BAUAW Newsletter: 08/09/2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009

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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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TODAY!
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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THIS SATURDAY -- TOMORROW! -- IMPORTANT!

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 whether in off-shore slave shops or by U.S. bombs and bullets, 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! Some of us have some of these things now, but we all have an inalienable right to all of these things. And without obscene private profits and the war machine to protect them, there's plenty to go around for all of us.

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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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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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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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
August 11, 2009
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/

Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.

Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.

Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.

Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.

Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!

Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org

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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) 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

2) What's Happening to our
Public Schools?
By Bonnie Weinstein
July/August 2009
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_09/julaug_09_01.html

3) Foreclosed and evicted in Oakland
By David Bacon
SFGate.com
August 7, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/07/EDTQ1952GT.DTL

4) As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them
by Ron Jacobs
August 7th, 2009
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/as-long-as-the-wars-continue-we-must-resist-them/comment-page-1/

5) A Scary Reality
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11herbert.html?hp

6) The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything
By HUSSEIN AGHA and ROBERT MALLEY
Op-Ed Contributors
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html

7) U.S. Missile Kills at Least 10 in Pakistan Tribal Area
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and SABRINA TAVERNISE
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/asia/12pstan.html?ref=world

8) France: 40 Riot in Paris Suburb
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Europe
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/world/europe/11briefs-France.html?ref=world

9) Disabled Students Are Spanked More
By SAM DILLON
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/education/11punish.html?ref=us

10) Calif. Prison Rocked by Riot Has Troubled Past
By SOLOMON MOORE
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/us/11riot.html?ref=us

11) G.M. Says Volt Will Get Triple-Digit City Mileage
By BILL VLASIC
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/12auto.html?ref=business

12) Labor Costs Fall as Productivity Increases
By JACK HEALY
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/economy/12econ.html?ref=business

13) UBS and U.S. Report a Deal on Names in Tax Inquiry
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/global/13ubs.html?hp

14) A Soldier's Eye in the Sky
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/12combat.html

15) Interrogation Inc.
A Window Into C.I.A.’s Embrace of Secret Jails
By DAVID JOHNSTON and MARK MAZZETTI
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/13foggo.html?_r=1&ref=world

16) Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/13clinic.html?ref=us

17) Huge Bonus Hangs Over Pay Review
By STEPHEN LABATON and ERIC DASH
News Analysis
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/13pay.html?ref=us

18) Pennsylvania: Report on Judge Who Took Kickbacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Mid-Atlantic
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/us/13brfs-REPORTONJUDG_BRF.html?ref=us

19) Locking Up Fewer Children
NYT Editorial
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14fri3.html

20) Cuban 5 Art Exhibit Opens at La Peña Cultural Center
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday August 13, 2009
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-08-13/article/33512?headline=Cuban-5-Art-Exhibit-Opens-at-La-Pe-a-Cultural-Center

21) U.S. to Resume Training Georgian Troops
By THOM SHANKER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/europe/14military.html?ref=world

22) U.S. Army Reduces Soldiers’ Murder Sentences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/14/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world

23) Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising [RE: Kevin Cooper...bw]
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/us/14dissent.html?ref=us

24) On 11th Try, Man Convicted in ’91 Killing Gets Hearing
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/nyregion/14retrial.html?ref=nyregion

25) Jobless Claims Post Increase [At the rate of over 500,000 per week!...bw]
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14econ.html?ref=business

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1) 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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2) 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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3) Foreclosed and evicted in Oakland
By David Bacon
SFGate.com
August 7, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/07/EDTQ1952GT.DTL

Three weeks ago, 10 Alameda County deputy sheriffs poured through the gate of a tan house on the corner of Tenth and Willow streets in West Oakland, the oldest African American neighborhood in the city. Tosha Alberty had just left for her job as a transportation services coordinator for Alameda County. Her children were still at home, however. All of them were hustled through the front door, down the steep steps, and out onto the sidewalk.

A locksmith drilled out the door locks so the family couldn't get back in. Other workers nailed sheets of plywood over every window. A new steel padlock was fastened to the gate.

Alberty had lived in the home with four children and two grandchildren for four years. She grew up in the neighborhood, and had been house hunting for a long time when she found the place in 2005. Although unemployed, her mother had left her a little money, and a real estate broker pushed her into a nonconforming loan with no down payment, with First Franklin Mortgage Services.

"I thought I'd be paying $2,800 a month," she recalls, "but the payment was much more." Alberty got a union job with the county, barely making it. But then the monthly installments ballooned to close to $5,000. "When I tried to renegotiate them," she says, "they said that since I'd been paying before, they wouldn't help me." The loan went into default.

Despite promises that huge bank bailouts would keep people in their homes, they gave no help to people like Alberty. But they did make some people rich.

First Franklin's Web site offered "flexible, hassle-free home loan solutions" to mortgage brokers. Merrill Lynch bought the lender in 2006, and was then itself bought for $50 billion by Bank of America. Last week Bank of America reported second-quarter profits of $2.4 billion, its second straight profitable quarter since the mortgage crisis started. The bank received $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and spent $2.3 million in the first half of 2008 on lobbying Congress and another $1.5 million this year.

Last week, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reported that Bank of America paid $3.3 billion in bonuses to its executives, 172 of whom received more than $1 million apiece. Merrill Lynch, which lost $27 billion in 2008, paid $3.6 billion in bonuses - 696 execs received more than $1 million, and 14 got more than $10 million.

None of that money went to the Albertys. Instead, First Franklin's "hassle-free solution" became Tosha Alberty's eviction. So she found a better solution. She joined ACORN's Home Defender campaign. Twice in May the sheriffs met a resolute group determined to keep her from being evicted, finally swooping down without warning July 20, just after she'd left for work.

Last week, a group sat in on the steps of her house in an act of civil disobedience and were arrested by the Oakland police. ACORN Home Defender Martha Daniels vows, "We will find a way to put Tosha and her family back into this house." City Council members and a county supervisor support them.

Protecting people's right to stay in their homes will produce a healthier community. Throwing billions at the banks trying to evict them will not. "There's something wrong with this country," says Alberty's father, Charles Alberty. "My daughter just needed a house for her family."

David Bacon is a Bay Area writer and photographer whose latest book is "Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants."

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4) As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them
by Ron Jacobs
August 7th, 2009
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/as-long-as-the-wars-continue-we-must-resist-them/comment-page-1/

As the casualty figures climb in Afghanistan and dip in Iraq and support for those wars plummets, the question of troop resistance remains on the table. According to US military estimates, desertion and AWOL rates have climbed since the resistance in Iraq began its armed campaign against the US occupation. In addition, recruitment numbers dropped drastically, although they have began to climb since the economy began its collapse in Fall 2008. Soldiers and Marines have been stop-lossed and their tours of duty in the combat zones were extended. In addition, many troops serve not one, but two or three consecutive tours with as little as one month stateside between tours. All of these phenomena have created increased levels of stress and depression among the troops, leading to one of the highest known suicide rates among veterans and active duty troops ever.

Many readers know at least one man or woman who has done time in Iraq or Afghanistan. Although most vets seem to adjust to civilian life once they are through with their military duty, many others do not. indeed, even those who appear to be adjusting just fine often cause concern among their friends and relatives because of changes in their behavior. The Veteran's Administration (VA) is notoriously inept and callous in its treatment of vets, despite the best efforts of some individuals within the organization that struggle against the overwhelming bureaucratic odds and inadequate funding endemic in the agency. Newspapers run stories regularly about veterans lacking care, lashing out at family members or others, and most tragically of all, killing themselves. Yet, the Pentagon continues to push for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan while carrying on what appears to be a heated debate over whether or not to withdraw from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the US antiwar movement founders in the wake of a substantial part of its membership giving their collective soul to the Democratic Party. Since November 2008, it's as if the bloodshed perpetrated by US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is okay because Barack Obama is leading the charge instead of George Bush. Besides the National Assembly's call for local and regional protests against the Iraq occupation and Afghan war in October, there has been barely a peep from other national antiwar organizations. This is despite the fact that Congress and Obama have approved several more billion dollars for the wars and the size of the US force in Afghanistan has nearly doubled while the promised withdrawal of US forces in Iraq has not even begun.

It is the opinion of many anti-warriors that veterans have a key role to play in any organized resistance. After all, it was their presence in the movement against the Vietnam war that shook the conscience of the US public in that war's later years. However, as Dahr Jamail and his subjects point out again and again, the strength in numbers and the political power of the GI movement against the war in Vietnam was directly related to the strength of the greater antiwar movement. So, despite the commitment of today's GI and veteran resisters profiled in Jamail's book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, that commitment is limited by the weakness of the antiwar movement as a whole.

Jamail highlights the various organizations organizing GI resistance, from the Iraq Veterans Against the War to the group Courage to Resist. He also commits a chapter to each of the primary forms of resistance and reasons for that resistance. He describes instances of individual resistance and the refusal of entire units to carry out missions. He also explores the nature of the sexist culture of the military and the immorality of the wars themselves. One of the most interesting chapters in The Will to Resist is titled "Quarters of Resistance." It describes the mission and interior of a house in Washington, DC run by a couple veterans. The purpose of the house is to operate as a sort of clearinghouse for the GI resistance movement. At times, the house has provided shelter for veterans and GIs attending antiwar activities in DC. It is also a place that the founder of the house, Geoffrey Millard, calls a "training ground for resistance." In addition to these quarters, Jamail discusses the beginnings of a coffeehouse movement slowly developing outside major US military bases.

Jamal's book is also about his learning to understand and appreciate the humanity of the US soldier. Originally inclined to consider them all killers without conscience, his conversations and other interactions with the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill in America's name have led him to understand that many of these folks struggle with their souls on a daily basis. With this growing understanding of folks who are essentially his contemporaries, The Will to Resist becomes more than just another collective biography of troops who discover their conscience under the duress of war.

If the current commander of US troops in Afghanistan has his way, there will be more than 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of the summer in 2010. Already, Barack Obama has approved adding 20,000 more active duty troops to the 1,473,900 already on duty. Without public protest, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is certain to continue. In addition, General Odierno in Iraq insists that US troops remain in that country, as well. Furthermore, the likelihood of combat against other foes chosen by Washington increases. Resistance is never easy, as the men and women in The Will to Resist can tell us. However, if the people who poured into the streets to protest Bush's war are truly opposed to war, then they should also make an appearance in those same streets now that the war is Obama's.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net. Read other articles by Ron, or visit Ron's website.

This article was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 10:35am and is filed under Afghanistan, Anti-war, Book Review, General, Immigration, Iraq, Military/Militarism, Obama.

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5) A Scary Reality
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11herbert.html?hp

Last week was a pretty good one for President Obama. Bill Clinton helped out big time when he returned from North Korea with the American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Sonia Sotomayor was elevated to the Supreme Court. And Friday's unemployment report registered a tiny downward tick in the jobless rate.

But for American workers peering anxiously through their family portholes, the economic ship is still sinking. You can put whatever kind of gloss you want on last week's jobs numbers, but the truth is that while they may have been a bit better than most economists were expecting, they were still bad, bad, bad.

Some 247,000 jobs were lost in July, a number that under ordinary circumstances would send a shudder through the country. It was the smallest monthly loss of jobs since last summer. And for that reason, it was seen as a hopeful sign. The official monthly unemployment rate ticked down from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent.

But behind the official numbers is a scary story that illustrates the single biggest challenge facing the United States today. The American economy does not seem able to provide enough jobs - and nowhere near enough good jobs - to maintain the standard of living that most Americans have come to expect.

The country has lost a crippling 6.7 million jobs since the Great Recession began in December 2007. No one is predicting a recovery in the foreseeable future powerful enough to replace the millions of jobs that have vanished in this historic downturn.

Analysts at the Economic Policy Institute noted that the economy has fewer jobs now than it had in 2000, "even though the labor force has grown by around 12 million workers since then."

Two issues that absolutely undermine any rosy assessment of last week's employment report are the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed and the crushing levels of joblessness among young Americans. More than five million workers - about a third of the unemployed - have been jobless for more than six months. That's the highest number recorded since accurate records have been kept.

For those concerned with the economic viability of the American family going forward, the plight of young workers, especially young men, is particularly frightening. The percentage of young American men who are actually working is the lowest it has been in the 61 years of record-keeping, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

Only 65 of every 100 men aged 20 through 24 years old were working on any given day in the first six months of this year. In the age group 25 through 34 years old, traditionally a prime age range for getting married and starting a family, just 81 of 100 men were employed.

For male teenagers, the numbers were disastrous: only 28 of every 100 males were employed in the 16- through 19-year-old age group. For minority teenagers, forget about it. The numbers are beyond scary; they're catastrophic.

This should be the biggest story in the United States. When joblessness reaches these kinds of extremes, it doesn't just damage individual families; it corrodes entire communities, fosters a sense of hopelessness and leads to disorder.

The unemployment that has wrought such devastation in black communities for decades is now being experienced by a much wider swath of the population. We've been in deep denial about this. Way back in March 2007, when the official unemployment rate was a wildly deceptive 4.5 percent and the Bush crowd was crowing about the alleged strength of the economy, I wrote:

"People can howl all they want about how well the economy is doing. The simple truth is that millions of ordinary American workers are in an employment bind. Steady jobs with good benefits are going the way of Ozzie and Harriet. Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family. And blacks, particularly black males, are in a deep danger zone."

The official jobless rate is now more than twice as high - 9.4 percent - and even more wildly deceptive. It ticked down by 0.1 percent last month not because more people found jobs, but because 450,000 people withdrew from the labor market. They stopped looking, so they weren't counted as unemployed.

A truer picture of the employment crisis emerges when you combine the number of people who are officially counted as jobless with those who are working part time because they can't find full-time work and those in the so-called labor market reserve - people who are not actively looking for work (because they have become discouraged, for example) but would take a job if one became available.

The tally from those three categories is a mind-boggling 30 million Americans - 19 percent of the overall work force.

This is, by far, the nation's biggest problem and should be its No. 1 priority.

David Brooks is off today.

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6) The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything
By HUSSEIN AGHA and ROBERT MALLEY
Op-Ed Contributors
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html

THE two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas's political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding?

As for Hamas, recognition of the state of Israel has always been and remains taboo. Until recently, the movement had hinted it might acquiesce to Israel's de facto existence and resign itself to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This sentiment has now grown from hint to certitude.

President Obama's June address in Cairo provoked among Hamas leaders a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. The American president criticized the movement but did not couple his mention of Hamas with the term terrorism, his recitation of the prerequisites for engagement bore the sound of a door cracked open rather than one slammed shut, and his acknowledgment that the Islamists enjoyed the support of some Palestinians was grudging but charitable by American standards. All of which was promising but also foreboding, prompting reflection within the Hamas movement over how to escape international confinement without betraying core beliefs.

The result of this deliberation was Hamas's message that it would adhere to the internationally accepted wisdom - a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas also coupled its concession with caveats aplenty, demanding full Israeli withdrawal, full Palestinian sovereignty and respect for the refugees' rights. In this, there was little to distinguish its position from conventional Palestinian attitudes.

The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state - and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees' rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.

The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core. It can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 - Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.

Both positions enjoy broad support within their respective communities. Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears - for an end to Arab questioning of Israel's legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees' return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel's Arab citizens.

Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. Their firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right. The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement - led by refugees and focused on their plight.

It's easy to wince at these stands. They run against the grain of a peace process whose central premise is that ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state will bring this matter to a close. But to recall the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian clash is not to invent a new battle line. It is to resurrect an old one that did not disappear simply because powerful parties acted for some time as if it had ceased to exist.

Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle's latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.

That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

Hussein Agha is a co-author, with Ahmed S. Khalidi, of "A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine." Robert Malley, the director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, was a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.

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7) U.S. Missile Kills at Least 10 in Pakistan Tribal Area
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and SABRINA TAVERNISE
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/asia/12pstan.html?ref=world

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An American missile hit the Mehsud tribal region of South Waziristan on Tuesday, claiming at least 10 lives in the same area where the leader of the Pakistani Taliban was apparently killed in a similar drone attack last week, Pakistani security officials said.

The missile struck near the town of Kani Gurram, one of the largest in the area, which is home to the Pakistani Taliban movement. American and Pakistani security officials say they believe the leader of the movement, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a drone strike by the C.I.A. last Wednesday.

The officials spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

Details of the latest strike on Tuesday were unclear. Reuters reported that the missile apparently hit a house that was being used by the Taliban, but it was not clear if the attack killed any Taliban commanders, many of whom have reportedly gathered in the area in order to choose Mr. Mehsud's successor.

More deaths could be extremely damaging for the Taliban, whose ranks - according to Pakistani security officials - are in disarray after the death of Mr. Mehsud. Pakistan's military says it wants to exploit that weakness but is waiting for the right moment.

"Now it's a fluid situation," a Pakistani military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said in an interview. "One would like the dust to settle first."

A near complete news blackout has settled over South Waziristan, but militants who reached news organizations by telephone have denied the death of Mr. Mehsud.

Under standard policy for covert operations, C.I.A. strikes inside Pakistan are not publicly acknowledged by the United States government.

While American and Pakistani intelligence officials have not publicly confirmed Mr. Mehsud's death, they say the evidence for it is overwhelming. Less clear is who is in charge now. On Monday, a man claiming to be Hakimullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander whom Pakistani intelligence officials believed had been killed over the weekend in the power struggle, surfaced in a phone call to a news agency.

The caller, who contacted a reporter from Reuters, said that the government had falsely claimed he had been killed. The man also denied the death of the Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud.

"I have proven the government's claim of my death wrong, and I challenge the government to prove the death of our amir," Reuters quoted the man as saying. "Baitullah Mehsud is alive, safe and sound."

But Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, refuted those assertions. In a telephone interview late Monday, he said Pakistan's government had received intelligence over the weekend that a scuffle had broken out over who would take power and that Hakimullah Mehsud, one of the candidates, had been killed.

Mr. Malik said officials were convinced of Baitullah Mehsud's death, though they still had not been able to formally confirm it. The information about the fight and subsequent killing, however, had come from sources within the Taliban, he said, and though they believed the intelligence to be credible, it was less certain.

Real proof of their claims, he said, would be a video.

"Why don't they clearly come forward?" he said. "Calling from some number. The voice could be similar to others. There's something dubious going on."

A Pakistani intelligence official said the information about Hakimullah Mehsud's death had come from intercepted phone conversations, and that they were conducting a voice analysis, as three Taliban commanders had similar sounding voices.

The Reuters reporter, reached by telephone, said he was sure the caller was Hakimullah Mehsud.

Meanwhile, the government is trying to enlist members of the Mehsud tribe against the Taliban. Mr. Malik met tribal elders Monday evening, and encouraged them to form a militia against the Taliban in their area, elders said. But the suggestion did not appeal, mainly because such an action would put their families in danger and risk setting ancient tribal code of revenge into action.

"The interior minister said they were about to finish," said Muhammed Zaman Mehsud, a tribal elder who attended the meeting. "We don't know that."

He added: "We'll live in that area for the coming 100 decades. We simply cannot afford it."

Besides, the tribe feels harassed by the government, which it says has arrested scores of its members, accusing them of being part of the Taliban. Some of them, the elders said, have been killed.

"They claim they are taking action against terrorists," the elder said. "But to us, they are peaceful citizens."

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8) France: 40 Riot in Paris Suburb
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Europe
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/world/europe/11briefs-France.html?ref=world

The interior minister called Monday for calm after about 40 rioters in a Paris suburb hurled Molotov cocktails at police officers and firefighters and set dozens of cars on fire in a rampage prompted by the death of a teenage pizza deliveryman fleeing the police. Tensions broke out after the man tried to evade a police document check in Bagnolet on Sunday, a police official said. He lost control of his motorcycle, hit a barrier and died en route to the hospital, the official said.

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9) Disabled Students Are Spanked More
By SAM DILLON
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/education/11punish.html?ref=us

More than 200,000 schoolchildren are paddled, spanked or subjected to other physical punishment each year, and disabled students get a disproportionate share of the treatment, according to a new study.

Most states prohibit corporal punishment in public schools, but 20 do not. The two watchdog groups that collaborated on the report, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, are urging federal and state lawmakers to extend the ban nationwide and enact an immediate moratorium on physical punishment of students with disabilities.

"Corporal punishment is just not an effective method of punishment, especially for disabled children, who may not even understand why they're being hit," said Alice Farmer, who wrote the report.

The report, based on federal Department of Education data, said that of the 223,190 public school students nationwide who were paddled during the 2006-7 school year, at least 41,972, or about 19 percent, were students with disabilities, who make up 14 percent of all students.

As recently as the 1970s, only two states had laws banning corporal punishment, but 28 others have since passed similar legislation. Corporal punishment is still permitted in some form in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

The most recent state to enact a ban was Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland last month signed into law a measure including a such a prohibition.

In states that do not have bans, some school districts do. In Louisiana, about 56 districts allow corporal punishment, while about 14 prohibit it. Last month the Education Committee of the Louisiana Legislature voted 8 to 6 to reject a proposed ban.

Roy McCoy, principal of Beekman Junior High School in Bastrop, La., testified against the bill. Classroom discipline has been an increasing problem, Mr. McCoy told lawmakers. In an interview, he said paddling is no cure-all, "but when other means of correcting behavior have failed to produce the desired improvement, it could be a viable option."

"My view is that this should be a decision made by each local school board," Mr. McCoy said.

Among the cases cited in the report was that of a 6-year-old, first-grade boy with autism, who was paddled at his Mississippi elementary school. An assistant principal who the report described as weighing 300 pounds "picked up an inch-thick paddle and paddled him" on the buttocks, the report said.

"It just devastated him," the report cited the boy's grandmother as saying. "When a child with autism has something like that happen, they don't forget it. It's always fresh in their minds."

Alan Richard, a former journalist who is the spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, said he once surveyed attitudes in Southern districts.

"One principal said, 'I was whipped as a child, so it's fine with me,' " Mr. Richard recalled. "Others said, 'We don't do that anymore.' It varied by community."

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10) Calif. Prison Rocked by Riot Has Troubled Past
By SOLOMON MOORE
August 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/us/11riot.html?ref=us

LOS ANGELES - A California prison badly damaged over the weekend by a riot that injured 250 inmates has a record of poor maintenance, shoddy safety protocols, dangerous overcrowding and riots, three inspection reports since 2006 show.

Conditions at the prison, the California Institution for Men in Chino, exacerbated tensions among inmates, many of them in African-American and Latino prison gangs, the reports say.

Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said 16 prisoners remained hospitalized on Monday, out of 250 hurt in the weekend riot.

Ms. Thornton said the Reception Center West, site of the riot, was too badly damaged to accommodate prisoners. One dormitory was destroyed by fire, she said, and about 700 inmates will be moved to other prisons.

Ms. Thornton said investigators were still trying to determine the cause of the riot.

Lt. Mark Hargrove, a corrections officer, said Sunday that the fighting had broken down along ethnic lines, with African-Americans battling Latinos. Lieutenant Hargrove said recent efforts to desegregate the 33-prison system, along with overcrowding, could have contributed to tensions. The Chino prison held 5,877 inmates, nearly twice its capacity.

Lieutenant Hargrove also said the riot could have been related to an uprising in May that he called the worst at the Chino prison since 2006.

J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed federal receiver in charge of overhauling prison health care in California, also cited a swine flu outbreak as a factor in tensions because quarantined prisoners were not allowed out of their cells.

The riot reflects systemic shortcomings in California's prison system, experts said. Citing well-documented problems at Chino, a federal three-judge court recently ordered the state to come up with a plan to reduce the state's inmate population, currently 150,000, by more than 40,000 inmates within two years.

Three inspection reports at the Chino prison - by an internal investigator, an expert witness in a federal class-action lawsuit and the state inspector general - show longstanding problems.

In 2005, an inmate stabbed a correctional officer to death. The inspector general's review concluded that the killer had a history of mental illnesses and should have been placed in a more restricted setting. The review also found that guards lacked proper training and safety equipment.

In 2007, a prison expert inspected the Chino complex and told the three-judge court that it was "an incredibly old, poorly maintained, unsanitary facility with inadequate staffing." The expert, Doyle Wayne Scott, a former executive director for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, described how prisoners were often deprived of educational and counseling programs and recreation time outside their living quarters.

Double bunk beds were stacked in common areas. Inmates were secured in overflow cages in halls, Mr. Scott said.

Mr. Scott said that in the West Reception Center, 198 prisoners were monitored by only two corrections officers, and that many inmates were out of sight of guards.

"The housing unit was a serious disturbance waiting to happen," he wrote. "If the prisoners wanted to take over the dorm, they could do so in a second and no one would know."

Mr. Scott said of the unit, "In its current state, it is not fit for housing human beings."

Last year, the California inspector general, David R. Shaw, highlighted inadequate correctional officer training and poor classification of inmates that allowed high-risk felons to mix with less serious offenders. Mr. Shaw described the Chino facility as being in "beyond poor condition."

Luis Rodriguez, a writer in Los Angeles and expert on gang and prison culture who gives writing workshops at California prisons, said, "You have these guys on top of each other, and ethnic violence becomes the funnel for all their frustrations."

Ms. Thornton said that problems persisted, but that officials continued to make improvements.

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11) G.M. Says Volt Will Get Triple-Digit City Mileage
By BILL VLASIC
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/12auto.html?ref=business

WARREN, Mich. - General Motors said Tuesday that its Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle, scheduled for release in 2011, will achieve a fuel rating of 230 miles a gallon in city driving.

The rating is based on methodology drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency, and most other automakers have not revealed the mileage for the electric cars. Nissan, however, announced last week that its all-electric vehicle, the Leaf, which comes out in late 2010, would get 367 m.p.g., using the same E.P.A. standards.

Figures for highway driving and combined city and highway use have not been completed for the Volt, but G.M.'s chief executive, Fritz Henderson, told reporters and analysts at a briefing that the car is expected to get more than 100 miles a gallon in combined city and highway driving.

"Our Chevrolet Volt extended range electric vehicle will achieve unprecedented fuel economy," Mr. Henderson said. "I'm confident that we will be in triple digits."

The Volt can travel up to 40 miles on a single battery charge, at which point a small gasoline engine kicks in and powers the car and simultaneously recharges the battery. The battery can be charged in eight hours, at an off-peak cost of about 40 cents, Mr. Henderson said.

Nearly 8 of 10 Americans commute fewer than 40 miles a day, the company said in a statement, citing Department of Transportation data. The mileage calculation for the Volt essentially assumes that most drivers would stay within that range and not need the gasoline engine.

Mr. Henderson said the Volt would be a critical part of G.M.'s product strategy. "Having a car that gets triple-digit fuel economy will be a game changer for us," he said. The car will go into production late next year.

But whether the Volt can live up to its billing has been a matter of debate. Some industry analysts note that General Motors has a poor track record of introducing green technology to the market.

G.M. is trying to persuade consumers to return to its showrooms after filing for bankruptcy on June 1 and emerging as a reorganized company with fewer brands, models and dealers.

Mr. Henderson and other G.M. executives met with groups of consumers on Monday to hear their thoughts on the company's product lineup.

"We need to communicate what we have," Mr. Henderson said. "The only way we're going to make G.M. great again is to win in the market."

The Volt is expected to be both a so-called halo car to draw consumers to the Chevrolet brand, and a technological foundation for future electric models.

The company has built about 30 Volts so far and is testing them in various conditions.

Interest has been building in the Volt since it was introduced at auto shows in recent years. But with G.M. now 60 percent government-owned, the car has become a symbol of the company's rebirth after its 40-day trip through bankruptcy.

Mr. Henderson said most of G.M.'s new products would be either passenger cars or fuel-efficient crossover vehicles. While the company will still build trucks and large sport utilities, the bulk of its investments will go toward smaller vehicles.

"I think the fundamental premise of planning for higher fuel prices is the right premise," he said.

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12) Labor Costs Fall as Productivity Increases
By JACK HEALY
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/economy/12econ.html?ref=business

Businesses in the United States squeezed more out of their workers this spring, as productivity surged by the most in six years, the government reported on Tuesday.

Overall output slid in the second quarter as businesses scaled back production and curtailed their growth plans to cut their budgets and survive the recession. But the number of hours worked fell even farther, meaning that workers effectively did more with less.

Productivity rose at an annual rate of 6.4 percent at non-farm businesses from the first quarter, the Labor Department reported, the largest increase since the third quarter of 2003. Overall output fell 1.7 percent, and hours worked fell by 7.6 percent.

As workers became more efficient, the cost of labor for each unit of output fell 5.8 percent. After several quarters of heavy losses, many businesses were able to turn profits this spring by slashing their labor costs and capital investments.

The report also showed that wages are stagnating and people's purchasing power is falling.

Although hourly pay inched up 0.2 percent in the second quarter, an increase in consumer prices actually outpaced any growth in wages. Real hourly compensation, which takes price changes into account, dropped 1.1 percent, highlighting concerns that weakened consumers are not likely to drive the economic recovery. .

Economists said the figures showed that despite record government deficits, inflation is still not an imminent concern.

"It is very clear that deflation remains a significantly greater risk than inflation over the near several quarters," the Morgan Stanley economists, David Greenlaw and Ted Wieseman, wrote in a research note.

The recession has left millions out of work and struggling to pay their bills, but it has also made workers in the United States more productive. Worker productivity increased 1.8 percent over the last year, even amid a tumultuous business climate marked by uncertainty about whether employers would be cutting jobs or shutting down altogether.

Another economic report showed that businesses continued to cut their inventories in June - and by almost twice the amount economists had expected - as sales rebounded. Wholesale inventories fell by 1.7 percent after a 1.2 percent decline in May, and many economists believe that companies will soon begin rebuilding their depleted stockpiles as production revives, providing a shot of economic growth.

Sales of wholesalers rose by 0.4 percent from May.

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13) UBS and U.S. Report a Deal on Names in Tax Inquiry
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/global/13ubs.html?hp

The Swiss banking giant UBS and the Justice Department said Wednesday that they had reached an accord that would force the bank to disclose names of American clients suspected of tax evasion.

"The parties have initialed agreements," Stuart Gibson, a Justice Department lawyer who is trying the case, said in a conference call on Wednesday with the judge overseeing the matter. Mr. Gibson told Judge Alan Gold of Federal District Court in Miami that both sides would move next week to have the legal case dismissed and file court documents outlining the settlement.

Mr. Gibson told the judge last week that he hoped a deal could be completed by Aug. 12.

It is unclear how many client names UBS will ultimately reveal or whether it will pay a fine. UBS and the Swiss government have been fighting efforts by the Justice Department to force it to disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients of UBS suspected of offshore tax evasion, which came in a civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department in February.

A number of wealthy Americans have approached the I.R.S. in recent months to disclose their offshore accounts, in exchange for reduced penalties.

In addition, the efforts have threatened to erode Swiss banking laws and have shaken UBS, the world's largest private bank. They have also escalated into a diplomatic incident between Switzerland and the United States.

In February, UBS agreed to pay $780 million to settle charges that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes on nearly $20 billion hidden in offshore accounts. One day later, the Justice Department filed a civil suit seeking to force UBS to disclose 52,000 client names. Of the names on the agency's original list, prosecutors are focused on several thousand Americans with offshore accounts containing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.

UBS had fiercely resisted disclosure, arguing that doing so would cause it to violate Swiss banking laws. The Swiss government has said it would block UBS from turning over the names if ultimately ordered to do so, while the Justice Department has said that it might consider indicting the bank if it ultimately refused to do so upon a judge's order.

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14) A Soldier's Eye in the Sky
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/12combat.html

FORT BLISS, Tex. - The soldiers crouched beneath the blazing desert sun, waiting to burst into the villages in conditions similar to those they have encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this time, they got some high-tech help in an exercise intended to prove that new devices operated by the soldiers themselves can make those harrowing missions less dangerous in the future.

As the mock attack began on the sprawling military base here, tiny drones hovered overhead, peering through the windows to see insurgents gathered inside the houses. Small robots - like R2-D2 in "Star Wars" - crawled through some of the doors, flashing back live video of the startled enemy's positions. Electronic sensors placed nearby watched escape routes. And a battery of six-foot-high missiles stood at the ready farther out in the desert to destroy vehicles that tried to rush in to help the insurgents.

"When I was in Iraq, we couldn't see what we were busting into," said Specialist Randall Thompson, who operates the robots. "But with this equipment, we can at least get a peek."

Army officials are trying to distance the relatively small-scale effort, which still faces some technical hurdles, from the shadow of a much broader program recently canceled that was to have created a truly modern military, with a new generation of combat vehicles and a vast wireless network.

As they go back to the drawing board for the big equipment, Army officials say these smaller technologies could make a difference sooner for the soldiers who take on some of the most dangerous missions hunting out insurgents.

The new equipment, being developed by Boeing and other contractors, is expected to cost about $2 billion for the first seven brigades. Each has at least 3,000 soldiers, and the equipment is about two years away from use in the field. By 2025, the Army plans to create similar gear and other improvements for all 73 of its active and reserve brigades.

The changes also illustrate a shift in Pentagon contracting toward more incremental upgrades and a greater use of commercial technologies. For instance, iRobot, a Massachusetts company that has developed robots for home vacuum-cleaning and industrial uses, is building the Army's robots.

Officials say the new devices will help transform basic infantry brigades, which have shouldered the bulk of the fighting in both wars even though they have far less protection and firepower than armored units.

The drones resemble flying lawnmower engines about the size of a beer keg that land on four curved wire feet. With the cameras on the drones acting like spotters, the ground-launched six-foot missiles, called "rockets in a box," will eventually enable soldiers to destroy hostile forces more than 20 miles away without having to call in help from artillery units or other aircraft, Army officials say.

The robots could also search caves and cars at hazardous checkpoints. And the sensors could guard outposts and monitor areas cleared of insurgents, freeing more soldiers to fight.

"I think the difference is going to be huge," Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, a deputy Army chief of staff, said in an interview.

Col. Lee Fetterman, who is helping to oversee the testing here, said the new technologies were "methods of transferring risk from soldiers to machines, which we're all for."

The defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, broke up the broader effort to modernize the Army, called Future Combat Systems, in June. He was concerned about potential cost increases - it was headed for at least $160 billion - and he questioned whether the new combat vehicles would provide enough protection against roadside bombs.

Compared with that broader vision, "it seems like an awful lot of expectations have come down to a pretty small litter," said Representative Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat of Hawaii, who heads a House subcommittee that oversees the Army.

Mr. Gates, who ordered the Army to go back to the drawing board on the combat vehicles, and Congressional leaders like Mr. Abercrombie have urged the military to supply the enhancements for the infantry as quickly as it can.

So 1,150 soldiers, most with experience in Iraq or Afghanistan, have been testing the gear here at Fort Bliss, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, and the adjacent White Sands Missile Range, where the mix of desert, mountains and 100-degree temperatures echo recent combat conditions.

Most of the soldiers are enthusiastic about the new capabilities. Some Army units already have tiny hand-held drones and robots that can disarm roadside bombs while the operator is a safe distance away. But the new drones, made by Honeywell, are designed to hover over a crucial spot on a battlefield like helicopters, instead of flying in a wide circle. And if an assault squad needed, for example, to toss the 35-pound robot though a window, where it happened to land on its back, it would flip itself over and start shooting video.

The sensors, designed by Textron, send alerts and pictures from the field or from the inside of buildings. One device, which can be buried near a road, can even discern from seismic readings whether people, trucks or tanks are passing by or approaching.

The precision-guided missiles could represent a major advance. Fifteen of them can fit into a refrigerator-size launcher. They are being designed, by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to go over or swerve around hills and mountains and update their course in midflight. The warheads are supposed to be powerful enough to destroy a moving tank, making infantry brigades more potent than ever.

But some of the systems have obvious flaws. Even from several hundred feet high, the drone sounds like a lawn mower, and Honeywell is looking to muffle the noise. The soldiers here have also suggested changes, like redesigning the field sensors to make them less detectable.

And Army officials say it will be the ability, which is still being developed, to link all these systems wirelessly that could provide the biggest enhancement.

In the tests, the soldiers controlling the drones, robots and sensors could receive streaming video on laptops or other devices. But the network does not have enough bandwidth or range to send more than photographs to platoon leaders in Humvees and from there on to headquarters.

Even the photos are a big improvement over the mostly voice and data communications now in use. But the Army expects a sophisticated new radio, which has run into costly delays, to be available to extend the network's video capabilities by the time the new equipment goes into full production in 2011.

The Government Accountability Office, a Congressional watchdog agency, has warned that the Army is taking a risk in testing the rest of the gear before that radio transmitter is ready. But Army officials say they will take that chance to push out the new devices as quickly as possible.

"It's like the saying goes: A picture is worth 1,000 words," said Lt. Col. Kevin D. Hendricks, a battalion commander involved in the recent exercise.

"If I can get early warning that an armored vehicle is coming down the road, and I can hit that vehicle with a precision-guided munition before any of my soldiers come into contact with it, that's the way I'd like to fight every war," he added.

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15) Interrogation Inc.
A Window Into C.I.A.’s Embrace of Secret Jails
By DAVID JOHNSTON and MARK MAZZETTI
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/13foggo.html?_r=1&ref=world

WASHINGTON — In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency’s main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world’s most threatening terrorists.

Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, was known inside the agency as a cigar-waving, bourbon-drinking operator, someone who could get a cargo plane flying anywhere in the world or quickly obtain weapons, food, money — whatever the C.I.A. needed. His unit in Frankfurt, Germany, was strained by the spy agency’s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Mr. Foggo agreed to the assignment.

“It was too sensitive to be handled by headquarters,” he said in an interview. “I was proud to help my nation.”

With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees, according to former intelligence officials and others briefed on the matter. One jail was a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania, the officials disclosed. Another was a steel-beam structure at a remote site in Morocco that was apparently never used. The third, another remodeling project, was outside another former Eastern bloc city. They were designed to appear identical, so prisoners would be disoriented and not know where they were if they were shuttled back and forth. They were kept in isolated cells.

The existence of the network of prisons to detain and interrogate senior operatives of Al Qaeda has long been known, but details about them have been a closely guarded secret. In recent interviews, though, several former intelligence officials have provided a fuller account of how they were built, where they were located and life inside them.

Mr. Foggo acknowledged a role, which has never been previously reported. He pleaded guilty last year to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided other supplies to the agency, and he is now serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison.

The C.I.A. prisons would become one of the Bush administration’s most extraordinary counterterrorism programs, but setting them up was fairly mundane, according to the intelligence officials.

Mr. Foggo relied on C.I.A. finance officers, engineers and contract workers to build the jails. As they neared completion, he turned to a small company linked to Brent R. Wilkes, an old friend and a San Diego military contractor.

The business provided toilets, plumbing equipment, stereos, video games, bedding, night vision goggles, earplugs and wrap-around sunglasses. Some products were bought at Target and Wal-Mart, among other vendors, and flown overseas. Nothing exotic was required for the infamous waterboards — they were built on the spot from locally available materials, the officials said.

Mr. Foggo, 55, would not discuss classified details about the jails. He was not charged with wrongdoing in connection with the secret prisons, but instead accused of steering other C.I.A. business to Mr. Wilkes’ companies in exchange for expensive vacations and other favors. Before leaving the C.I.A. in 2006, he had become its third-highest official, and his plea was an embarrassment for the agency.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the intelligence world’s embrace of dark-of-night snatch-and-grabs, hidden prisons and interrogation tactics that critics condemned as torture has stained the C.I.A.’s reputation and led to legal challenges, investigations and internal divisions that may take years to resolve. The Justice Department is now considering opening a criminal investigation, with much of the attention focused on the agency’s network of secret prisons, which have become known as the “black sites.”

From Fringes to Spotlight

The demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had transformed Mr. Foggo from a fringe player into the C.I.A.’s indispensable man. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Frankfurt base was a relatively sleepy resupply center, running one or two flights a month to outlying stations. Within days of the attacks, Mr. Foggo had a budget of $7 million, which quickly tripled.

He managed dozens of employees, directing nearly daily flights of cargo planes loaded with pallets of supplies, including saddles, bridles and horse feed for the mounted tribal forces that the spy agency recruited. Within weeks, he emptied the C.I.A.’s stockpile of AK-47s and ammunition at a Midwest depot.

He was a logical choice for the prison project: aggressive, resourceful, patriotic, ready to dispense a favor; some inside the C.I.A. jokingly compared him to Milo Minderbinder, the fictional character who rose from mess hall officer to the black-market magnate of Joseph Heller’s World War II novel “Catch-22.”

Early in the fight against Al Qaeda, agency officials relied heavily on American allies to help detain people suspected of terrorism in makeshift facilities in countries like Thailand. But by the time two C.I.A. officials met with Mr. Foggo in 2003, that arrangement was under threat, according to people briefed on the situation. In Thailand, for example, local officials were said to be growing uneasy about a black site outside Bangkok code-named Cat’s Eye. (The agency would eventually change the code name for the Thai prison, fearing it would appear racially insensitive.) The C.I.A. wanted its own, more permanent detention centers.

Eventually, the agency’s network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was dubbed Strawberry Fields, officials said. (It was named after a Beatles song after C.I.A. officials joked that the detainees would be held there, as the lyric put it, “forever.”)

The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100.

At the detention centers Mr. Foggo helped build, several former intelligence officials said, the jails were small, and though they were built to house about a half-dozen detainees they rarely held more than four.

The cells were constructed with special features to prevent injury to the prisoners during interrogations: nonslip floors and flexible, plywood-covered walls to soften the impact of being slammed into the wall.

The detainees, held in cells far enough apart to prevent communication with one another, were kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. For their one hour of daily exercise, they were taken out of their cells by C.I.A. security officers wearing black ski masks to hide their identities and to intimidate the detainees, according to the intelligence officials.

Just like prisons in the United States, the jailers imposed a reward and punishment system: well-behaved detainees received books, DVDs and other forms of entertainment, which were taken away if they misbehaved, the officials said.

C.I.A. analysts served 90-day tours at the prison sites to assist the interrogations. But by the time the new prisons were built in mid-2003 or later, the harshest C.I.A. interrogation practices — including waterboarding — had been discontinued.

Winning a Promotion

Mr. Foggo’s success in Frankfurt, including his work on the prisons, won him a promotion back in Washington. In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.’s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief.

The appointment raised some eyebrows at the agency. “It was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment,” said A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s executive director from 2001 to 2004. “It popped people’s eyes.”

Mr. Foggo soon became embroiled in agency infighting. The C.I.A. was reeling from criticism that it had exaggerated Iraq’s weapons programs. Mr. Foggo came to Washington as part of a new team that almost immediately began firing top C.I.A. officials, causing anger among veteran clandestine officers. Mr. Foggo’s fast rise and blunt approach unsettled some headquarters officials, according to Brant G. Bassett, a former agency officer and friend who served with Mr. Foggo.

“Dusty went in there with a blowtorch,” Mr. Bassett said. “Some people were overjoyed, but there were a few others who said, we’ve got to take this guy down.”

In 2005, before he came under investigation, Mr. Foggo and other officials, including John Rizzo, the agency’s top lawyer, paid a rare visit to some of the prison sites, assuring C.I.A. employees that their activities were legal, according to former intelligence officials. Mr. Foggo also met with representatives of Eastern European security services that had helped with the prisons. He expressed gratitude and offered assistance — a gesture the officials politely declined.

In February 2007, Mr. Foggo and Mr. Wilkes were indicted. Prosecutors believed that the C.I.A. had paid an inflated price to Archer Logistics, a business connected to Mr. Wilkes that had a $1.7 million C.I.A. supply contract. In return, the prosecutors claimed, Mr. Wilkes had taken Mr. Foggo on expensive vacations, paid for his meals at expensive restaurants and promised him a lucrative job when he retired.

“I was taking a trip with my best friend,” Mr. Foggo said in his defense. “It looked bad, but we had been taking trips together since we were 17 years old.”

Mr. Foggo said he had turned to Mr. Wilkes’ companies to bypass the cumbersome C.I.A. bureaucracy, not to provide a sweetheart deal to his oldest friend. “I needed something done by someone I trusted in private industry,” Mr. Foggo said.

Downfall in Court

Mr. Wilkes maintains his innocence, but he was eventually convicted in a bribery scandal involving former Representative Randall Cunningham of California. Mr. Foggo pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence on the fraud count, but he still maintains that he was unfairly prosecuted.

His lawyer, Mark J. MacDougall, said he believed that Mr. Foggo’s legal problems stemmed in part from controversies over his stint as executive director. “Nobody ever accused Dusty Foggo of putting a dime in his pocket, failing to do his job, or compromising national security,” Mr. MacDougall said. “Dusty may have made some mistakes, but this case was driven by professional animosity at C.I.A. and personal ambition.”

When Mr. Foggo’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to obtain access to agency files about his role in the prison program, prosecutors complained that he was trying to disclose a secret program. Mr. Foggo claimed that he was reluctant to divulge his role in classified programs and pleaded guilty, in part, to avoid revealing his secrets.

In an Aug. 1, 2007, letter, a C.I.A. lawyer informed Mr. Foggo’s lawyers that they could not review any classified files related to the prisons. The agency’s letter concluded, “In light of the president’s statements regarding the extraordinary value and sensitivity of the C.I.A. terrorist detention and interrogation program, the C.I.A. denies your request in its entirety.”

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16) Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/13clinic.html?ref=us

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around.

For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday — starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours — for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.

Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.

When Remote Area Medical, the Tennessee-based organization running the event, decided to try its hand at large urban medical services, its principals thought Los Angeles would be a good place to start. But they were far from prepared for the outpouring of need. Set up for eight days of care, the group was already overwhelmed on the first day after allowing 1,500 people through the door, nearly 500 of whom had still not been served by day’s end and had to return in the wee hours Wednesday morning.

The enormous response to the free care was a stark corollary to the hundreds of Americans who have filled town-hall-style meetings throughout the country, angrily expressing their fear of the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the nation’s health care system. The bleachers of patients also reflected the state’s high unemployment, recent reduction in its Medicaid services for the poor and high deductibles and co-payments that have come to define many employer-sponsored insurance programs.

Many of those here said they lacked insurance, but many others said they had coverage but not enough to meet all their needs — or that they could afford. Some said they were well aware of the larger national health care debate, and were eager for changes.

“I am on point with the news,” said Elizabeth Harraway, 50, who is unemployed and came for dental care. “I think the president’s ideas are awesome, and I believe opening up health care is going to work."

Stan Brock, Remote Area Medical’s founder and among the many khaki-wearing volunteers in the arena, said his organization’s intent was not to become part of the health care debate, but to do what it had done for nearly 25 years: offer charity to people in need. Still, the group attracted attention last month when President Obama visited Bristol, Va., just days after it held a health care event in nearby Wise, Va.

“My position on the Obama plan is that I am delighted to see so much focus on the health care issue," Mr. Brock said. “There is incredible focus on what we do, but that is not my doing."

In the past, Remote Area Medical has also provided services in mid-sized American cities, including New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but had never tried an operation in such a large metropolitan area. Mr. Brock said the considerable logistics were made possible with the help of Don Manelli, a film producer, but he said he was disappointed in the dearth of volunteers among local providers — specifically dentists and optometrists — which made it hard to provide services for all comers.

Ana Maria Garcia, who works for Orange County, has health insurance that covers her husband and 3 ½-year-old daughter, but her dental deductibles are too high for them all to get care, she said.

Ms. Garcia’s husband, Jorge, who was laid off from his custodial job last October, arrived from their home — a 90-minute drive away — at 4 p.m. on Tuesday to get the family’s spot in line.

But the Garcias’ number never came up, so they slept in their car for a few hours and lined up again early Wednesday morning, awaiting a chance to get root canals and cleanings that Ms. Garcia figured were worth thousands of dollars. They made a friend in the bleachers outside, who gave the family some coffee and hot biscuits for breakfast.

“Regardless if you are employed or not,” Ms. Garcia said, “everything in California is expensive, and so I can empathize with everyone here. Looking at this crowd, I think this is what people fear health care is going to be with reform. But to me it also shows the need.”

Last month, the state dropped its dental and vision coverage for MediCal enrollees, and has since capped enrollment in the state’s health insurance program for children of the working poor. Thousands of people across the state lost their coverage in the middle of complex, multimonth procedures and have found themselves at a loss.

Sammie Edwards, a retired welder, was in the middle of getting dentures made when his care ran out, he said. A friend at a food bank clued him into the free clinic. “A lot of older people are caught in the midst of this,” Mr. Edwards said.

Begun in 1985 as a mobile health clinic serving undeveloped countries and later rural America, Remote Area Medical provides various medical services through units to people who are largely unable to gain access to health care. Officials from the organization said they believed that this week’s event in Los Angeles constituted the largest free health care event in the country, with the arena and all supplies and services provided free to the group. Other expenses were covered by the group’s fund-raising.

On Tuesday, volunteers provided 1,448 services to about 600 patients, including 95 tooth extractions, 470 fillings, 140 pairs of eyeglasses, 96 Pap smears and 93 tuberculosis tests, the organizers said. Hundreds of volunteer doctors, dentists, optometrists, nurses and others are expected to serve 8,000 patients by the end of the eight days.

For those willing to endure the long waits, the arena was like a magical medical kingdom, where everything was possible once a person got through the door. Mike Bettis, who runs security for a nightclub in Hollywood, and his fiancée, Lourie Alexander, who cleans homes, said they usually went on Craigslist, exchanging a home cleaning for a dermatology appointment.

By Wednesday, the couple had gotten between them dentures (him); a breast exam, Pap smear and general physical (her); and acupuncture (both).

“What I liked about it was that everyone was so sweet,” Ms. Alexander said. “You know when you haven’t seen a doctor in so many years you have a lot of questions.”

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17) Huge Bonus Hangs Over Pay Review
By STEPHEN LABATON and ERIC DASH
News Analysis
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/business/13pay.html?ref=us

WASHINGTON — Citigroup is planning to claim that an energy trader who is due to receive compensation of $100 million this year should be exempt from review by a federal authority given responsibility for setting pay packages at financial companies that received taxpayer bailouts, executives at the bank said Wednesday.

Such a claim would come as the Obama administration is set to begin examining the pay packages and, if accepted, could set off a new wave of criticism from the administration and from lawmakers already incensed over recent Wall Street pay packages.

Citigroup executives say the trader’s compensation is exempt because it is part of a contract signed before the law establishing the review system was passed.

The trader, Andrew J. Hall, the head of Citigroup’s highly profitable Phibro commodity trading unit, was paid $100 million last year and under a contract signed in October is on track to receive a similar amount this year, executives with knowledge of the contract said Wednesday. The executives, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said no final decision about seeking an exemption had been made.

Bonuses issued earlier this year by the American International Group, whose payroll is also being reviewed, led to vows by lawmakers and top administration officials to impose new restrictions on pay. The Citigroup issue could set off such a measure when Congress returns from its August recess.

In recent discussions with senior executives at Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in taxpayer assistance, Treasury officials sent signals that they would almost certainly reject Mr. Hall’s proposed pay package as excessive.

In defending Mr. Hall’s contract, the executives told Treasury officials that Mr. Hall was entitled to a percentage of the profit he earned for Citigroup through his trading activities, people involved in those discussions said.

Citigroup executives said that Mr. Hall’s pay package could also be exempt because it was a commission paid to an investment manager.

The law establishing the review, passed on Feb. 11, provides that employment contracts signed before that date are exempt from review if the Treasury secretary concludes that they are valid contracts.

The new law led to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s appointment of a special master, Kenneth R. Feinberg, who is set to begin formal reviews of the compensation practices at Citigroup, A.I.G., Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers, this week.

Treasury officials declined to comment on Mr. Hall’s pay package or Citi’s consideration of an exemption for Mr. Hall.

The companies that are required to seek approval of pay packages have until Friday to file proposed employment contracts for their 25 top executives and highest paid employees. Mr. Feinberg then has 60 days to determine whether to accept them. While he cannot reject Mr. Hall’s contract if it was signed before Feb. 11, he has the authority to issue advisory opinions, which while not carrying legal weight could have significant political clout with Congress.

Citigroup issued a statement on Wednesday evening saying that the trading unit Mr. Hall headed “has a consistent track record of profitability and attractive returns on capital” for the bank and its shareholders.

It said that employees of the trading unit received a percentage of the profits, not discretionary bonuses, a pay plan that “directly aligns compensation with performance.”

“That said, we are sensitive to the need for a full review of compensation practices in our industry and we are evaluating the best way forward for stakeholders,” the statement said.

Recognizing that Mr. Hall’s employment contract, which automatically renews every year unless either party decides to terminate it, has become a political hot potato, Citigroup has begun exploring the possibility of selling Phibro.

Many of the other contracts that the administration is to begin reviewing raise difficulties for Mr. Feinberg because his admonition to restrain excessive pay could conflict with his requirement to set pay packages that remain competitive with the companies’ peers.

One regulation, intended to discourage the exodus of talented executives to less regulated and higher-paying companies, requires Mr. Feinberg to be guided by “comparable” pay packages in the industry. But other regulations instruct Mr. Feinberg to avoid creating incentives for short-term risk-taking and base pay on formulas reflecting the longer-term performance of the company and the return that is ultimately paid to taxpayers.

The proposed pay packages will not be immediately made public, although the compensation of the top executives will ultimately be disclosed next year in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But the Treasury, which has two months to decide the appropriateness of the compensation packages, already has a good idea of what will be submitted. Mr. Feinberg has spent the last two months meeting with senior executives and lawyers at the companies and describing what kinds of pay packages are unacceptable.

Participants in those discussions say Mr. Feinberg has discouraged packages that guarantee bonuses regardless of a company’s performance.

On Tuesday, General Motors, which received about $50 billion from the government and emerged from bankruptcy last month, said that it had submitted its pay plans. Speaking with reporters in Warren, Mich., Fritz Henderson, the company’s chief executive, was asked whether the pay requirements had hampered G.M.

“Hampered? I guess you could use that term,” Mr. Henderson said, according to The Associated Press. “We still don’t know how we’re going to pay people.” Employees know what their salary is, he said, but not the total compensation package.

The guidelines require Mr. Feinberg to consider whether the pay plans create incentives that reward executives for short-term or temporary increases in company value that may not ultimately result in longer-term gains.

Mr. Feinberg is also directed to consider how the pay plans reflect the company’s ability to remain competitive and ultimately be able to repay the government. The rules also require the automatic approval of any annual pay package limited to $500,000 with additional compensation paid in the form of long-term restricted stock.

Mr. Feinberg’s determinations will be made in the coming months just as financial regulators consider appropriate pay guidelines for the institutions that they supervise. Congress is also preparing legislation that lawmakers say will limit excessive risk-taking. Two weeks ago, the House overwhelming adopted legislation that would give regulators greater authority over compensation packages.

Stephen Labaton reported from Washington, and Eric Dash from New York.

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18) Pennsylvania: Report on Judge Who Took Kickbacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Mid-Atlantic
August 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/us/13brfs-REPORTONJUDG_BRF.html?ref=us

Every finding of juvenile delinquency by a former judge accused of taking kickbacks from a private juvenile detention company should be thrown out and nearly all the cases should not be retried, a judge appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review the cases said. The court has the final say on what happens to the juveniles found delinquent by the former judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., of Luzerne County. Arthur A. Grim, who was appointed to review the cases, said in a report that retrying the 1,866 cases of those juveniles who appeared before Mr. Ciavarella without lawyers from 2003 to May 2008 would amount to double jeopardy. He wrote that there would be no public benefit in retrying juveniles who had lawyers but completed their sentences. He also wrote that he should individually review the cases of juveniles who had been represented by lawyers and had not completed their sentences.

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19) Locking Up Fewer Children
NYT Editorial
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14fri3.html

In the 1990s, states and localities began sending more and more children to juvenile lockups, often for months, while they awaited trial for nonviolent offenses or even noncriminal behavior like being “unruly.” This was a disaster. Children who spend time in detention are far more likely to leave school, suffer alcohol or drug abuse problems or commit violent crimes as adults.

A far better approach — for these young people as well as overburdened government budgets — is to lock up only truly dangerous children and enroll the rest in community-based monitoring programs.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which focuses on disadvantaged children, gave a boost to this approach by underwriting juvenile justice reform projects in five states in the early 1990s. The experiments showed that closely supervising young offenders, instead of incarcerating them, did not increase the youth crime rate or the risk to public safety. Similar programs have since been adopted in 110 jurisdictions in 27 states and the District of Columbia. According to a new study from the foundation, the results have been astonishing: Many jurisdictions have managed to cut the number of children in detention by half or more; in many, the youth crime rate has declined.

The programs invite collaboration among all of the major players, including prosecutors, probation officers and public defenders. Children who present no safety threat remain in custody for the shortest possible time. Meanwhile, new screening practices allow judges and other officials to decide more accurately and quickly which children require secure detention and which of them can be released to their families or to the care of community programs while they await their day in court.

Communities that have been most faithful to the new model have registered the most impressive results, with some districts locking up only about a quarter of the number of youngsters as before. These efforts show that it is possible to treat children humanely without compromising public safety and deserve to be replicated nationwide.

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20) Cuban 5 Art Exhibit Opens at La Peña Cultural Center
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday August 13, 2009
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-08-13/article/33512?headline=Cuban-5-Art-Exhibit-Opens-at-La-Pe-a-Cultural-Center

The Cuban 5 have come to Berkeley—in spirit if not in person.

“From My Altitude,” a touring exhibit of 25 paintings by Antonio Guerrero, one of the five men facing stiff sentences in U.S. prisons for spying, opened at La Peña Cultural Center Aug. 6 and will continue through the end of the month.

Although hailed as heroes in their own country, most Americans know little—if anything—about the Cuban 5. The Cuban government asserts they were gathering information to protect Cuba from right-wing terrorists, not conspiring to commit a crime against the United States, as alleged.

Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González and Fernando González were arrested in 1998 in Miami and convicted three years later of being unregistered foreign agents.

The Associated Press reported that three of them were also found guilty of espionage for failed efforts to get military secrets from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters. The AP also reported that Hernández was convicted of a conspiracy to murder four Miami-based pilots who died when their planes were shot down on Feb. 24, 1996, by a Cuban MiG in international waters off Cuba’s northern coast.

Facing sentences that span from 15 years to life, all five have been working with their lawyers and international human rights advocates to draw attention to their situation.

Hernández and René González have been involved in lengthy visitation rights battles over the U.S. government’s refusal, on at least nine occasions, to grant visas to Hernández’ wife Adrianna Perez and René González’ wife Olga Salanueva to visit their husbands.

Labañino and Guerrero have been serving life sentences and Fernando González was sentenced to 19 years. A federal appeals court ruled their sentences were too long last year and ordered new sentences for all three. They are scheduled to be re-sentenced in October.

The paintings Guerrero produced in the isolation of his cell in Florence Colorado Penitentiary include portraits of the prisoners’ mothers, wives and children, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and familiar landscapes from Cuba.

“Even Nelson Mandela, who endured 27 years of hard labor in prison on Robben Island under apartheid South Africa, was still allowed to see his wife,” said Alicia Jrapko, national coordinator for the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5, the event organizer. “How is it that the U.S., which promotes itself as the champion of human rights, can be more punitive and cruel than apartheid South Africa when it comes to visitation rights for Olga and Adrianna?”

Drawing comparisons between the problems that existed in Cuba and the City of Richmond, a sister city to Regla, Cuba, Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin stressed the importance of creating more awareness about the issue.

“The mainstream press has dissed Richmond in the same way it has dissed Cuba,” said McLaughlin, who will be leading a delegation to Regla in November to meet with the families of the five men. The Richmond-Regla Sister City Association co-sponsored the exhibit at La Peña. “We know that the way to overcome hardship is to link in unity,” said McLaughlin, who last visited Cuba in 1986. “Richmond is making an effort to build a sustainable city—empowerment is the way forward. The Cuban people have made a revolution and are living it.”

McLaughlin’s efforts to pass a resolution in the Richmond City Council calling for the freedom of the Cuban 5 and their visitation rights were successful.

A five-minute video clip from the documentary Against the Silence: The Family of the Five Speak Out, by New York filmmakers Sally O'Brien and Jennifer Wager, showed Adrianna recalling how the news of her husband’s arrest changed the course of their marriage.

She talked about sporadic phone conversations with Gerardo, during which only he was allowed to call her for a few minutes from the prison. Most of the five men’s children have grown up without their fathers, and some of them have not seen each other in 11 years.

“I have traveled all over the world talking to lawyers,” said Adrianna, who is trying to raise awareness of the case. “Sadly, American people do not know.”

The International Committee is planning to hold a series of gatherings this year featuring Nobel laureates, artists, actors and activists who will call on President Barack Obama to end the U.S. blockade to Cuba and support the cause of freedom for the Cuban 5.

Local political analyst and author Michael Parenti, who is a member of the International Commission for the Rights of Family Visits, denounced the American government’s harsh treatment toward the Cuban 5.

“Here are five exceptionally intelligent, sensitive, admirable, dedicated, and democratically minded men who committed no act of espionage or sabotage against the U.S. government,” Parenti said. “For their valiant efforts against the terrorists they have been given draconian sentences.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker also spoke in support of the five men.

“What has happened to them is shameful,” Walker told the Daily Planet before taking the podium. “For those of us who believe our country is for justice, it’s shameful. These men have left behind their wives and their children. Their only fault is trying to protect their country. The least we can do in this country is to speak up against the injustice and express our concern and affection for these people in the prison.”

Walker, who lives in the Bay Area, has supported the Cuban revolution since she was 15 years old.

“Injustice is the greatest foundation of hatred and this is what we continue to create, and we do it as if we don’t understand this,” Walker told the audience. “We understand this, but we keep harming people deliberately, making them suffer. Our government does this, our country does this over and over through the centuries. So what can our future be if we mistreat people in this way?”

Walker said the painting she had been touched by the most was the one Guerrero made of the cell door he saw every day.

She later read aloud from Letters of Love and Hope, a book chronicling the correspondence between the Cuban 5 and their families, for which she has written a prologue.

“Time is short,” Walker said. “Does it mean anything to be an American if you can actually send these men to dungeons, not let them see their families, not let them embrace their children, or their wives? ... I think of how much I love the people that I love and how much I love snuggling with them, how much I love cuddling, and how much I love to feel them in the morning, to feel their touch. To take this away from human beings—just on a whim—is actually heartbreaking.”

“From My Altitude” will be exhibited at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., through August. For more information visit www.thecuban5.org or www.laPeña.org.

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21) U.S. to Resume Training Georgian Troops [U.S. gathering cannon fodder world wide...bw]
By THOM SHANKER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/europe/14military.html?ref=world

WASHINGTON — The United States is resuming a combat training mission in the former Soviet republic of Georgia to prepare its army for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, despite the risks of angering Russia, senior Defense Department officials said Thursday.

The training effort is intended to prepare Georgian troops to fight at NATO standards alongside American and allied forces in Afghanistan, the Pentagon officials said.

Russian officials have been informed, American officials said. The training should not worry the Kremlin, they said, because it would not involve skills that would be useful against a large conventional force like Russia’s.

“This training mission is not about internal defenses or any capabilities that the Georgians would use at home,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “This is about the United States supporting Georgia’s contribution to the war in Afghanistan, which everybody can recognize is needed and valued and appreciated.”

At the same time, officials in Washington said, the Georgians should not see the new training mission as a military counterweight to Russian influence along Georgia’s borders and within the separatist regions they fought over.

A year ago, the republic’s brief, disastrous war with Russia froze a similar American training operation that prepared Georgian troops for deployments to Iraq.

The new training mission is scheduled to begin Sept. 1. The first members of a Marine Corps training and advising team are to arrive in Georgia on Sunday or Monday, and the number of trainers will fluctuate between 10 and 69 over the next six months.

Georgia has pledged an army battalion — about 750 troops — to Afghanistan, and it should be ready to deploy next spring, perhaps by March.

It is unlikely that Kremlin officials could offer a convincing argument that training a single Georgian Army battalion amounted to a threat to Russian security. But the new training could be seen as a launching pad for increased military relations among Washington, NATO members and a former Soviet republic that aspires to NATO membership.

The Kremlin vehemently opposes any extension of NATO’s defensive umbrella over former Soviet republics, in particular Georgia and Ukraine. At the same time, some NATO officials view Georgia’s behavior before the war last year as needlessly provocative, and have said it harmed the country’s chances for alliance membership.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama ordered the doubling of American forces in Afghanistan, to about 68,000, and the administration has sought, with little success, to persuade NATO allies to add to their combat forces.

In contrast to some NATO allies that impose restrictions on where their forces can go and what they can do in Afghanistan, the Georgian military will send its troops with none of these so-called caveats, a decision viewed by American officials as intended to indicate Georgia’s worthiness for potential alliance membership.

Officials said Georgia’s troops would probably be assigned to operations in areas of Afghanistan under Marine command, so the training mission begins that partnership.

The United States has so far rebuffed requests from Georgia to rearm its military after its humiliating defeat by Russia. When the war began, Georgia recalled an army brigade serving in Iraq and never sent it back, and the Americans training the Georgians returned home.

Georgian troops that join the Afghan mission will bring their own small-caliber weapons, but the United States and other allies will supply vehicles, including armored transports, as well as logistical support and daily supplies, according to senior Defense Department officials.

Any weapons provided to the Georgians would stay in Afghanistan, the officials said.

Some military ties between the United States and Georgia resumed after the war with Russia, but they focused on officer development, improvement of command-and-control systems, and other such areas, officials said. There have been visits by senior American military officers and government leaders — most recently Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and NATO has conducted some military exchanges.

Administration officials familiar with discussions with Russia said American officials emphasized that Russia had endorsed the international security assistance mission in Afghanistan. For example, Russia allows overflight rights and land access for the coalition supply mission for Afghanistan.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the diplomatic communications with Russia, acknowledged that “this is delicate for us — because while we want to be supportive of the Georgians, and look forward to their contribution in Afghanistan, we don’t want to be perceived incorrectly as supplying lethal capabilities that would elicit a Russian response.”

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22) U.S. Army Reduces Soldiers’ Murder Sentences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/14/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world

Filed at 8:29 a.m. ET

FRANKFURT (AP) -- The U.S. Army said Friday it had reduced the sentences of three soldiers convicted of murder in the execution-style slayings of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi detainees.

Master Sgt. John Hatley, sentenced to life in prison in April, will instead receive 40 years, the military told the Associated Press.

He will still receive a dishonorable discharge and be reduced to the rank of private.

Sgt. Michael Leahy and Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Mayo -- sentenced respectively to life in prison in February and 35 years in March -- had their sentences reduced to 20 years, the military said. They will also receive bad conduct discharges instead of dishonorable discharges.

The sentence reductions came after a standard review of the cases, the Army said.

The soldiers were all with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division while in Iraq. The unit is now part of the Germany-based 172nd Infantry Brigade.

According to court proceedings over the last year, the four Iraqis were taken into custody in spring 2007 after an exchange of fire with Hatley's unit.

The Iraqis were taken to the unit's base although there wasn't enough evidence to hold them for attacking the unit. Later that night patrol members took the Iraqis to a remote area and shot them, dumping the bodies in a canal.

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23) Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising [RE: Kevin Cooper...bw]
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/us/14dissent.html?ref=us

It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper’s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper’s life.

“The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,” it began.

The judge who wrote the dissent, William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, argued that the police and prosecutors had withheld and tampered with evidence in the case for decades; Judge Fletcher even accused the district court of having sabotaged the case.

Compared with the dry, mannerly prose found in many opinions, Judge Fletcher’s passion in Cooper v. Brown is startling. But these kinds of fervent, lonely dissents, urging that a prisoner’s life be spared, have noticeably increased in the last decade, compared with previous years, according to a review of death penalty opinions by The New York Times, as confirmed by experts in the field.

In dozens of capital cases in recent years, appeals court judges, some of whom have ruled in favor of the death penalty many times, have complained that Congress and the Supreme Court have raised daunting barriers for death row prisoners to appeal their convictions, and in many cases the judges have taken on their colleagues.

“There is an increasing frustration among federal judges throughout the system,” said Eric M. Freedman, a critic of the death penalty who teaches on the subject at Hofstra Law School.

Mr. Freedman predicted that the level of dissatisfaction would increase. “Judges are likely to have less and less patience for being hogtied by legalistic mumbo-jumbo,” he said, “which prevents them from reaching fair results.”

The law that generates much of the judges’ ire is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Since its passage, the act has been cited in a half-dozen to two dozen dissents a year, often in language forceful enough to rival Judge Fletcher’s. The law, championed by legislators who believed prisoners were abusing the federal appeals process, restricts federal court review of state court decisions in death penalty cases and puts strong limits on the ability of condemned prisoners to file habeas corpus petitions to get their cases reconsidered.

In April, Judge Rosemary Barkett of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, complained of the law’s “thicket of procedural brambles.” Dissenting from a decision by her colleagues, Judge Barkett noted that seven of the nine witnesses in the murder trial of Troy Davis, a death row inmate in Georgia, had recanted their testimony. To execute Mr. Davis without fully considering that evidence would be “unconscionable and unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Barkett, who has voted in more than 200 other cases to uphold the death penalty.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, a critic of capital punishment, took on the constitutionality of the 1996 death penalty act itself in a dissent in the case of Andrew C. Crater, who had been convicted of taking part in a robbery and shooting spree that killed a Sacramento musician, James Pantages. Judge Reinhardt, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, wrote in 2007 that the act made “a mockery of the careful boundaries between Congress and the courts that our Constitution’s framers believed so essential to the prevention of tyranny.”

The dissents rarely have any practical effect in changing the outcome of the cases they address. But Howard J. Bashman, an appellate lawyer in Philadelphia, said such dissents were often directed toward audiences to come: the next appeals court, lawmakers and academics.

“You have to think that these judges do have some valid reason for putting all this effort into the exercise than just feeling better about it after they’re done,” Mr. Bashman said.

Judge Barkett, whom President Bill Clinton appointed, declined to discuss individual cases but agreed that a dissent tried to persuade many audiences — the first, in her case, being the other judges of her court, who circulate dissents among themselves as they are coming to a decision.

Judge Barkett said she did not see her opinions as “emotive,” adding that dissents were about policy, not feelings. But the feeling that motivates her to write them, she said, is “mostly frustration that I cannot make people see what I see.”

Judge Fletcher’s frustration was on display in the case of Mr. Cooper, who he concluded was “probably innocent” of the 1983 murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and an 11-year-old houseguest, Christopher Hughes, who were hacked to death in the Ryens’ home.

Judge Fletcher argued that the evidence had been tainted by bumbling and misconduct and suggested that blood linking Mr. Cooper to the crime had been planted by overzealous investigators. And while the Ninth Circuit in 2004 ordered new DNA tests, Judge Fletcher wrote that the lower court had set conditions rendering the results useless. “There is no way to say this politely,” he wrote. “The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and flouted our direction to perform the two tests.”

Judge Fletcher, who declined to be interviewed, was appointed by Mr. Clinton.

Jesse H. Choper, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the judge was hardly a fierce opponent of capital punishment. “I don’t see him as someone who is unexceptionally opposed,” Mr. Choper said.

In the Cooper case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, was among 11 of the circuit’s 27 judges who joined dissents.

Elisabeth A. Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Berkeley, which trains lawyers to defend people facing the death penalty, said many jurists had been shaken by the rise of exonerations due to DNA evidence. “I think it’s been shattering to judges who had a fair amount of confidence in the system,” she said.

The next step in the Cooper case is a long-shot appeal to the Supreme Court, which Mr. Cooper’s lead lawyer, Norman C. Hile, said was likely to be filed this year.

Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group in Sacramento that favors the death penalty, said substantial claims of innocence in such appeals remained rare.

In Mr. Cooper’s case, Mr. Scheidegger said, the defendant has been given ample opportunity to exonerate himself. “It is high time to bring this case to a close,” Mr. Scheidegger said.

Judge Fletcher argued otherwise. “If he is innocent, the real killers have escaped,” he wrote. “They may kill again. They may already have done so.

“We owe it to the victims of this horrible crime, to Kevin Cooper, and to ourselves, to get this one right.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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24) On 11th Try, Man Convicted in ’91 Killing Gets Hearing
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/nyregion/14retrial.html?ref=nyregion

After 11 legal attempts to overturn a 1992 Manhattan murder conviction that was based on testimony since recanted or found to be false, Fernando Bermudez will have a day in court next month that his defenders say could free him from an upstate prison.

A state judge has ordered a hearing on Sept. 1 to determine, in effect, whether Mr. Bermudez deserves a new trial on charges that he fatally shot a man on a Greenwich Village street corner nearly two decades ago.

Last week, Justice John Cataldo of State Supreme Court in Manhattan indicated his concern that witnesses who placed Mr. Bermudez at the scene of the shooting may have conferred before identifying him and, further, that the prosecution’s only witness to the actual shooting lied in parts of his testimony.

“The People’s only trial witness who testified to having known the shooter prior to the night of the crime, is now conceded by the People to have committed perjury throughout his trial testimony,” Justice Cataldo wrote in an Aug. 5 decision.

Mr. Bermudez, now 40, was a young man living with his parents in Upper Manhattan when he was convicted in 1992 in the murder of Raymond Blount on the corner of University Place and 13th Street. Several of Mr. Blount’s friends picked Mr. Bermudez’s photo from an array of suspects after the police improperly allowed them to openly discuss his resemblance to the man they saw pull the trigger, a federal magistrate later found. But that magistrate found in 2004 that the impropriety was not sufficient to overturn the conviction.

Mark Dwyer, the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said in an interview that if Justice Cataldo ordered a new trial, his office would vigorously appeal the order. Mr. Bermudez has always maintained that he did not know Mr. Blount and had never met the witnesses who picked out his photo. He and his friends who were with him that night said they had not been at the crime scene at any time on the night of the killing.

Since his conviction, he has married, become a father and earned two associate’s degrees through correspondence programs at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. This month, he began his 19th year as New York State Prisoner No. 92A8325. His lawyers have spent most of that time pressing 11 appeals or motions to set aside his conviction. None have led a judge to question the conviction, until last week.

In ordering a hearing, Justice Cataldo said in his 13-page decision that the 2004 magistrate’s finding that witnesses had conferred before collectively picking Mr. Bermudez’s mug shot “cannot be ignored.” If he comes to the same conclusion as the magistrate, Justice Cataldo wrote, state law would require a reversal of the conviction and a new trial.

Mr. Dwyer said prosecutors would present Justice Cataldo with “additional evidence” not seen by the federal magistrate in 2004, to argue that witnesses did not discuss and collectively pick Mr. Bermudez’s photo.

“We will continue to represent the evidence that has persuaded triers of fact in the past that there is no merit to defendant’s claim,” Mr. Dwyer said. But Justice Cataldo said evidence presented to him by Mr. Bermudez’s lawyers raised “a viable claim of actual innocence” that would be explored at the Sept. 1 hearing. Justice Cataldo also ordered an inquiry into whether prosecutors should have known before Mr. Bermudez’s sentencing that the prosecution’s only witness to Mr. Blount’s killing had lied on the stand.

That witness, Efraim Lopez, identified Mr. Bermudez at trial as someone he had known for years, a familiar figure who sold drugs in the neighborhood around West 92nd Street. Mr. Lopez told the court that he knew Mr. Bermudez by his street name, Wool Lou, because he said Mr. Bermudez sold “wools,” slang for crack cocaine.

None of those assertions were true, prosecutors have since acknowledged. In fact, Mr. Lopez was describing another man, Luis Munoz — the real Wool Lou. In 1993, Mr. Lopez signed a sworn affidavit recanting his testimony and saying that before the trial, he had been coerced by police detectives to identify Mr. Bermudez as the killer.

In late 2007, after The New York Times published an examination of the Bermudez case, investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office interviewed Mr. Munoz for the first time. In court papers, they described him as “quite cooperative” and having no knowledge of the 1991 killing.

The Sept. 1 hearing could signify an extraordinary turning point in a 18-year effort among numerous criminal defense lawyers to clear Mr. Bermudez’s name and overturn his conviction, said one of his lawyers, Barry J. Pollack.

“The facts keep getting stronger and stronger,” Mr. Pollack said in an interview Tuesday, “and the conviction keeps getting weaker and weaker.”

Prosecutors have acknowledged in court that given the recantations and false testimony, there is virtually no evidence to prosecute Mr. Bermudez again.

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25) Jobless Claims Post Increase [At the rate of over 500,000 per week!...bw]
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14econ.html?ref=business

More Americans than forecast filed claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, underscoring the threat to spending from the continued deterioration in the job market.

The Labor Department said 558,000 people filed first-time claims for jobless benefits last week, up from 554,000 the week before.

“Until we start seeing job growth, consumers are still going to be very cautious,” said Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “It’s premature to talk about the sustainability of a recovery,” he said, until there’s “follow-through on the demand side.”

Other reports showed companies trimmed inventories in June for a 10th consecutive month, and prices of imported goods dropped in July for the first time in six months as the cost of commodities such as petroleum and chemicals decreased.

The economy has lost about 6.7 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007, the worst of any downturn since World War II.

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