's southern city limits. Again, Iraqi officials have classified it as effectively outside Baghdad, so no exception to the agreement needs to be granted, in their view.
Combat troops with the Seventh Field Artillery Regiment will remain in the heart of Baghdad at Camp Prosperity, located near the new American Embassy compound in the Green Zone. In addition to providing a quick reaction force, guarding the embassy and noncombat troops from attack, those soldiers will also continue to support Iraqi troops who are now in nominal charge of maintaining security in the Green Zone.
The details of troop withdrawals and the transfer of facilities are negotiated by the Joint Military Operations Coordinating Committee, led by the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and the Iraqi defense minister, Abdul Qadir al-Obaidi. At its meeting on Monday, the committee will discuss a host of transfer issues, as well as whether to grant any exceptions to the June 30 deadline, and it will make recommendations to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a final decision.
The spokesman for the Iraqi military, Maj. Gen. Muhammad al-Askari, who is also the secretary to the committee's Iraqi contingent, said also that a decision on Mosul would be made at Monday's meeting, which he called "critical."
"I personally think even in Mosul there will be no American forces in the city, but that's a decision for the Iraqi government and the Iraqi prime minister," General Askari said.
General Perkins also expressed specific concerns about Mosul, noting how important the city is to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.
"For Al Qaeda to win, they have to take Baghdad. To survive they have to hold on to Mosul," he said. "Mosul is sort of their last area where they have some maybe at least passive support."
In Baghdad, whether combat troops remain in the city may well be a function of how they are defined, as well as where the city limits lie.
The Camp Victory complex includes Camps Victory, Liberty, Striker and Slayer, plus the prison known as Camp Cropper, where so-called high-value prisoners are kept. It also includes the military side of Baghdad International Airport.
General Askari emphatically said that the June 30 provision did not apply to the Camp Victory complex because it was effectively outside the city. General Askari also said having American combat troops at Camp Prosperity would not violate the terms of the agreement, because they are there for force protection and to guard the nearby embassy.
"If there is a small group to stay in that camp to guard the American Embassy, that's no problem," he said. "The meaning of the SOFA is that their vehicles cannot go in the streets of Baghdad and interfere with our job."
The Green Zone was handed over to Iraqi control Jan. 1, when the agreement went into effect. In addition to the United States-Iraqi patrols, most of the security for the Green Zone's many checkpoints and heavily guarded entry points is still done by the same private contractors who did it prior to Jan. 1.
"What you're seeing is not a change in the numbers, it's a doctrine change," said First Sgt. David Moore, a New Jersey National Guardsman with the Joint Area Support Group, which runs the Green Zone. "You're still going to have fighters. Every U.S. soldier is trained to fight."
One of the Green Zone's biggest bases, Forward Operating Base Freedom, was handed back to Iraqi control on April 1, at least most of it. The United States military kept the swimming pool.
In addition to troops, Camp Prosperity will house many American contractors and other personnel. Next door, at Camp Union III, the military is in the process of setting up housing for several thousand soldiers, trainers and advisers working for the Multi-National Security Transition Command, which now has its headquarters elsewhere in the Green Zone.
While those principal Baghdad bases will remain, the United States military has been rapidly erasing its footprint everywhere else in Baghdad. The so-called troop surge added 77 small bases, known as combat outposts, patrol bases and joint security stations, spread throughout the city's neighborhoods to get United States troops closer to the people. At the height, in 2007, there were nearly 100 such bases. All of them will have been turned over to the Iraqis by June 30, and many already have been, General Perkins said. He added that in many cases the Iraqis would choose not to use them for their own troops.
Nationwide, the American military presence is also changing quickly as June 30 approaches. A survey of northern and central Iraqi provinces by New York Times reporters confirmed that American troops had already withdrawn from all of the bases situated in the centers of major towns or cities, with the exception of Mosul.
General Perkins said that American combat forces had already been drawing down steadily in Iraq's cities, replaced by Iraqi troops. By September 2008, the number of American troops in Iraq had dropped by about 20 percent from the peak during the so-called troop surge in 2007, he said. An additional 8,000 left by the end of January.
As of April 17, there were 137,934 American service members in Iraq, according to Lt. Col. Amy Hannah, a public affairs officer. An additional 16,000 will go by September, General Perkins said.
"We don't want to lose the gains we've had so far," he said. "We don't want to rush to failure here. This isn't just, we're going home. We're just moving."
"We don't mean you won't have soldiers trained in combat skills in the city," General Perkins said. Trainers and advisers can stay, under the terms of the agreement, and combat troops can re-enter on operations if invited by the Iraqis, he said.
General Perkins gave the example of sending the 82nd Airborne Division to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "The 82nd are combat troops, but that was not a combat mission," he said.
Suadad N. Al-Salhy contributed reporting from Baghdad, and employees of The New York Times from Diwaniya, Baquba, Falluja, Kut, Mosul and Sulaimaniya.
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7) Money for Nothing
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html
On July 15, 2007, The New York Times published an article with the headline "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age." The most prominently featured of the "new titans" was Sanford Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, who insisted that he and his peers in the financial sector had earned their immense wealth through their contributions to society.
Soon after that article was printed, the financial edifice Mr. Weill took credit for helping to build collapsed, inflicting immense collateral damage in the process. Even if we manage to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression, the world economy will take years to recover from this crisis.
All of which explains why we should be disturbed by an article in Sunday's Times reporting that pay at investment banks, after dipping last year, is soaring again - right back up to 2007 levels.
Why is this disturbing? Let me count the ways.
First, there's no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify those humongous paychecks.
Remember that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy's wheels turning.
So why did some bankers suddenly begin making vast fortunes? It was, we were told, a reward for their creativity - for financial innovation. At this point, however, it's hard to think of any major recent financial innovations that actually aided society, as opposed to being new, improved ways to blow bubbles, evade regulations and implement de facto Ponzi schemes.
Consider a recent speech by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, in which he tried to defend financial innovation. His examples of "good" financial innovations were (1) credit cards - not exactly a new idea; (2) overdraft protection; and (3) subprime mortgages. (I am not making this up.) These were the things for which bankers got paid the big bucks?
Still, you might argue that we have a free-market economy, and it's up to the private sector to decide how much its employees are worth. But this brings me to my second point: Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private sector. It's a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a k a "welfare."
I'm not just talking about the $600 billion or so already committed under the TARP. There are also the huge credit lines extended by the Federal Reserve; large-scale lending by Federal Home Loan Banks; the taxpayer-financed payoffs of A.I.G. contracts; the vast expansion of F.D.I.C. guarantees; and, more broadly, the implicit backing provided to every financial firm considered too big, or too strategic, to fail.
One can argue that it's necessary to rescue Wall Street to protect the economy as a whole - and in fact I agree. But given all that taxpayer money on the line, financial firms should be acting like public utilities, not returning to the practices and paychecks of 2007.
Furthermore, paying vast sums to wheeler-dealers isn't just outrageous; it's dangerous. Why, after all, did bankers take such huge risks? Because success - or even the temporary appearance of success - offered such gigantic rewards: even executives who blew up their companies could and did walk away with hundreds of millions. Now we're seeing similar rewards offered to people who can play their risky games with federal backing.
So what's going on here? Why are paychecks heading for the stratosphere again? Claims that firms have to pay these salaries to retain their best people aren't plausible: with employment in the financial sector plunging, where are those people going to go?
No, the real reason financial firms are paying big again is simply because they can. They're making money again (although not as much as they claim), and why not? After all, they can borrow cheaply, thanks to all those federal guarantees, and lend at much higher rates. So it's eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may be regulated.
Or maybe not. There's a palpable sense in the financial press that the storm has passed: stocks are up, the economy's nose-dive may be leveling off, and the Obama administration will probably let the bankers off with nothing more than a few stern speeches. Rightly or wrongly, the bankers seem to believe that a return to business as usual is just around the corner.
We can only hope that our leaders prove them wrong, and carry through with real reform. In 2008, overpaid bankers taking big risks with other people's money brought the world economy to its knees. The last thing we need is to give them a chance to do it all over again.
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8) Malcolm X's daughter: 'Zionist agitators' bothered at Durban II
By Michael J. Jordan
April 24, 2009
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/24/1004634/malcom-xs-daughter-complains-of-zionist-agitators-at-durban-ii
GENEVA (JTA) - Three groups were expelled from the Durban II conference for disruptive behavior, and Malcom X's daughter complained of "Zionist agitators" at the conference.
The United Nations in Geneva announced late Thursday that it had expelled three organizations for disruptive behavior at the Durban Review Conference: the Union of Jewish Students of France, the London-based interfaith group Coexist and an Iranian group called the Neda Institute for Political and Scientific Research.
On Friday, Malcolm X's daughter, Malaak Shabazz, sent a letter of protest to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay complaining of how young "Zionist agitators" had treated her at one event.
"They were juvenile, nasty and aggressive," Shabazz told JTA.
Shabazz, who was in Geneva advocating for slave reparations, expressed concern that the students who filmed the incident might post it online.
"They're putting my likeness out there for any psycho Zionist to do something," she said.
Large contingents of Jewish students frequently made noise during the conference. One rainbow-wigged French student rushed the podium during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech, tossing a rubber nose at him. Others shouted "Racist!" during the speech.
Pillay's office said it also intercepted efforts by French students trying to mount disturbances in the hallways, where students chanted slogans, blocked entrances and tried to confront critics of Israel.
"After examining the types of conduct and patterns of conduct, as well as the risk of possible disruptive behavior during the remainder of the conference," Pillay said, she revoked the accreditation of the three groups.
The United Nations said two women from the Iranian delegation distributed "inciting materials" and that Coexist had shared entrance badges with some French students after theirs had been confiscated.
Another student group, the European Union of Jewish Students, had learned April 21 that its accreditation was pulled after some members had yelled insults at Ahmadinejad from the gallery.
But the EUJS, which also has formal, permanent accreditation to the United Nations, protested that the entire group shouldn't be punished for the actions of a few. EUJS Chairman Jonas Karpantschof said he told U.N. officials he would issue a news release if the accreditation weren't reinstated, and it soon was.
"It would have looked really bad," he said, "for the U.N. to take away badges from Jewish students on Yom Hashoah at an anti-racism conference."
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9) U.S. Soldier Who Killed Herself--After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo, I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson.
By Greg Mitchell
April 23, 2009
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003965876
With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo (and who, knows, probably elsewhere), I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who I have written about numerous times in the past three years but now with especially sad relevance. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what we would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, in September 2003.
Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the U.S. Senate committee probe and various new press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it.
Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq. A cover-up, naturally, followed.
Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."
A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." And that might have ended it right there.
But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told me in late 2006 (there's a chapter about it in my book on Iraq and the media, "So Wrong for So Long"). He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston then worked, reported:
"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."
According to the official report on her death released the following year, she had earlier been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of that report is: "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."
Peterson was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.
A notebook she had been writing was found next to her body. Its contents were redacted in the official report.
The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told me: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."
Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.
Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003.
A report in The Arizona Daily Sun of Flagstaff -- three years after Alyssa's death -- revealed that Spc. Peterson's mother, Bobbi Peterson, reached at her home in northern Arizona, said that neither she nor her husband Richard had received any official documents that contained information outlined in Elston's report.
In other words: Like the press and the public, even the parents had been kept in the dark.
Tomorrow I will write about Kayla Williams, a woman who served with Alyssa, and talked to her about her problems shortly before she killed herself, and also took part in torture interrogations. She observed the punching of detainees and was forced to take part in one particular tactic: prisoners were stripped naked, and when they took off their blindfolds the first thing they saw was Kayla. She opted out, but survived, and is haunted years later.
Here's what Williams told Soledad O'Brien of CNN : "I was asked to assist. And what I saw was that individuals who were doing interrogations had slipped over a line and were really doing things that were inappropriate. There were prisoners that were burned with lit cigarettes."
All of this only gains relevance in light of the current debate over whether those who were "just following orders" in torture routines should be held accountable today.
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Greg Mitchell's latest book is "Why Obama Won." His previous book on Iraq and the media was "So Wrong for So Long." He is editor of Editor & Publisher.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor. His latest book is "Why Obama Won."
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10) Geithner, as Member and Overseer, Forged Ties to Finance Club
By JO BECKER and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/business/27geithner.html?hp
Last June, with a financial hurricane gathering force, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. convened the nation's economic stewards for a brainstorming session. What emergency powers might the government want at its disposal to confront the crisis? he asked.
Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation's most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.
The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.
"People thought, 'Wow, that's kind of out there,' " said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who heard about the idea afterward. Mr. Geithner says, "I don't remember a serious discussion on that proposal then."
But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation's financiers from their own mistakes.
And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to "push the envelope," said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.
Today, Mr. Geithner is Treasury secretary, and as he seeks to rebuild the nation's fractured financial system with more taxpayer assistance and a regulatory overhaul, he finds himself a locus of discontent.
Even as banks complain that the government has attached too many intrusive strings to its financial assistance, a range of critics - lawmakers, economists and even former Federal Reserve colleagues - say that the bailout Mr. Geithner has played such a central role in fashioning is overly generous to the financial industry at taxpayer expense.
An examination of Mr. Geithner's five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street's giant financial institutions.
His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry's interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.
In a pair of recent interviews and an exchange of e-mail messages, Mr. Geithner defended his record, saying that from very early on, he was "a consistently dark voice about the potential risks ahead, and a principal source of initiatives designed to make the system stronger" before the markets started to collapse.
Mr. Geithner said his actions in the bailout were motivated solely by a desire to help businesses and consumers. But in a financial crisis, he added, "the government has to take risk, and we are going to be doing things which ultimately - in order to get the credit flowing again - are going to benefit the institutions that are at the core of the problem."
The New York Fed is, by custom and design, clubby and opaque. It is charged with curbing banks' risky impulses, yet its president is selected by and reports to a board dominated by the chief executives of some of those same banks. Traditionally, the New York Fed president's intelligence-gathering role has involved routine consultation with financiers, though Mr. Geithner's recent predecessors generally did not meet with them unless senior aides were also present, according to the bank's former general counsel.
By those standards, Mr. Geithner's reliance on bankers, hedge fund managers and others to assess the market's health - and provide guidance once it faltered - stood out.
His calendars from 2007 and 2008 show that those interactions were a mix of the professional and the private.
He ate lunch with senior executives from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley at the Four Seasons restaurant or in their corporate dining rooms. He attended casual dinners at the homes of executives like Jamie Dimon, a member of the New York Fed board and the chief of JPMorgan Chase.
Mr. Geithner was particularly close to executives of Citigroup, the largest bank under his supervision. Robert E. Rubin, a senior Citi executive and a former Treasury secretary, was Mr. Geithner's mentor from his years in the Clinton administration, and the two kept in close touch in New York.
Mr. Geithner met frequently with Sanford I. Weill, one of Citi's largest individual shareholders and its former chairman, serving on the board of a charity Mr. Weill led. As the bank was entering a financial tailspin, Mr. Weill approached Mr. Geithner about taking over as Citi's chief executive.
But for all his ties to Citi, Mr. Geithner repeatedly missed or overlooked signs that the bank - along with the rest of the financial system - was falling apart. When he did spot trouble, analysts say, his responses were too measured, or too late.
In 2005, for instance, Mr. Geithner raised questions about how well Wall Street was tracking its trading of complex financial products known as derivatives, yet he pressed reforms only at the margins. Problems with the risky and opaque derivatives market later amplified the economic crisis.
As late as 2007, Mr. Geithner advocated measures that government studies said would have allowed banks to lower their reserves. When the crisis hit, banks were vulnerable because their financial cushion was too thin to protect against large losses.
In fashioning the bailout, his drive to use taxpayer money to backstop faltering firms overrode concerns that such a strategy would encourage more risk-taking in the future. In one bailout instance, Mr. Geithner fought a proposal to levy fees on banks that would help protect taxpayers against losses.
The bailout has left the Fed holding a vast portfolio of troubled securities. To manage them, Mr. Geithner gave three no-bid contracts to BlackRock, an asset-management firm with deep ties to the New York Fed.
To Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia and a critic of the bailout, Mr. Geithner's actions suggest that he came to share Wall Street's regulatory philosophy and world view.
"I don't think that Tim Geithner was motivated by anything other than concern to get the financial system working again," Mr. Stiglitz said. "But I think that mindsets can be shaped by people you associate with, and you come to think that what's good for Wall Street is good for America."
In this case, he added, that "led to a bailout that was designed to try to get a lot of money to Wall Street, to share the largesse with other market participants, but that had deeply obvious flaws in that it put at risk the American taxpayer unnecessarily."
But Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in an interview that Mr. Geithner's Wall Street relationships made him "invaluable" as they worked together to steer the country through crisis.
"He spoke frequently to many, many different players and kept his finger on the pulse of the situation," Mr. Bernanke said. "He was the point person for me in many cases and with many individual firms so that we were prepared for any kind of emergency."
An Alternate Path
A revolving door has long connected Wall Street and the New York Fed. Mr. Geithner's predecessors, E. Gerald Corrigan and William J. McDonough, wound up as investment-bank executives. The current president, William C. Dudley, came from Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Geithner followed a different route. An expert in international finance, he served under both Clinton-era Treasury secretaries, Mr. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers. He impressed them with his handling of foreign financial crises in the late 1990s before landing a top job at the International Monetary Fund.
When the New York Fed was looking for a new president, both former secretaries were advisers to the bank's search committee and supported Mr. Geithner's candidacy. Mr. Rubin's seal of approval carried particular weight because he was by then a senior official at Citigroup.
Mr. Weill, Citigroup's architect, was a member of the New York Fed board when Mr. Geithner arrived. "He had a baby face," Mr. Weill recalled. "He didn't have a lot of experience in dealing with the industry."
But, he added, "He quickly earned the respect of just about everyone I know. His knowledge, his willingness to listen to people."
At the age of 42, Mr. Geithner took charge of a bank with enormous influence over the American economy.
Sitting like a fortress in the heart of Manhattan's financial district, the New York Fed is, by dint of the city's position as a world financial center, the most powerful of the 12 regional banks that make up the Federal Reserve system.
The Federal Reserve was created after a banking crisis nearly a century ago to manage the money supply through interest-rate policy, oversee the safety and soundness of the banking system and act as lender of last resort in times of trouble. The Fed relies on its regional banks, like the New York Fed, to carry out its policies and monitor certain banks in their areas.
The regional reserve banks are unusual entities. They are private and their shares are owned by financial institutions the bank oversees. Their net income is paid to the Treasury.
At the New York Fed, top executives of global financial giants fill many seats on the board. In recent years, board members have included the chief executives of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, as well as top officials of Lehman Brothers and industrial companies like General Electric.
In theory, having financiers on the New York Fed's board should help the president be Washington's eyes and ears on Wall Street. But critics, including some current and former Federal Reserve officials, say the New York Fed is often more of a Wall Street mouthpiece than a cop.
Willem H. Buiter, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science who caused a stir at a Fed retreat last year with a paper concluding that the Federal Reserve had been co-opted by the financial industry, said the structure ensured that "Wall Street gets what it wants" in its New York president: "A safe pair of hands, someone who is bright, intelligent, hard-working, but not someone who intends to reform the system root and branch."
Mr. Geithner took office during one of the headiest bull markets ever. Yet his most important task, he said in an interview, was to prepare banks for "the storm that we thought was going to come."
In his first speech as president in March 2004, he advised bankers to "build a sufficient cushion against adversity." Early on, he also spoke frequently about the risk posed by the explosion of derivatives, unregulated insurancelike products that many companies use to hedge their bets.
But Mr. Geithner acknowledges that "even with all the things that we took the initiative to do, I didn't think we achieved enough."
Derivatives were not an altogether new issue for him, since the Clinton Treasury Department had battled efforts to regulate the multitrillion-dollar market. As Mr. Geithner shaped his own approach, records and interviews show, he consulted veterans of that fight at Treasury, including Lewis A. Sachs, a close friend and tennis partner who managed a hedge fund.
Mr. Geithner pushed the industry to keep better records of derivative deals, a measure that experts credit with mitigating the chaos once firms began to topple. But he stopped short of pressing for comprehensive regulation and disclosure of derivatives trading and even publicly endorsed their potential to damp risk.
Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, who made early predictions of the crisis, said Mr. Geithner deserved credit for trying, especially given that the Fed chairman at the time, Alan Greenspan, was singing the praises of derivatives.
Even as Mr. Geithner was counseling banks to take precautions against adversity, some economists were arguing that easy credit was feeding a more obvious problem: a housing bubble.
Despite those warnings, a report released by the New York Fed in 2004 called predictions of gloom "flawed" and "unpersuasive." And as lending standards evaporated and the housing boom reached full throttle, banks plunged ever deeper into risky mortgage-backed securities and derivatives.
The nitty-gritty task of monitoring such risk-taking is done by 25 examiners at each large bank. Mr. Geithner reviewed his examiners' reports, but since they are not public, it is hard to fully assess the New York Fed's actions during that period.
Mr. Geithner said many of the New York Fed's supervisory actions could not be disclosed because of confidentiality issues. As a result, he added, "I realize I am vulnerable to a different narrative in that context."
The ultimate tool at Mr. Geithner's disposal for reining in unsafe practices was to recommend that the Board of Governors of the Fed publicly rebuke a bank with penalties or cease and desist orders. Under his watch, only three such actions were taken against big domestic banks; none came after 2006, when banks' lending practices were at their worst.
The Citigroup Challenge
Perhaps the central regulatory challenge for Mr. Geithner was Citigroup.
Cobbled together by Mr. Weill through a series of pell-mell acquisitions into the world's largest bank, Citigroup reached into every corner of the financial world: credit cards, auto loans, trading, investment banking, as well as mortgage securities and derivatives. But it was plagued by mismanagement and wayward banking practices.
In 2004, the New York Fed levied a $70 million penalty against Citigroup over the bank's lending practices. The next year, the New York Fed barred Citigroup from further acquisitions after the bank was involved in trading irregularities and questions about its operations. The New York Fed lifted that restriction in 2006, citing the company's "significant progress" in carrying out risk-control measures.
In fact, risk was rising to dangerous levels at Citigroup as the bank dove deeper into mortgage-backed securities.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2007, as subprime lenders began to fail and government officials reassured the public that the problems were contained, Mr. Geithner met repeatedly with members of Citigroup's management, records show.
From mid-May to mid-June alone, he met over breakfast with Charles O. Prince, the company's chief executive at the time, traveled to Citigroup headquarters in Midtown Manhattan to meet with Lewis B. Kaden, the company's vice chairman, and had coffee with Thomas G. Maheras, who ran some of the bank's biggest trading operations.
(Mr. Maheras's unit would later be roundly criticized for taking many of the risks that led Citigroup aground.)
His calendar shows that during that period he also had breakfast with Mr. Rubin. But in his conversations with Mr. Rubin, Mr. Geithner said, he did not discuss bank matters. "I did not do supervision with Bob Rubin," he said.
Any intelligence Mr. Geithner gathered in his meetings does not appear to have prepared him for the severity of the problems at Citigroup and beyond.
In a May 15, 2007, speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Mr. Geithner praised the strength of the nation's top financial institutions, saying that innovations like derivatives had "improved the capacity to measure and manage risk" and declaring that "the larger global financial institutions are generally stronger in terms of capital relative to risk."
Two days later, interviews and records show, he lobbied behind the scenes for a plan that a government study said could lead banks to reduce the amount of capital they kept on hand.
While waiting for a breakfast meeting with Mr. Weill at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Geithner phoned Mr. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, according to both men's calendars. Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were pushing for the new standards, which they said would make them more competitive. Records show that earlier that week, Mr. Geithner had discussed the issue with JPMorgan's chief, Mr. Dimon.
At the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures bank deposits, the chairwoman, Sheila C. Bair, argued that the new standards were tantamount to letting the banks set their own capital levels. Taxpayers, she warned, could be left "holding the bag" in a downturn. But Mr. Geithner believed that the standards would make the banks more sensitive to risk, Mr. Dugan recalled. The standards were adopted but have yet to go into effect.
Callum McCarthy, a former top British financial regulator, said regulators worldwide should have focused instead on how undercapitalized banks already were. "The problem is that people in banks overestimated their ability to manage risk, and we believed them."
By the fall of 2007, that was becoming clear. Citigroup alone would eventually require $45 billion in direct taxpayer assistance to stay afloat.
On Nov. 5, 2007, Mr. Prince stepped down as Citigroup's chief in the wake of multibillion-dollar mortgage write-downs. Mr. Rubin was named chairman, and the search for a new chief executive began. Mr. Weill had a perfect candidate: Mr. Geithner.
The two men had remained close. That past January, Mr. Geithner had joined the board of the National Academy Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Mr. Weill to help inner-city high school students prepare for the work force.
"I was a little worried about the implications," Mr. Geithner said, but added that he had accepted the unpaid post only after Mr. Weill had stepped down as Citigroup's chairman, and because it was a good cause that the Fed already supported.
Although Mr. Geithner was a headliner with Mr. Prince at a 2004 fundraiser that generated $1.1 million for the foundation, he said he did not raise money for the group once on the board. He attended regular foundation meetings at Mr. Weill's Midtown Manhattan office.
In addition to charity business, Mr. Weill said, the two men often spoke about what was happening at Citigroup. "It would be logical," he said.
On Nov. 6 and 7, 2007, as Mr. Geithner's bank examiners scrambled to assess Citigroup's problems, the two men spoke twice, records show, once for a half-hour on the phone and once for an hourlong meeting in Mr. Weill's office, followed by a National Academy Foundation cocktail reception.
Mr. Geithner also went to Citigroup headquarters for a lunch with Mr. Rubin on Nov. 16 and met with Mr. Prince on Dec. 4, records show.
Mr. Geithner acknowledged in an interview that Mr. Weill had spoken with him about the Citigroup job. But he immediately rejected the idea, he said, because he did not think he was right for the job.
"I told him I was not the right choice," Mr. Geithner said, adding that he then spoke to "one other board member to confirm after the fact that it did not make sense."
According to New York Fed officials, Mr. Geithner informed the reserve bank's lawyers about the exchange with Mr. Weill, and they told him to recuse himself from Citigroup business until the matter was resolved.
Mr. Geithner said he "would never put myself in a position where my actions were influenced by a personal relationship."
Other chief financial regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Company and the Securities and Exchange Commission say they keep officials from institutions they supervise at arm's length, to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. While the New York Fed's rules do not prevent its president from holding such one-on-one meetings, that was not the general practice of Mr. Geithner's recent predecessors, said Ernest T. Patrikis, a former general counsel and chief operating officer at the New York Fed.
"Typically, there would be senior staff there to protect against disputes in the future as to the nature of the conversations," he said.
Coping With Crisis
As Mr. Geithner sees it, most of the institutions hit hardest by the crisis were not under his jurisdiction - some foreign banks, mortgage companies and brokerage firms. But he acknowledges that "the thing I feel somewhat burdened by is that I didn't attempt to try to change the rules of the game on capital requirements early on," which could have left banks in better shape to weather the storm.
By last fall, it was too late. The government, with Mr. Geithner playing a lead role alongside Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, scurried to rescue the financial system from collapse. As the Fed became the biggest vehicle for the bailout, its balance sheet more than doubled, from $900 billion in October 2007 to more than $2 trillion today.
"I couldn't have cared less about Wall Street, but we faced a crisis that was going to cause enormous damage to the economy," Mr. Geithner said.
The first to fall was Bear Stearns, which had bet heavily on mortgages and by mid-March was tottering. Mr. Geithner and Mr. Paulson persuaded JPMorgan Chase to take over Bear. But to complete the deal, JPMorgan insisted that the government buy $29 billion in risky securities owned by Bear.
Some officials at the Federal Reserve feared encouraging risky behavior by bailing out an investment house that did not even fall under its umbrella. To Mr. Geithner's supporters, that he prevailed in the case of Bear and other bailout decisions is testament to his leadership.
"He was a leader in trying to come up with an aggressive set of policies so that it wouldn't get completely out of control," said Philipp Hildebrand, a top official at the Swiss National Bank who has worked with Mr. Geithner to coordinate an international response to the worldwide financial crisis.
But others are less enthusiastic. William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis until March 2008, said that the Fed, by effectively creating money out of thin air, not only runs the risk of "massive inflation" but has also done an end-run around Congressional power to control spending.
Many of the programs "ought to be legislated and shouldn't be in the Federal Reserve at all," he contended.
In making the Bear deal, the New York Fed agreed to accept Bear's own calculation of the value of assets acquired with taxpayer money, even though those values were almost certain to decline as the economy deteriorated. Although Fed officials argue that they can hold onto those assets until they increase in value, to date taxpayers have lost $3.4 billion. Even these losses are probably understated, given how the Federal Reserve priced the holdings, said Janet Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, a consulting firm in Chicago. "You can assume that it has used magical thinking in valuing these assets," she said.
Mr. Geithner played a pivotal role in the next bailout, which was even bigger - that of the American International Group, the insurance giant whose derivatives business had brought it to the brink of collapse in September. He also went to bat for Goldman Sachs, one of the insurer's biggest trading partners.
As A.I.G. bordered on bankruptcy, Mr. Geithner pressed first for a private sector solution. A.I.G. needed $60 billion to meet payments on insurance contracts it had written to protect customers against debt defaults.
A.I.G.'s chief executive at the time, Robert B. Willumstad, said he had hired bankers at JPMorgan to help it raise capital. Goldman Sachs had jockeyed for the job as well, but because the investment bank was one of A.I.G.'s biggest trading partners, Mr. Willumstad rejected the idea. The potential conflicts of interest, he believed, were too great.
Nevertheless, on Monday, Sept. 15, Mr. Geithner pushed A.I.G. to bring Goldman onto its team to raise capital, Mr. Willumstad said.
Mr. Geithner and Mr. Corrigan, a Goldman managing director, were close, speaking frequently and sometimes lunching together at Goldman headquarters. On that day, the company's chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, was at the New York Fed.
A Goldman spokesman said, "We don't believe anyone at Goldman Sachs asked Mr. Geithner to include the firm in the assignment." Mr. Geithner said he had suggested Goldman get involved because the situation was chaotic and "time was running out."
But A.I.G.'s search for capital was fruitless. By late Tuesday afternoon, the government would step in with an $85 billion loan, the first installment of a bailout that now stands at $182 billion. As part of the bailout, A.I.G.'s trading partners, including Goldman, were compensated fully for money owed to them by A.I.G.
Analysts say the New York Fed should have pressed A.I.G.'s trading partners to take a deep discount on what they were owed. But Mr. Geithner said he had no bargaining power because he was unwilling to threaten A.I.G.'s trading partners with a bankruptcy by the insurer for fear of further destabilizing the system.
A recent report on the A.I.G. bailout by the Government Accountability Office found that taxpayers may never get their money back.
The Debt Guarantee
Over Columbus Day weekend last fall, with the market gripped by fear and banks refusing to lend to one another, a somber group gathered in an ornate conference room across from Mr. Paulson's office at the Treasury.
Mr. Paulson, Mr. Bernanke, Ms. Bair and others listened as Mr. Geithner made his pitch, according to four participants. Mr. Geithner, in the words of one participant, was "hell bent" on a plan to use the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to guarantee debt issued by bank holding companies.
It was a variation on Mr. Geithner's once-unthinkable plan to have the government guarantee all bank debt.
The idea of putting the government behind debt issued by banking and investment companies was a momentous shift, an assistant Treasury secretary, David G. Nason, argued. Mr. Geithner wanted to give the banks the guarantee free, saying in a recent interview that he felt that charging them would be "counterproductive." But Ms. Bair worried that her agency - and ultimately taxpayers - would be left vulnerable in the event of a default.
Mr. Geithner's program was enacted and to date has guaranteed $340 billion in loans to banks. But Ms. Bair prevailed on taking fees for the guarantees, and the government so far has collected $7 billion.
Mr. Geithner has also faced scrutiny over how well taxpayers were served by his handling of another aspect of the bailout: three no-bid contracts the New York Fed awarded to BlackRock, a money management firm, to oversee troubled assets acquired by the bank.
BlackRock was well known to the Fed. Mr. Geithner socialized with Ralph L. Schlosstein, who founded the company and remains a large shareholder, and has dined at his Manhattan home. Peter R. Fisher, who was a senior official at the New York Fed until 2001, is a managing director at BlackRock.
Mr. Schlosstein said that while he and Mr. Geithner spoke frequently, BlackRock's work for the Fed never came up.
"Conversations with Tim were appropriately a one-way street. He'd call you and pepper you with a bunch of questions and say thank you very much and hang up," he said. "My experience with Tim is that he makes those kinds of decisions 100 percent based on capability and zero about relationships."
For months, New York Fed officials declined to make public details of the contract, which has become a flash point with some lawmakers who say the Fed's handling of the bailout is too secretive. New York Fed officials initially said in interviews that they could not disclose the fees because they had agreed with BlackRock to keep them confidential in exchange for a discount.
The contract terms they subsequently disclosed to The New York Times show that the contract is worth at least $71.3 million over three years. While that rate is largely in keeping with comparable fees for such services, analysts say it is hardly discounted.
Mr. Geithner said he hired BlackRock because he needed its expertise during the Bear Stearns-JPMorgan negotiations. He said most of the other likely candidates had conflicts, and he had little time to shop around. Indeed, the deal was cut so quickly that they worked out the fees only after the firm was hired.
But since then, the New York Fed has given two more no-bid contracts to BlackRock related to the A.I.G. bailout, angering a number of BlackRock's competitors. The fees on those contracts remain confidential.
Vincent Reinhart, a former senior Federal Reserve official, said a more open process might have yielded a better deal for the taxpayers.
"They may have been able to convince themselves that this was the only way to go, but it sounds to me like nobody stepped back and said, 'What's this going to look like to the outside world,'" he said.
Rescues Revisited
As Mr. Geithner runs the Treasury and administration officials signal more bailout money may be needed, the specter of bailouts past haunts his efforts.
He recently weathered a firestorm over retention payments to A.I.G. executives made possible in part by language inserted in the administration's stimulus package at the Treasury Department's insistence. And his new efforts to restart the financial industry suggest the same philosophy that guided Mr. Geithner's Fed years.
According to a recent report by the inspector general monitoring the bailout, Neil M. Barofsky, Mr. Geithner's plan to underwrite investors willing to buy the risky mortgage-backed securities still weighing down banks' books is a boon for private equity and hedge funds but exposes taxpayers to "potential unfairness" by shifting the burden to them.
The top echelon of the Treasury Department is a common destination for financiers, and Mr. Geithner has also recruited aides from Wall Street, some from firms that were at the heart of the crisis. For instance, his chief of staff, Mark A. Patterson, is a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, and one of his top counselors is Lewis S. Alexander, a former chief economist at Citigroup.
A bill sent recently by the Treasury to Capitol Hill would give the Obama administration extensive new powers to inject money into or seize systemically important firms in danger of failure. It was drafted in large measure by Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm that represents many banks and the financial industry's lobbying group. Mr. Geithner also hired Davis Polk to represent the New York Fed during the A.I.G. bailout.
Treasury officials say they inadvertently used a copy of Davis Polk's draft sent to them by the Federal Reserve as a template for their own bill, with the result that the proposed legislation Treasury sent to Capitol Hill bore the law firm's computer footprints. And they point to several significant changes to that draft that "better protect the taxpayer," in the words of Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman.
But others say important provisions in the original industry bill remain. Most significant, the bill does not require that any government rescue of a troubled firm be done at the lowest possible cost, as is required by the F.D.I.C. when it takes over a failed bank. Treasury officials said that is because they would use the rescue powers only in rare and extreme cases that might require flexibility. Karen Shaw Petrou, managing director of the Washington research firm Federal Financial Analytics, said it essentially gives Treasury "a blank check."
One year and two administrations into the bailout, Mr. Geithner is perhaps the single person most identified with the enormous checks the government has written. At every turn, he is being second-guessed about the rescues' costs and results. But he remains firm in his belief that failure to act would have been much more costly.
"All financial crises are a fight over how much losses the government ultimately takes on," he said. And every decision "requires we balance how to achieve the most benefits in terms of improving confidence and the flow of credit at the least risk to taxpayers."
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11) After a U.S. Raid: 2 Iraqis Dead, Protests and Regrets
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - American troops killed two Iraqis on Sunday during an early morning raid in southern Iraq that set off public protests and drew a pointed complaint from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the operation violated a new security agreement between Iraq and the United States.
The raid was not the first violent episode involving American forces to provoke a public dispute since the security agreement took effect in January, but it quickly became the most serious test so far of the agreement's carefully negotiated provisions.
Mr. Maliki, in a statement read Sunday evening on the state's television network, Al Iraqiya, criticized the raid as a violation of the agreement and called for the American military to "hand over those responsible for this crime to the courts."
Under the agreement, Americans can theoretically be charged by Iraqi authorities, but only in extremely rare cases in which they are not "on duty." The raid nonetheless set the stage for a potentially contentious dispute at a time when American troops are preparing to withdraw.
The operation underscored the confusion and anger stemming from raids against people suspected of being extremists now that the Iraqis are officially in charge of security across the country.
By the end of the day, the raid appeared to have been a mistake in the first place, as six men arrested in the operation by the Americans were released after being questioned in Baghdad. The American commander in the region, Col. Richard M. Francey Jr., joined senior Iraqi officials on Sunday evening at a news conference in Kut, the city south of Baghdad where the raid took place, and apologized.
The American military command in Baghdad said in a statement that it did not retract its position that the operation was aimed at suspected Shiite militants and that it was "fully coordinated and approved by the Iraqi government."
Regional officials and commanders from the Ministry of Defense provided contradictory accounts on Sunday.
Hundreds of people, including relatives and neighbors of those killed, as well as police officers, gathered near the offices of the provincial council in Kut, the regional capital of Wasit Province, a largely Shiite province bordering Iran. They chanted "No, no to America," "No, no to occupation" and "No, no to Israel."
Latif al-Turfa, Wasit's governor, said that the operation violated the security agreement and added that one of those arrested, a police captain, was "a good person in the province." A member of Wasit's provincial council, Alaa Hussein Hachim, denounced the operation as "such an ugly crime."
The Defense Ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, said that two Iraqi Army commanders in the region had been detained and accused of not informing their superiors about the operation.
That suggested that some Iraqi commanders knew of the raid in advance, though it was not immediately clear who authorized it and whether the American troops possessed an arrest warrant, as required under the agreement. The American military declined to answer any questions, referring repeatedly to its initial statement.
According to the American military and witnesses, American troops arrived early Sunday at a house belonging to a local sheik, Ahmed Abdul Sada. The military's statement said the troops opened fire when "an individual with a weapon came out of the home."
"Forces assessed him to be hostile, and they engaged the man, killing him," the American statement said. "During the engagement, a woman in the area moved into the line of fire and was also struck by gunfire."
A medic treated her at the house, but she died before being evacuated for treatment, the statement said. The woman was Sheik Ahmed's wife, Azhar, his relatives said. The other person killed was the sheik's brother Khalid, a policeman.
The American statement said that troops arrested six people, including Sheik Ahmed, suspected of belonging to the Mahdi Army and the Promise Day Brigade, both Shiite militias suspected of carrying out attacks against American and Iraqi forces.
By late afternoon, however, the men returned home. Sheik Ahmed said in an interview on Sunday evening that his wife, in a panic, had picked up a rifle when the Americans burst into their home in the middle of the night.
"If the Americans had only knocked, we would have cooperated," he said. "Instead they came from four corners."
He and his brother Ayad said they had been flown by helicopter to a military base in Baghdad and questioned before being released with an apology. " 'You are not the people we want,' " Ayad Abdul Sada said an American told him.
A delegation of American and Iraqi officers later visited the raided house and the provincial council to express condolences and apologies. "It is really a tragedy, and I express my deep regret and apologies to all the families that lost victims," Colonel Francey said at the news conference in Kut.
He added that the operation had not been carried out by troops based in Wasit. That, and comments by Iraqi officials, suggested that American Special Operations forces, whose missions are shrouded in secrecy, carried out the raid.
Anwar J. Ali contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kut, Iraq.
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12) More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?ref=us
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying "Don't Believe in God? You Are Not Alone," the group's 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman's living room to grapple with the fallout.
The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.
And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.
"Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?" asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of "ayes."
More than ever, America's atheists are linking up and speaking out - even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words "I Believe" (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).
They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.
They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.
"It's not about carrying banners or protesting," said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. "The most important thing is coming out of the closet."
Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed "no religion" were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.
Nationally, the "nones" in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the "nones" are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.
Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration's embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.
Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.
A wave of donations, some in the millions of dollars, has enabled the hiring of more paid professional organizers, said Fred Edwords, a longtime atheist leader who just started his own umbrella group, the United Coalition of Reason, which plans to spawn 20 local groups around the country in the next year.
Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.
Over lunch with some new atheist joiners at a downtown Charleston restaurant serving shrimp and grits, one young mother said that her husband was afraid to allow her to go public as an atheist because employers would refuse to hire him.
But another member, Beverly Long, a retired school administrator who now teaches education at the Citadel, said that when she first moved to Charleston from Toronto in 2001, "the first question people asked me was, What church do you belong to?" Ms. Long attended Wednesday dinners at a Methodist church, for the social interaction, but never felt at home. Since her youth, she had doubted the existence of God but did not discuss her views with others.
Ms. Long found the secular humanists through a newspaper advertisement and attended a meeting. Now, she is ready to go public, she said, especially after doing some genealogical research recently. "I had ancestors who fought in the American Revolution so I could speak my mind," she said.
Until recent years, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry were local pariahs. Mr. Silverman - whose specialty license plate, one of many offered by the state, says "In Reason We Trust" - was invited to give the invocation at the Charleston City Council once, but half the council members walked out. The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity would not let the Secular Humanists volunteer to build houses wearing T-shirts that said "Non Prophet Organization," he said.
When their billboard went up in January, with their Web site address displayed prominently, they expected hate mail.
"But most of the e-mails were grateful," said Laura Kasman, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The board members meeting in the Kasmans' living room were an unlikely mix that included a gift store owner, a builder, a grandmother, a retired nursing professor, a retired Navy officer, an administrator at a primate sanctuary and a church musician. They are also diverse in their attitudes toward religion.
Loretta Haskell, the church musician, said: "I did struggle at one point as to whether or not I should be making music in churches, given my position on things. But at the same time I like using my music to move people, to give them comfort. And what I've found is, I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing."
The group has had mixed reactions to President Obama, who acknowledged nonbelievers in his inauguration speech. "I sent him a thank-you note," Ms. Kasman said. But Sharon Fratepietro, who is married to Mr. Silverman, said, "It seemed like one long religious ceremony, with a moment of lip service."
Part of what is giving the movement momentum is the proliferation of groups on college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance now has 146 chapters, up from 42 in 2003.
At the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, 19 students showed up for a recent evening meeting of the "Pastafarians," named for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - a popular spoof on religion dreamed up by an opponent of intelligent design, the idea that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.
Andrew Cederdahl, the group's co-founder, asked for volunteers for the local food bank and for a coming debate with a nearby Christian college. Then Mr. Cederdahl opened the floor to members to tell their "coming out stories."
Andrew Morency, who attended a Christian high school, said that when he got to college and studied evolutionary biology he decided that "creationists lie."
Josh Streetman, who once attended the very Christian college that the Pastafarians were about to debate, said he knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true. Like Mr. Streetman, many of the other students at the meeting were highly literate in the Bible and religious history.
In keeping with the new generation of atheist evangelists, the Pastafarian leaders say that their goal is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public's stereotype of atheists. A favorite Pastafarian activity is to gather at a busy crossroads on campus with a sign offering "Free Hugs" from "Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist."
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13) Seeing Warning Signs of Outbreak, School Nurse Set Response in Motion
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27response.html?ref=nyregion
It was a routine call last Thursday from a diligent high school nurse that put health detectives in New York City on the trail of a swine flu outbreak. Over the next few days, things unfolded much like a criminal investigation, with alert epidemiologists cast in the role of the police officer who remembers information on a wanted poster.
But as so often happens in New York, the arrest - or in this case, getting the evidence that clinched the diagnosis - was almost prevented by a traffic jam.
The detective story behind the discovery of a new strain of flu in New York City emerged Sunday as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that eight cases of swine flu at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens had been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as the federal government declared a national public health emergency.
As of Sunday evening, public health officials said that there were 20 confirmed cases in the United States and that they expected that number to rise.
At a morning news conference in Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg and the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said that a review of emergency room admissions, drug prescriptions and data collected from doctors across the city indicated that the outbreak in Queens was at that point the only sign of the new strain of flu in New York City.
Dr. Frieden said initial fears of an outbreak at a day care center in the Tremont section of the Bronx appeared to be unfounded, with tests on five of six children coming up negative for swine flu and the testing of the sixth child continuing. Results were also negative, he said, for the children of two families in Manhattan who had recently returned from Mexico and reported flulike symptoms.
The city's health department was accelerating its computerized early warning system for outbreaks, known as the syndromic surveillance system, Dr. Frieden said. Expanded after Sept. 11, 2001, out of concern for a bioterrorist attack, the system feeds electronic reports of certain symptoms, or syndromes, to the city's health department, and can quickly detect patterns.
The detective story involving St. Francis began with a school nurse, who called the city's school health nurse on Thursday to report about 75 students with symptoms including upset stomach, nausea and fever. The city nurse was struck by the number of cases and consulted her medical director, who told her to alert the nurse at the Bureau of Communicable Disease, officials said.
Several people at the bureau simultaneously began to consider the possibility of swine flu, because they had heard from other state and federal agencies that it appeared to have crossed the border from Mexico into California. Dr. Scott A. Harper, a medical epidemiologist at the bureau, remembers his colleagues saying: If it could reach California, then why not New York?
A team from the health department arrived at St. Francis about 1:30 p.m. Friday, by which time the number of sick students had risen to about 150, according to Brother Leonard Conway, the school's principal. In interviews, investigators learned that some students had been to Mexico for spring break. A second team was called to come and take specimens for testing.
The traffic Friday afternoon was bad, Dr. Harper said, and the second team did not arrive until 3:30. "You can imagine on Friday afternoon, there are a number of logistical barriers to surmount," he said.
By the time the second crew arrived, almost all the students had been picked up by their parents and gone home, the principal said. The second team was able to test nine students - five who had remained at the school nurse's office, and four others who had visited a local doctor. The investigators called the students' parents, and got permission to test them. Eight of the nine samples were determined to be Type A flu of a subtype they could not identify, meaning a new strain that the city had not yet encountered. Following protocol, the samples were flown to the Centers for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta on Saturday, where the strain was confirmed as the swine flu.
On Sunday, St. Francis announced that it would be closed Monday and Tuesday, and a cleaning company began sanitizing the building.
"There is a bit of panic out there over this, and I'm telling them that they should call their doctor, or if there are no other choices, go to an emergency room," Brother Conway said.
Dr. Frieden said that in the next phase of the investigation, the city would try to track where in Mexico the St. Francis students went, and how the flu might have been transmitted.
"We're by no means out of the woods, not even close to it," Dr. Frieden said. "Every night that we don't have a lot of people going to emergency rooms is one that the next day we breathe a little easier."
Nevertheless, the health department has been on high alert since Thursday, calling in 200 employees to work on the swine flu outbreak.
The city's health agency, Dr. Frieden said, would be checking every 12 hours to determine if any of the roughly 60,000 patients who are admitted to emergency rooms in a typical day had flu symptoms. If authorities find a case of swine flu serious enough to require hospitalization, it would indicate the need to mobilize resources like antiviral drugs and respirators, officials said.
Mr. Bloomberg tried to tamp down any growing sense of panic, saying Sunday that his advice to New Yorkers was to "just go about your business, enjoy the good weather."
He encouraged people with flu symptoms not to go to the hospital unless they were seriously ill, because such an enclosed and sometimes crowded environment could become an incubator for further outbreaks.
And though the city has neighborhoods with large Mexican populations, city officials said there was no reason to focus on those communities because the flu spreads quickly.
Later Sunday, Gov. David A. Paterson said that he considered the declaration of a federal emergency to be proactive, and noted that such emergencies had been declared for floods in the Dakotas and for crowds gathered for the presidential inauguration. "This is a situation that we're monitoring, but we don't see any real danger ahead," Mr. Paterson said.
If travelers and workers at Kennedy International Airport were any guide, the swine flu outbreak had not totally sunk into the public consciousness.
Alberto Fernandez, 24, a construction worker who lives in New York City and had just returned from Mexico on Sunday, was typical of travelers interviewed at the airport. "Sure, it concerns me, because I don't want to get sick," Mr. Fernandez said. "But let's face it, this is really not a big deal. I'm really not the least bit afraid of catching this in New York."
Angela Macropoulos, Mick Meenan and Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
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14) Advocates Fear City Budget Cuts Will Put Children at Risk
By JULIE BOSMAN
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27acs.html?ref=nyregion
The threat of more than $83 million in budget cuts at New York City's child-welfare agency has left advocates for children afraid that recent improvements in its operations, including reduced caseloads, could be threatened.
To bring the agency's budget down to the size that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has requested, officials at the Administration for Children's Services have prepared to reduce preventive services, institute a 5 percent cut in fees to foster-care agencies that hold contracts with the city and lay off more than 550 of its more than 6,800 employees.
The cuts would be the largest since John B. Mattingly became commissioner of the agency in 2004, and among the most severe reductions since it was created as a stand-alone department in 1996. The city, meanwhile, is receiving a steadily increasing number of reports of abuse and neglect - 65,856 in 2008, up from 63,434 the year before.
"As the economic crisis worsens, there are probably going to be more families who need services," said Stephanie Gendell, an associate executive director of the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, an advocacy group. "It's not like A.C.S. has become less busy."
Jennifer Marino Rojas, the deputy director of the Children's Defense Fund-New York and a former associate commissioner at the Administration for Children's Services, said the cuts could not come at a worse moment. "A.C.S. was just getting the resources it needed to better respond to the needs of children and families," she said.
"And now to start chipping away at that again really does threaten the stability of the agency."
Perhaps the biggest fear is that the average caseload could balloon, after an intense effort to bring it to its current level, just under 12, from 21 three years ago. A children's services spokeswoman, Sharman Stein, said she could not say that child-protective workers, who investigate reports of abuse and neglect, would be spared from layoffs; Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said, "It's an issue we have to look at very carefully."
"We have a goal of reducing costs while continuing the progress made in reducing caseloads," Mr. La Vorgna said.
In a statement sent by e-mail, Mr. Mattingly said he would try to keep caseloads at the current levels.
"These manageable caseloads are a critical element in our ability to do strong, thorough protective investigations," he said. "Children's services has committed to the children and families of this city that we will continue to strengthen and improve our child-protective work." The city budget process is still underway; Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to present his proposal on Friday.
The Administration for Children's Services was founded in 1996, after the much-publicized beating death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, who was killed by her mother. In response to the public outcry, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani removed child-welfare programs from the Human Resources Administration, then the umbrella agency for all city social services, and promised a renewed focus on protecting children.
After a string of high-profile deaths of children in 2006 - including that of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, who was found abused and starved in her home - Mr. Mattingly instituted a series of changes, beefing up child-protective services, vastly increasing the amount of money spent on family support programs, reducing caseloads and shifting more responsibility to foster-care agencies.
But if Mr. Mattingly plans to prioritize child-protective caseloads, the proposed budget cuts would eliminate some preventive services and reduce others. These programs, which are administered through contracted agencies, address problems in families through parenting classes, housing advocacy or domestic violence counseling, for example, and can often keep children with their parents and out of foster care. Officials from the 36 foster-care agencies that hold contracts with the city have been told to prepare for a 5 percent cut in their fees, a reduction that many agency directors said could be devastating.
James F. Purcell, chief executive officer of the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, said that if there was less money to work with, "kids are going to stay in foster care even longer, and they're already in care a very long time." Jeremy Kohomban, the president and chief executive of Children's Village, said he was planning to lay off several employees. Bill Baccaglini, the executive director of the New York Foundling, one of the city's oldest and largest foster-care agencies, said the cuts would mean a loss of roughly $500,000.
According to data compiled in Child Welfare Watch, a biannual report published by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, preventive programs were operating at full capacity through most of 2008.
"A.C.S. is relying a lot more heavily on preventive services than it did, say, six years ago, and this means the caseloads are probably going to go up," said Andrew White, the director of the center. "And it means there won't be the kind of growth in family and children's services that we need to diffuse the kinds of crises that send kids into foster care."
Some of the layoffs within the city agency itself appear to be in line with Mr. Mattingly's goals under Improved Outcomes for Children, an initiative begun in 2007 to delegate more responsibility and decision-making to the outside foster-care agencies. Several directors of the agencies said they were not concerned that many of the city positions would be eliminated.
But many of the proposed cuts are of positions that provide support to child-protective workers, like administrative staff, computer technicians and drivers.
In 2006, the agency began building a staff of 60 former police detectives who work as investigative consultants. Ten of those positions will be cut.
"The burden will fall on the child-protective workers, because they won't have the supports that help them manage the cases and move the cases along," said Faye Moore, president of the Social Service Employees Union.
Some advocates predicted that the budget cuts were only the beginning. Even if the economy begins to recover, they said, another round of reductions was possible in the fall.
"We finally started to get it right after Nixzmary Brown," said Bill de Blasio, a city councilman from Brooklyn who is chairman of the General Welfare Committee. "Now, by definition, it will be much harder to keep up with the cases, it'll be much harder to protect kids, and this level of cut at a single agency suggests that we are not making this agency a priority."
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15) Chrysler and Union Agree to Deal Before Federal Deadline
By NICK BUNKLEY and BILL VLASIC
April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/business/27chrysler.html?ref=business
DETROIT - Union leaders said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with Chrysler that meets federal requirements for the automaker to receive more financing.
The deal includes Fiat, the Italian automaker with which Chrysler was ordered by the government to form an alliance before Thursday.
Neither the United Automobile Workers union nor the company released details of the tentative agreement, which would modify the union's 2007 contract and reduce the amount of money Chrysler must pay into a new health fund for retirees.
The union plans to have its 26,000 Chrysler workers vote on the deal by Wednesday.
Chrysler said the agreement, reached during marathon negotiations over the weekend, satisfied the requirements laid out by the Obama administration for a deal by an April 30 deadline.
Even with the agreement, Chrysler is expected to seek Chapter 11 protection, in a case mapped out by the government in advance, including safeguards meant to protect worker benefits, people with knowledge of the company's plans said Sunday night.
A new company would be set up with the best assets of Chrysler, these people said. Fiat of Italy would own 20 percent to 35 percent of the new Chrysler, they said, with the government also holding a stake. Some of the equity in the new company would also be given to Chrysler's creditors as repayment.
These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the deals had not been finalized.
The Treasury Department has also reached an agreement with Daimler of Germany, the former owner of Chrysler, to settle tax and other claims left over from its sale of Chrysler in 2007 to Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm.
In order to persuade the union to back the sale to Cerberus, Daimler agreed to pay $1 billion to Chrysler if the company's pension plans were terminated in a subsequent bankruptcy filing. Details of the Treasury's deal with Daimler were not available.
Last week, the union reached an agreement in principle with the administration and Chrysler that would protect workers' pensions in the event of a bankruptcy filing and provide for a change in the financing of a health care trust set up in 2007.
Under that pension deal, workers would lose some benefits after the bankruptcy filing but would receive more protection than they would with a Chapter 11 filing that lacked government direction, people with knowledge of the agreement said.
Chrysler, which has received $4 billion in federal loans, is in the final stages of a reorganization process ordered by the government, which includes a mandate to provide financing for half of all union retiree health care using company stock.
In a statement Sunday night, Chrysler said the union agreement "provides the framework needed to ensure manufacturing competitiveness and helps to meet the guidelines set forth by the U.S. Treasury Department."
Meanwhile, the Canadian Automobile Workers union said Sunday that its members had ratified a cost-cutting deal covering 8,000 Chrysler workers in that country. The deal, which is expected to lead to similar cuts for Canadian workers at General Motors and Ford Motor, cuts workers' benefits, reduces time off and creates a health care trust for retirees.
The union said 87 percent of its members voted in favor of the deal, even though the union's president, Ken Lewenza, described the negotiation process as "torturous and unfair."
G.M. is set to unveil a revised revamping plan on Monday.
The union deals increase pressure on Chrysler's lenders to come to an agreement to reduce the automaker's $6.9 billion in secured debt. The lenders, a group of banks and private funds led by JPMorgan Chase, are still in talks with Treasury officials over terms of a debt-for-equity exchange to eliminate at least two-thirds of the debt.
Talks between the government and the lenders have picked up in recent days, with four proposals having passed between them. While a gap remains over how much the creditors should be repaid - as of Sunday, the two sides were about $2.25 billion apart - it has shrunk over the last two weeks.
In February, Chrysler said bankruptcy would most likely result in the liquidation of the company. But since then, the company has signaled that it could file for bankruptcy protection without having to shut down.
"My sense is that it's not liquidation, that it would be a reorganization," a Detroit-area Chrysler dealer, Carl Galeana, said Sunday. "I just think a shutdown of a corporation this size, in this economy, would be devastating."
Micheline Maynard contributed reporting from Detroit, and Michael J. de la Merced from New York.
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16) And So It Goes ...
By Dahr Jamail
Truthout, April 27, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/042709R?print
Last week found Iraq swimming in blood once again. Attacks last Thursday brought the worst violence Iraq has seen in over a year, with at least 96 Iraqis killed and 157 wounded in two massive suicide bombings. Over 35 bombings have rocked Baghdad this month alone. There appears to be no end in sight for the escalating violence. For an Obama administration that plans to keep at least 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, look no further for a justification in doing so.
On Friday, further slaughter assaulted Iraq, with 93 killed and another 163 wounded as the attacks continued unabated. Saturday was a light day, with "only" 15 Iraqis killed and 22 wounded, while Iraqi security forces reportedly defused 20 bombs and two booby-trapped cars in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, violence most likely related to the growing battle between government forces and the Sahwa, who are stepping up attacks against government and U.S. forces, continues. In the last three days, clashes erupted at a police checkpoint in Fallujah, three men were killed while planting an improvised explosive device (IED) in Khanaqin, three Sahwa fighters were arrested north of Babel while planting an IED, an IED targeting Sahwa members in Udhaim killed three members and wounded three others, gunmen killed a member of the Sahwa in Mussayab, a car bomb was defused in Fallujah and two Sahwa members were wounded in a blast in Iskandariya. And, by the way, at least five U.S. soldiers have been killed in the last five days.
Sunday found another 12 Iraqis killed and five wounded. A U.S. military raid of a home in Kut brought the deaths of a man and his sister-in-law, who just happened to be the wife of a local clan leader; additionally, four Iraqis, one of them, a police officer, were arrested. Protests erupted as angry Iraqis denounced the raid. During a funeral procession in Kut where the cloth-draped coffins of the dead were carried, protesters called the Americans "criminal occupiers" and demanded the release of the seized men. "We condemn this horrific incident," said Latif al-Tarfa, governor of Wasit province, "It violates the agreements between U.S. forces and the Iraqi government. Innocent people were killed and the city is now very tense. They were poor people. They do not cause any political or security problems."
U.S. forces denied killing the man and claimed the death of the woman was "accidental." They also claimed they had full permission from Iraqi authorities. Contradicting this U.S. military propaganda, Maliki viewed the U.S. military raid as a crime that violated a bilateral security pact, and wants U.S. forces to hand those responsible to the courts, an Iraqi official in the office of Maj. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, the Baghdad security spokesman, told reporters. "The general commander (Maliki) is affirming that the killing of two citizens and detaining others in Kut is considered a violation of the security pact. He asks the commander of the multinational forces to release the detainees and hand over those responsible for this crime to the courts."
Make no mistake about it-there is a war on. The floodgates of hell have once again been opened, largely as the result of U.S. unwillingness to pressure the Maliki government to back off its ongoing attacks against the U.S.-created Sahwa, which have led to the Sahwa walking off their security posts in many areas, which has been a green light for al-Qaeda to resume its operations in Iraq. In addition, many of the Sahwa forces, weary of not being paid promised wages from the government, as well as broken promises by the occupiers of their country, have resumed attacks against U.S. forces. Again, there doesn't appear to be anything in the short term to indicate these trends will stop.
General Patraeus, as part of his ongoing efforts to take responsibility for the hell he helped create in Iraq, laughably blamed the recent attacks in Baghdad on "Tunisians."
Conveniently, during her recent visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while perched in the surreal Green Zone which is floating atop a sea of Iraqi blood, had the gall to claim "that Iraq is going in the right direction" and that the recent violence does "not reflect any diversion from the security progress that has been made" in Iraq. The primary reason for her unannounced visit was to reassure Prime Minister Maliki that if the violence continues to worsen, the Obama administration would back off its so-called withdrawal plan. Let us not forget the context of this visit-in addition to the hellish week Iraq has just experienced, overall violence there has been on the rise for the last two months.
Along with leaving up to 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, the plan to remove many of the other troops by August 2010 is slipping into the background as the justifications for remaining in Iraq are now being placed in the foreground. Iraq is Obama's occupation now, and circumstances there are ripping away the mask of any promised "change."
Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years.
-Truthout, April 27, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/042709R?print
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17) Web-savvy Japanese Communist party's message of welfare and jobs lures young voters away from sleazed-mired political mainstream
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk
Monday 27 April 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/japanese-communist-party-resurgence
Faced with an economy in steep decline, rising unemployment and an uncertain future, a growing number of Japanese are shunning the conservative consensus and turning instead to a new brand of cuddly communism.
While the leaders of Japan's two main political parties battle poor opinion poll ratings and accusations of sleaze, the Japanese Communist party (JCP) has seen its fortunes transformed after years of being dismissed as an irrelevant hangover from the cold war.
In the last 16 months membership has soared to more than 410,000 as the revamped party courts younger voters from the working poor. Of the 14,000 people to have joined since the end of 2007, about a quarter are aged under 30, the party says. That contrasts with the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP), whose membership has plummeted from 5 million at its peak to about a million today.
By dispensing with ideological rhetoric and focusing on welfare and jobs, the JCP has struck a chord with students, the unemployed and the estimated 10 million Japanese earning less than 2m yen (about £14,000) a year.
Yasuhisa Wakabayashi is typical of the new Japanese communist. The 23-year-old Yokohama factory worker joined the party in January. "Unlike the mainstream parties, the communists aren't interested in seeking donations from major corporations," he said. "They talk about education and welfare and the problems of ordinary people. And they are honest."
The JCP is making its presence felt on the internet. Among its clips is a rousing tirade by the party's affable leader, Kazuo Ishii, against the exploitation of contract workers, which has been viewed more than 100,000 times on YouTube.
The circulation of its official newspaper Akahata (the Red Flag) has risen for eight straight months to 1.6m, although it is still a long way short of its 1980 peak of 3.5m.
The JCP also owes some of its success to a novel published in 1929. Kanikosen (The Crab Ship), a Marxist-inspired account of rebellion, sold over half a million copies last year after it became required reading on restless university campuses.
Despite its resurgence, few believe the party will play a pivotal role in national politics. It has just nine seats in the 480-seat lower house, and is hampered by an electoral system that penalises minor parties.
JCP officials insist they will play no part in a coalition, not even if it means turfing the LDP out of office for only the second time in 54 years. "We would co-operate on individual policies but we wouldn't be part of a coalition," said Kimitoshi Morihara of the party's international bureau. "There is no difference between the LDP and Minshuto [the main opposition party] on the economy, defence or any of the big issues of the day. But we are different."
The JCP is barely recognisable from the party of 30 years ago. Now, dialectic materialism has been replaced by a commitment to "democratic change within the current framework of capitalism".
"The JCP of today is very different," said Go Ito, a professor of politics at Meiji University in Tokyo. "The modern party is pragmatic, which is why it has managed to tap into the dissatisfaction being felt right across Japanese society."
guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
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18) Free Ehren Watada!
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada ).
For updates on the Campaign to Free Ehren Watada, go to
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
Hi folks,
Here's the latest development in the Ehren Watada campaign! We have
learned that the Army is awaiting word from the Justice Dept. as to whether or
not to proceed with appealing the double jeopardy decision. Please act
immediately on this email alert, and forward it to all who may be interested.
Thanks very much.
yours in peace,
Mike Wong
AD HOC CAMPAIGN TO FREE EHREN WATADA
End the U.S. Army's Prosecution of Lt. Ehren Watada
The Justice Department Can Say No to Army's Legal Appeal
In June 2006, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada refused orders to Iraq on the
grounds that the war was illegal and immoral. His court martial in February
2007 ended in an Army-contrived mistrial. In October 2007, the Army attempt to
have a second court martial was stopped by a Federal judge who ruled that a
second court martial would be double jeopardy. But the Army has not allowed Lt.
Watada to leave military service. Instead, they have notified the U.S. Court of
Appeals, Ninth Circuit of their plans to appeal the double jeopardy ruling. The
Army has also threatened to revive old charges stemming from Lt. Watada's
speech in Seattle to the 2006 convention of Veterans For Peace.
Justice Department to Decide If Army Will Appeal Double Jeopardy Ruling
The U.S. Solicitor General's office in the Department of Justice will soon
decide whether the Army can go ahead with its plans to appeal Federal Court
rulings in Lt. Watada's favor.
An campaign of public pressure is being called by Lt. Watada's supporters in
the peace movement. The ad hoc campaign is being spearheaded by two Vietnam War
resisters, Mike Wong and Gerry Condon, who are active members of Veterans for
Peace in San Francisco and Seattle. The Call to Action is being issued in the
name of Asian Americans for Peace and Justice, formerly the Watada Support
Committee, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Project Safe Haven, a war resister
support group.
We are sending out this email alert to all our contacts and organizations -
including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families
Speak Out, United For Peace and Justice, ANSWER, Code Pink, American Friends
Service Committee and others. We ask you all to phone, write, and email
Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Deputy Attorney General Neal Katyal
immediately.
1. Ask the Solicitor General: Tell the Army to drop the appeal and any other
charges against Lt. Watada, and to release him from the Army with an honorable
discharge.
If we all act quickly, we can flood the Solicitor General's office with
hundreds of phone calls, letters and emails, which could tip the balance in
Ehren Watada's favor.
Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 202-514-2201
Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, 202-514-2206
Send letters to: U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20530.
E-mails to DOJ@usdoj.gov will reach the Solicitor General and Attorney General
Eric Holder. A sample letter is included below. Feel free to edit as you wish,
or to write your own.
It is possible that both the Solicitor General and her Deputy may be open to
our plea. Please be respectful and polite in all your communications with these
Obama appointees.
2. Please forward this alert to all activists, friends, and organizations you
know that would be supportive. If you are involved in an organization, please
ask that it forward this alert to its entire membership.
3. We will approach the friendliest of our allies in Congress and ask them to
make inquiries to the Justice Department. If you or your organization has
contact with any members of Congress, please email Gerry Condon at
projectsafehaven@hotmail.com so we can coordinate our Congressional outreach.
4. Various groups may also wish to mount demonstrations, press conferences,
lobby, or use other means of peaceful political pressure. You may also call for
an end to the persecution of all war resisters.
Mike Wong, Vice President, SF Bay Area Veterans For Peace; Asian Americans for
Social Justice
Gerry Condon, Greater Seattle Veterans For Peace; Project Safe Haven
Sample letter:
Date
Solicitor General Elena Kagan
Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal
U.S. Department of Justice,
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Dear Solicitor General Kagan and Deputy Solicitor General Katyal,
I am writing to urge you to direct the U.S. Army to drop its appeal and any
other charges in the case of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, and to release him from the
Army with an Honorable Discharge. Lt. Watada was the first Army officer to
publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq, because he believes the U.S. war in Iraq is
illegal and immoral, and that orders to participate in it are therefore also
illegal and immoral.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada).
Lt. Watada's Army court martial in February 2007 ended in a mistrial that was
illegally construed by the Army judge, Lt. Col. John Head. When the Army then
attempted a second court martial in October 2007, U.S. District Court Judge
Benjamin Settle halted the proceedings on double jeopardy grounds. Judge Settle
had just been appointed to his position by George W. Bush and was a former Army
JAG lawyer. I urge you to uphold U.S. and international law by directing the
Army to end its prolonged prosecution of Lt. Ehren Watada. Thank you very much.
Sincerely yours,
Mike Wong
For more backfround on Lt. Ehren Watada, go to info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada ).
For updates on the Campaign to Free Ehren Watada, go to
www.SoldierSayNo.blogspot.com
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19) Persistent Racial Gap Seen in Students' Test Scores
By SAM DILLON
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/education/29scores.html?hp
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving black and Hispanic scores, according to results of a federal test considered to be the nation's best measure of long-term trends in math and reading proficiency.
Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test, administered last year, than did their counterparts decades back. But nearly four decades of scores on the same test show that their most important academic gains came not in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s.
Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President Bush's frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.
"There's not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for," said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. "Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn't seem to be happening." Overall, America's education system does not seem to be making more than incremental progress either. The scores of 17-year-old students were the same as those of teenagers who took the test in the early 1970's. The scores of 9- and 13-year-old students, however, averaged across all groups, were up modestly in reading, and considerably higher in math, since 2004, the last time the test was administered. And they were quite a bit higher than those of students of the same age a generation back. Still, their progress disappeared as they got older.
The results will stoke debate about how to rewrite the No Child law when the Obama administration brings it up for reauthorization later this year. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said he would like to strengthen national academic standards, tighten requirements that high-quality teachers be distributed equally across schools in affluent and poor neighborhoods, and make other tweaks. "We still have a lot more work to do," Mr. Duncan said of the latest scores. But the long-term assessment results could invigorate those who challenge the law's accountability model itself.
"We saw stronger gains and more progress in narrowing achievement gaps before No Child took effect," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at Berkeley. "The punch that centralized accountability packs seems to be weakening. We're lifting the basic skills of young kids but this policy is not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy."
The math and reading test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Trends in Academic Progress, was given to a nationally representative sample of 26,000 students last year. It was the 12th time since 1971 that the Department of Education administered a comparable test to students ages 9, 13 and 17. The scores, released on Tuesday in Washington, allow for comparisons of student achievement every few years back to the Vietnam and Watergate years.
The results point to the long-term crisis in many of the nation's high schools, and could lead to proposals for more federal attention to them in the rewrite of the No Child law, which requires states to administer annual tests in grades three to eight, but only once in high school.
Margaret Spellings, Mr. Duncan's predecessor under President Bush, called the results a vindication of the No Child law.
"It's not an accident that we're seeing the most improvement where N.C.L.B. has focused most vigorously," Ms. Spellings said. "The law focuses on math and reading in grades three through eight - it's not about high schools. So these results are affirming of our accountability type approach."
She said the results were especially encouraging because of the sweeping demographic changes that have overtaken American schools during the decades since the first long-term assessment was administered. In 1971, for instance, 84 percent of the 9-year-olds who took the test were white, 14 percent were black, 2 percent were classified as "other," and Hispanics were not even broken out as a separate category. Last year, 56 percent of 9-year-olds who took the test were white, 16 percent were black, 20 percent were Hispanic, and 7 percent were classified as "other."
"Schools are poorer, more diverse, our work is more challenging," Ms. Spellings said.
Freeman Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has written about raising successful African-American children, said the persistence of the achievement gap should lead policymakers to redouble efforts to increase time spent with low-performing students.
"Where we see the gap narrowing, that's because there's been an emphasis on supplemental education, on after-school programs that encourage students to read more and do more math problems," Dr. Hrabowski said. "Where there are programs that encourage that additional work, students of color do the work and their performance improves and the gap narrows."
But he said that educators and parents pushing children to higher achievement often find themselves swimming against a tide of popular culture.
"Even middle-class students are unfortunately influenced by the culture that says it's simply not cool for students to be smart," he said. "And that is a factor here in these math and reading scores."
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents more than 60 metropolitan school systems, said that much of the progress among the nation's minority students has been the result of hard work by urban educators, not only since the No Child law took effect but for decades before.
"N.C.L.B. did not invent the concept of the achievement gap -much of the desegregation work in the 70's and 80's was in fact about giving poor, Hispanic and African-American kids access to better resources and curriculum," Mr. Casserly said. "You do see from these results that in that period, the gains were steeper. It wasn't being called an achievement gap, but that was what that was about."
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20) British Court Clears 3 Men on Terrorism Charges
By ALAN COWELL
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/europe/29britain.html?hp
LONDON - A British court on Tuesday acquitted three men on charges of helping to plan London's deadliest terror attack in July, 2005, when four suicide bombers killed 52 people during the morning rush-hour in attacks on subway trains and a double-decker bus.
Prosecutors had accused the men - Mohammed Shakil, 32, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Waheed Ali, 25 - of aiding the bombers by reconnoitering locations for the attacks. The charges were brought in a re-trial, after a jury last year failed to reach a verdict on the same accusations. The prosecution of the three men, who denied the charges, was the only one to emerge directly from the July 7 bombings.
At Kingston Crown Court west of London, the men were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions, but Mr. Ali and Mr. Shakil were convicted on a second charge of conspiring to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The jury was not obliged under British law to explain why it rejected the prosecution's case.
Prosecutor Neil Flewitt said the case centered on circumstantial evidence, which he argued created a compelling picture of guilt, the BBC reported. But the three men insisted that they opposed suicide bombings. Lawyers acting for them said there was no evidence of complicity in the bombing and that they were being tried for guilt by association. The men were arrested in 2007 after one of Britain's biggest police investigations, as counter-terrorism officers sought to unravel what they depicted as a shadowy underworld of militants linked to Al Qaeda.
But the police failure to prove their main charge added to a catalog of setbacks in terrorism investigations and other actions that have tarnished the image of Scotland Yard.
And it left unanswered one of the key questions lingering long after the attacks: Did the bombers operate alone or with a network of helpers and possibly controllers?
According to the prosecution, the three men acquitted Tuesday belonged to the same circle as the bombers - Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, all of whom died in the attacks. Prosecutors said the men all worshiped at the same mosque and worked out at the same gym in the hardscrabble Beeston neighborhood of northeast England where police discovered a bomb-making factory after the attacks.
The three men were accused of spending two days in London with two of the bombers, visiting high-profile locations such as the London Eye Ferris wheel and places similar to those attacked on July 7.
But the three insisted that the trip was for family reasons and tourism.
As the verdicts were delivered, Mr. Ali gave a broad smile and Mr. Saleem wiped his eyes, according to reporters in the court-room. Mr. Shakil mouthed the words "thank you" to the jury.
The prosecution had sought to prove the existence of close personal and ideological bonds between the four bombers and the three defendants, who acknowledged knowing the July 7 attackers but said they did not help them.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ali and Mr. Shakil had attended terrorist training camps in Pakistan with Mr. Khan in 2001 and 2003, where they had been instructed in the use of automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Mr. Shakil had also appeared in a farewell video made by Mr. Khan in 2004 before a trip to Afghanistan, the prosecution said.
The jury's decision on Tuesday meant that no-one has been brought to justice for the July 7 attacks, leaving survivors and relatives of the dead frustrated.
"It was painful to follow the trial, and it is equally painful to be here, nearly four years after 7/7 and still have so many unanswered questions," said Jacqui Putnam, who was injured in the attacks, referring to the date of the attacks.
After the jury announced its verdict, Imran Khan, a lawyer for Mr. Saleem, read out a statement on his client's behalf saying: "I must make it absolutely clear that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the dreadful attacks on 7 July 2005, which I have always condemned."
He went on: "In my view the police wanted somebody, anybody, to pay for the murders of 52 people."
Some relatives of the victims renewed calls for inquests into the killings, Britain's Press Association news agency reported.
"I don't know how to describe the distress, the upset, the pain while the whole issue is prolonged," said Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, died in the bombings. "We were promised the inquest would be held very quickly. Then we got letter after letter putting it further and further back."
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21) Group Sounds Alarm on European Bee Industry
By REUTERS
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/europe/28bees.html?ref=world
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's beekeeping industry could be wiped out in less than a decade as bees fall victim to disease, insecticides and intensive farming, the international beekeeping body Apimondia said on Monday.
"With this level of mortality, European beekeepers can only survive another 8 to 10 years," Gilles Ratia, the president of Apimondia, told Reuters.
"We have had big problems in southwest France for many years," he said, but the problem had extended to Italy and Germany.
Last year, about 30 percent of Europe's 13.6 million hives died, according to Apimondia figures. Losses reached 50 percent in Slovenia and as high as 80 percent in southwest Germany.
About 35 percent of European food crops rely on bees to pollinate them, Mr. Ratia said, and the deaths pose a big threat for farmers.
"It is a complete crisis," said Francesco Panella, who tends about 1,000 hives in the Piedmont region of Italy. "Last year, I lost about half my production. I can't survive more than two or three more years like this."
Mystery has surrounded the recent decline in the bee population. Most keepers blame modern farming methods and the pesticides used on crops like sunflower and rapeseed.
French honey output has suffered in intensive sunflower-farming areas, said Henri Clement, president of the French beekeeping union, but has remained steady in mountains and chestnut forests.
Apimondia's scientific coordinator, Gerard Arnold, cites two main factors responsible for weakening bee colonies: insecticides and the parasitic mite Varroa. Once weakened, Mr. Arnold said, the hives were then wiped out by other diseases.
The European Union voted this year to phase out the most toxic pesticides after years of wrangling, but beekeepers still say that they are ignored by politicians. "If cattle were producing 30 percent less milk each year, it would not be acceptable," said Josef Stich, who keeps 200 hives near Vienna.
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22) On Voting Rights, Test of History v. Progress
By ADAM LIPTAK
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28voting.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Ellen D. Katz is a liberal law professor and a big fan of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which she calls the most effective civil rights legislation in American history. "It's sacred," she said. "It's holy."
But Professor Katz is torn about what the Supreme Court should do in a case asking it to strike down a central part of the law. She cannot shake the feeling that the election of the nation's first black president has changed everything.
"This election was momentous," said Professor Katz, who teaches voting rights and legal history at the University of Michigan, "and it arguably presents the moment when Congress should close out this regime."
That Barack Obama is now president is not directly relevant to any issue in the case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, No. 08-322, which will be argued on Wednesday and is widely considered the most important of the term.
Yet as they consider whether to cut off one of the great legal legacies of the civil rights era, the justices may be asking themselves the inevitable question: Is a law rooted in the age of Jim Crow still needed in the Obama era?
The central question before the court, though, is this: Did Congress overstep its constitutional power in 2006 by reauthorizing Section 5 of the act, which requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before making changes to their voting procedures?
"Obama inexorably shapes how we understand Section 5 today," Professor Katz said, adding that the court should take the unusual step of finding a way to force Congress to take a fresh look at the law, which expires in 2031.
Theodore M. Shaw, a law professor at Columbia and a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., said the court should not place too much weight on a single election. "We've had a profound moment, and we're in a different place," Professor Shaw said. "But race still plays powerfully in electoral politics in this country. If it weren't for the Voting Rights Act, there would be no President Obama."
The act was a triumph of the civil rights movement. It took on, as the Supreme Court said in upholding it in 1966, the "insidious and pervasive evil" of state officials defiantly committed to denying blacks the right to vote.
At the act's heart is Section 5, which requires state officials to get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before they make even minor changes to voting procedures. Such federal intrusion into state affairs through "preclearance" rather than subsequent litigation was needed, the Supreme Court said in 1966, to address "unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution" by state officials.
The court has repeatedly upheld the act. Just last month, even as it limited another part of the law, three relatively conservative justices in the majority acknowledged that more work was needed to ensure equal access at the polls.
Some state officials, mostly in the South, bristle at what they say is the stigma, burden and federal intrusion that come with being covered by Section 5.
Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama, a Republican, conceded in a friend-of-the-court brief that his state's racist policies had earned it a place on Section 5's original coverage list. "Through acts of violence and willful defiance of federal law," Mr. Riley told the court, "Alabama maintained an all-white legislature and 19 percent black voter registration in 1965."
Today, though, he said, black and white voter registration rates are virtually identical - 72.9 percent for blacks and 73.8 percent for whites. And a quarter of the state legislators are black, almost exactly reflecting the state's population.
In extending the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Mr. Riley said, "Congress wrongly equated Alabama's modern government, and its people, with their Jim Crow ancestors."
Besides Alabama, Section 5 applies to Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas; most of Virginia; counties and townships in California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and South Dakota; and three New York City boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. The act requires federal permission before making changes in voting procedures like how registration is conducted, where polling places are put, how elections are publicized and where the boundaries of voting precincts are drawn.
Most changes are minor, but redistricting or wholesale revisions of election laws can require complicated, expensive and time-consuming submissions.
A supporting brief urging the court to uphold the law filed by six states at least partly subject to the preclearance requirement said the minor burdens were offset by benefits including expert guidance in avoiding discrimination, less litigation and better race relations. The law also allows jurisdictions with clean records to ask a court to let them "bail out" of the preclearance requirements.
The jurisdictions subject to Section 5 were selected based on whether they had used devices to discourage voting, like literacy tests, and data from the 1964, 1968 and 1972 elections. Congress did not tinker with those decades-old criteria when it renewed in 2006.
The question before the Supreme Court is not whether the criteria were optimal but whether Congress acted beyond its constitutional authority in using them.
There are arguments on both sides. On the one hand, Congressional power is at its peak in the areas of race and voting. On the other hand, the federal intrusion under Section 5 is unique in American legal history.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the Voting Rights Act and its earlier extensions. But a 1997 decision in a religion case, City of Boerne v. Flores, may require the court to subject the latest extension to more exacting scrutiny than it has in the past, one that asks not only whether legislation was a rational response to constitutional violations but also whether it was "congruent and proportional" to them.
The case before the court was brought by a Texas utility district that was established on undeveloped land in the late 1980s. The district said it had never been accused of voting discrimination. Lawyers for the district told the court that the current Voting Rights Act "treats racism as an inheritance that runs with the land rather than a manifestation of attitudes and actions of living individuals."
The crucial vote on the court will probably be that of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In another voting rights case decided last month, Bartlett v. Strickland, Justice Kennedy indicated that he might oppose eliminating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
"Racial discrimination and racially polarized voting are not ancient history," he wrote. "Much remains to be done to ensure that citizens of all races have equal opportunity to share and participate in our democratic processes and traditions."
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23) Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARJORIE CONNELLY
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/politics/28poll.html?ref=us
Barack Obama's presidency seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July, according to the latest New York Times/ CBS News poll.
Despite that, half of blacks still say whites have a better chance of getting ahead in American society, the poll found. Black Americans remain among the president's staunchest supporters; 70 percent of black respondents now say the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 34 percent of whites.
The poll found broad support for Mr. Obama's approach on a variety of issues, including one of the most contentious: whether Congress should investigate the harsh interrogation tactics authorized by George W. Bush. Sixty-two percent of Americans share Mr. Obama's view that hearings are unnecessary.
Americans seem to have high hopes for the president; 72 percent said they were optimistic about the next four years. By and large, Americans expect him to make significant progress in health care, energy and immigration policy, issues central to his ambitious domestic agenda.
But the optimism is tempered by a feeling of resignation about two of the most difficult challenges he faces: reviving the economy and ending United States military involvement in Iraq. Most Americans say Mr. Obama has begun to make progress on both fronts, but many do not expect either the recession or the war to be over by the end of his term.
It is not unusual for new presidents to enjoy substantial public support at this point in their tenure. But Mr. Obama's 68 percent job approval rating is higher than that of any recent president at the 100-day mark. Mr. Bush had the approval of 56 percent of the public at this juncture.
But while Americans clearly have faith in Mr. Obama, the poll revealed something of a disconnect between what the public thinks the president has already accomplished and what it expects him to achieve.
Fewer than half of those surveyed, 48 percent, said Mr. Obama had begun to make progress on one of his major campaign promises, changing the way business is conducted in Washington. And just 39 percent said he had begun to make progress on another major promise, cutting taxes for middle-class Americans, even though the stimulus bill he signed into law does include a middle class tax cut.
Mr. Obama will mark his 100th day in office on Wednesday with a trip to St. Louis and a prime time news conference, where aides say he will make the case that he has made "a down payment" on fixing the nation's biggest problems. The poll found that Americans seem to share that view, suggesting the White House has been effective at casting Mr. Obama as an agent of change, while persuading the public that change will take time.
"With all Obama wants to do and all he's got going, it's going to take more than four years," said Larry Gibbons, 58, a retired restaurant manager and a Republican in Phoenix who voted for Mr. Obama's opponent, John McCain. Speaking in a follow-up interview to the poll, he said, "Obama is attacking everything at once and I do approve of that."
Throughout Mr. Obama's candidacy and his young presidency, race has been a subtle thread woven through his message of change. Yet the president shies away from talking about it. In response to a question at his last news conference, Mr. Obama conceded that his election had created ''justifiable pride on the part of the country," then quickly shifted gears, adding, "That lasted about a day."
But Americans do feel differently about race and race relations with Mr. Obama in the White House, according to poll respondents who spoke in follow-up interviews. Some, like Jacqueline Luster, 60, a retired bank employee in Macedonia, Ohio, say that the times are changing, and that Mr. Obama seems to be speeding that change.
"With him as president, people seem to be working together toward the same goals, and that has helped race relations," said Ms. Luster, who is black and a Democrat. "Before there was more of a separation, blacks working for black goals and whites for white goals. Obama has helped change the perception of blacks in a positive way, but it's also the times."
Another Democrat, Lisa Fleming, 49, who is white, said that even in the small Illinois town, Potomac, where she lived, she noticed "people of different races being kinder to each other" since Mr. Obama's election. In Kansas City, a white Republican homemaker, Mary Robertson, 78, said Mr. Obama's ''openness and acceptance have helped others be more open and accepting."
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 973 adults. For purposes of analysis, blacks were oversampled in this poll, for a total of 212, and then weighted back to their proper proportion in the poll, based on the census. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all people, and plus or minus seven points for blacks.
After nearly 100 days of watching Mr. Obama conduct the affairs of state, more than two-thirds of Americans say he is not a typical politician, though most say he is set apart more by his style and his personal qualities than his policies.
For instance, the poll found that the public appears divided over whether the Obama administration has broken with the Bush administration in its overall foreign policy. Forty-three percent of respondents said there had been some change in foreign policy since Mr. Obama took office, the poll found, while 44 percent said there had been no change. Thirteen percent did not have an opinion.
Yet the public does give Mr. Obama credit for improving the image of the United States with the rest of the world. And it found support for Mr. Obama's overtures to Iran and Cuba; a majority, 53 percent, said they favored establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, while two-thirds favored Mr. Obama's plans to thaw relations with Cuba.
Megan Thee-Brenan, Marina Stefan and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
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24) People With Service Jobs Feel Economic Pain Early
By HILLARY CHURA
April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/28worker.html?ref=business
Hotel jobs have long offered a first step on the economic ladder to immigrants and people without a college education or work experience. But the steep drop in travel that started last fall has hit hotels hard and, in turn, buffeted already vulnerable workers.
Many housekeepers, bus boys, dishwashers, doormen, valets and customer service agents have either lost their jobs or are working significantly fewer hours.
In some cases, hotels have laid off workers and hired them back as independent contractors, without health insurance and other benefits. The fortunate have picked up other odd jobs at their current hotels, while some have scrambled to cobble together equally low-paying second and third positions elsewhere.
Carrie Tucker, a hotel housekeeper in Detroit, said she earned $9.17 an hour. Pushing a 150-pound stocked cart, she cleans 16 to 22 rooms a day when the hotel has guests and she is not called off from work. She said that her hours were whittled to fewer than 36 a week from 40 late last year and that she was behind on her rent and her gas and electricity bills.
"I'm stressed out every day I go to work," Ms. Tucker said.
Daniel Tjhin Chin said he was demoted in November to hotel telephone operator, from night manager at the Sacramento Marriott Rancho Cordova, and his weekly hours were cut to 32 from 40. Four weeks later, he was laid off.
"I understand the recession, the crisis and the impact on the industry," he said "I feel bad for whoever owns that hotel, but I hope I get a job as soon as possible because I'm running out of money."
The hotel layoffs, said Lalia Rach, dean of the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, have had an inordinate impact on workers who were already living paycheck to paycheck - large percentages of women, minorities, immigrants, single parents and welfare-to-work participants.
"They are the vulnerable, but they are also what we built our country on," Ms. Rach said. "As paychecks decline or go away, there is going to be a ripple effect on families who are living on the edge. It's going to cascade into taking away the American dream in its entirety."
Hotel workers generally have less education than the American work force as a whole - 19.1 percent have no high school diploma, versus 8.8 percent of the total work force. Their wages last year were lower as well - their median hourly rate was $9.78, while the national rate for all workers in all industries was $15.10, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And while 8.8 percent of workers in the United States were unemployed in the first quarter of this year, the jobless rate for hotel employees was 11.7 percent, according to the bureau. The figures do not count those still employed but working fewer hours.
Nor has there been much hiring. From July 2007 through February 2009, hotel industry job listings were down 28 percent, according to Simply Hired, a national online job search engine. Demand for valets was down 33 percent, housekeepers almost 50 percent and waiters 86 percent.
Hospitality employment may not bounce back until the beginning to middle of 2010, according to Adam Weissenberg, who leads the tourism, hospitality and leisure practice in the United States at Deloitte, the accounting firm. Other experts are even more pessimistic, predicting no rebound until the middle to end of next year, at the earliest.
Catherene Parker, who has a customer service job at the Marriott in San Jose, Calif., was able to cover her expenses with her pay of $15 an hour and consistent overtime. But she could save nothing. Late last year, when her overtime dried up, she said she found a job as a customer service representative at a shopping mall. Now, she works 40 hours a week at the hotel and 20 at the mall.
Van Valiant has managed to hold onto his job by participating in retraining programs and making himself as indispensable as possible. He started waiting tables at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Austin, Tex., in May 2008. By fall, his hours were cut to 32 a week. He asked to be trained in other areas. Now the hotel's food and beverage supervisor, he can tend bar, cook, work at the hotel's front desk and do night auditing. He is back up to 40 hours a week, with frequent overtime.
"It's very easy to find another server," Mr. Valiant said. "It makes sense to make yourself more valuable so that they don't want to get rid of you."
At the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, Amy DeVincentis, a parking attendant, says colleagues take turns leaving early when it is slow so that pooled tips go further.
"We understand that there are certain people that can't leave early because they need the extra money, because they do have a mortgage," Ms. DeVincentis said. "No one gets upset if they really need to work their hours. We're all in this together."
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25) Group Advises Stopping Flow of Gifts to Doctors
By GARDINER HARRIS
April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/health/policy/29drug.html?ref=health
WASHINGTON - In a scolding report, the nation's most influential medical advisory group said that doctors should stop taking much of the money, gifts and free drug samples that they routinely accept from drug and device companies.
The report by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is a stinging indictment of many of the most common means by which drug and device makers endear themselves to doctors, medical schools and hospitals.
"It is time for medical schools to end a number of long-accepted relationships and practices that create conflicts of interest, threaten the integrity of their missions and their reputations, and put public trust in jeopardy," the report concluded.
The institute's report is even more damning than a similar one released last year by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which proposed tough new rules governing interactions between companies and medical schools.
In the wake of the association's report, many schools and medical societies toughened their policies. The institute's imprimatur is certain to accelerate this process.
"With the I.O.M.'s endorsement, issues that were once controversial now are indisputable," said Dr. David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University. "Conflicts of interest in medicine are no longer acceptable."
The report calls on Congress to pass legislation that would require drug and device makers to publicly disclose all payments made to doctors. Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Senator Herb Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin, have co-sponsored legislation that would do just that.
Both senators said they welcomed the institute's endorsement.
"It's a shot in the arm to the reform movement to have the prestige and policy heft of the Institute of Medicine on the side of transparency," Mr. Grassley said. "The more disclosure, the better, for holding the system accountable and building public confidence in medical research and practice."
Drug companies spend billions of dollars wooing doctors - more than they spend on research or consumer advertising. Much of this money is spent on giving doctors free drug samples, free food, free medical refresher courses and payments for marketing lectures. The institute's report recommends that nearly all of these efforts end.
The largest drug makers agreed last year to stop giving doctors pens, pads and other gifts of small value, but company executives have defended other marketing tactics as valuable to both doctors and patients. Medical device and biotechnology companies have yet to swear off even pens and free trips.
A 2007 survey found that more than three-quarters of doctors accept free drug samples and free food, more than a third get financial help for medical refresher courses and more than a quarter get paid for giving marketing lectures and enrolling patients in clinical trials
Among the most controversial of the institute's recommendations is a plan to end industry influence over medical refresher courses. Presently, drug and device makers provide about half of the funding for such courses so that doctors can often take them for free. Even as they have acknowledged the need for other limits, many medical societies and schools have defended subsidies for education as necessary.
"As science progresses, it's going to get harder and harder to get doctors to keep pace," said Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology. "I think industry has some responsibility toward education."
By contrast, the American Psychiatric Association recently announced that it would phase out industry funding for medical refresher courses at its conventions.
The institute acknowledged that many doctors depend on industry funding for refresher medical courses but said that "the current system of funding is unacceptable and should not continue." The report recommended that a different funding system be created within two years.
Senator Kohl said that he has been investigating refresher medical courses, and he said the industry's funding has biased some courses.
Dr. Bernard Lo, the director of the Program in Medical Ethics at University of California San Francisco who served on the institute's committee that wrote the report, said in an interview that doctors "need to do a better job in addressing conflicts of interest that would lead to bias or threaten public trust."
Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, a former Merck chief executive, said that he has worried for years that drug and device companies wielded too much influence over doctors.
"I think medical centers and companies will start to listen to these recommendations and to take them very seriously," Dr. Vagelos said.
The institute recommended that doctors stop giving free drug samples to patients unless the patient is poor and the doctor can continue to provide the medicine to the patient for little or no cost. By contrast, many free drug samples go to patients with insurance coverage or to doctors and their families, the report stated.
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