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Scraping By
Opinion | Op-Ed
In the first of a series by the filmmaker Stewart Thorndike on life during the economic crisis, a tent city in Redmond, Wash., is filling up with the newly homeless who are forming a makeshift community.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/08/06/opinion/1247463860996/op-ed-scraping-by.html
06/26/1787 James Madison Statement: "The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, - when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."
As quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/yates.asp
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison
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U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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HOBOS TO STREET PEOPLE:
Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present
Artists Panel Discussion - August 6
Closing Party - August 13
Exhibition runs through August 15, 2009
The California Historical Society
678 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
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Please join Haiti Action Committee next Wednesday, August 12th, to observe the second anniversary of the kidnapping and disappearance of grassroots organizer and leader, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Meet in front of the Brazilian Consulate at 300 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, 4:30PM. Brazil heads MINUSTAH, made up of 9000 UN military troops who currently occupy Haiti.
Lovinsky was kidnapped and disappeared in Haiti on August 12th, 2007 shortly after meeting with a US-Canadian human rights delegation. As a member of Fanmi Lavalas, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was an extraordinary grassroots organizer and leading advocate for the poor, including street children, teenage mothers and victims of torture.
Despite massive international actions demanding an investigation into Lovinsky's disappearance, there has been absolutely no effective effort on the part of either the UN authorities in Haiti or the Haitian government headed by Rene Preval to locate Lovinsky and secure his safe return, or hold those responsible for his disappearance accountable.
We will not forget Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine! Join with Haiti's grassroots movement and activists around the globe to demand an accounting for his disappearance. End the US/UN occupation, Brazil out of Haiti, free the political prisoners, return President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Please forward this announcement!
Read more about Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine here:http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=205
Below is last year's message of solidarity from Mumia Abu-Jamal on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of Lovinsky's abduction.
For Haitians, this coming August is a reminder of the kidnapping and disappearance of their brother, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, who was taken after a meeting with a US-Canadian human rights delegation visiting Haiti in mid-August, 2007.
Pierre-Antoine was a co-founder of the Fondayson Trant Septenm, (Kreyol for September 30th Foundation), a group which assisted and supported the people who during (and especially after) the 1991 and 2004 coups against the democratically-elected president, Bertrand Aristide. Members of the Fondayson have been targeted for years.
Around the world, activists have been organizing in Lovinsky's support, calling on various governments, from Haiti's President Rene Preval, Brazil (which forms the bulk of the United Nations forces in the country), Canada, the US and France, which organized the latest coup against Haitian democracy.
When Pierre-Antoine was abducted, it forced other democracy and human rights activists in Haiti to go into hiding to avoid waves of state repression.
Haiti has a proud and illustrious career on the world's stage, becoming the first free Black republic in the West after its 1804 revolution against France, which abolished slavery almost 70 years before the US Civil War spelled the end to human bondage in the US. Their freedom spread the bright lights of liberty and independence throughout the Caribbean, and when South America rose against Spain, it was to Haiti that their Liberator Simon Bolivar turned for support, arms, and a place to rest.
For their bold struggle to bring Black freedom to the West, the US and Europe have unleashed an unholy war. France forced reparations (!) on Haiti -- an act unprecedented in history, forcing the victor in war to pay away it's wealth for almost a century. The US repeatedly invaded the country, brutalized its people, and imposed an assortment of puppet dictators to exploit the country for foreign benefit, and national impoverishment, for generations!
Because Haiti's popularly elected Bertrand Aristide dared to oppose Haiti's rich elite, and tried to make things nominally better for its peasantry, US Marines forced him into exile.
Because Lovinsky comes from the popular mass movements, he was snatched off the streets of Haiti a year ago, and the movement is building to bring him back home to his family, his community, and the popular movements of which he was a part.
Haiti must never be forgotten, and neither must we forget Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
7/30/08 (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
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A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Showing & Discussion
¡SALUD!
Thurs. Aug. 13, 7:30pm
ATA Theater, 992 Valencia St. at 21st, SF
$6 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
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Join Local 2, and many, many community groups on
Friday, August 14th at 4:15 PM to fight for a fair contract for hotel workers!
Plaza next to Four Seasons Hotel
(Market Street (between 4th Street and 3rd Street)
RSVP here by email at ialvaran@clueca.org or by phone at 415-863-1142. Please cc' ope3erin@sbcglobal.net
Below is a message from Unite Here Local 2:
In April 2008, almost 3000 workers voted overwhelmingly for a monthly temporarily dues assessment of $25 and for a permanent $2 increase to build our strike/lock out fund.
Next month our contract will expire. Greedy hotel corporations are sharpening their knives to come after us, as they did in 2004.
In 2004 management resisted our proposal for a two year contract and for a card check agreement. They presented us with a ridiculous proposals of take away. The bosses locked us out hoping we would fall on our knees and accept their nasty proposal.
That didn't happen, we broke the lock out and defeated their agenda of take away. Hotel corporations this year will try to use the crisis of 2009 to force us into concessions.
Though we will be reasonable at the table we will not compromise our living standards that have taken us years to build, specially when these corporations are still reporting profits despite the crisis.
Hundreds of workers have been coming to committee meetings and street actions, and preparing for this fight.
Join us on August 14th (Friday) to demand a fair contract!
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Meeting to Plan a United October 17
Bay Area/Regional Antiwar Mass Demonstration
Saturday, August 15 at 3:30 pm
Committee of Correspondence Hall at:
522 Valencia Street, Third Floor
Between 16th and 17th Streets, San Francisco
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
https://www.natassembly.org/ActionProgram.html
https://www.natassembly.org/October17Endorsers.html
Dear All:
This is an urgent meeting for all social activists fighting for peace and human justice. We must begin organizing right here; right now, in San Francisco in unity with others across the country for a massive outpouring of opposition to the wars Saturday, October 17, marking the eighth year of the U.S. war on Afghanistan which began October 7, 2001; and seven years since Congress passed the resolution authorizing war against Iraq. In addition, October commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam Moratorium that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest the war.
The U.S. Government military assault on humanity is escalating.
While banksters award themselves huge bonuses, and the government bolsters military might to protect their right to take these bonuses; the poor, underemployed, unemployed, destitute are being forced to pay for the bankster's luxury and their war machine!
U.S. military and "homeland security" costs are skyrocketing to protect U.S. corporate interests throughout the world. Meanwhile, schools are being closed and those that still exist are being turned into military training grounds; and our streets are being turned into armed camps to cage the impoverished and institute a school-to-prison trajectory for our youth.
It just doesn't have to be this way. But it's up to us to come together and take charge of the situation and put a stop to this injustice.
We are, after all, the majority and we're opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran; and military and financial support to Israel; and the myriad of other secret and non-secret U.S. interventions throughout the world wherever there is a profit to be made for U.S. capital investment!
Innocent people are being killed, their lives and lands ruined, their childhood dreams are being dashed by bombs and bullets and poverty and hopelessness!
We must speak out--massively, peacefully, but powerfully and in unity--against these wars and bloodshed. And demand those trillions be spent, instead, on what human beings need desperately right now! We want food, water, housing, healthcare, jobs, education, freedom and equality and a just and peaceful world!
U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW! End the War on Terror! No U.S. Aid to Israel! Tax the rich! Feed the Poor! Money for Human Needs; Not War!
"It will be a great day when the schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a ship!" --Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/SylviaWpg2.html
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Dialogues Against Militarism ~ Ice Cream Social
Fundraiser
Dialogues Against Militarism (D.A.M.) was created from the belief that the power of conversation can serve as a means to develop new ideas and advance the possibilities of moving beyond militarism. D.A.M.'s mission is to foster free and open conversations that engage and challenge issues of militarism through the relation of experiences by those who have been on its front lines. It is hoped through these dialogues that together we can build a better world.
A speaking tour is being organized in Israel/Palestine made up of US and Israeli ex-soldiers to discuss their experiences and strategize for ways to challenge militarism in their respective societies. This forum will be used as a means of education and mobilization in the fight against war and occupation.
We need funds to support these courageous former US soldiers. Join the fundraiser, eat delicious ice cream and meet the young ex-soldiers who will be traveling to Israel/Palestine to build people-to-people ties. http://www.againstmilitarism.org/
Sunday, August 23rd 3pm
446 Valencia St - Intersection for the Arts
Gallery, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA
BART: 16th & Mission St. Station
with special guest Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, writer, teacher, historian and social activist
Supported by American Friends Service Committee, CODEPINK Women for Peace, Courage to Resist & others!
*Gallery not handicapped accessible
DAM TEAM
Stephen Funk, In 2003, US Marine Stephen Funk became the first person in the military to publicly denounce the War in Iraq and refuse to serve. He applied for conscientious objection and traveled the country for several months to speak out against the war, encouraging military service members to examine their own beliefs about the war, informing others about conscientious objection, and to caution young people to think twice before enlisting. For his public stand he was sentenced to six months in military prison, demoted to private, fined, and given a bad conduct discharge. Since being released he continues activism with several groups, primarily as the San Francisco chapter president of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Sarah Lazare, is an organizer and Program Coordinator with Courage to Resist, a national organization that supports members of the US military who refuse orders to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is also a freelance writer and columnist, with articles that have appeared in publications ranging from Adbusters to ZNet, and is currently co-editing a book about GI resistance against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sarah has a background in labor, community, and anti-war organizing and has done such organizing in the several cities where she has lived, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and Springfield, Illinois.
Matthew Edwards, is a conscientious objector from this most recent war in Iraq. He was discharged on March 19, 2003, the first day of the bombing campaign in Iraq, from the United States Marine Corps. Prior to his discharge he was held by the Marines for 5 months and was subjected to harsh and often illegal treatment that included food and sleep deprivation and physical mistreatment that culminated in a broken hip and finally a medical discharge. He lived in Damascus, Syria for just shy of one year where he lived, worked, and studied, picking up conversational Arabic. While there he was exposed to the refugee and social crises associated with the war and occupation of Iraq. Matt currently lives in San Francisco organizing with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).
David Zlutnick, has spent the last several years involved in social justice movements, mostly focusing on labor struggles and war opposition, and most recently housing justice. For several years he was involved in counter-recruitment and demilitarization campaigns aimed at getting the military and war profiteers out of high schools and colleges as well as participating in direct action organizing. David also has a strong history within independent media, both written and visual. He has worked with numerous independent print publications and his writing has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Friendly Fire Collective, of which he is a founding member.
Eddie Falcon, served four years in the Air Force as a C-130 Loadmaster. He was assigned to the 50th Airlift Squadron based at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. He deployed to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, moving cargo, troops, senators, Special Forces units, medical evacuees, Afghan locals, vehicles, and more in and out of Afghanistan in the winter of 2003 and the winter of 2004. He was also forward deployed to Al Udeid, Qatar, to move troops, cargo, etc. in and out of Iraq. Falcon received an honorable discharge in December 2005 and is now using the Montgomery GI Bill to major in Spanish at San Francisco City College. He now studies Spanish at the Complutense University in Madrid. Since his discharge, Falcon has been involved in anti-war activities back home. He helped organize and testified in Winter Soldier San Francisco.
Nancy L. Mancias
CODEPINK Women for Peace
www.codepinkalert.org
PINKTank :: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/
Facebook :: http://www.facebook.com/nancymancias
Twitter :: nancymancias
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National Call For Action And Endorsements at the
G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA
Sept. 19 - 25, 2009
Endorsers (list in formation): Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter 61, Pittsburgh; PA State Senator Jim Ferlo; Veterans for Peace Chapter 047, Pittsburgh; National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations; Thomas Merton Center Pittsburgh; Codepink Pittsburgh Women for Peace; Bail Out The People; Green Party of Allegheny County; World Can't Wait; ISO (International Socialist Organization); WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) Pittsburgh; Socialist Action; Ohio Valley Peace
Activists from Pittsburgh, the U.S., and across the globe will converge to protest the destructive policies of the G-20 - meeting in Pittsburgh this September 24-25.
The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors represents the world's economic leaders, intimately connected to the most powerful multi-national corporations that dominate the global economy. Their neo-liberal policies have squandered billions on war, plunged economies into deep recessions, worsened social, economic and political inequality, and polluted the earth.
We believe a better world is possible. We anticipate involvement and support from like-minded people and organizations across the country for projected actions from September 19-25:
People's Summit - Sept. 19, 21-22 (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday)
A partnership of educators and social justice groups is organizing a People's Summit to discuss global problems and seek solutions that are informed by the basic principles of genuine democracy and human dignity. This will bring together informed speakers and panels to discuss problems we face and possible solutions, also providing interactive workshop discussions.
Mass March on the G-20 - Friday, Sept. 25:
Money for human needs, not for war!
Gather at 12 noon, march to the City County Building downtown
A peaceful, legal march is being sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, an umbrella organization that supports a wide variety of peace and justice member projects in Pittsburgh. We will hold a mass march to demand "Money for human needs, not for war!"
WE SEEK THE BROADEST RANGE OF SUPPORT, PARTICIPATION, AND ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE MASS MARCH AND PEOPLE'S SUMMIT
To endorse, E-mail: info@pittsburghendthewar.org
Or contact: Thomas Merton Center AWC, 5125 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Several other events are being planned by a wide variety of community and social justice groups in Pittsburgh.
For more information and updates please visit:
http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/g20action.htm
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NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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END THE DEATH PENALTY NOW! END "LIFE WITHOUT POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE"!
This video is a very compelling story of a man who spent 14 years on Death Row for murders he did not commit. He was finally released upon evidence of his innocence and of racial prejudice at his trial. The whole criminal "In-Justice" system in this country is racist to the core and corrupt. That's why the death penalty and life w/o possibility of parole must be overturned and all inmates should be awarded new chances for exoneration...Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCZK7AxUCQ
Death Penalty Focus
870 Market St. Ste. 859 San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel. 415.243.0143 - Fax 415.243.0994 - www.deathpenalty.org
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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U.S. national anti-war assembly calls for freedom for Ahmad Sa'adat and Palestinian prisoners
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
The July 10-12, 2009 U.S. national conference of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations unanimously approved a major resolution in support of freedom for Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
Over 250 anti-war and progressive activists attended the conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, representing dozens of organizations and groups across the United States. The National Assembly includes trade unionists, veterans, students, local antiwar coalitions, women's organizations, national leaders of the major antiwar coalitions, immigrant rights activists, racial justice activists and organizations, and many others.
Monadel Herzallah, a Palestinian organizer, president of the Arab American Union Members' Council and national coordinator of the US Palestine Community Network - Popular Conference presented the resolution at the conference, where he spoke at the major Saturday evening panel. In his presentation, he called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel and called for trade unions, churches, universities, cultural centers and other institutions to cut all ties with Israel and Israeli entities, and stressed the need to confront racism and oppression facing the Palestinian and Arab communities and other racially and nationally oppressed communities within the United States. He concluded by stressing the need to support Palestinian political prisoners, highlighting the growing campaign of solidarity with Ahmad Sa'adat and all prisoners. He discussed Sa'adat's hunger strike against prison repression as well as his leadership in the Palestinian national movement, and the direct involvement and responsibility of the U.S. for the imprisonment of Sa'adat.
Ahmad Sa'adat is the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A Palestinian national leader, he is one of 39 Palestinian Legislative Council members and government ministers imprisoned by Israel, and one of thousands of Palestinian activists, students, workers, trade unionists, men, women and children held in the prisons and detention centers of the occupier. He was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority since 2002 under U.S. and British guard before being kidnapped in an Israeli military raid on the PA prison where he was held. He has since been sentenced to 30 years in Israeli prison for his political activity and has remained a strong leader of the prisoners' movement as well as a national and international symbol of the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom. Over 400 international organizations and individuals recently signed on to a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urging freedom for Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat congratulates the National Assembly for its important resolution, that passed with the unanimous approval of the delegates. Only one other resolution passed with such unanimous support - a resolution to condemn the military coup in Honduras and stand in solidarity with the Honduran people against the coup and U.S. imperialism. We welcome such resolutions from organizations around the world. Please send your resolutions and statements in solidarity with Ahmad Sa'adat to the Campaign at info@freeahmadsaadat.org.
The full text of the resolution is below:
RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF THE CAMPAIGN TO FREE AHMAD SA'ADAT AND ALL PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS
for the National Assembly National Conference, July 10-12, 2009
WHEREAS, Israel currently holds over 11,000 Palestinians as political prisoners, including men, women and children, and one out of every four Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza has been subject to political arrest or detention, including 40% of Palestinian men from the West Bank and Gaza, and
WHEREAS, the arrest, detention and imprisonment of Palestinians is directed by a series of over 1500 Israeli military regulations that can be changed at any time by the regional military commander, and Palestinians arrested by the Israeli military are often relocated to Israeli military prisons outside the West Bank and Gaza, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and as the Israeli military continues to abduct Palestinians on a daily basis and imprison them in these military prisons, and
WHEREAS, Palestinians abducted by the Israeli military are subject to psychological and physical torture and abuse, especially during the period of interrogation, which can last for up to 180 days, including up to sixty days in which a Palestinian prisoner may not be seen by an attorney, and
WHEREAS, over half of all Palestinian political prisoners and detainees have not been tried, and
WHEREAS, nearly one thousand Palestinians are held in "administrative detention," a system of detention without charge or trial, that is indefinitely extensible for successive six-month periods, confronted only by secret evidence that is impossible to refute, and
WHEREAS, those Palestinian detainees that are tried are brought before an Israeli military court, in which Palestinians' rights to a fair trial are systematically violated, presided over by three judges, only one of which is required to have any legal training, and
WHEREAS, the Israeli military courts exist only as a function of the illegal military occupation, and thus can never provide a legitimate or fair trial to Palestinian political prisoners, and
WHEREAS, Palestinian national leaders, including Ahmad Sa'adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Marwan Barghouti, and 37 other members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, are systematically targeted for political arrest and imprisonment, and
WHEREAS, the most basic of political activities, including simply being a member of most Palestinian political parties, are sufficient to serve as "charges" against Palestinian political prisoners and are met with substantial sentences, and
WHEREAS, Ahmad Sa'adat and five other Palestinian political prisoners were arrested by the Palestinian Authority in 2002, and were transferred to Jericho Prison under U.S. and British guard as a condition of a settlement between then PA President Yasser Arafat and Israel in May 2002, and
WHEREAS, during his time in PA prison, Sa'adat was never charged with any crime nor tried for any offense; his release was ordered by the Palestinian High Court, and supported by numerous international organizations, including Amnesty International, and
WHEREAS, on March 14, 2006, the U.S. and British monitors at Jericho Prison left their posts, shortly before the inception of a ten-hour siege of the prison by the Israeli military that ended in the death of two Palestinians, the injury of twenty-three more, and the abduction of Ahmad Sa'adat and five other political prisoners from Jericho to Israeli military prisons, and
WHEREAS, Ahmad Sa'adat was sentenced by an illegitimate military court to 30 years in prison for 19 political offenses, including membership in a prohibited organization, holding a post in a prohibited organization, and incitement, for giving a speech after the Israeli assassination of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, in 2001, and
WHEREAS, Ahmad Sa'adat and his attorneys consistently refuse and refused throughout his trial to recognize the authority of a military court that is an instrument of occupation, and
WHEREAS, political imprisonment has been one part of a deliberate strategy to deprive Palestinians of their leaders, educators, writers, journalists, clergy, unionists, and popular activists from all political orientations, as part of the dispossession and repression of the Palestinian Arab people in the interests of colonialism and occupation for over sixty years, including the denial of millions of Palestinian refugees' right to return home, and
WHEREAS, as Ahmad Sa'adat said in his statement to the court of January 14, 2007, " This trial cannot be separated from the process of the historical struggle in Palestine that continues today between the Zionist Movement and the Palestinian people, a struggle that centers on Palestinian land, history, civilization, culture and identity," and
WHEREAS, Ahmad Sa'adat has been a leader among Palestinian prisoners and recently completed a nine-day hunger strike against Israeli policies of isolation and solitary confinement against Palestinian prisoners, and is currently in isolation until September 17, has faced serious health problems, and has been denied family visits from his wife for months and from his children for years, and
WHEREAS, the United States government bears direct responsibility for the situation of Ahmad Sa'adat, and oversaw his imprisonment in PA prison for four years and was complicit in his abduction and kidnapping by the Israeli military during its attack on Jericho prison, and
WHEREAS, there is an international campaign to free Ahmad Sa'adat, and all Palestinian political prisoners, and as the National Assembly has a history of supporting struggles for justice and freedom, and
WHEREAS, the political imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians is made possible by the billions of dollars in economic and military support as well as the vast political and diplomatic support given to Israel by the United States,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations calls for the immediate freedom of Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian political prisoners and detainees, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the National Assembly shall actively support the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat and all campaigns to free all Palestinian political prisoners and detainees, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the National Assembly shall endeavor to issue statements and publicize the cases of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees, and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the National Assembly shall endeavor to support the struggles and organizing of Palestinian political prisoners, and the work of activists and organizations on the ground working for justice and freedom for Palestinian political prisoners and the cause of freedom for which these thousands of prisoners are held - of self-determination, liberation and return for all Palestinians in exile and in all of historic Palestine
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Condemn Honduran Coup and Restore Honduran President Zelaya NOW!
Sign the Emergency Petition!
http://www.iacenter.org/honduraspetition/
To: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
CC: Vice President Joe Biden, Congressional leaders, U.N. General Assembly President d'Escoto-Brockmann, U.N. Secretary General Ban, and major media representatives including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and Reuters.
I demand that the Barack Obama administration and the U.S. Congress unequivocally condemn the unconstitutional and anti-democratic military coup in Honduras and insist that the military regime and the newly appointed but illegitimate president of Honduras restore President Zelaya to office, free all the imprisoned popular leaders and remove the curfew. I further demand that the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras be recalled immediately until such time as President Zelaya is restored to office.
Sincerely,
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter in the form)
Sign the Petition Online
http://www.iacenter.org/honduraspetition/
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Unpaid Work, but They Pay for Privilege
By GERRY SHIH
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09intern.html?ref=education
2) And You Thought a Prescription Was Private
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09privacy.html?ref=business
3) Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
By Barbara Ehrenreich
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?scp=1&sq=Is%20It%20Now%20a%20Crime%20to%20Be%20Poor?%20&st=cse
4) U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban
By JAMES RISEN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/world/asia/10afghan.html?hp
5) A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform
By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/health/policy/10facts.html?hp
6) Effort to Rein In Wall Street Pay Hits New Hurdle
[The thieves would like to be paid for their services...bw]
By ERIC DASH
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/business/10pay.html?hp
7) Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System
By SOLOMON MOORE
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10juvenile.html?hp
9) Arts Programs in Academia Are Forced to Nip Here, Adjust There
By PATRICIA COHEN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/arts/10cuts.html?ref=us
10) The Forgotten Casualties: Falling through the Cracks
in the U.S. Army's Duty of Care
By Ted Newcomen
July/August 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_09/julaug_09_14.html
11) What's Happening to our
Public Schools?
By Bonnie Weinstein
July/August 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_09/julaug_09_01.html
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1) Unpaid Work, but They Pay for Privilege
By GERRY SHIH
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09intern.html?ref=education
With paying jobs so hard to get in this weak market, a lot of college graduates would gladly settle for a nonpaying internship. But even then, they are competing with laid-off employees with far more experience.
So growing numbers of new graduates - or, more often, their parents - are paying thousands of dollars to services that help them land internships.
Call these unpaid internships that you pay for.
"It's kind of crazy," said David Gaston, director of the University of Kansas career center. "The demand for internships in the past 5, 10 years has opened up this huge market. At this point, all we can do is teach students to understand that they're paying and to ask the right questions."
Not that the parents are complaining. Andrew Topel's parents paid $8,000 this year to a service that helped their son, a junior at the University of Tampa, get a summer job as an assistant at Ford Models, a top agency in New York.
"It would've been awfully difficult" to get a job like that, said Andrew's father, Avrim Topel, "without having a friend or knowing somebody with a personal contact." Andrew completed the eight-week internship in July and was invited to return for another summer or to interview for a job after graduation.
Andrew's parents used a company called the University of Dreams, the largest and most visible player in an industry that has boomed in recent years as internship experience has become a near-necessity on any competitive entry-level résumé.
The company says it saw a spike in interest this year due to the downturn, as the number of applicants surged above 9,000, 30 percent higher than in 2008. And unlike prior years, the company says, a significant number of its clients were recent graduates, rather than the usual college juniors.
The program advertises a guaranteed internship placement, eight weeks of summer housing, five meals a week, seminars and tours around New York City for $7,999. It has a full-time staff of 45, and says it placed 1,600 student interns in 13 cities around the world this year, charging up to $9,450 for a program in London and as little as $5,499 in Costa Rica.
The money goes to the University of Dreams and the other middlemen like it. Officials at the company say they are able to wrangle hard-to-get internships for their clients because they have developed extensive working relationships with a variety of employers. They also have an aggressive staff who know who to call where. Their network of contacts, they say, is often as crucial as hard work in professional advancement.
"Students don't have problems finding internships, students have problems getting internships," Eric Normington, the company's chief marketing officer, said by telephone from Hong Kong where he was overseeing the local program. "We can secure those exclusive positions."
Employers say the middlemen save them time and hassle. "They make the search process a lot easier," said Sarah Cirkiel, the chief executive of Pitch Control Public Relations, a small New York firm that started four years ago and has taken in 20 summer interns, all from the University of Dreams. "I feel like they hand-select their interns for the specific agencies to make sure it's the right fit. They just show up at our doorstep, ready to go."
But many educators and students argue that the programs bridge one gulf - between those who have degrees from prestigious colleges or family connections and those who do not - only to create a new one, between the students who have parents willing and able to buy their children better job prospects and those who do not.
"You're going to increase that divide early, on families that understand that investment process and will pay and the families that don't," said Anthony Antonio, a professor of education at Stanford University. "This is just ratcheting it up another notch, which is quite frightening."
Julia McDonald, the career services director at Florida State University, questioned the need for these programs. "The economy has had an impact, but there are more than enough internship opportunities out there still," she said. "That's like buying a luxury car."
Other college advisers cautioned that while the desire to help is understandable, parents who pay for an internship program are depriving their children of the chance to develop job-seeking skills or to taste rejection before they have to fend for themselves.
The industry dismisses the criticism.
"Universities forget that they themselves are, in essence, businesses," said C. Mason Gates, the president of Internships.com, an online placement service. "Just because they're doing it in a nonprofit fashion doesn't mean that those of us doing it for profit are doing it incorrectly."
The University of Dreams has several smaller competitors. One is the Washington Center, which places students at institutions like Amnesty International and the Canadian Embassy in Washington. The center is a nonprofit but charges summer participants a $5,195 program fee on top of a $60 application fee. If students choose to pay $3,395 for 10 weeks of prearranged housing - and more than 90 percent do, the center said - the total comes to $8,650.
Online start-ups that match students with internships have joined in, too, as have auction services that have sold internships worth thousands of dollars.
Francois Goffinet entered the University of Dreams program in 2007 as a student at William and Mary College, he said, because he wanted an internship at a top bank but those banks did not recruit at colleges like his. The University of Dreams advisers polished Francois's résumé. They coached him on interviews and then helped him secure an internship at UBS, which he then converted into a job offer.
"We wanted the biggest and the best," Francois's mother, Lynn Andrews, recalled. "No one had the direct route."
Gerry Shih is a summer intern at The Times. He is paid.
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2) And You Thought a Prescription Was Private
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09privacy.html?ref=business
MORE than 10 years after she tried without success to have a baby, Marcy Campbell Krinsk is still receiving painful reminders in her mail. The ads and promotions started after she bought fertility drugs at a pharmacy in San Diego.
Marketers got hold of her name, and she found coupons and samples in her mail that shadowed the growth of an imaginary child - at first, for Pampers and baby formula, then for discounts on family photos, and all the way through the years to gifts suitable for an elementary school graduate.
"I had three different in vitro procedures," said Ms. Krinsk, now 55, a former telecommunications executive who lives with her husband in San Diego. "To just go to the mailbox and get that stuff, time after time after time, it was just awful."
Like many other people, Ms. Krinsk thought that her prescription information was private. But in fact, prescriptions, and all the information on them - including not only the name and dosage of the drug and the name and address of the doctor, but also the patient's address and Social Security number - are a commodity bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients' knowledge or permission.
That may change if some little-noted protections from the Obama administration are strictly enforced. The federal stimulus law enacted in February prohibits in most cases the sale of personal health information, with a few exceptions for research and public health measures like tracking flu epidemics. It also tightens rules for telling patients when hackers or health care workers have stolen their Social Security numbers or medical information, as happened to Britney Spears, Maria Shriver and Farrah Fawcett before she died in June.
"The new rules will plug some gaping holes in our federal health privacy laws," said Deven McGraw, a health privacy expert at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. "For the first time, pharmacy benefit managers that handle most prescriptions and banks and contractors that process millions of medical claims will be held accountable for complying with federal privacy and security rules."
The law won't shut down the medical data mining industry, but there will be more restrictions on using private information without patients' consent and penalties for civil violations will be increased. Government agencies are still writing new regulations called for in the law.
Ms. Krinsk was never able to find out who sold her information, but companies that have been accused in lawsuits of buying and selling personal medical data include drugstore chains like Walgreens and data-mining companies like IMS Health and Verispan. CVS Caremark, which handles prescriptions for corporate clients, has also been accused of violating patients' privacy.
These companies all say that names of patients are removed or encrypted before data is sold, typically to drug manufacturers.
But as Ms. Krinsk's case shows, there are leaks in the system.
Before the changes, privacy regulations mainly applied to hospitals and doctors. Enforcement was weak, and there were lots of loopholes.
Privacy experts cite research by Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which shows that a computer-savvy snooper can easily match names, addresses, Social Security numbers and so on to "re-identify" information that had supposedly been rendered anonymous.
"Our biggest concern is the complete lack of protection against re-identifying data that was supposed to be anonymous and secure," Ms. McGraw said.
TRACKING prescriptions has been a big business for decades. Data miners say their research is valuable because gathering and analyzing information from thousands of people helps identify trends and provides indications of potentially dangerous side effects of drugs.
"Data stripped of patient identity is an important alternative in health research and managing quality of care," said Randy Frankel, an IMS vice president. As for the ability to put the names back on anonymous data, he said IMS has "multiple encryptions and various ways of separating information to prevent a patient from being re-identified."
"De-identified health information is our core business," he said.
IMS Health reported operating revenue of $1.05 billion in the first half of 2009, down 10.6 percent from the period a year earlier. Mr. Frankel said he did not expect growing awareness of privacy issues to affect the business.
CVS Caremark says it is careful about patient data. "In very limited circumstances, we exchange aggregated, de-identified data with third parties to assist the health care community in understanding patient use of prescription medications with the goal of achieving better health outcomes," said Carolyn Castel, a company spokeswoman.
Selling data to drug manufacturers is still allowed, if patients' names are removed. But the stimulus law tightens one of the biggest loopholes in the old privacy rules. Pharmacy companies like Walgreens have been able to accept payments from drug makers to mail advice and reminders to customers to take their medications, without obtaining permission. Under the new law, the subsidized marketing is still permitted but it can no longer promote drugs other than those the customer already buys.
The ban on marketing is even more strict in California, where Walgreens is fighting off a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of customers who received the subsidized mailings before the state outlawed them in 2004. Michael Polzin, a Walgreens spokesman, defended the mailings as a cost-cutting measure. "Patients who fail to properly take their medication cost the U.S. health care system $177 billion a year," when they fall sick and need treatment, he said.
The data mining industry, meanwhile, is challenging laws in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont that ban collecting and selling prescription information to drug makers, which use it to decide which doctors to market to.
The companies in the case, IMS Health and Verispan, now part of the private company SDI Health, said the identities of patients were removed. "At no time does SDI ever receive any identifiable patient information nor any means to identify any patient from the data we handle. All data is de-identified prior to transmission to SDI," said Andrew Kress, chief executive of SDI.
Privacy advocates and a judge in the case argued that de-identified information could easily spin out of control. "This information quickly finds its way into other databases, including those of insurance carriers and pharmacy benefits managers," Judge Bruce M. Selya wrote in a federal appeals court decision upholding the New Hampshire law.
IN another big change, the stimulus law provides $19 billion to push doctors toward installing electronic records systems. It is a milestone on the road toward President Obama's goal of digitizing all medical records within five years. But digitization creates the potential for more abuses by hackers, as well as blackmail and insurance fraud.
"Privacy is under greater duress than ever before as medical records are switched from paper to electronic," said Pam Dixon, a consumer advocate and executive director of the World Privacy Forum near San Diego.
Administration officials say privacy guarantees are essential. "We can't afford to go forward with our plans unless we have assured the American public that the privacy of their information is assured," said Dr. David Blumenthal, the Health and Human Services Department's national coordinator for health information technology.
Companies like Google, Microsoft and WebMD see a lucrative business opportunity in assembling and holding personal health records. Patients and their doctors would be able to consult the records wherever and whenever needed. But the companies themselves recognize that they have work to do to persuade consumers and physicians that records will be safe and protected.
Although as many as one in four adult Americans are currently offered an online personal health record, by a health plan or physician's office, most have not taken up the offer.
Google, Microsoft and WebMD all say they will not show advertising alongside a person's health records. But visitors to WebMD, Google Health and Microsoft's site, HealthVault, see ads for drugs for diseases like osteoporosis or acid reflux as they seek information on an array of ailments.
Technology experts say identities of viewers and their health interests are often captured at the moment they click on online ads for a drug. That provides the advertiser with a prospective customer to pursue online or by mail.
"Personal health records linked to advertising, even indirectly, put them in the hands of marketers and profilers," said Robert Gellman, an independent privacy consultant in Washington.
Microsoft and WebMD acknowledge that the privacy rules in the stimulus law apply to them. Google says the law's prohibitions do not apply to it, except for its duty to report any breaches of medical privacy. "Google is bound by the privacy policy that people agree to when they sign up," said Christine Chen, a Google spokeswoman.
The new law also requires the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Health and Human Services to clarify the rules for privacy violations and gives all 50 states' attorneys general new authority to enforce the federal rules.
Some recent high-profile incidents reveal the extent of the problem. In Virginia, a state health agency notified 530,000 residents in June that their Social Security numbers were at risk after a hacker claimed to have invaded a state monitoring database in April and demanded $10 million ransom to return the stolen data. State officials said they were still investigating the breach.
Ms. Fawcett was plagued by lurid tabloid reports fueled with information from her cancer treatment records at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. And in May, Kaiser Permanente paid a $250,000 fine to California after it reported that 21 unauthorized employees and two physicians had invaded the records of Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to eight infants in a Kaiser hospital in January.
Since 2003, more than 45,000 complaints have been filed at the civil rights office in the Department of Health and Human Services by people who said their medical privacy was violated. The office says it has taken enforcement actions on more than 8,900 cases in that period, covering millions of people.
A single case can involve thousands of patients. For example, CVS paid a $2.25 million settlement early this year after an Indianapolis television station found paper records with CVS customers' personal drug information had been tossed into Dumpsters. In the settlement agreement, CVS promised to protect patient information at all 6,300 CVS stores.
A survey sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission suggested that tens of thousands of patients each year had their records broken into by hackers and unauthorized employees of hospitals and other health industry companies. Keith B. Anderson, an economist at the F.T.C., estimated that the personal information of about 890,000 adults was misused between 2001 and 2006. Stolen identities and data were used to trick Medicare, Medicaid and other insurers into paying for bogus medical treatment and supplies, he said.
Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist in Austin, Tex., who lobbies for privacy rights, said she predicts "a looming battle between the data thieves and those that believe in constructing a digital universe with even stronger protections for the privacy of personal information than we have in the world of medical records on paper."
SOME people think that the stimulus law doesn't go far enough to protect patients' privacy. While it bans paying a pharmacist for marketing to patients, it does not bar the sale of personal drug information by one pharmacy to another, as happened to Randee Lonergan, 35, a school administrator who now lives in Florida.
She says that when a pharmacy closed in a Stop & Shop supermarket on Long Island, it sold her information to a nearby Target store. She was upset when her new pharmacist asked if she was still taking injections for a skin problem. "They knew all about me and my family," she said. Adding to her chagrin, she saw a person she happened to know working at the pharmacy. A Target spokeswoman says the company complied with all privacy laws.
Ms. Krinsk in San Diego, whose privacy was repeatedly violated for more than a decade, says she is willing to speak out if it draws attention to the problem. "I'm a pretty tough person," she said.
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3) Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
By Barbara Ehrenreich
August 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?scp=1&sq=Is%20It%20Now%20a%20Crime%20to%20Be%20Poor?%20&st=cse
It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it's almost illegal to be poor. You won't be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you're well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life-like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the '80s and '90s. "If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire, you're in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida, said in June, echoing Anatole France's immortal observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."
In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more "neutral" infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.
The report lists America's 10 "meanest" cities-the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco-but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colorado, has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Arizona, carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, "An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive" public assistance.
That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it's definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington-the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants.
It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant-for not appearing in court to face a charge of "criminal trespassing" (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. "Can you imagine?" asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. "They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless."
The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Florida, but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Connecticut, is cracking down on food sharing.
If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by committing a significant crime-by participating in the armed robbery of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.
For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with a regimen of frantic scratching.
For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization-one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors' prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can't afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to "sit out their tickets" in jail.
Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now you're in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you're stopped for something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have your car impounded or face a steep fine-again, exposing you to a possible summons. "There's just no end to it once the cycle starts," said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. "It just keeps accelerating."
By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been effectively "profiled" for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the "broken windows" or "zero tolerance" theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.
Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you're littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you're displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect, according to Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is like looking "overly anxious" in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the police "can force you to stop just to investigate why you don't want to talk to them." And don't get grumpy about it or you could be "resisting arrest."
There's no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children's Defense Fund calls "the cradle-to-prison pipeline." In New York City, a teenager caught in public housing without an ID-say, while visiting a friend or relative-can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice programs for the Children's Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing and sometimes, handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school hours.
In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as much as $500-crushing amounts for people living near the poverty level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group, 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.
Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent of the "truants," especially those who are black or Latino, are merely late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep their children home if there's the slightest chance of their being late. It's an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from sending their youngsters to school.
The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.
And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief marijuana-induced high, it's "gotcha" all over again, because that of course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of Americans-2.3 million-reside in prison as in public housing.
Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police sweeps. The safety net, or what's left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.
Some of the community organizers I've talked to around the country think they know why "zero tolerance" policing has ratcheted up since the recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that "poor people have become a source of revenue" for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers testified about the pervasive "overcriminalization of crimes that are not a risk to public safety," like sleeping in a cardboard box or jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.
A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record $51.7 billion on corrections, an amount that the center judged, with an excess of moderation, to be "too much."
But will it be enough-the collision of rising prison populations that we can't afford and the criminalization of poverty-to force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it's up to 45 million to 50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty-for example, by sending drug offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of "crimes" but also charging prisoners for their room and board-assuring that they'll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.
Maybe we can't afford the measures that would begin to alleviate America's growing poverty-affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now I'd be content with a consensus that, if we can't afford to truly help the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them.
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation.
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4) U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban
By JAMES RISEN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/world/asia/10afghan.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.
United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.
In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is releasing the report, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the "joint integrated prioritized target list." That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.
The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.
Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.
"We have a list of 367 'kill or capture' targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency," one of the generals told the committee staff. The generals were not identified in the Senate report, which was obtained by The New York Times.
The shift in policy comes as the Obama administration, deep into the war in Afghanistan, makes significant changes to its strategy for dealing with that country's lucrative drug trade, which provides 90 percent of the world's heroin and has led to substantial government corruption.
The Senate report's disclosure of a hit list for drug traffickers may lead to criticism in the United States over the expansion of the military's mission, and NATO allies have already raised questions about the strategy of killing individuals who are not traditional military targets.
For years the American-led mission in Afghanistan had focused on destroying poppy crops. Pentagon officials have said their new emphasis is on weaning local farmers off the drug trade - including the possibility of paying them to grow nothing - and going after the drug runners and drug lords. But the Senate report is the first account of a policy to actually place drug chieftains aligned with the Taliban on a "kill or capture" list.
Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, would not comment on the Senate report, but said that "there is a positive, well-known connection between the drug trade and financing for the insurgency and terrorism." Without directly addressing the existence of the target list, he said that it was "important to clarify that we are targeting terrorists with links to the drug trade, rather than targeting drug traffickers with links to terrorism."
Several individuals suspected of ties to drug trafficking have already been apprehended and others have been killed by the United States military since the new policy went into effect earlier this year, a senior military official with direct knowledge of the matter said in an interview. Most of the targets are in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where both the drug trade and the insurgency are the most intense.
One American military officer serving in Afghanistan described the purpose of the target list for the Senate committee. "Our long-term approach is to identify the regional drug figures," the unidentified officer is quoted as saying in the Senate report. The goal, he said, is to "persuade them to choose legitimacy, or remove them from the battlefield."
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing delicate policy matters.
When Donald H. Rumsfeld was defense secretary, the Pentagon fiercely resisted efforts to draw the United States military into supporting counternarcotics efforts. Top military commanders feared that trying to prevent drug trafficking would only antagonize corrupt regional warlords whose support they needed, and might turn more of the populace against American troops.
It was only in the last year or two of the Bush administration that the United States began to recognize that the Taliban insurgency was being revived with the help of drug money.
The policy of going after drug lords is likely to raise legal concerns from some NATO countries that have troops in Afghanistan. Several NATO countries initially questioned whether the new policy would comply with international law.
"This was a hard sell in NATO," said retired Gen. John Craddock, who was supreme allied commander of NATO forces until he retired in July.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO until last month, told the Senate committee staff that to deal with the concerns of other nations with troops in Afghanistan, safeguards had been put in place to make sure the alliance remained within legal bounds while pursuing drug traffickers. Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, is also informed before a mission takes place, according to a senior military official.
General Craddock said that some NATO countries were also concerned that the new policy would draw the drug lords closer to the Taliban, because they would turn to them for more protection. "But the opposite is the case, since it weakens the Taliban, so they can't provide that protection," General Craddock said. "If we continue to push on this, we will see progress," he added. "It's causing them problems."
In a surprise, the Senate report reveals that the United States intelligence community believes that the Taliban has been getting less money from the drug trade than previous public studies have suggested. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency both estimate that the Taliban obtains about $70 million a year from drugs.
The Senate report found that American officials did not believe that Afghan drug money was fueling Al Qaeda, which instead relies on contributions from wealthy individuals and charities in Persian Gulf countries, as well as aid organizations working inside Afghanistan.
But even with the new, more cautious estimates, the Taliban has plenty of drug money to finance its relatively inexpensive insurgency. Taliban foot soldiers are paid just $10 a day - more if they plant an improvised explosive device.
Not all those suspected of drug trafficking will end up on the Pentagon's list. Intelligence gathered by the United States and Afghanistan will more often be used for prosecutions, although American officials are frustrated that they still have not been able to negotiate an extradition treaty with the Afghan government.
A major unresolved problem in the counternarcotics strategy is the fact that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan remains wide open, and the Pakistanis are doing little to close down drug smuggling routes.
A senior American law enforcement official in the region is quoted in the report as saying that cooperation with Pakistan on counternarcotics is so poor that traffickers cross the border with impunity.
"We give them leads on targets," the official said in describing the Pakistani government's counternarcotics tactics, adding, "We get smiles, a decent cup of tea, occasional reheated sandwiches and assertions of progress, and we all leave with smiles on our faces."
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5) A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform
By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/health/policy/10facts.html?hp
WASHINGTON - With the debate over the future of health care now shifted from Capitol Hill to town halls, supporters and critics of the Democrats' legislative proposals are polishing their sound bites and sharpening their attack lines.
Increasingly, the battle looks like a presidential contest, with expensive advertising campaigns and Internet-driven efforts to mobilize local support. It can be difficult to sort fact from fiction, as angry protesters denounce the legislation at raucous public forums.
President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have made the health care overhaul their top priority, putting their political futures on the line. Democrats had hoped to spend the month whipping up support for the legislation, but instead find themselves on the defensive, responding to what Mr. Obama describes as "outlandish rumors" spread by critics.
Many Republicans view fighting the president as a smart political strategy, turning a potentially wonkish debate over Medicare reimbursement rates and subsidies for the uninsured into an ideological battle over the government's role in health care.
Each side hopes to win ground by boiling down one of the most complex policy discussions in history into digestible nuggets. For beachside viewers who might be more interested in iced-tea service than fee-for-service, here is a guide to the main fight points.
KEEP IT OR LOSE IT?
Mr. Obama has said repeatedly, as he told the American Medical Association in June: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
These assurances reflect an aspiration, but may not be literally true or enforceable.
The legislation does not require insurers or employers to continue offering the health benefits they now provide. The House bill sets detailed standards for "acceptable health care coverage," which would define "essential benefits" and permissible co-payments. Employers that already offer insurance would have five years to bring their plans into compliance with the new federal standards.
The Senate health committee bill goes somewhat further by offering an "option to retain current insurance coverage."
The legislation could have significant implications for individuals who have bought coverage on their own. Their policies might be exempted from the new standards, but the coverage might not be viable for long because insurers could not add benefits or enroll additional people in noncompliant policies.
Dallas L. Salisbury, president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a private nonpartisan group, said: "The president and Democrats in Congress are saying what they would like. Their promises may not be literally true because your health plan may change, and your doctor may no longer accept your insurance."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
Or Uniquely American?
Republicans harshly criticize Democratic proposals to create a government-run insurance plan, or public option, to compete with private insurers. Republicans say the public plan would drive insurers out of business and lead to "socialized medicine" or a government takeover of health care. Democrats say they want a "uniquely American" system with public and private elements.
For now, the Republican criticism seems overblown. Major versions of the legislation all rely heavily on a continuation of private health plans, offered by employers and by insurance companies, subject to sweeping new federal regulations.
Whether a public plan would crowd out private insurers depends on details yet to be decided, including its premiums and its payment rates for health care providers.
The public plan is not even a certainty. To win bipartisan support for the overhaul, some Democrats have proposed private nonprofit health care cooperatives, instead of a public plan, to compete with private insurers.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, under the House bill, the number of people with employer-sponsored insurance would climb to 162 million in 2016, which is 3 million more than expected under current law. Further, it said, enrollment in the proposed public plan might total 11 million, far lower than estimates cited by Republicans.
An additional 10 million people, most of them now uninsured, would enroll in Medicaid, the budget office said.
At any rate, the federal government already holds sway over the health care system through Medicare, Medicaid and various insurance programs for children, veterans, military personnel and other federal employees. The federal government will account for 35 percent of the expected $2.5 trillion in health spending this year, and that does not include subsidies built into the tax code.
BLAMING INSURERS
Or Ensuring Blame?
Democrats have unleashed a blistering attack on private health insurers as they try to convince the vast majority of Americans who already have coverage that the current system is tilted in favor of corporate profits, not patients, and that insurers are a main obstacle to passing legislation.
Insurers say they support some of the most important Democratic proposals, including a ban on denying coverage or charging higher premiums based on pre-existing medical conditions.
The insurance industry does oppose a government-run insurance plan and could eventually mobilize against the overhaul. But insurers appear to be less of an obstacle than public apprehension over such sweeping change and skittishness among lawmakers, including centrist Democrats from Republican-leaning districts.
Most Americans do not know the full cost of their employer-sponsored insurance. And it is easier for Democrats to paint insurers as greedy than to explain the complex math that shows current health care spending is unsustainable.
DEFICIT-NEUTRAL
Or Budget-Buster?
Mr. Obama has avoided dictating specific provisions of health care legislation. But he has insisted that the bill not add to the federal debt, leading Democrats to say that the overhaul will be "deficit neutral," with the roughly $1 trillion, 10-year cost to be offset by reduced spending or new taxes.
The Congressional Budget Office has yet to issue cost estimates for the latest versions of the bill approved by three House committees. But it has warned that the legislation "would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits" beyond 2019, in part because health costs are rising faster than the rate of inflation and proposed new taxes would not keep up.
Republicans use those warnings to cast doubt on the claim by Mr. Obama that the legislation will "bend the cost curve" by slowing the growth of health spending in the long term. Democrats say the overhaul will lead to savings that cannot be calculated under budgeting rules. At this point, it is difficult to know who is right.
Over the next 10 years, the budget office said, the House bill would "result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion," partly because of an increase in Medicare spending to avert sharp cuts in payments to doctors scheduled to occur under existing law.
House Democrats say the higher doctor payments should not count in the cost because they fix a problem that predates the Obama administration and Democratic control of Congress.
EUTHANASIA
And Abortion
Conservative critics say the legislation could limit end-of-life care and even encourage euthanasia. Moreover, some assert, it would require people to draw up plans saying how they want to die.
These concerns appear to be unfounded. AARP, the lobby for older Americans, says, "The rumors out there are flat-out lies."
The House bill would provide Medicare coverage for optional consultations with doctors who advise patients on life-sustaining treatment and "end-of-life services," including hospice care.
The legislation instructs Medicare officials to propose ways to measure the quality of end-of-life care. Doctors would have financial incentives to report data on such care to the government.
On abortion, the situation is more complex. Opponents of abortion, like the National Right to Life Committee, say the legislation would use tax dollars to subsidize insurance that could cover abortion.
Under a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, health plans, including the new government insurance plan, could choose to cover abortion. But they generally could not use federal money to pay for the procedure and instead would have to use money from the premiums paid by beneficiaries.
Douglas D. Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said, "Under either the Senate bill or the House bill, the federal government would run a huge system of subsidizing elective abortion."
Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said the bill would keep current restrictions on the use of federal money for abortion, but "would not expand the prohibitions, as many Republicans want to do."
CUTTING MEDICARE
Or Preserving It?
To help finance coverage for the uninsured, Congress would squeeze huge savings out of Medicare, the program for older Americans and the disabled. These savings would pay nearly 40 percent of the bills' cost.
The legislation would trim Medicare payments for most services, as an incentive for hospitals and other health care providers to become more efficient. The providers make a plausible case that the cutbacks could inadvertently reduce beneficiaries' access to some types of care.
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Democrats would make "massive cuts to Medicare to pay for more government-run health care."
Mr. Obama told AARP last month, "Nobody is talking about reducing Medicare benefits." All the savings, he said, would come from measures to "eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare." As an example, he cited duplicative tests ordered by different doctors for the same patient.
But some proposals could affect beneficiaries. The major bills in Congress would cut more than $150 billion over 10 years from federal payments to private health plans that care for more than 10 million Medicare beneficiaries.
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6) Effort to Rein In Wall Street Pay Hits New Hurdle
[The thieves would like to be paid for their services...bw]
By ERIC DASH
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/business/10pay.html?hp
A guaranteed bonus might strike many people as a contradiction in terms. But on Wall Street, banks have become so eager to lure and keep top deal makers and traders that they are reviving the practice of offering ironclad, multimillion-dollar payouts - guaranteed, no matter how an employee performs.
The resurrection of the guaranteed bonus is sure to become a hot-button issue for the Obama administration's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, who is preparing this week to review how compensation should be structured at seven companies that received two or more federal bailouts.
The companies must each submit 2009 compensation plans for their top 25 earners by Thursday, and Mr. Feinberg has 60 days to rule on them. He has the authority to single out any of those employees and adjust their pay packages.
In the next phase, he is to review the packages of the next 75 highest earners in each company. For them, he can set pay formulas to be applied broadly.
Mr. Feinberg has met privately with executives at the companies and urged them to voluntarily rework any guarantees for big earners in advance of the submission deadline, according to two executives briefed on the discussions, with the goal of holding out these pay packages as examples for the industry.
The resurgence of bonus guarantees underscores just how difficult it is to control Wall Street pay, despite the public outcry over how taxpayer money is being spent.
And it is not the only tough decision Mr. Feinberg faces. He also must decide how much overall compensation is too much, even when the pay is tied to performance, like the $100 million package that Citigroup has promised to Andrew J. Hall, a top trader.
But guaranteed pay poses a particular problem, some compensation experts say, because it is unhinged from financial results.
"Is Wall Street again going to overpromise, and then when the market turns down, we'll have another set of pay problems?" asked Alan Johnson, a pay consultant who specializes in financial services.
For a short time, banks had stopped offering guarantees, after the financial crisis turned their profits into losses and as Washington began to scrutinize their use of public money. But now, with banks apparently rebounding after two consecutive profitable quarters, some have resumed the practice, arguing that such bonuses are needed to attract and retain top performers.
Some of the biggest bonus commitments are being made to bond sales staff workers and traders in currencies and derivatives, and to computer programmers and others who support those operations. Trading has been the main source of the banks' recent profits.
For now, the guarantees are roughly a third smaller than they were at the market's height in 2007, although they are bigger than they were last year, Mr. Johnson said. "The absolute levels are by historical standards moderate, but it is a big change from where we were at the beginning of the year," he said.
In Britain, where banks have begun to make similar guarantees, regulators have said they are concerned that the practice could lead to poor accountability. Last month, Britain's banking watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, sent bank chiefs a letter warning that the widespread use of guarantees "may be inconsistent with effective risk management."
In the United States, banks like Citigroup and Bank of America have offered guarantees, arguing that they are necessary to attract new employees and keep existing ones. Indeed, foreign banks like Nomura Securities of Japan, Credit Suisse of Switzerland and Barclays Capital of Britain are making guarantees in hopes of poaching talent.
Stronger banks that have repaid their bailout money and are not subject to Mr. Feinberg's restrictions - like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley - have also begun offering guarantees to star prospects.
Sanaz Zaimi, a former partner in the London office of Goldman Sachs, signed a multimillion-dollar contract recently with Bank of America that she told former associates was worth $15 million a year for two years and included a guarantee, according to a person with knowledge of her pay.
A Bank of America spokeswoman, Jessica Oppenheim, said that Ms. Zaimi's package had been guaranteed for only one year and she called the amount "wildly exaggerated," but she declined to provide a figure. Ms. Zaimi could not be reached for comment. Bank of America also recently offered Bryan Weadock, a veteran bond salesman, a two-year guaranteed package worth roughly $6 million annually in cash and stock to leave JPMorgan, according to a person briefed on the offer. That figure is roughly twice the amount he earned the previous year.
"Pay for performance is our standard," Ms. Oppenheim said. "It's a competitive marketplace, and we will take the necessary steps to attract and retain top talent."
In the last few months, Citigroup has lured several senior derivatives traders - including Dan Petherick, Rachel Lord and Stefanos Bitzakidis - away from Morgan Stanley with multimillion-dollar, multiyear guarantees.
A Citigroup spokesman, Stephen Cohen, declined to comment on the agreements but said that attracting and retaining the best talent was "very important" to the success of Citi and all its stakeholders, including taxpayers.
The American International Group and GMAC, among the other recipients of multiple bailouts, are making similar offers. GMAC granted one-year guaranteed bonuses for about 15 executives, and A.I.G. is set to pay out about $281 million in guaranteed retention bonuses to scores of its sales staff.
(The automakers General Motors and Chrysler, as well as Chrysler's finance arm, round out the list of companies that received multiple bailouts.)
Some rivals of the bailed-out banks have already benefited from being out of reach of the government's pay czar. Jeff Michaels, the head of Citigroup's interest rate trading in the United States, found Nomura Securities knocking at his door in July with an offer that would guarantee him as much as $10 million for 2009 and 2010. That was nearly twice the $6 million bonus he received last year when he joined Citigroup from Lehman Brothers, according to a person briefed on the offer.
A Nomura spokesman declined to comment on any of its recent hires.
Morgan Stanley, after posting dismal second-quarter trading results, has been canvassing Wall Street trading units to bolster its ranks. After picking off currency and rate traders at JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, it recently used one-year guarantees to hire three traders from Citigroup and approached several more with similar offers, according to two people with direct knowledge of the offers.
A Morgan Stanley spokesman said that one-year guarantees were often necessary to recruit people during the middle of the year, but that the bank rarely makes multiyear promises.
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7) Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System
By SOLOMON MOORE
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10juvenile.html?hp
FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio - The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state's most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities.
The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking and entering. Although he had received diagnoses for psychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder, a judge decided that Donald would get better care in the state correctional system than he could get anywhere in his county.
That was two years ago.
Donald's confinement has been repeatedly extended because of his violent outbursts. This year he assaulted a guard here at the prison, the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, and was charged anew, with assault. His fists and forearms are striped with scars where he gouged himself with pencils and the bones of a bird he caught and dismembered.
As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation's juvenile inmates - who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 - have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.
"We're seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn't find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them," said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. "Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums."
At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.
Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple - and powerful - psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.
In California's state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year - a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.
In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.
"I'm hearing from a lot of judges saying, 'I'm sorry I'm sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he'll get the treatment he can't get in his community,' " Mr. Stickrath said.
But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.
George, 17, an inmate at Ohio River Valley, detailed his daily cocktail of psychiatric medications, including Abilify and Seroquel. In addition to having bipolar disorder, he is a sex offender and is H.I.V. positive - severe stigmas in prison.
"I be getting punked," he said, using prison slang to describe how gang youths routinely humiliate him. He blinked, and his leg shook uncontrollably. "They take my food, they hit me, they make me do things."
Demetrius, 16, another inmate there, said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Officials said he has psychotic episodes and attacks other inmates. In an interview in June, he said he was receiving no mental health counseling or medications. Andrea Kruse, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stickrath, said that since July 1, he has had more than 20 counseling sessions.
According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.
Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.
"I've begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they're trained to deal with people like him," said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. "I don't think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don't think he should be on the street either."
Lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas have criticized juvenile corrections systems for failing to meet their obligation to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.
Despite downsizing to about 1,650 juvenile inmates from about 10,000 youth offenders in 1996, California's state system remains under a 2004 federal mandate to improve conditions, including mental health services - the result of a class-action lawsuit that documented the systematic physical and sexual abuse of wards.
Under a plan to reduce the state juvenile inmate population, many youths who once would have been held by the state are now detained by the Los Angeles County juvenile detention system. Los Angeles County is also under a federal mandate to improve psychiatric services for juvenile inmates, especially at the six camps at its Challenger Memorial Youth Center, which holds most of the county's medium- and high-risk offenders and most of its mentally ill ones.
"We were told that the Challenger camps are, paradoxically, the only camps at which staff are authorized to carry O.C. spray," wrote federal civil rights investigators in a 2008 report to county authorities, referring to oleoresin capsicum, known as pepper spray. "One supervisor told us that he believed that allowing staff to carry and use O.C. spray made sense given the 'mental health population.' "
The investigators also recounted how staff members body slammed unruly juveniles, often breaking their bones.
In May, a reporter toured the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall with Eric Trupin, a consultant hired by the Department of Justice to monitor mental health services in California's juvenile justice system. Dr. Trupin, a psychologist, said some detainees appeared to be held there for no reason other than that they were mentally ill and the county had no other institution capable of treating them.
One inmate at the county's juvenile hall, Eric, 18, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed Risperdal, a powerful antipsychotic, to help him avoid violent flashes of temper.
A public defender who specializes in juvenile mental health issues, said Eric had been arrested more than 20 times near his South Los Angeles home. Dr. Trupin worried that if Eric is released and arrested again, he will be charged as an adult and enter the Los Angeles County jail, the nation's largest residential mental institution, with 1,400 mentally ill inmates.
In the 1960s and '70s, the increasing availability of antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals. Many private hospitals barred psychotic patients, including juveniles. By the 1980s, juvenile justice systems had become the primary providers of residential psychiatric care for mentally ill youths.
But as cutbacks have worsened, the debate has intensified over what constitutes adequate mental health care. Often juvenile justice systems have very little to go on when attempting a diagnosis.
"Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail," said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. "The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it's often hard to figure out exactly what's going on with each kid."
School records often do not arrive with arrested youths, nor do files often come from other corrections institutions. The lack of information is particularly problematic when psychiatrists try to prescribe medications. Joseph Parks, medical director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and a national expert on pharmaceutical drug use in corrections facilities, said many juvenile offenders are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs as they move from mental health clinics to detention halls to juvenile prisons.
A decade ago, it was rare to find juvenile offenders on two psychotropic drugs at once, Dr. Parks said. Now, many take three or four at a time, often for nonprescribed uses like helping the youths sleep.
"If you just give a kid a pill, the prison administration doesn't have to do anything differently," he said. "The staff doesn't have to do anything differently. The guards don't have to get more training."
Census studies of child mental health professionals show chronic shortages. A 2006 study estimated that for every 100,000 youths, there were fewer than nine child psychiatrists. Dr. Penn of Texas said the state youth prison system there recently instituted a system of telepsychiatry sessions, conducting videoconferences between mental health professionals and youths being detained hundreds of miles away.
Inadequate mental health services increases recidivism. In a February report on psychiatric services at the Ohio River Valley center, Dr. Cheryl Wills, an independent mental health expert, found that officials were unnecessarily extending incarceration for youths who acted out because of their mental illnesses.
Mr. Stickrath, the director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, said that one challenge in dealing with large numbers of psychologically ill youths is determining who is "mad versus bad." He mentioned Donald, whose file he knew by heart.
"He's been in 130 fights since he's been with us, and there were no resources in the small county he's from to deal with him," Mr. Stickrath said. "Our staff worked to get him in a sophisticated psychiatric residential program, but they said he had to leave because he was attacking staff."
Mr. Stickrath shook his head. "He just wears you out."
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8) Hundreds Hurt in California Prison Riot
By SOLOMON MOORE
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10prison.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55.
The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said.
No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in the state system were put on lockdown to prevent unrest from spreading. Those 10 were in the southern part of the state.
Damage to the 1,300-inmate medium-security prison was "significant and extensive," said a spokesman, Lt. Mark Hargrove. One housing unit was virtually destroyed by fire, Lieutenant Hargrove said. The other housing areas were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable, he said, so some inmates were being temporarily housed in tents while others were sent to alternate prisons.
With more than 150,000 inmates, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal three-judge panel ruled last week that crowding and poor health care caused one avoidable inmate death each week and that the system was "impossible to manage."
Lieutenant Hargrove said prisoners had smashed windows, torn down gates and used whatever they could to battle one another in the riot.
"Inmates broke out glass and used shards as knives," he said. "They used pieces of metal, wood, whatever they could break off the walls, pipes."
The Chino prison is trying to put into effect a 2005 Supreme Court decision that prohibits automatic and systematic racial segregation of prison inmates after more than three decades of racial separation in the corrections system.
Lieutenant Hargrove said that inmates could now opt out of segregation and that a growing number of black, Latino and white prisoners shared cells, increasing racial tensions in the prison.
"All races had injuries," Lieutenant Hargrove said of the weekend riot. "But there are a greater number of injuries among Hispanic and black inmates. And we did have another incident that occurred in May, a riot between blacks and Hispanics, and this may be associated with that incident."
Prison officials said they were still questioning inmates to understand what set off the uprising. They said no demands or complaints had been directed at the guards.
Inmates in one of seven 200-man housing units began brawling around 8:20 p.m. Saturday, officials said. Overwhelmed guards set off an alarm and retreated as unrest spread.
Thirty minutes later, a crisis response team of about 80 guards arrived, but the chaos inside prevented them from entering. Guards watched as prisoners constructed barricades of broken bunk beds, desks and other furniture and clashed in the prison yards and on rooftops.
As inmates tired on Sunday and fighting died down, guards re-entered the prison and reasserted control, officials said, staving off sporadic attacks from prisoners throwing scrap metal and glass.
Lieutenant Hargrove said that the entire prison was being treated as a crime scene and that new charges would probably be filed against prisoners who participated in the violence, which was mainly between inmates.
In its order last week, the federal panel directed the state to come up with a plan to reduce its prison population by 40,000 inmates within two years. Attorney General Jerry Brown, a possible candidate for governor next year, said he would probably appeal the ruling.
Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, said the riot illustrated the many problems plaguing the state prison system, including growing cost overruns and pending cuts.
"There are proposals to eliminate all programs including reducing visiting days for inmates participating in programs," Mr. Krisberg said. "But if you isolate these men from their families and cut down even the most basic educational and counseling programs, you're going to create more idleness, and this is what happens."
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9) Arts Programs in Academia Are Forced to Nip Here, Adjust There
By PATRICIA COHEN
August 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/arts/10cuts.html?ref=us
If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los Angeles, is for cash, consider that its arts and architecture school may resort to holding a bake sale to raise money. California's severe financial crisis has left its higher-education system - which serves nearly a fifth of the nation's college students - in particularly bad straits. But tens of thousands of students at public and private colleges and universities around the country will find arts programs, courses and teachers missing - victims of piercing budget cuts - when they descend on campuses this month and next.
At Washington State University the department of theater arts and dance has been eliminated. At Florida State University the undergraduate program in art education and two graduate theater programs are being phased out. The University of Arizona is cutting three-quarters of its funds, more than $500,000, for visiting classical music, dance and theater performers. Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts, which supports four departments - dance, music, theater and visual arts - is losing 14 percent of its $1.2 million budget over the next two years. The Louisiana State University Museum of Art, one of the largest university-affiliated collections in the South, saw 20 percent of its state financing disappear. Other private and state institutions warn of larger classes, trimmed offerings, higher tuition and fewer services, faculty and visitors.
The arts are of course not the only victims of the recent economic meltdown. Large reductions in budgets have stung pretty much every corner of academia, from philosophy to Chinese, from gymnastics to geology.
The University of California, for example, is raising student fees by 9 percent, reducing freshman enrollment by 6 percent and cutting at least $300 million across its 10 campuses. There are no nationwide statistics to reveal whether one discipline is suffering more cuts than others. But administrators at more than a dozen state and private campuses who were interviewed say that the way that arts programs are structured and operated may amplify the effect of reductions.
Since tenured faculty are generally insulated from layoffs, budget cuts fall on part-time and visiting staff, Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture at U.C.L.A., explained. For teachers, "we want artists who are in the thick of their careers," he said. The result is that a large proportion of the school's instructors are not permanent members of the faculty. Every department across the board has been ordered to cut 5 percent - on top of a 10 percent cut last year - but that relatively small reduction could mean the elimination of a third of the art department's staff, Mr. Waterman said. (Final decisions on specific cuts have not been made.)
Crowded classes may not be as harmful in lecture courses, but in creative and performing studios, increasing class size is not always an option, he added. "You can't teach painting to 40 students or give that many students voice lessons in opera or jazz."
Several other college arts administrators around the country also said programs that serve the surrounding community as well as the students - like museums and performing arts centers - are especially vulnerable.
In California figuring out which programs and positions will survive will take a few more weeks. In the meantime the School of the Arts and Architecture, like other sections of U.C.L.A., has been told it should search for more ways to raise money itself. "We're looking at more summer classes for high school seniors and bake sales," Mr. Waterman said.
Elsewhere on the campus the Film & Television Archive is paring back its foreign-film program "because we cannot afford shipping any more of those prints from foreign countries," said Jan-Christopher Horak, the archives director. A smaller staff in the film studies center could translate into less academic research, he added. As public universities watch state legislators slice away their funds, private colleges have seen their endowments shrink. Both are having to rely more on private donations at the same time that the recession has left individual contributors less able to give.
Figuring out what or who faces the budgetary guillotine has been a harrowing process no matter how it was done. Few go quietly.
Officials at Washington State University held a dozen public forums, testified before state lawmakers, appeared before the student council, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Regents; they responded to thousands of electronic messages and spoke with every single student, legislator, faculty and staff member, alumnus and community member who requested a meeting before deciding where $54 million and 360 jobs over the next two years would come from. One result: Sports management got a reprieve; that program and major will continue, while theater arts and dance will be phased out.
Arizona State University's four campuses lost 500 jobs, closed 48 programs and imposed 10-to-15-day furloughs this spring. The schools of music, theater, film and design were all incorporated into the existing art and architecture center. Virgil Renzulli, the university's media spokesman, said that officials focused on slashing administrative costs to maintain the same number of courses and tenured faculty.
In Flagstaff, Northern Arizona University spread the $21.3 million in cuts across departments. "The only program that we eliminated was a B.A. in theater education," said Tom Bauer, assistant director of public affairs. "It only had 15 students, and they will be allowed to finish." He added that the university is still waiting to hear from the governor's office how much federal stimulus money might be directed its way.
Like California, Louisiana has had a tough year, although the doomsday cuts that some administrators were forecasting have not come to pass. Laurence Kaptain, dean of the College of Music and Dramatic Arts at Louisiana State University, said, "We tried to save people and cut things in our operations." The college, which took a 3 percent cut this year on top of a 10 percent reduction last year, is holding back on upgrading computers and production technology, spending less on costumes, scenery and special effects as well as travel and conferences. "It's making us more dependent on private funds," he said.
Over at Louisiana State's College of Art & Design the dean, David Cronrath, said a 4 percent cut ate up the positions of three full-time tenure-track faculty members, eight adjunct faculty and two staff members. He hopes to offer the same number of courses by increasing the faculty members' loads and by relying more on graduate-student teaching assistants and part-time faculty, he said. But he, like others around the country, expects more cuts despite federal stimulus money.
For some institutions many tough decisions are yet to come. Cornell University, for example, recently approved long-term capital projects, including a $20 million extension to its art museum and a $55 million building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, said Simeon Moss, a university spokesman. But the university is also undertaking a top-to-bottom evaluation in the face of a projected operating deficit of approximately $150 million within five years.
Although some arts advocates, faculty and students have complained that their subjects are saddled with a disproportionate share of the cuts, Sally E. McRorie, the dean of visual arts, theater and dance at Florida State University, said that did not happen in her case.
"Florida State has a long history of dedication and investment in the arts," she said. "Our cuts have not been greater than anybody else's." She said the university made a decision to use federal stimulus money "to keep people employed" but noted that after next year, when "those funds are gone, I'm not sure if we'll be able to maintain those positions."
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10) The Forgotten Casualties: Falling through the Cracks
in the U.S. Army's Duty of Care
By Ted Newcomen
July/August 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_09/julaug_09_14.html
It was just another tragic headline in a Florida newspaper, "Area woman killed in Iraq-Father confirms his daughter is third casualty in past three months." The article went on to describe how Army SPC Oprah Nestling, aged 24, (for reasons of confidentiality-not her real name or age), had been killed in combat overseas in January 2006. She was the third service member from the newspaper's catchment area to become a fatality in as many months. No details were provided by the Department of Defense and her father declined to make any further comment.
Nestling's name also briefly appeared as one of sixty-two service fatalities listed during the month of January 2006 on the website of the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (www.icasualty.org), along with the names of a number of marines who had been killed in the same IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attack.
However, a few days later her name was removed from the casualty list altogether and no further information appeared in the local paper. In the months that followed there was desultory "chatter" on the Internet speculating that there had been some sort of army cover-up. At the time lurid rumors were widespread about unexplained deaths of female military personnel both overseas and on bases in the U.S. Further investigation revealed that SPC Nestling had not been killed on active service in Iraq but was supposedly found slumped dead on the floor of a barrack room (not her own) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Delay and obfuscation by military authorities
Fast-forward a year-and-a-half and the Army was still refusing to make available any information about Nestling's death following requests submitted through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The reason given was that an active investigation of the case was still in progress.
A second request for details under the FOIA submitted in January 2007 indicated that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command had finally assigned the application a case number. In June 2008, that's two years and five months after Nestling's death, a partial report was released by the army. Withheld from the report were key pieces of information:
̢ۢ The Emergency Medical Service Pre-Hospital Report made out when the paramedics responded to the 911 call after the body
was discovered
̢ۢ SPC Nestling's army medical/psychiatric records
̢ۢ The Autopsy Examination Report determining the manner and cause of death (which was not actually completed until over four months after the autopsy itself took place)
̢ۢ The Report of Toxicological Examination which was completed within a fortnight of the fatality
̢ۢ Information on the contents of about a dozen prescription pill bottles found either with the body or in her room at the time of death
̢ۢ The contents of letters and journals written just prior to her death
̢ۢ Evidence of completion of any Army Suicide Event Reports. These are mandatory and must be completed by a credentialed behavioral health clinician within 30 days of an evacuation/hospitalization due to suicidal behavior or within 60 days of an actual suicide
̢ۢ Evidence of a completed psychological autopsy. Also mandatory when the manner of death is uncertain.
̢ۢ Swab test results of red and brown stains found on the floor next to the body
The original death certificate, signed January 19, 2006 and filed five days later, listed the cause of death as "pending." It claimed that an autopsy had already been performed and its findings were available prior to completion of the document. This is totally untrue; the autopsy report was not actually completed until the May 15, 2006 which happened to be the same date as the Supplemental Report of Cause of Death Certificate was completed. This now listed the cause of death as "undetermined." So how did an active 24 year-old female soldier die alone in a total stranger's barrack room on a U.S. Army base? How come three years after the event the manner and cause of death are still undetermined? Why have the authorities failed to come to a satisfactory conclusion concerning her demise? Why are they still withholding vital information?
Prescription drug cocktail-an accident waiting to happen?
From the scant and heavily censored details in the partial report released by the army it is still possible to piece together some of the history leading up to the death of SPC Nestling. What it reveals is the tragic story of a young woman with chronic psychological problems including severe depression and anger management issues, a track record of heavy drinking, abusing prescription drugs, bulimia, self-harm including cutting, overdosing, and failed suicide attempts, relationship problems, and questions about sexual orientation.
It begs the question, how did such a person with so many psychological problems come to be accepted into the military in the first place? A military life exposes soldiers to high stress situations which would be traumatic enough in the ordinary civilian world but in combat can result in deadly serious consequences for both individuals and their colleagues. It could be argued that such personnel need to be very carefully selected, well-balanced, and best able to cope with difficult circumstances.
Was her psychological entry-screening really so inadequate or has the desperate need to put boots on the ground meant that psychological standards had been lowered to such an extent that severe depression and bizarre self-destructive behavior are no longer seen as being a disqualification for entry? Once in the service was this same behavior condoned or just overlooked as long as it didn't interfere too much with prosecuting the war in Iraq? How was Nestling treated once in the army, what counseling did she receive, what drugs was she prescribed, and where was the duty of care to look after this young woman? All questions the military authorities have so far failed to answer.
You don't have to dig far into the army documents to find that Nestling had been diagnosed and medicated as a manic-depressive with bi-polar disorder from the age of 13. Her brother and mother both had similar problems. Prior to joining the military she had been institutionalized for six months due to depression. Evidence also suggests a chaotic childhood, broken home, family drinking problems, and even the possibility of sexual abuse.
The released army documents are surprisingly light on information as to Nestling's subsequent performance and experience in the army. She appeared to do well, liked service life and working with helicopters but continued to have chronic mental and relationship problems. She was described as being a "good soldier, she only had problems in her time off." It was noted she (unusually) didn't have a cell phone of her own and often borrowed others. She was seen as a "loner with no close friends." Even prior to being sent overseas she was mixing prescription anti-depressants with alcohol and was once rushed to the ER to have her stomach pumped in what may have been a failed suicide attempt.
It's not clear if Nestling was actually posted to the war zone in Iraq but we do know that while she was stationed in Egypt she was cutting herself, drinking and abusing prescription drugs, before again attempting suicide. She was evacuated to a medical center in Israel for evaluation and put on a 24-hour watch for about two weeks, before being sent to the Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany where she was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder and medicated for depression.
An Army Mental Health Counselor who knew her during this period later incongruously commented to investigating officers that Nestling was "chronically suicidal, but at the time had no desire to kill herself," but "based on her history and our conversations I felt she would kill herself within a year." The same person said Nestling had been warned of the potential for liver damage if she continued to drink alcohol while taking prescriptions for the drug INH to combat a TB infection. Interestingly, the investigating officer also asked if Nestling had ever been prescribed the anti-malarial drug, Lariam1, which carries warnings that it should be used with caution in patients with a history of depression. This interview appears to have been completed the day after the autopsy, and prior to the completion of the toxicological examination and a full review of her medical records.
The counselor said she did not know if Nestling had taken Lariam. We still don't know for sure as the army has so far failed to release details on the cocktail of medications regularly taken by Nestling for physical or psychological problems, what was in the dozen or so prescription pill bottles found at the time of her death, or the results of the toxicology report.
Conspicuously absent from the evidence/property custody document listing those same pill bottles was any information as to what drugs they actually contained. However, the partial army report did inadvertently reveal the use of several drugs including sleeping tablets. Others mentioned by name were INH (see above), "Zolft" (probably the antidepressant Zoloft), "Colodpyn" (probably Klonopin used for the treatment of panic disorders), and Quetiapine (an anti-psychotic) all of which should not be mixed with alcohol and need to be carefully monitored. All these drugs can have serious side-effects. The last one is particularly noted for increasing the sedating effects of other drugs such as Klonopin and ethanol, and even a potentially fatal complex called neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) has been reported.
After returning to the mainland U.S.A., Nestling visited her mother who was concerned at her daughter's excessive drinking and her difficulty sleeping due to nightmares and crying bouts which she claimed were brought on by her experiences (incidents and deaths of fellow soldiers) while stationed overseas.
Not long after this, Nestling again took a cocktail of antibiotics, decongestants, and alcohol, and was reported by the MPs as making suicidal gestures. She was taken to the ER for treatment and held for observation. She also spent about two months at Walter Reed Hospital where she signed a Suicide Prevention Agreement and a doctor recommended she be "at a stable location where she could meet friends and socialize."
The exit strategy-or not?
At some point, which is still not clear, the army decided that Nestling would be chaptered out of the service and was sent to Fort Bragg, N.C. for processing and discharge. In early December 2005 she was again drinking in barracks and later hospitalized for cutting herself, and held for yet another psychological evaluation. She was by now probably seeing a base psychiatrist regularly about three times a week.
In early January 2006 she failed to turn up for duty or attend a scheduled hospital appointment and was subsequently reported absent without leave. A few days prior to this it is known Nestling was found asleep on a couch in the barrack-block day room she shared with fellow soldiers. She awoke for an incoming phone call and asked them to leave so she could hold a private conversation. On their return the door was locked and despite banging loudly for quite a while they had to resort to using a credit card to slip the lock and gain entry. Nestling was passed out on a couch with the phone still pressed to her ear. She continued to sleep most of the day and when the soldiers eventually left at about 9:00 p.m. they nudged her but it was clear she just wanted to be left alone.
This was the last time she was seen alive. About midday five days later her fully-clothed body was found slumped on the floor of a barrack room by a soldier returning to collect some personal possessions from a billet he no longer occupied (as he was lodging off the base). The soldier did not know Nestling but evidence suggests she had been living in his room (instead of her own) for a couple of days.
Nestling's own room had been checked for her whereabouts the previous late afternoon after she was posted missing. An unmade bed covered with pill bottles and odd journal entries/letters were found which mentioned a "monster" and other strange writings about pain. However, the notes were not thought to be suicidal.
Some witnesses said there was no evidence she had been drinking on the last day in question but others contradict this and claimed "she was last seen drinking an unknown amount of alcohol." One witness commented that she would normally "drink whenever she could get her hands on (it)," and had pleaded she "wouldn't know what she would do without (her girlfriend) in her life."
Although, to date, the toxicological report has not been released, the partial report suggests it came back "negative for all tests" except for "a minor amount of Benzodiazepine in the urine," and "there was no alcohol present." This would appear to be highly inconsistent with her chronic alcohol and prescription drug problems, recent history, and some witness statements.
Cock-up or conspiracy?
Nestling's death may or may not have been suicide. It is now over three years since her demise and we will probably never know the truth. Authorities continue to refuse the release of all the relevant documents that reveal the manner and cause of this young soldier's death. What's certain is that the number of army suicides has doubled in the past few years and is symptomatic of an organization in severe crisis.
Stories from families of servicemen and women who have died non-combat related deaths also reveal a pattern of deception and obfuscation by military authorities. At an interview with a CID investigating officer nearly 11 weeks after the fatality, Nestling's own mother revealed she was "upset with the military in that they did not notify her of her daughter's death," and that she "found out from a friend and if she did not find out that way, she still would not have known that her daughter had died."
The mainstream U.S. media continues to shy away from awkward questions about the lowering of mental health entry standards into the military and the subsequent medication of personnel with severe psychological problems. The side-effects of mixing various psychotropic and non-psychotropic drugs in an environment which appears to ignore a culture of heavy drinking is also not on the agenda despite clear manufacturer's warning labels.
What is very obvious is that SPC Nestling's death was totally unnecessary; her calls for help were largely ignored by a military establishment who no longer saw her as an asset but a liability that needed to be shown the exit door. The military authorities have failed get to the bottom of what really happened or are covering up. This suggests a basic lack of respect for low-ranking personnel and their families in a system which is clearly stretched beyond capacity.
SPC Nestling was dumped alone into a decommissioning facility with total strangers, where odd behavior like sleeping all day, locking oneself inside a shared day-room, binge drinking and abusing prescription drugs were ignored, or worse, accepted as normal behavior. A place where she did not make friends or socialize and where fellow soldiers forgot the first rule drummed into them during basic training i.e., you look after each other-that's what keeps you alive in combat.
Was Nestling's death just another avoidable cock-up or is there something more sinister going on here? Either way, plenty of people in the military appeared to be aware that she had serious psychological problems and its leadership clearly failed in its basic duty of care by allowing a vulnerable confused young female soldier to slip thru the cracks.
-This article was submitted to Socialist Viewpoint May 19, 2009 by the author.
1 Since September 2002 warning labels on the drug Lariam, state:
Mefloquine (Lariam) may cause psychiatric symptoms in a number of patients, ranging from anxiety, paranoia, and depression to hallucinations and psychotic behavior. On occasions, these symptoms have been reported to continue long after mefloquine has been stopped. Rare cases of suicidal ideation and suicide have been reported though no relationship to drug administration has been confirmed. To minimize the chances of these adverse events, mefloquine should not be taken for prophylaxis in patients with active depression or with a recent history of depression, generalized anxiety disorder, psychosis, or schizophrenia or other major psychiatric disorders. Lariam should be used with caution in patients with a previous history of depression.
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11) What's Happening to our
Public Schools?
By Bonnie Weinstein
July/August 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_09/julaug_09_01.html
President Obama named Arne Duncan, an old time friend and former Superintendent of Chicago's Public Schools since 2001, as U.S. Secretary of Education.
Duncan's responsible for Chicago leading the country in Public Military Schools and other Charter Schools. Chicago has six public military academies and is the only district with schools representing all four branches of the military. In fact, according to an AP article that appeared June 4, 2009 by Dorie Turner, "Duncan sees the schools as another option for kids who don't fit well in a traditional educational setting...'For the right child, these schools are a lifesaver,' says Duncan."
The article also points out, "Between five percent and ten percent of graduating seniors from the nation's public military schools end up enlisting, according to an Associated Press review of the majority of the schools' records. About three percent of all new high school graduates join the military, according to the U.S. Department of Education."
All Charter schools receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of academic achievement accountability set forth in each school's charter. In some states, districts can allow corporations to open for-profit charter schools.
Basically, Charter schools can get rid of students that don't do well and fire teachers at will. They can also be fully militarized.
According to a November 2, 2007 AP article by Sophia Tareen entitled, "Chicago Leads in Public Military Schools,"
The Chicago district runs the academies [public military schools], and the curriculum is similar to that of regular high schools. But the students are required to enroll in Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps, operated by the Pentagon, and
the regimen includes uniform
inspections, drills, and lessons in military history.
School and military officials tout the academies' emphasis on college preparation, discipline and character building.
"These are positive learning environments. I love the sense of leadership. I love the sense of discipline," said Arne Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago school system.
At Rickover [Naval Academy], named for the admiral considered the father of the nuclear submarine, a student "watch" is posted at the entrance, standing attention when the principal passes. Students wear military-style JROTC uniforms and are called "recruits" until they earn the title "cadet." Each class starts with a roll call in which students answer "On board, sir!"
The article continues,
...the military is deliberately trying to recruit poor blacks and Hispanics by setting up academies in a 435,000-student district that is more than 90 percent minority.
According to a June 29, 2009 truthout article entitled, "The Chicago Model of Militarizing Schools," by teacher Brian Roa,
For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago's Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). I use the term "occupation" because part of our building was taken away despite student, parent, teacher and community opposition to RNAs opening.
Senn students are made to feel like second-class citizens inside their own school, due to inequalities. The facilities and resources are better on the RNA side. RNA students are allowed to walk on the Senn side, while Senn students cannot walk on the RNA side. RNA "disenrolls" students and we accept those students who get kicked out if they live within our attendance boundaries. This practice is against Chicago policy, but goes unchecked. All of these things maintain a two-tiered system within the same school building...Chicago has more military academies and more students in JROTC than any other city in the U.S.
Roa points out, "A favorite lie used to defend the expansion of military academies is that they are not used to recruit for the military."
But, as Roa explains,
...military academies receive money from the Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD would be derelict in its responsibilities were that money not spent as an investment in future soldiers...Moreover, since military academies are staffed with ex-service members (many don't even require valid teaching certificates), students are likely to receive career advice that favors a military path.
There are more blatant examples of recruiting at RNA. The cadets...have taken a school-sponsored field trip to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Furthermore, last year the school hosted Admiral Michael Mullen, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen told the cadets that the Navy was a "great career choice." RNA has hosted ten admirals in their short four-year history.
In addition to these direct tactics, the academies use more insidious approaches. A military culture permeates these schools. Students dress in uniform, receive demerits, and are introduced to the military hierarchy and way of life. For example, I have witnessed students marching with fake rifles. This cultivation of a militarized mind is the best explanation for why 40 percent of all Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program graduates wind up entering military service [my emphasis]. This statistic is especially telling, considering that less than one percent of the population has served in the military at any given moment since 1975.
In short, Charter Schools are not only a direct attack on public education; they are designed to expand the role of the military in our schools.
Obama increases school
militarization
The militarization is not only increasing in our elementary and secondary schools. There's a new twist on military recruitment in the colleges. In an article entitled "Son of PRISP, Obama's Classroom Spies," by David Price that appeared in Counterpunch on June 23, 2009,
...at its core, the new administration remains committed to staying the course of American militarization. Now we have an articulate, nuanced president who supports elements of progressive domestic policies, can even comfortably say the phrase LGBT in public speeches, while funding military programs at alarming levels and continuing the Bush administration's military and intelligence invasion of what used to be civilian life.
The latest manifestation of this continuity came last week when Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced plans to transform the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) from a pilot project into a permanent budget item. Blair also announced plans to establish a "Reserve Officers' Training Corps" to train unidentified [my emphasis] future intelligence officers in U.S. college classrooms. Like students receiving PRISP funds, the identities of students participating in these programs would not be known to professors, university administrators or fellow students-in effect, these future intelligence analysts and agents would conduct their first covert missions in our university classrooms... PRISP links undergraduate and graduate students with U.S. security and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) or CIA, and unannounced to universities, professors or fellow-students. PRISP-students enter American university campuses, classrooms, laboratories and professor's offices without disclosing links to these agencies... President Obama's ability to bring a new liberal credibility to this warmed-over Bush era project will induce many faculty and students to seriously consider participating in these programs. Times are hard and as funds get scarce it will be increasingly difficult for many to say no.
This development is just the latest installment in ongoing efforts to increase the militarization of American higher education. None of this should be surprising in a nation that alone spends about 48 percent of the planet's military budget.
What "military thinking"
does to our kids
As publisher of the Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW) newsletter and blog (bauaw.org), I sometimes get letters from readers not in the movement. One such letter was from a veteran of the first Gulf War and was delivered to me in person after a Board of Education meeting in March 2005.
This young man, in his mid-thirties, suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He had come to the Board of Education meeting to read the letter to the Board members that evening because they were considering arguments for and against the continuation of Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps (JROTC) in the San Francisco Schools. He wanted to give his reasons for opposing JROTC and military recruiters in schools.
We had been encouraging people to come to the Board meetings and speak out against JROTC and many people from the antiwar movement came to speak. When he approached the microphone we had no idea what he was going to say. He began to read his letter.
Here's an excerpt:
I refer to these recruiters as gang members and animals because in 1987 a Marine gang member approached me. He also sold me on a better way of life. He sold me on how I can be high speed and low drag by enlisting and taking Recon indoct. He also told me of these benefits I would be eligible for after I'm done servicing his machine. It's his machine that has left me with horrors I still cannot comprehend. What lives inside me is a screaming white-hot anger that has made me a social recluse. I'm afraid of the anger that lives inside. Fifteen years later I still deal with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and the inability to sleep through the night.
But what he didn't highlight was how I will give up everything I know and what is good in this world to trade it in for a violent and very mean view of life. I'm not going to preach to you today about the lies they weave to hit quota. No, what I am asking you for today is to consider this... imagine your child, grandson, daughter, neighbor's kids-children. See the mold of clay waiting to become a work of art.
They're good kids, kids you love, kids who love you, kids with such promise, kids who just need a better understanding of what's out there. A kid who could be the next doctor to come up with the answer for cancer...O.K., ya got that...?
Now imagine this kid goes and joins the military. Let's use the United States Marine Corps (U.S.MC). What is it that you think they teach them? They first teach them how to defend the constitution from aggressors both foreign and domestic. Not how to work on seven tons...or build radar systems, or how to rebuild Harrier jet turbines. Things they are promised by the recruiter. No! The job of the military personal-'ya know, the good kid-is to defend the constitution and our way of life 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That means job one is to kill until the killin' is done. How do you think they teach a good kid to kill? Good kids don't know the first thing about killing. It's why they're good kids. So what do you do...brainwash them to do it. That's what boot camp is for. That son and daughter will become a sanctioned government 03 killer at the end of 12 weeks of boot camp. Have you ever lived with a killer? Probably not. But my wife and parents have.
To this day my mom doesn't recognize me as the same person who left in 1987. Her words, "What happened to you over there? You left me a happy and carefree kid who loved being around people. And now you come back as a mean, hateful, angry animal who hates people. Where is my child?"
"I don't know mom, you need to ask the recruiter."
And the beast came to feed on my innocence. When he was done he left me with anger and memories of horror.
Then, he was cut off.
War is not healthy for children and other living things
The military has a powerful influence over our children. One of the functions of the JROTC as a self-described "community service" student group is to perform marching drills at elementary schools and middle and high school sporting events and graduations. They were the honor guard in this year's Memorial Day celebration in San Francisco's Presidio. They view the military as a viable career option; as a way to get a college education; a way to become a citizen; or as a way to "stay out of trouble." They have a strong sense of "brotherhood" towards one-another, but not toward their fellow non-military students; and they learn to obey the chain of command and idolize their military superiors.
Meanwhile, the economy is plunging massive numbers of people into poverty with no prospect of getting a job that will support them, let alone, a family. Obama's stimulus package claims that 3,657,000 jobs will be either created or retained by 2010. But in the last six months, lay-offs were at twice that rate. And in the planned 16-month span until 2010, six million teenagers will turn 18!1
In a July 2, 2009 article in Times by Peter S. Goodman and Jack Healy entitled, "U.S. Job Losses Rise in June as Unemployment Reaches 9.5 Percent," "The American economy lost 467,000 jobs in June..."
The public schools are being shuttered at an alarming rate. In San Francisco they call it "school consolidation." It sounds better than saying, "we're going to merge two schools into one whenever and wherever possible; enlarge class size; lay off teachers and school support staff; cut after-school programs for students; and even cut off meals programs that so many students depend on for their daily nourishment-such as it is.
While the government is spending trillions of dollars on corporate bailouts and the military, our schools are being decimated. Healthcare is more unavailable than ever before. Social service safety nets-clinics, food banks, shelters-are starved of resources and completely inadequate to meet the growing needs.
So, lets take stock of things as they stand. What would a rational society
-a society designed to solve problems-do, faced with a situation like we have today?
Logic would dictate that instead of pouring money into the pockets of the wealthy few; and investing it in war, plunder, occupation, death and destruction (to benefit the wealthy few); we should pour it into the things most people in the world need like housing, healthcare, education. Expanding, building and supplying these would create jobs and produce real benefits in the living conditions of all working people.
What do our children need?
Our children must inherit a healthy world. No child should have to worry where their next meal will come from or whether their parents will return home safely to them. No child should have to survive bombs or famine. No child should see their parents broken and sick and unable to care for even themselves. No child's "career choice" should be to kill other children.
(1) 2001 Statistical Abstract of the United States
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