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VIVA PALESTINA CONVOY UNDER ATTACK BY RIOT POLICE
Call for protest, and details on events in Egypt below that.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raja Abdulhaq
Date: Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 2:52 PM
Subject: VIVA PALESTINA CONVOY UNDER ATTACK BY RIOT POLICE NEEDS US: PROTEST TODAY, TUESDAY 4:30 AT THE EGYPTIAN MISSION
There will be protest today from 430 pm to 630 at Egyptian Mission on 44 street and 2nd Ave.. The latest news is the Egyptian Gov't has seized Viva Palestina's vehicles.
Please show up today to put pressure on the Egyptian Gov't to let the humanitarian aid go through to Gaza!
And please call one of these numbers and ask them to let the Convoy through! To open
Rafah Crossing! And to let our people in Gaza live
The Washington Embassy and its Consulate Section
Telephone: (202)895-5400
3521 International Ct. N.W
Washington, DC 20008
The Consulate General in San Francisco
Telephone:(415)346-7352 / (415)346-9702 / (415)346-9700
276 Mallorca Way
San Francisco, CA 94123
Fax (415) 346-9480
www.egy2000.com
email: egypt@egy2000.com
The Consulate General in New York
Telephone: (212)759-7122 / (212)759-7121 / (212)759-7120
1110 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10022
The Consulate General in Chicago
Telephone:(312)828-9162 / (312)828-9163 / (312)828-9164
500 N. Michigan Ave., Suite # 1900
Chicago, IL 60611
The Consulate General in Houston
Telephone:(713)961-4916 / (713)961-4915
5718 Westheimer, Suite # 1350
Houston, TX 77057
From VP:
To all friends of Palestine
Our situation is now at a crisis point! Riot has broken out in the port of Al- Arish.
This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return. Our negotiations with the official was regarding taking our aid vehicles into Gaza.
He left two hours ago and did not come back. Egyptian authorities called over 2,000 riot police who then moved towards our camp at the port.
We have now blocked the entrance to the port and we are now faced with riot police and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid.
The Egyptian authorities have by their stubbornness and hostility towards the convoy, brought us to a crisis point.
We are now calling upon all friends of Palestine to mount protests in person where
possible, but by any means available to Egyptian representatives, consulates and
Embassy's and demand that the convoy are allowed a safe passage into Gaza tomorrow!
Kevin Ovenden
Viva Palestina Convoy Leader
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Alice Howard
Viva Palestina UK - Administration Manager
Tel: 07944 512 469
Email: alice@vivapalestina.org
Website: http://www.vivapalestina.org/
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BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR RESPONDS:
The following is the email I sent this afternoon to the Egyptian Consulate General in San Francisco:
The Consulate General in San Francisco
Telephone:(415)346-7352 / (415)346-9702 / (415)346-9700
276 Mallorca Way
San Francisco, CA 94123
Fax (415) 346-9480
www.egy2000.com
email: egypt@egy2000.com
Dear Consulate General of Egypt,
We are horrified to learn riot police are attacking humanitarian aid workers who are simply trying to bring much needed humanitarian aid -- supplies prohibited from entering Gaza already by Israel (with the financial and military backing of the U.S.) -- into Gaza to reach the men, women and children who are living in deplorable conditions and are in dire need of the basic necessities of life.
We demand you let them through to carry out their mission of peace and good conscience. There is nothing to gain by attacking them and stopping them from their humanitarian mission.
You have the good will of the great majority of the world to gain if you let them through safely.
Please do the right thing. Let the aid through to Gaza. The whole world is watching.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War, www.bauaw.org
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Help spread the word for March 20!
Join a postering team tomorrow to stop the war.
Tuesday, January 5th, 7pm, people will gather at the ANSWER office (2489 Mission st #24 near 21st st.) then go out and get up as many posters as possible.
At the office we will form teams and pick neighborhoods to cover.
Bring a friend if you can (postering is fun).
Forrest Schmidt, ANSWER Coalition (415) 596-7009
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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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Rally and march for San Francisco-area hotel workers with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and UNITEHERE! President John Wilhelm this Tuesday at 4 p.m.
Event: Rally and March for Hotel Workers
Time: Tuesday, Jan. 5, from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Start Location: Local 2 Plaza, 750 Market St., between 3rd and 4th streets
End Location: The Hilton at 333 O'Farrell St.
Event Contact: The Rev. Israel Alvaran at 415-863-1142 or by e-mail at ialvaran@clueca.org
More than 9,000 hotel workers represented by UNITEHERE! Local 2 are currently working without a contract. Hotel management companies have proposed a contract that would slash health and retirement benefits and increase workloads.
This is not acceptable. Show your solidarity with local hotel workers as they fight for a fair contract. After the rally and march, volunteers will engage in civil disobedience.
Hotel workers have sacrificed enough. It's time the hotel corporations realize that we're not going to give up.
John Elrod, bartender at the W Hotel
Join President Trumka, President Wilhelm and workers like John Elrod this Tuesday in San Francisco. Together, we can help make a difference for thousands of workers.
In solidarity,
Marc Laitin
AFL-CIO Online Mobilization Coordinator
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NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
The first meeting was held Wednesday, December 9 at 7:00 P.M. It was a broad, democratically run meeting with over 40 people in attendance from many different groups and organizations as well as individuals.
There was an atmosphere of renewed energy and resolve to build as large a demonstration as possible to mark the seventh year of "Shock and Awe" against the people of Iraq. It was especially poignant on the eve of Obama's Orwellian "war is for peace" Nobel speech.
We are encouraging all groups, organizations and individuals to join with us to demand an immediate end of these wars and to demand that the trillions spent on war be used for jobs, housing, healthcare, education for all!
Obama, in his Nobel remarks, points out his intentions to escalate his "wars for peace" wherever the U.S. empire desires to go.
As many pointed out at the first coalition meeting on Wednesday night, the financial, physical and emotional burden for these wars falls on working people across the globe in the broadest war plan ever devised by any empire!
The honeymoon is over! These are Obama's wars and we must organize massively against them.
Please plan on attending the next March 20, 2010 coalition meeting so we can organize broad outreach in our communities and make March 20, 2010 a powerful statement of opposition to the wars and for a world of equality, peace and justice for all.
For more information call: 415-821-6545
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, bauaw.org
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Getting in Gear for the New Year... of Resistance!
info@bayareacodepink.org
Our 2010 beginning Occupation Strategy from January (in the Bay Area) thru March (in D.C.) and beyond.
A coalition of organizations including CodePINK, Cindy Sheehan, and World Can't Wait are planning a Day of Occupation Actions to END WAR NOW around the Bay Area on January 20th, the 1 year anniversary of Obama's inauguration leading up to many days/weeks of actions at CAMP OUT in Washington D.C. March 13th thru???
The goal for the 20th is to engage in TWENTY different actions around the Bay, from banner drops to teach-ins to occupations at intersections, roof tops, and offices.
The next coalition meeting is Jan 10th, 3pm at Mudrakers Café, 2801 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley in the back room.
Call 510-540-7007 or email info
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National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education
By Elly
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirmed#subscribe-blog
California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education -- but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country. A nationwide resistance movement is needed.
We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to massively mobilize for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4, 2010. Education cuts are attacks against all of us, particularly in working-class communities and communities of color.
The politicians and administrators say there is no money for education and social services. They say that "there is no alternative" to the cuts. But if there's money for wars, bank bailouts, and prisons, why is there no money for public education?
We can beat back the cuts if we unite students, workers, and teachers across all sectors of public education - Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities. We appeal to the leaders of the trade union movement to support and organize strikes and/or mass actions on March 4. The weight of workers and students united in strikes and mobilizations would shift the balance of forces entirely against the current agenda of cuts and make victory possible.
Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services and will be an inspiration to all those fighting against the wars, for immigrants rights, in defense of jobs, for single-payer health care, and other progressive causes.
Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics -- such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. -- as well as the duration of such actions.
Let's make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.
- The California Coordinating Committee
To endorse this call and to receive more information contact:
march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com
and check out:
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com
Andy Griggs
andyca6@gmail.com
310-704-3217
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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!
San Francisco March and Rally
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
11am, Civic Center Plaza
National March on Washington
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.
People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.
There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. see below)
Click here to become an endorser:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=5940&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&autologin=true&link=endorse-body-1
Click here to make a donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2302&autologin=true&donate=body-1&JServSessionIdr002=2yzk5fh8x2.app13b
We will march together to say "No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!" We will march together to say "No War Against Iran!" We will march together to say "No War for Empire Anywhere!"
Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.
March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.
This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder.
Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat
Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a "single-payer" war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of "American" power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.
That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform "the generals and admirals") and those in three-piece suits "our elected officials") can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.
All of us can make the difference - progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.
The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.
But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change - on any front - is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.
It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women's rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.
It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.
We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive $1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.
Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington.
Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today. We can't do this without your active support.
The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the 4th of July"; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild - LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty, Bay Area United Against War.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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The US Social Forum II
" June 22-26, 2010 "
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Another World Is Possible! Another US is Necessary!
http://www.ussf2010.org/
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
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Tom Zaniello is a living, walking encyclopedia of films about labour.
I heard him speak at a conference once, but it wasn't so much a speech as a high-speed tour through dozens of film clips, lovingly selected, all aiming to make a point.
I don't know anyone who knows more about cinema and the labour movement than he does.
And Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An expanded guide to films about labor is his, well, encyclopedia about the subject.
It's a 434 page guide to 350 labour films from around the world, ranging from those you've heard of - Salt of the Earth, The Grapes of Wrath, Roger & Me - to those you've never heard of but will fall in love with once you see them.
Zaniello describes all the films in detail, tells you whether they're available for rental or purchase, and, if so, where.
Fiction and nonfiction, the films are about unions, labour history, working-class life, political movements, and the struggle between labour and capital.
Each entry includes critical commentary, production data, cast list, suggested related films, and annotated references to books and Web sites for further reading.
If you want to know more about labour films, buy this book.
And remember that every copy you purchase helps support LabourStart.
Thanks very much.
Eric Lee
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Marc Hall jailed for angry 'Stop-Loss' Hip Hop song
By Courage to Resist. Updated December 16, 2009
Stop-lossed Army Specialist Marc Hall aka Hip Hop artist Marc Watercus) was placed in the Liberty County Jail Friday, December 11 for speaking out against the continuing policy that has barred him from exiting the military, including recording an angry and explicit song. He was shipped off to jail after talking to to his Ft Stewart, Georgia commander Captain Cross about not wanting to redeploy. Call the jail at 912-876-6411 to demand an end to this illegal confinement. Also send letters of protest to: CPT Cross, Commander, B 2-7 INF BN, Fort Stewart GA 31314. Marc is being represented by civilian Washington DC lawyer Jim Klimaski. As of 5:00 pm EST) Monday, December 14, Marc was still in the county jail.
Marc Hall is the self-professed "first Hip Hop President of the World", with the issue of ending the Army's "Stop Loss" program being at the top of his agenda. On a music website, he explains, "I am a political artist. I rap about real issues in life in hopes to recover a solution. Life is based on decisions we make. So we should make decisions that will make us better in the future and fully aware in the present."
Recently Marc recorded an angry song entitled "Stop Loss" in order to artistically express some of his frustrations about his situation.
"Stop Loss" by Marc Hall aka Marc Watercus)
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/800/1/
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Dear all,
Dear all,
go the link below to endorse the BT petition against the death penalty in Iraq.
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Petitions/Petition.html?lists=10&codes=7&s=0abaa878c308c42949c62790df13498f&email=siui_iraqsolidarity@yahoo.co.uk
regards
Tahrir
Maliki's election platform: 900 Iraqi prisoners face summary execution
In the run-up to elections, Maliki proposes executions to bolster his chances
Democracy in the new Iraq equals death and repression
Maliki serves the US occupation: it is the occupation that kills Iraqis
The machine of repression and death in Iraq continues unabated. The Presidential Council of Iraq has reportedly ratified the death sentences of some 900 detainees who languish on death row. Some 17 of them are confirmed to be women.
None of the condemned had a fair trial. The Iraqi judicial system has been deemed corrupt, fundamentally dysfunctional and plagued with sectarianism by responsible international agencies and all major human rights organisations. Hundreds of lawyers have been assassinated since 2003. The Association of Iraqi Lawyers has publicly declared that it cannot reach the detainees.
In a bid to eliminate its political opponents, further terrorise the Iraqi people, ostensibly into submission, and to be casted the "tough leader" the US pretends it is currently seeking for Iraq, Nouri Al-Maliki has pledged to carry out these executions ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled in March of 2010.
Iraq already has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. On a single day in June, 19 people were hanged in Baghdad. Without global action, 900 people will be hanged imminently.
A culture of terror and detention
Terror through mass detention, torture and abuse is one of the trademarks of the US occupation and Maliki. In addition to mass killing, mass forced displacement, the contamination of Iraqi soil, the destruction of all public infrastructure and means of survival, tens of thousands of Iraqis are arbitrarily detained in both official and ghost facilities all over Iraq.
Exact figures of the number, age and gender of detainees are withheld by authorities. Those who want investigations on abuse are either threatened or killed. In June 2009, Harith Al-Obaidi, an MP and critic of human rights abuses, announced in parliament his plan to investigate allegations of corruption, torture and abuse in Iraqi prisons. He was assassinated the following day.
Depending on the source, the number of detainees varies from 44,014 to some 400,000. Tens of thousands of families don't know the fate of a loved one arbitrarily arrested. Even the number of detention facilities is unknown. The ICRC, responsible for monitoring prisoners in time of conflict, has repeatedly complained of being denied access to all "field operation detention facilities" and secret prisons. Amnesty International, the International Federation of Human Rights and even the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, mandated by the Security Council to provide human rights reporting, are denied access to official detention centres by US Command.
The Red Cross has reported that intelligence officers of the US occupation themselves estimate that 70-90 per cent of Iraqi detainees are arrested "by mistake". The majority is taken in sweeping and arbitrary mass arrest campaigns. They are held incommunicado, without charges, without visits from families or access to lawyers, for indefinite periods. The few who are formally accused are charged on the basis of confessions made under torture or the testimonies of dubious informants of the occupation. No tangible evidence is ever provided.
Since 2003, an estimated 2,400 children have been detained by the US, some as young as 10 years old. After denying it for years, the occupation has now acknowledged that a large but unspecified number of women are being held. Many were kidnapped to blackmail their husbands, accused of "terrorism," into surrendering. They often have their infants and children in prison with them. Several women inmates interviewed by UN researchers reported being raped and sexually abused while held in custody. The US bears primary and final responsibility for these conditions.
Maliki's new Iraq: repression
Everyday news outlets report more arrests and new killings by persons wearing official uniforms. The Maliki government praises itself for the recent waves of detention. Since its appointment, all it has succeeded in achieving is more repression of his opponents while the crimes against innocent people had never been investigated and punished.
Under occupation, Iraq has become the second most corrupted country in the world, the trade of prisoners one of the government militias' most lucrative businesses. The police kidnap, hold prisoners in ghost prisons, sell them and blackmail their families for ransom with impunity.
Year after year, alarming reports have been published by leading human rights organisations, inside and outside Iraq, pointing to random arrests, unlawful detentions, summary executions, abuses, rape and torture of prisoners in Iraq, both at the hands of occupation forces and their local armed gangs.
Under false accusations and deceitful propaganda, the absence of law or a functioning judicial system, and with the support of the US for its puppet government, humanity and the rights of the human being are insulted every day in Iraq. Millions of Iraqis are suffering.
An occupation that tries to impose its plans and interests by force and destruction on a people whose rights, interests and identity is to resist it can only result in the perpetuation of genocide - the intended destruction of Iraq and the Iraqi people as a state and nation.
Call for global action
We call on all to work to stop these executions, demand the release of all political prisoners, and impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Iraq.
Every Iraqi deserves protection and justice.
We call on the UN Human Rights Council to appoint a Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in Iraq.
We call on all organisations that defend the first human right - the right to life - to take up with urgency the cause of the 900 prisoners on death row in Iraq.
We call on all lawyers associations to protest the absence of law and due process in Iraq, and to declare the imminent execution of these 900 prisoners unlawful.
900 prisoners killed in Iraq would be 900 insults to the common conscience of humanity.
We call on all to do everything within their means to bring the cases of these 900 prisoners facing death to the public eye, and to demand action by relevant authorities.
The US occupation of Iraq must end. It is that occupation that is the ultimate rope around the neck of Iraq, and the ultimate prison for the Iraqi people.
Hana Al Bayaty, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Ian Douglas, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Dirk Adriaensens, Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Please endorse, distribute and take action
For more information contact:
info@brusselstribunal.org
www.brusselstribunal.org
Endnotes
Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com
"Yesterday I lost a country. / I was in a hurry, / and didn't notice when it fell from me / like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. / Please, if anyone passes by / and stumbles across it, / perhaps in a suitcase / open to the sky, / or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound, / ... / If anyone stumbles across it, / return it to me please. / Please return it, sir. / Please return it, madam. / It is my country . . . / I was in a hurry / when I lost it yesterday." -Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi poet
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----- Forwarded Message ----
From: MOOS-Bay
To: Counter Recruitment Events
Subject: [events] Youth Mini Grants, Online Petition, Discount CR Brochures
CR Brochures Available for Cut Rates!
Full Picture recently purchased a large quantity of the brochure, "What Every Girl Should Know About the U.S. Military," which was produced jointly by the War Resisters League and the Women of Color Resource Center. A copy of the brochure can be seen online at http://coloredgirls.live.radicaldesigns.org/downloads/What%20Every%20Girl%20Should%20Know.pdf.
Our network of counter-recruiting organizations and activists will probably not be able to distribute all of them in the near future. We'd like to see them get out to the youth who need them, and -- if necessary -- are willing to sell them at "a loss" to other counter-recruiters who'll be able to reach youth that we cannot. We paid 11.6 cents each, including shipping, which is significantly less than what you'd pay when buying small quantities. If you can make use of some, let us know how many and how much, if anything, you're able to pay. Please remember that we'll have to incur additional costs to ship them to you unless you're able to pick them up at the AFSC office in San Francisco, where we have them stored.
Kevin Casey, Full Picture Core Group, 510) 289-2621 kevinkevin-c-is@sbcglobal.net
Support Oakland Youth: Online Petition--Pass the Word!
The BAY-Peace Youth Manifesto is on it's home stretch to win stronger policies to protect Oakland high school students against aggressive military recruiting. Please help us reach our goal of 2000 signatures to deliver to the Oakland School Board. Sign the Youth Manifesto today and forward this link to your contacts to sign our online petition: http://www.baypeace.org
Mini-Grants for High School Counter Recruitment Projects
If you are part of a high school student group that would like to do a counter recruitment project, you can apply for a grant of up to $500 to help you get your message out about non-military alternatives for youth, aggressive military recruiting in our schools and resisting war.
Bay Area high school students are encouraged to apply. The deadline is the last day of each month, and the funds will be distributed quickly to qualified applicants, so don't wait to apply! For info contact: moos-bay@riseup.net
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Letter from Lynne from behind bars:
Dear Sisters and Brothers, Friends and Supporters:
Well the moment we all hoped would never come is upon us. Good bye to a good cup of coffee in the morning, a soft chair, the hugs of grandchildren and the smaller pleasures in life. I must say I am being treated well and that is due to my lawyer team and your overwhelming support.
While I have received "celebrity" treatment here in MCC - high visibility - conditions for the other women are deplorable. Medical care, food, education, recreation are all at minimal levels. If it weren't for the unqualified bonds of sisterhood and the commissary it would be even more dismal.
My fellow prisoners have supplied me with books and crosswords, a warm it is cold in here most of the time) sweat shirt and pants, treats from the commissary, and of course, jailhouse humor. Most important many of them know of my work and have a deep reservoir of can I say it? Respect.
I continue to both answer the questions put to me by them, I also can't resist commenting on the T.V. news or what is happening on the floor - a little LS politics always! Smile) to open hearts and minds!
Liz Fink, my lawyer leader, believes I will be here at MCC-NY for a while - perhaps a year before being moved to prison. Being is jail is like suddenly inhabiting a parallel universe but at least I have the luxury of time to read! Tomorrow I will get my commissary order which may include an AM/FM Radio and be restored to WBAI and music classical and jazz).
We are campaigning to get the bladder operation scheduled before I came in to MCC) to happen here in New York City. Please be alert to the website I case I need some outside support.
I want to say that the show of support outside the Courthouse on Thursday as I was "transported" is so cherished by me. The broad organizational representation was breathtaking and the love and politics expressed the anger too) will keep me nourished through this.
Organize - Agitate, Agitate, Agitate! And write to me and others locked down by the Evil Empire.
Love Struggle, Lynne Stewart
FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
For further information contact: Jeff Mackler, Coordinator, West Coast Lynne Stewart Defense Committee 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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The trial of Johannes Mehserle, killer of unarmed Oscar Grant, has been moved to Los Angeles.
In the case of an innocent verdict, folks are encouraged to head to Oakland City Hall ASAP to express our outrage in a massive and peaceful way! Our power is in our numbers! Oscar Grant's family and friends need our support!
For more information:
Contact BAMN at 510-502-9072
letters@bamn.com
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
Jon Stewart: Obama Is Channeling Bush VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/03/jon-stewart-obama-is-chan_n_378283.html
US anti-war activists protest
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/200912283650408132.html
Buffy Sainte Marie - No No Keshagesh
[Keshagesh is the Cree word to describe a greedy puppy that wants to keep eating everything, a metaphor for corporate greed]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmAb1gNN74&feature=player_embedded#
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh lyrics:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/?i=print_lyrics&id=705368
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The Tar Sands Blow
Hi -
I just signed the Tar Sands Blow petition -- and I hope you'll do the same.
The Canadian tar sands produce the dirtiest oil on earth -- including five times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. World leaders meet next month in Copenhagen to deal with climate change. Sign the petition -- so that we all don't get a raw deal.
http://ien.thetarsandsblow.org/
The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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VIDEO INTERVIEW: Dan Berger on Political Prisoners in the United States
By Angola 3 News
Angola 3 News
37 years ago in Louisiana, 3 young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation called Angola. In 1972 and 1973 prison officials charged Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King with murders they did not commit and threw them into 6x9 ft. cells in solitary confinement, for over 36 years. Robert was freed in 2001, but Herman and Albert remain behind bars.
http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-dan-berger-on-political-prisoners.html
Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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JROTC MUST GO!
The San Francisco Board of Education has re-installed the Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps in San Francisco schools -- including allowing it to count for Physical Education credits.
This is a complete reversal of the 2006 decision to end JROTC altogether in San Francisco public schools. Our children need a good physical education program, not a death education program!
With the economy in crisis; jobs and higher education for youth more unattainable; the lure, lies and false promises of military recruiters is driving more and more of our children into the military trap.
This is an economic draft and the San Francisco Board of Education is helping to snare our children to provide cannon fodder for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and for over 700 U.S. military bases around the world!
We can't depend upon "friendly politicians" who, while they are campaigning for office claim they are against the wars but when they get elected vote in favor of military recruitment--the economic draft--in our schools. We can't depend upon them. That has been proven beyond doubt!
It is up to all of us to come together to stop this NOW!
GET JROTC AND ALL MILITARY RECRUITERS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS NOW!
Write, call, pester and ORGANIZE against the re-institution of JROTC in our San Francisco public schools NOW!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
San Francisco Board of Education
555 Franklin Street, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427, 415) 241-6493
cascoe@sfusd.edu
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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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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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 501c)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) Obama Says Al Qaeda in Yemen Planned Bombing Plot, and He Vows Retribution
By PETER BAKER
January 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/politics/03address.html?ref=us
2) That 1937 Feeling
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
January 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04krugman.html
3) Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal
"Anyone who doubts the degree of executive branch pliability in this realm needs to consider this: The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims' appeal because the illegality of torture was not "clearly established" was the Obama Justice Department."
Editorial
January 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html
4) Economy Is Down, but Dubai Tower Tops All
By LANDON THOMAS Jr
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/business/global/05tower.html?hp?hp
5) Sidebar
Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work in Frustration
"...the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure."
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05bar.html?ref=us
6) An Uneasy Feeling
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
7) This Year's Housing Crisis
Editorial
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05tue1.html?hp
8) As Population Shifts in Harlem, Blacks Lose Their Majority
By SAM ROBERTS
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html?hp
9) The Card Game
How Visa, Using Card Fees, Dominates a Market
By ANDREW MARTIN
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html?hp
10) Tax on Health Care Will Erode Coverage for Middle Class
By Tula Connell
January 4, 2010
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01/04/tax-on-health-care-will-erode-coverage-for-middle-class/
11) U.S. Drone Strikes Reported in Pakistan
By ISMAIL KHAN and SALMAN MASOOD
January 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07drones.html?hp
12) Deadly Gunfire at Gaza Protest Along Egypt Border
By ETHAN BRONNER
January 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/middleeast/07gaza.html?ref=world
13) Israel: Disputed Housing Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Middle East
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/world/middleeast/06briefs-Israel1.html?ref=world
14) Court Backs War Powers Over Rights of Detainees
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/06detain.html?ref=us
15) A terrorism designation Cuba doesn't deserve
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, January 5, 2010; A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010402723.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
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1) Obama Says Al Qaeda in Yemen Planned Bombing Plot, and He Vows Retribution
By PETER BAKER
January 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/politics/03address.html?ref=us
HONOLULU - President Obama declared for the first time on Saturday that a branch of Al Qaeda based in Yemen sponsored the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American passenger jet, and he vowed that those behind the failed attack "will be held to account."
In his first weekly Saturday address of the new year, Mr. Obama rebutted attacks by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans who since the episode have accused him of not recognizing that the struggle against terrorists is a war. Mr. Obama said he was well aware that "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."
Mr. Obama also sent a message to President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, delivered on Saturday by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American regional commander, during a quiet visit to Sana, the Yemeni capital.
According to the official Yemen news agency, Saba, Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Saleh on his counterterrorism efforts and promised close cooperation in the future against Al Qaeda.
On Friday, General Petraeus announced that this year the United States would more than double the $70 million in security aid it sent to Yemen in 2009 to help fight Al Qaeda. Britain announced Sunday that it and the United States would jointly finance a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen, news services reported.
In addition, a senior American military commander said Saturday that United States development assistance over the next three years to Yemen is projected to be about $120 million.
The president's speech, taped from Hawaii, where he is nearing the end of a 10-day vacation, was the third time he had publicly addressed the failed attack on Northwest Flight 253 bound for Detroit on Dec. 25. Mr. Obama noted that he had received preliminary reports about the attack, but gave no more details about how a Nigerian man with known radical views was allowed to board a flight to the United States with explosives in his underwear.
Mr. Obama's comments about the involvement of Al Qaeda, however, were the most direct to date. Administration officials and intelligence analysts previously had said they were increasingly confident that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemeni branch calls itself, was involved, as it claimed.
But the president until now had avoided citing that until analysts were further along in their assessment of the group's activities and its ties to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with trying to blow up the airliner.
"We're learning more about the suspect," Mr. Obama said. "We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of Al Qaeda and that this group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America."
Mr. Obama's comments indicated that he and the government largely accepted the accounts offered by Mr. Abdulmutallab since he was taken into custody and by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in a statement on the Web. The National Security Agency had intercepted communications among Qaeda leaders months ago talking about an unnamed Nigerian preparing to attack, but the government never correlated that with information about Mr. Abdulmutallab's radicalization collected by embassy officials in Nigeria from the suspect's father.
On Saturday, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael E. Leiter, made his first public comments on the bombing attempt. The center has come under sharp criticism for not connecting various warnings before the attempt.
"The failed attempt to destroy Northwest Flight 253 is the starkest of reminders of the insidious terrorist threats we face," Mr. Leiter said in a statement. "While this attempt ended in failure, we know with absolute certainty that Al Qaeda and those who support its ideology continue to refine their methods to test our defenses and pursue an attack on the homeland."
Some changes have been made in the past week, and others are being forwarded to Mr. Obama for consideration. The terrorism center has elevated several hundred individuals from a handful of countries, including Yemen and Nigeria, to be put on watch lists rather than merely being entered in a terrorism database.
Some of these individuals, as well as others who were already on the terrorism watch list, have now been placed on more selective lists that subject them to secondary screening before boarding a commercial airline flights, or that bar them from flying to the United States altogether, intelligence officials said.
Mr. Obama noted that this was not the first time Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had tried to attack the United States and its allies. "In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels," he said, adding, "So as president, I've made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government."
He said those efforts had already led to strikes against the group's leaders and training camps. "And all those involved in the attempted act of terrorism on Christmas must know, you, too, will be held to account," he said.
The president also used the address to implicitly deflect the criticism of Republicans who have blamed some of his policy changes for what they see as a weakening of the struggle against terrorism. Although he did not name Mr. Cheney, Mr. Obama was clearly responding to the his assertion that the president was "trying to pretend we are not at war."
Mr. Obama defended his policies as tough but reasonable, and called for an end to the sniping that both parties had engaged in since the Christmas episode. "Instead of succumbing to partisanship and division, let's summon the unity that this moment demands," he said. "Let's work together, with a seriousness of purpose, to do what must be done to keep our country safe."
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
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2) That 1937 Feeling
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
January 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04krugman.html
Here's what's coming in economic news: The next employment report could show the economy adding jobs for the first time in two years. The next G.D.P. report is likely to show solid growth in late 2009. There will be lots of bullish commentary - and the calls we're already hearing for an end to stimulus, for reversing the steps the government and the Federal Reserve took to prop up the economy, will grow even louder.
But if those calls are heeded, we'll be repeating the great mistake of 1937, when the Fed and the Roosevelt administration decided that the Great Depression was over, that it was time for the economy to throw away its crutches. Spending was cut back, monetary policy was tightened - and the economy promptly plunged back into the depths.
This shouldn't be happening. Both Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, and Christina Romer, who heads President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, are scholars of the Great Depression. Ms. Romer has warned explicitly against re-enacting the events of 1937. But those who remember the past sometimes repeat it anyway.
As you read the economic news, it will be important to remember, first of all, that blips - occasional good numbers, signifying nothing - are common even when the economy is, in fact, mired in a prolonged slump. In early 2002, for example, initial reports showed the economy growing at a 5.8 percent annual rate. But the unemployment rate kept rising for another year.
And in early 1996 preliminary reports showed the Japanese economy growing at an annual rate of more than 12 percent, leading to triumphant proclamations that "the economy has finally entered a phase of self-propelled recovery." In fact, Japan was only halfway through its lost decade.
Such blips are often, in part, statistical illusions. But even more important, they're usually caused by an "inventory bounce." When the economy slumps, companies typically find themselves with large stocks of unsold goods. To work off their excess inventories, they slash production; once the excess has been disposed of, they raise production again, which shows up as a burst of growth in G.D.P. Unfortunately, growth caused by an inventory bounce is a one-shot affair unless underlying sources of demand, such as consumer spending and long-term investment, pick up.
Which brings us to the still grim fundamentals of the economic situation.
During the good years of the last decade, such as they were, growth was driven by a housing boom and a consumer spending surge. Neither is coming back. There can't be a new housing boom while the nation is still strewn with vacant houses and apartments left behind by the previous boom, and consumers - who are $11 trillion poorer than they were before the housing bust - are in no position to return to the buy-now-save-never habits of yore.
What's left? A boom in business investment would be really helpful right now. But it's hard to see where such a boom would come from: industry is awash in excess capacity, and commercial rents are plunging in the face of a huge oversupply of office space.
Can exports come to the rescue? For a while, a falling U.S. trade deficit helped cushion the economic slump. But the deficit is widening again, in part because China and other surplus countries are refusing to let their currencies adjust.
So the odds are that any good economic news you hear in the near future will be a blip, not an indication that we're on our way to sustained recovery. But will policy makers misinterpret the news and repeat the mistakes of 1937? Actually, they already are.
The Obama fiscal stimulus plan is expected to have its peak effect on G.D.P. and jobs around the middle of this year, then start fading out. That's far too early: why withdraw support in the face of continuing mass unemployment? Congress should have enacted a second round of stimulus months ago, when it became clear that the slump was going to be deeper and longer than originally expected. But nothing was done - and the illusory good numbers we're about to see will probably head off any further possibility of action.
Meanwhile, all the talk at the Fed is about the need for an "exit strategy" from its efforts to support the economy. One of those efforts, purchases of long-term U.S. government debt, has already come to an end. It's widely expected that another, purchases of mortgage-backed securities, will end in a few months. This amounts to a monetary tightening, even if the Fed doesn't raise interest rates directly - and there's a lot of pressure on Mr. Bernanke to do that too.
Will the Fed realize, before it's too late, that the job of fighting the slump isn't finished? Will Congress do the same? If they don't, 2010 will be a year that began in false economic hope and ended in grief.
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3) Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal
"Anyone who doubts the degree of executive branch pliability in this realm needs to consider this: The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims' appeal because the illegality of torture was not "clearly established" was the Obama Justice Department."
Editorial
January 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html
Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It's not torture if you don't mean it to be. It's not torture if you don't nearly kill the victim. It's not torture if the president says it's not torture.
It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guantánamo detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs' rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not "clearly established" that torture was illegal.
The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties. Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the case.
A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits. But the justices surely understood that their failure to accept the case would further undermine the rule of law.
In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment. It has deprived victims of a remedy and Americans of government accountability, while further damaging the country's standing in the world.
Contrary to the view of the lower appellate court, it was crystal clear that torture inflicted anywhere is illegal long before the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling that prisoners at Guantánamo, de facto United States territory, have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. Moreover, the shield of qualified immunity was not raised in good faith. Officials decided to hold detainees offshore at Guantánamo precisely to try to avoid claims from victims for conduct the officials knew was illegal.
Reversing the Circuit Court would not have ended the matter. The plaintiffs would still have had to prove their case at trial. They deserved that chance. There are those who oppose trying to punish Bush-era lawlessness - some who argue that America should not look backward and some who excuse that lawlessness. But the rule of law rests on scrutinizing evidence of past behavior to establish accountability, confer justice and deter bad behavior in the future.
President Obama, much to his credit, has forsworn the use of torture, but politics and policy makers change and democracy cannot rely merely on the good will of one president and his aides. Such good will did not exist in the last administration. And the inhumane and illegal treatment of detainees could make a return in a future administration unless the Supreme Court sends a firm message that ordering torture is a grievous violation of fundamental rights.
Anyone who doubts the degree of executive branch pliability in this realm needs to consider this: The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims' appeal because the illegality of torture was not "clearly established" was the Obama Justice Department.
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4) Economy Is Down, but Dubai Tower Tops All
By LANDON THOMAS Jr
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/business/global/05tower.html?hp?hp
LONDON - For all the towers that give shape to Dubai's skyline, the city-state still hails the addition of each new one as a reaffirmation of its reach-for-the-skies spirit.
And so, even in the midst of a devastating real estate crash, Dubai pulled out all the stops Monday to celebrate the opening of the world's tallest building: a rocket-shaped edifice that soars 828 meters, or 2,717 feet, with views that can reach 100-kilometers, or 60-miles.
Following its close brush with bankruptcy late last year, and the tsunami of international criticism that ensued, the opening was also an opportunity for Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, to shift attention from the economic troubles that still plague Dubai to the allure of its future.
But they weren't forgotten completely. In a surprise move, the building's name was changed from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa, in honor of the president of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The last-minute switch carries a symbolic weight in light of the billions of dollars oil-rich Abu Dhabi has poured into Dubai in order to cover its debts. Once the most pridefully autonomous of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai's financial troubles have made it more dependent on Abu Dhabi and likely to be drawn closer into the federation.
"Dubai not only has the world's tallest building, but has also made what looks like the most expensive naming rights deal in history," said Jim Krane, author of City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism. "Renaming the Burj Dubai after Sheikh Khalifa of Abu Dhabi - if not an explicit quid pro quo - is a down-payment on Dubai's gratitude for its neighbor's $10 billion bailout last month."
In any case, the opening festivities had the feel of a national holiday, with fireworks, parachute jumps and shooting streams of water from the world's tallest fountain. Indeed, by the numbers there is much to celebrate.
At a cost estimated at $1.5 billion, the Burj took five years to build, is over 160 floors high and has comfortably surpassed the previous record holder in Taipei.
With its mix of nightclubs, mosques, luxury suites and boardrooms, the Burj is an almost-perfect representation of Dubai's own complexities and contradictions. It will boast the world's first Armani hotel; the world's highest swimming pool, on the 76th floor; the highest observation deck on the 124th floor; and the highest mosque on the 158th floor.
More than 12,000 people will occupy its 6 million square feet, zooming up and down in the 54 elevators that can hit speeds of 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, an hour. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago.
At a time when a number of Dubai's newly built office towers stand empty, it is 90 percent sold, according to the building's developer Emaar Properties.
To be sure, some have questioned the utility of such a towering project. At least three foreign workers died during the construction and at a time of increasing concerns over global terror, such a building could well pose an inviting target.
But for a city-state that from its very beginning has taken pleasure in proving its doubters wrong, the Burj is evidence that if you build it big and brash enough the people will come, from near and far.
All the same, the Burj's success by no means signals a recovery in Dubai's beaten-down real estate market, where prices have collapsed by as much as 50 percent and may have further fall according to analysts.
With its strong government backing and unquestioned prestige, the Burj was a project that was destined to succeed and its developer, Emaar, had little difficulty in attracting residents - especially as much of the space was sold in the midst of Dubai's real estate frenzy.
Other projects, however, have not been so lucky. One such example is the Omniyat Bayswater, a 24-story office building that stands less than a kilometer away from the Burj and remains more than 50 percent vacant despite having opened more than six months ago.
Targeted to be the flagship structure of an ambitious development project in an area by the sea called Business Bay, the inability of Bayswater to attract tenants is an obvious consequence of the debilitating real estate crisis here that has seen prices halved.
More broadly, however, there is a deeper significance to its desolation that speaks to a larger truth behind the Dubai real estate bubble that, despite the excitement over the Burj, could well forestall a meaningful recovery.
Like many office projects that were born during the peak years Dubai's expansion four to five years ago, the Omniyat Bayswater is estimated to have more than 50 landlords, or more than two per floor - with some landlords owning as little as a 1,000 foot small office suite.
A spokesman for Bayswater said that Omniyat has recognized the problem of multiple landowners and taken steps to address it and that it expects to see floors leased by the second quarter of this year.
At a time when selling real estate was like handing out candy to children, such a strategy became a quick and easy way to finance building projects as speculators from around the world clamored for the smallest slice of Dubai property.
But with the crash, the building's splintered ownership structure has made it virtually impossible to sell a floor or two to foreign companies seeking to expand their presence here.
As a result, few offers have been made for space in buildings using this development model which is called strata title.
"There has been a difficulty in creating a collective of owners," said Nick Maclean of CB Ellis in Dubai. "The majority of the building is empty."
Mr. Maclean says a law is expected soon to rectify this issue.
But with two thirds of the new buildings coming on line this year being under strata title and 70 percent in 2011, a lack of government action could push office vacancy rates to as high as 40 percent.
As for the effect the Burj will have on the overall market, Mr. Maclean said its opening, while heartening to a city that has taken its lumps over the past year, was unlikely to drive an immediate turn around in the market.
"It is a unique building and symbolically important but it is not going to stimulate demand," he said.
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5) Sidebar
Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work in Frustration
"...the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure."
By ADAM LIPTAK
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05bar.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON
Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.
There were other important death penalty developments last year: the number of death sentences continued to fall, Ohio switched to a single chemical for lethal injections and New Mexico repealed its death penalty entirely. But not one of them was as significant as the institute's move, which represents a tectonic shift in legal theory.
"The A.L.I. is important on a lot of topics," said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "They were absolutely singular on this topic" - capital punishment - "because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States."
The institute is made up of about 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors. It synthesizes and shapes the law in restatements and model codes that provide structure and coherence in a federal legal system that might otherwise consist of 50 different approaches to everything.
In 1962, as part of the Model Penal Code, the institute created the modern framework for the death penalty, one the Supreme Court largely adopted when it reinstituted capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Several justices cited the standards the institute had developed as a model to be emulated by the states.
The institute's recent decision to abandon the field was a compromise. Some members had asked the institute to take a stand against the death penalty as such. That effort failed.
Instead, the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."
That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.
A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience have proved that the system cannot reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.
Roger S. Clark, who teaches at Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., and was one of the leaders of the movement to have the institute condemn the death penalty outright, said he was satisfied with the compromise. "Capital punishment is going to be around for a while," Professor Clark said. "What this does is pull the plug on the whole intellectual underpinnings for it."
The framework the institute developed in 1962 was an effort to make the death penalty less arbitrary. It proposed limiting capital crimes to murder and narrowing the categories of people eligible for the punishment. Most important, it gave juries a framework to decide whom to put to death, asking them to balance aggravating factors against mitigating ones.
The move to combat arbitrariness without giving up sensitivity to individual circumstances is known as "guided discretion," which sounds good until you notice that it is a phrase at war with itself.
The Supreme Court's capital justice jurisprudence since 1976 has only complicated things. Justice Harry A. Blackmun conceded in 1987 that "there perhaps is an inherent tension between the discretion accorded capital sentencing juries and the guidance for use of that discretion that is constitutionally required."
That was an understatement, Justice Antonin Scalia said in 1990. "To acknowledge that 'there perhaps is an inherent tension,' " he wrote, "is rather like saying that there was perhaps an inherent tension between the Allies and the Axis powers in World War II."
Justice Scalia solved the problem by vowing never to throw out a death sentence on the ground that the sentencer's discretion had been unconstitutionally restricted.
In 1994, Justice Blackmun came around to the view that "guided discretion" amounted to "irreconcilable constitutional commands." But he drew a different conclusion than Justice Scalia had from the same premise, saying that "the death penalty cannot be administered in accord with our Constitution." He said he would no longer "tinker with the machinery of death." The institute came to essentially the same conclusion.
Some supporters of the death penalty said they welcomed the institute's move. Capital sentencing "is so micromanaged by Supreme Court precedents that a model statute really serves very little function," Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation wrote in a blog posting. "We are perfectly O.K. with dumping it."
Mr. Scheidegger expressed satisfaction that an effort to have the institute come out against the death penalty as such was defeated.
But opponents of the death penalty said the institute's move represents a turning point.
"It's very bad news for the continued legitimacy of the death penalty," Professor Zimring said. "But it's the kind of bad news that has many more implications for the long term than for next week or the next term of the Supreme Court."
Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said he recalled reading Model Penal Code as a first-year law student in 1970. "The death penalty was an abstract issue of little interest to me or my fellow students," he said. But he remembered being impressed by the institute's work. "I thought in passing that smarter people than I had done a sensible job of figuring out this tricky problem."
Things will look different come September, Professor Gross said.
"Law students who take first-year criminal law from 2010 on," he said, "will learn that this same group of smart lawyers and judges - the ones whose work they read every day - has said that the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure."
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6) An Uneasy Feeling
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
I'm starting the new year with the sinking feeling that important opportunities are slipping from the nation's grasp. Our collective consciousness tends to obsess indiscriminately over one or two issues - the would-be bomber on the flight into Detroit, the Tiger Woods saga - while enormous problems that should be engaged get short shrift.
Staggering numbers of Americans are still unemployed and nearly a quarter of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Forget the false hope of modestly improving monthly job numbers. The real story right now is the entrenched suffering (with no end in sight) that has been inflicted on scores of millions of working Americans by the Great Recession and the misguided economic policies that preceded it.
As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, the entire past decade "was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times." There was no net job creation - none - between December 1999 and now. None!
The Post article read like a lament, a longing for the U.S. as we'd once known it: "No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent."
Middle-class families in 2008 actually earned less, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999. The data for 2009 are not yet in, but you can just imagine what happened to those families in that nightmarish downturn. Small children over the holidays were asking Santa Claus to bring mommy or daddy a job.
One in eight Americans, and one in four children, are on food stamps. Some six million Americans, according to an article in The Times on Sunday, have said that food stamps were their only income.
This is a society in deep, deep trouble and the fixes currently in the works are in no way adequate to the enormous challenges we're facing. For example, an end to the mantra of monthly job losses would undoubtedly be welcomed. But even if the economy manages to create a few hundred thousand new jobs a month, it would do little to haul us from the unemployment pit dug for us by the Great Recession. We need to create more than 10 million new jobs just to get us back to where we were when the recession began in December 2007.
What's needed are big new innovative efforts to fashion an economy that creates jobs for all who want and need to work. Just getting us back in fits and starts over the next few years to where we were when the recession began should not be acceptable to anyone. We should be moving now to invest aggressively in a new, greener economy, leading the world in the development of alternative fuels, advanced transportation networks and the effort to restrain the poisoning of the planet. We should be developing an industrial policy that emphasizes the need for America to regain its manufacturing mojo, as tough as that might seem, and we need to rebuild our infrastructure.
We're not smart as a nation. We don't learn from the past, and we don't plan for the future. We've spent a year turning ourselves inside out with arguments of every sort over health care reform only to come up with a bloated, Rube Goldberg legislative mess that protects the insurance and drug industries and does not rein in runaway health care costs.
The politicians will be back soon, trust me, screaming about the need to rein in health costs.
We keep talking about how essential it is to radically improve public education while, at the same time, we're closing libraries and firing teachers by the tens of thousands for economic reasons.
The fault lies everywhere. The president, the Congress, the news media and the public are all to blame. Shared sacrifice is not part of anyone's program. Politicians can't seem to tell the difference between wasteful spending and investments in a more sustainable future. Any talk of raising taxes is considered blasphemous, but there is a constant din of empty yapping about controlling budget deficits.
Oh, yes, and we're fighting two wars.
If America can't change, then the current state of decline is bound to continue. You can't have a healthy economy with so many millions of people out of work, and there is no plan now that would result in the creation of millions of new jobs any time soon.
Voters were primed at the beginning of the Obama administration for fundamental changes that would have altered the trajectory of American life for the better. Politicians of all stripes, many of them catering to the nation's moneyed interests, fouled that up to a fare-thee-well.
Now we're escalating in Afghanistan, falling back into panic mode over an attempted act of terror and squandering a golden opportunity to build a better society.
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7) This Year's Housing Crisis
Editorial
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05tue1.html?hp
The financial crisis and Great Recession have their roots in the housing bust. When it comes, a lasting recovery will be evident in a housing rebound. Unfortunately, housing appears to be weakening anew.
Figures released last week show that after four months of gains, home prices flattened in October. At that time, low mortgage rates (courtesy of the Federal Reserve) and a home buyer's tax credit (courtesy of Congress) were fueling sales. That should have propped up prices. But it was not enough to overcome the drag created by a glut of 3.2 million new and existing unsold single-family homes - about a seven-month supply.
The situation, we fear, will only get worse in months to come. Rates already are starting to rise as lenders brace for the Fed to curtail support for mortgage lending as early as the end of March. The home buyer's tax credit is scheduled to expire at the end of April. And a new flood of foreclosed homes is ready to hit the market.
It is increasingly clear that the Obama administration's anti-foreclosure effort - which pressed lenders to reduce interest rates - isn't doing nearly enough. High unemployment rates also mean that many borrowers who did qualify for aid have been unable to keep up with even reduced monthly payments.
As a result, an estimated 2.4 million foreclosed homes will be added to the existing glut in 2010, driving prices down by another 10 percent or so. That would bring the average decline nationwide to about 40 percent since the peak of the market in 2006.
A renewed price drop could usher in a new grim chapter in the foreclosure crisis. Already an estimated one-third of homeowners with a mortgage - nearly 16 million people - owe more than their homes are worth; in industry parlance, they are "underwater." If prices drop further, ever more borrowers will sink ever deeper. Research suggests that the greater the loss of home equity, the greater the likelihood that borrowers will decide to turn in the keys and find a cheaper place to rent.
Things didn't have to get this bad.
The best way to modify an underwater loan is to reduce the principal balance, lowering the monthly payment and restoring equity. But for the most part, lenders have refused to reduce principal because it would force them to take an immediate loss on the loan. Lenders also have vehemently - and successfully - resisted Congressional efforts to change the law so that bankruptcy courts could reduce the mortgage balances for bankrupt borrowers.
The administration decided not to press lenders to grant principal reductions in the flawed belief that simply making payments more affordable would be enough to forestall foreclosures. It hasn't. The administration also didn't fight for the bankruptcy fix when it was before Congress last year despite President Obama's campaign promise to do so.
The economy is hard pressed to function, let alone thrive, when house prices are falling. As home equity erodes, consumer spending falls and foreclosures increase. Lenders lose the ability and willingness to extend credit and employers are disinclined to hire. True economic recovery is all but impossible.
To avert the worst, the White House should alter its loan-modification effort to emphasize principal reduction. Job creation should also be a priority so that rising unemployment does not cause more defaults.
We wish we could proclaim a Happy New Year in housing. But until more is done to help struggling homeowners, the portents are not good.
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8) As Population Shifts in Harlem, Blacks Lose Their Majority
By SAM ROBERTS
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html?hp
For nearly a century, Harlem has been synonymous with black urban America. Given its magnetic and growing appeal to younger black professionals and its historic residential enclaves and cultural institutions, the neighborhood's reputation as the capital of black America seems unlikely to change soon.
But the neighborhood is in the midst of a profound and accelerating shift. In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street, blacks are no longer a majority of the population - a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked.
By 2008, their share had declined to 4 in 10 residents. Since 2000, Harlem's population has already grown more than in any decade since the 1940s, to 126,000 from 109,000, but its black population - about 77,000 in central Harlem and about twice that in greater Harlem - is smaller than at any time since the 1920s.
In 2008, 22 percent of the white households in Harlem had moved to their present homes within the previous year. By comparison, only 7 percent of the black households had.
"It was a combination of location and affordability," said Laura Murray, a 31-year-old graduate student in medical anthropology at Columbia, who moved to Sugar Hill near City College about a year ago. "I feel a community here that I don't feel in other parts of the city."
Change has been even more pronounced in the narrow north-south corridor defined as central Harlem, which planners roughly define as north of 110th Street between Fifth and St. Nicholas Avenues.
There, blacks account for 6 in 10 residents, but native-born African-Americans born in the United States make up barely half of all residents. Since 2000, the proportion of whites living there has more than doubled, to more than one in 10 residents - the highest since the 1940s. The Hispanic population, which was concentrated in East Harlem, is now at an all-time high in central Harlem, up 27 percent since 2000.
Harlem, said Michael Henry Adams, a historian of the neighborhood and a local resident, "is poised again at a point of pivotal transition."
Harlem is hardly the only ethnic neighborhoods to have metamorphosed because of inroads by housing pioneers seeking bargains and more space - Little Italy, for instance, has been largely gobbled up by immigrants expanding the boundaries of Chinatown and by creeping gentrification from SoHo. But Harlem has evolved uniquely.
Because so much of the community was devastated by demolition for urban renewal, arson and abandonment beginning in the 1960s, many newcomers have not so much dislodged existing residents as succeeded them. In the 1970s alone, the black population of central Harlem declined by more than 30 percent.
"This place was vacated," said Howard Dodson, director of Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. "Gentrification is about displacement."
Meanwhile, the influx of non-Hispanic whites has escalated. The 1990 census counted only 672 whites in central Harlem. By 2000, there were 2,200. The latest count, in 2008, recorded nearly 13,800.
"There's a lot of new housing to allow people to come into the area without displacing people there," said Joshua S. Bauchner, who moved to a Harlem town house in 2007 and is the only white member of Community Board 10 in central Harlem. "In Manhattan, there are only so many directions you can go. North to Harlem is one of the last options."
In 1910, blacks constituted about 10 percent of central Harlem's population. By 1930, the beginnings of the great migration from the South and the influx from downtown Manhattan neighborhoods where blacks were feeling less welcome transformed them into a 70 percent majority. Their share of the population (98 percent) and total numbers (233,000) peaked in 1950.
In 2008, according to the census, the 77,000 blacks in central Harlem amounted to 62 percent of the population.
In greater Harlem, the population peaked at 341,000 in 1950. The black share hit a high of 64 percent in 1970. In 2008, the comparable figures were 153,000 and 41 percent, respectively.
About 15 percent of Harlem's black population is foreign-born, mostly from the Caribbean, with a growing proportion from Africa.
Some experts say the decline in the black population may be overstated because poorer people are typically undercounted by the census, and Harlem has a disproportionate number of poor people. Others warn that proposed development and higher property values may force poor people out and say that when the city was the neighborhood's leading landlord it should have increased ownership opportunities for Harlem residents .
"Gentrification - the buying up and rehabilitation of land and buildings, whether by families or developers, occupied or abandoned -means a rising rent tide for all, leading inevitably to displacement next door, down the block, or two streets away," said Neil Smith, director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Mr. Dodson of the Schomburg Center moved from Riverside Drive to Newark not long ago. He said, "I tell people that I can't afford to live in Harlem or in New York in the manner I deserve to."
Other analysts point to the outflow of some blacks and the influx of others as positive evidence that barriers to integration have fallen in other neighborhoods and that Harlem has become a more attractive place to live.
"It's a mistake to see this only as a story of racial change," said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. "What's interesting is that many African-Americans are living in Harlem by choice, not necessity."
Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, said, "Harlem has become as it was in the early 1930s - a predominantly black neighborhood, but with other groups living there as well."
Ronald Copney, a former limousine driver, and his two sisters share a brownstone on West 147th Street that his grandmother bought in 1929. He rents two floors to tenants, one of whom is white.
"This was always a very nice neighborhood," he said. "In a way, it's better now as far as property values are concerned."
Geneva Bain, the district manager of Community Board 10, blamed the economy and the lack of jobs, rather than gentrification, for the dwindling number of blacks.
She acknowledged, though, that white newcomers have sometimes been greeted ambivalently. "Integration is very subjective," Ms. Bain said. "One person's fellowship is another person's antagonism. I am one who thinks that central Harlem has become a better place because of integration."
Mr. Dodson, the Schomburg Center director, said one source of historic resentment remained true: that while blacks made up a majority of the population, they still accounted for a tiny minority of the property owners.
"There are people who would like to maintain Harlem as a 'black enclave,' but the only way to do that is to own it," Mr. Dodson said. "That having been said, you can't have it both ways: You can't on the one hand say you oppose being discriminated against by others who prevent you from living where you want to and say out of the other side of your mouth that nobody but black people can live in Harlem."
"The question of whether it's a good thing or not," he added. "I honestly can't make that judgment yet."
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9) The Card Game
How Visa, Using Card Fees, Dominates a Market
By ANDREW MARTIN
January 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html?hp
Every day, millions of Americans stand at store checkout counters and make a seemingly random decision: after swiping their debit card, they choose whether to punch in a code, or to sign their name.
It is a pointless distinction to most consumers, since the price is the same either way. But behind the scenes, billions of dollars are at stake.
When you sign a debit card receipt at a large retailer, the store pays your bank an average of 75 cents for every $100 spent, more than twice as much as when you punch in a four-digit code.
The difference is so large that Costco will not allow you to sign for your debit purchase in its checkout lines. Wal-Mart and Home Depot steer customers to use a PIN, the debit card norm outside the United States.
Despite all this, signature debit cards dominate debit use in this country, accounting for 61 percent of all such transactions, even though PIN debit cards are less expensive and less vulnerable to fraud.
How this came to be is largely a result of a successful if controversial strategy hatched decades ago by Visa, the dominant payment network for credit and debit cards. It is an approach that has benefited Visa and the nation's banks at the expense of merchants and, some argue, consumers.
Competition, of course, usually forces prices lower. But for payment networks like Visa and MasterCard, competition in the card business is more about winning over banks that actually issue the cards than consumers who use them. Visa and MasterCard set the fees that merchants must pay the cardholder's bank. And higher fees mean higher profits for banks, even if it means that merchants shift the cost to consumers.
Seizing on this odd twist, Visa enticed banks to embrace signature debit - the higher-priced method of handling debit cards - and turned over the fees to banks as an incentive to issue more Visa cards. At least initially, MasterCard and other rivals promoted PIN debit instead.
As debit cards became the preferred plastic in American wallets, Visa has turned its attention to PIN debit too and increased its market share even more. And it has succeeded - not by lowering the fees that merchants pay, but often by pushing them up, making its bank customers happier.
In an effort to catch up, MasterCard and other rivals eventually raised fees on debit cards too, sometimes higher than Visa, to try to woo bank customers back.
"What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition," said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN-based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. "They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?"
Visa has managed to dominate the debit landscape despite more than a decade of litigation and antitrust investigations into high fees and anticompetitive behavior, including a settlement in 2003 in which Visa paid $2 billion that some predicted would inject more competition into the debit industry.
Yet today, Visa has a commanding lead in signature debit in the United States, with a 73 percent share. Its share of the domestic PIN debit market is smaller but growing, at 42 percent, making Visa the biggest PIN network, according to The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.
The Risk of Refusing
Critics complain that Visa does not fight fair, and that it used its market power to force merchants to accept higher costs for debit cards. Merchants say they cannot refuse Visa cards because it would result in lower sales.
"A dollar is no longer a dollar in this country," said Mallory Duncan, senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade association. "It's a Visa dollar. It's only worth 99 cents because they take a piece of every one."
Visa officials say its critics are griping about debit products that have transformed the nation's payment system, adding convenience for consumers and higher sales for merchants, while cutting the hassle and expense of dealing with cash and checks. In recent years, New York cabbies and McDonald's restaurants are among those reporting higher sales as a result of accepting plastic.
"At times we have a perspective problem," said William M. Sheedy, Visa's president for the Americas. "Debit has become so mainstream, some of the people who have benefited have lost sight of what their business model was, what their cost structure was."
Visa officials said the costs of debit for merchants had not gone down because the cards now provided greater value than they did five or 10 years ago. The costs must not be too onerous, they say, because merchant acceptance has doubled in the last decade.
The fees are "not a cost-based calculation, but a value-based calculation," said Elizabeth Buse, Visa's global head of product.
As for Visa's market share, company officials maintain that it is rather small when considered within the larger context of all payments, where, for now at least, cash remains king.
While Visa may be among the best-known brands in the world, how it operates is a mystery to many consumers.
Visa does not distribute credit or debit cards, nor does it provide credit so consumers can buy flat-screen televisions or a Starbucks latte. Those tasks are left to the banks, which owned Visa until it went public in 2008.
Instead, Visa provides an electronic network that acts like a tollbooth, processing the transaction between merchants and banks and collecting a fee that averages 5 or 6 cents every time. For the financial year ended in June, Visa handled 40 billion transactions. Banks that issue Visa cards also pay a separate licensing fee, based on payment volume. MasterCard, which is roughly half the size of Visa, uses a similar model.
"It's a penny here or there," said Moshe Katri, an analyst who tracks the payments industry for Cowen and Company. "But when you have a billion transactions or more, it adds up."
With debit transactions forecast to overtake cash purchases by 2012, the model has investors swooning: Visa's stock traded at $88.14 on Monday, near a 52-week high, while shares of MasterCard, at $256.84 each, have soared by more than 450 percent since the company went public in 2006.
While there is little controversy about the fees that Visa collects, some merchants are infuriated by a separate, larger fee, called interchange, that Visa makes them pay each time a debit or credit card is swiped. The fees, roughly 1 to 3 percent of each purchase, are forwarded to the cardholder's bank to cover costs and promote the issuance of more Visa cards.
The banks have used interchange fees as a growing profit center and to pay for cardholder perks like rewards programs. Interchange revenue has increased to $45 billion today, from $20 billion in 2002, driven in part by the surge in debit card use.
Some merchants say there should be no interchange fees on debit purchases, because the money comes directly out of a checking account and does not include the risks and losses associated with credit cards. Regardless, merchants say they inevitably pass on that cost to consumers; the National Retail Federation says the interchange fees cost households an average of $427 in 2008.
While the cost per transaction may seem small, at Best Buy, the biggest stand-alone electronics chain, "these skyrocketing fees add up to hundreds of millions of dollars every year," said Dee O'Malley, director of financial services. "Every additional dollar we are forced to pay credit card companies is another dollar we can't use to hire employees, or pass along to our customers in the form of savings."
Weighing Rules on Merchants
The Justice Department is investigating if rules imposed by payment networks, including Visa, on merchants regarding "various payment forms" are anticompetitive, a spokeswoman said. Several bills have been introduced in Congress seeking to give merchants more ability to negotiate interchange, which is largely unregulated.
While interchange remains legal despite repeated challenges, a group of merchants is pursuing yet another class-action suit, this time in federal court in Brooklyn, against Visa and MasterCard that seeks to upend the system for setting fees.
"Visa and MasterCard have morphed into a giant cookie jar for banks at the expense of consumers," said Mitch Goldstone, a plaintiff in the case.
Fees were not an issue when debit cards first gained traction in the 1980s. The small networks that operated automated teller machines, like STAR, Pulse, MAC and NYCE, issued debit cards that required a PIN. MasterCard had its own PIN debit network, called Maestro.
Merchants were not charged a fee for accepting PIN debit cards, and sometimes they even got a small payment because it saved banks the cost of processing a paper check.
That changed after Visa entered the debit market. In the 1990s, Visa promoted a debit card that let consumers access their checking account on the same network that processed its credit cards, which required a signature.
To persuade the banks to issue more of its debit cards, Visa charged merchants for these transactions and passed the money to the issuing banks. By 1999, Visa was setting fees of $1.35 on a $100 purchase, while Maestro and other regional PIN networks charged less than a dime, Federal Reserve data shows. Visa says the fee was justified because signature debit was so much more useful than PIN debit; at the time, roughly 15 percent of merchants had keypads for entering a PIN.
Merchants said they had no choice but to continue taking the debit cards, despite the higher fees, because Visa's rules required them to honor its debit cards if they chose to accept Visa's credit cards.
A Seven-Year Battle
Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Sears and a number of major merchants eventually sued. After seven years of litigation, Visa and MasterCard agreed to end the "honor all cards" rule between credit and debit and to pay the retailers a settlement of around $3 billion, one of the largest in American corporate history. Visa paid $2 billion, and MasterCard the remainder.
Since then, only a handful of retailers have stopped accepting Visa debit cards, an indication that the crux of the lawsuit was "much ado about nothing," Mr. Sheedy says.
And while some merchants said they thought the lawsuit would pave the way to a new era of competition, a curious thing happened instead: while Visa temporarily lowered its fees for signature debit, it raised the price on PIN debit transactions and passed the funds on to card-issuing banks, and its competitors soon followed.
The current class-action lawsuit joined by Mr. Goldstone contends that Visa's PIN debit network, called Interlink, is offering banks higher fees as an incentive to issue debit cards that are exclusively routed over this network. Interlink, which has raised its PIN debit fees for small merchants to 90 cents for each $100 transaction, from 20 cents in 2002, is often the most expensive, especially for small merchants, Fed data shows.
One large retailer, who requested anonymity to preserve its relationship with Visa, provided data that showed Interlink's share of PIN purchases rose to 47 percent in 2009, from 20 percent in 2002, even as its fees steadily increased ahead of most other networks - to 49 cents per $100 transaction in 2009, from 38 cents in 2006.
Visa officials say its PIN debit network is taking off despite rising costs because it offers merchants, banks and consumers a level of efficiency and security that regional networks cannot match. "We are motivated as a company to try to drive value to each one of those participants so that they accept the card, issue more cards, use the card," Mr. Sheedy said.
At checkout counters, meanwhile, consumers are quietly tugged in one direction or the other.
Safeway, 7-Eleven and CVS drugstores automatically prompt consumers to do a less costly PIN debit transaction. The banks, however, still steer consumers toward the more expensive form of signature debit. Wells Fargo and Chase are among those that offer bonus points only on debit purchases completed with a signature.
Visa says it does not care how consumers use their debit card, as long as it is a Visa. But for now at least, the company says the only way to ensure that a purchase is routed over the Visa network is to sign.
"When you use your Visa card, you have a chance to win a trip to the Olympic Winter Games," a new Visa commercial promises.
The commercial does not explain the rules, but the fine print on Visa's Web site does: nearly all Visa purchases are eligible - as long as the cardholder does not enter a PIN.
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10) Tax on Health Care Will Erode Coverage for Middle Class
By Tula Connell
January 4, 2010
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/01/04/tax-on-health-care-will-erode-coverage-for-middle-class/
A new year brings with it lots of hope.
Let's hope 2010 brings a health care reform bill that does not penalize working families with a tax on their coverage. Because right now, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert aptly [1] describes it, there is a "middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate's version" of the health care reform legislation.
The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it's a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.
Jon Walker at Firedoglake [2] took a look at a report released in December by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which found the health care tax "will result in most people getting worse health insurance from their employer, insurance that covers less." Walker translates the report's conclusions this way:
"Your employer will reduce what your current insurance plan [covers] and put in place high co-pays and deductibles. The result is that many people with employer-provided health insurance will see their insurance get much worse. For younger, healthier employees, possibly getting less comprehensive insurance but maybe higher wages (I think it is very doubtful that there is a pure dollar for dollar passthrough), this might be a decent deal. For older, less healthy employees this is a very bad deal. They will be forced to pay much more out-of-pocket for their health care."
More cost, less coverage for working families. Yet portraying the tax as only affecting "Cadillac plans," purposely obscures how it will harm America's working families.
Or, as Herbert puts it:
The tax on health benefits is being sold to the public dishonestly as something that will affect only the rich....
[1] describes it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/opinion/29herbert.html?_r=1
[2] took a look: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/11/cms-excise-tax-on-insurance-will-make-your-insurance-cov
erage-worse-and-cause-almost-no-reduction-in-nhe/
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11) U.S. Drone Strikes Reported in Pakistan
By ISMAIL KHAN and SALMAN MASOOD
January 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07drones.html?hp
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - American missiles, presumably fired by remotely piloted drones, struck twice Wednesday in North Waziristan, the tribal region that is a stronghold of Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The drone strikes were the first reported since Dec. 30, when a double agent detonated a suicide vest packed with explosives and killed eight people at a C.I.A. base in southeastern Afghanistan. The C.I.A. base served as an important part of the American effort to target Al Qaeda's top leadership in the region, including with drone strikes.
The missiles hit along the border with Afghanistan's Paktika Province, in an area that has been a repeated target of drone strikes as the United States seeks to halt the flow of fighters from Pakistan.
Details of the drones strikes in the remote area remained sketchy and the death tolls varied, but a government official said as many as 20 or 25 people may have been killed.
A resident of Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, said by telephone that the initial strike occurred in the village of Sanzalai, in a mountainous region about 22 miles west.
"Just when militants people gathered at the scene to retrieve the bodies and pull out the wounded, another missile struck an hour later," he said. The second strike left five dead and wounded another three, he said.
He said that the area was under the control of local militants and those killed in the first strike appeared to "guests," a term used for foreign militants, or Al Qaeda.
A senior government official in Peshawar, the capital of neighboring North West Frontier Province, said that 17 people were killed but acknowledged that details remained unclear.
The official who gave the higher death toll said that the target of the attack was a base of Pakistani militants frequented by foreign fighters, and that some two dozen people were killed.
Both officials said foreign militants were among the dead. They spoke on condition of anonymity while discussing security matters.
The United States has stepped up the pace and intensity of its drone attacks in Pakistan, launching more than 40 last year in a C.I.A. program that is ostensibly covert, but is in fact widely known.
The area struck on Wednesday is a headquarters for the Taliban network group run by Sirajuddin Haqqani, which works closely with Al Qaeda and using North Waziristan to stage its insurgency against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
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12) Deadly Gunfire at Gaza Protest Along Egypt Border
By ETHAN BRONNER
January 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/middleeast/07gaza.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - An anti-Egypt rally in southern Gaza turned deadly on Wednesday when demonstrators rushed the border fence and stoned Egyptian troops on the other side, leading to an exchange of gunfire and the death of an Egyptian soldier. Nine Egyptian soldiers and a dozen Palestinians were wounded from stones and gunfire, witnesses and medics said.
It was the most serious Palestinian-Egyptian violence along the closed Gaza border since Israel's short-lived invasion more than a year ago, and reflected rising tensions between Gaza's Hamas rulers and the Egyptian government, which, like Israel, appears determined to keep Gaza isolated.The demonstration, organized by Hamas, protested Egypt's refusal to allow international aid and solidarity missions into Gaza as well as Egypt's construction of an underground barrier to obstruct smuggler tunnels. Those tunnels supply both goods and arms to Hamas and Gaza.
As Hamas leaders gave speeches, young men climbed the border fence and threw rocks at the Egyptians, witnesses and police reported, and Palestinian police officers shot in the air to control the crowd, though to little avail. Egyptian troops then shot from their side. "Two Palestinians were instantly wounded from five bullets," a witness said.
The Egyptian forces also tear-gassed demonstrators who waved Hamas and Turkish flags, witnesses said. A Palestinian aid convoy was stopped by Egypt in the northern Sinai city of El Arish and included Turkish activists. The group, called Viva Palestina, consisted of 500 people, including Americans, British and Jordanians. It had scuffled earlier with Egyptian security officials in El Arish. Dozens were hurt.
A compromise was reached and part of the convoy was en route into Gaza by nightfall.
"The area is calm now and the situation on the border is stable," said Ihab al-Ghussein, spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, at a news conference in Gaza City.
The Egyptian soldier who was killed was in an observation tower 100 yards from the demonstration's stage, witnesses said.
Dr. Ahmed Shehada of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said it had taken in 12 wounded Palestinians, "most of them hit by gunshots."
Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza.
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13) Israel: Disputed Housing Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Middle East
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/world/middleeast/06briefs-Israel1.html?ref=world
Israel has approved construction of four new apartment buildings in a site that has drawn opposition from Palestinians, just outside the old city of East Jerusalem, officials said Tuesday.
The 24-unit project is being developed in a predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim for a future capital.
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14) Court Backs War Powers Over Rights of Detainees
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
January 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/06detain.html?ref=us
A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday strongly backed the powers of the government to hold Guantánamo detainees and other noncitizens suspected of committing terrorist acts.
In a sweeping opinion, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the presidential war power to detain those suspected of terrorism is not limited even by international law of war.
The decision, if it is not reversed by the Supreme Court, could apply to all cases involving detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since all of those cases are heard by the District of Columbia Circuit. As a result, the Obama administration will have a stronger position when opposing a court order to release a terrorism suspect.
In its ruling, the court denied a request by Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani, a former cook for a Taliban paramilitary brigade, to be released from the detention center at Guantánamo. It is the first case to directly apply a landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision that allowed prisoners to challenge their detention.
Mr. Bihani, who is from Yemen, was captured in 2002 when his brigade surrendered. He challenged his detention with a petition for habeas corpus, which the courts did not act on before the decision of the 2008 Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush, which said federal judges had jurisdiction to hear such claims.
Last year, a federal district court denied Mr. Bihani's petition for release; Tuesday's decision upheld the lower court.
Mr. Bihani argued that his continued detention violated international law because he was not part of the military of a nation at war, and had not committed "a direct hostile act" like firing his weapon. His petition for release, he said, should have been reviewed under standards like those for criminal defendants in the United States.
But the court found that granting such a high level of protection to the rights of detainees like Mr. Bihani would affect the military's entire approach to war.
"From the moment a shot is fired, to battlefield capture, up to a detainee's day in court, military operations would be compromised as the government strove to satisfy evidentiary standards in anticipation of habeas litigation," the opinion said.
A lawyer for Mr. Bihani did not return calls seeking comment. A Department of Justice spokesman also declined to comment.
Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University and an expert in habeas cases, said the appeals court had "gone out of its way to poke a stick in the eye of the Supreme Court" by taking a view that expands government power beyond the limits laid out in decisions like Boumediene.
The 25-page opinion was written by Judge Janice Rogers Brown and joined by Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, both appointees of President George W. Bush. Both are considered among the most conservative judges on the circuit.
The third member of the panel, who joined in denying Mr. Bihani's petition but not in the complete reasoning of the decision, was Judge Stephen F. Williams., a senior judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. In a concurring opinion, Judge Williams, wrote that the majority's argument that the president's war powers are not bound by the international laws of war actually "goes well beyond even what the government has argued in this case."
In a separate concurrence, Judge Brown wrote that the war placed the nation "past the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written."
She wrote, "War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust."
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15) A terrorism designation Cuba doesn't deserve
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, January 5, 2010; A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010402723.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Under new rules prompted by the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, airline passengers coming to the United States from 14 nations will undergo extra screening: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. For our first quiz of the new decade, which country doesn't fit with the others?
The obvious answer is Cuba, which presents a threat of terrorism that can be measured at precisely zero. Cuba is not a failed state where swaths of territory lie beyond government control; rather, it is one of the most tightly locked-down societies in the world, a place where the idea of private citizens getting their hands on plastic explosives, or terrorist weapons of any kind, is simply laughable.
There is no history of radical Islam in Cuba. In fact, there is hardly any history of Islam at all. With its long-standing paranoia about internal security and its elaborate network of government spies and snitches, the island nation would have to be among the last places on Earth where al-Qaeda would try to establish a cell, let alone plan and launch an attack. Yet Cuba is on the list because the State Department still considers it -- along with Iran, Sudan and Syria -- to be a state sponsor of terrorism.
Really? Despite the fact that the U.S. Interests Section in Havana was one of the few American diplomatic posts in the world to remain open for normal business, with no apparent increased security, in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks?
The Obama administration has made many admirable moves to bring U.S. foreign policy into closer alignment with objective reality. But progress toward a fact-based relationship with Cuba has been tentative and halting, at best. Obvious steps that could only serve U.S. interests -- and, in the process, almost surely make Cuba a more open society -- remain untaken.
Last month, New York Times correspondent Tim Golden and I hosted a lunchtime conversation -- and mini-concert -- in Washington with Carlos Varela, a singer-songwriter who is often called Cuba's Bob Dylan. The event, sponsored by the New America Foundation's U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative and the Center for Democracy in the Americas, was notable for the fact that it could take place at all: Varela's only previous trip to the United States was in 1998. He wanted to come again in 2004, but the U.S. government refused him a visa.
The George W. Bush administration adopted a hard-line policy of denying visas to most Cuban artists, including some who were trying to come because they had been nominated for Grammy Awards. The fact that Varela got a visa this time is indicative of a partial thaw, but there has not yet been a full return to the pre-Bush status quo, when the question that preoccupied Cuban musicians was whether the Castro government would let them out, not whether the U.S. government would let them in.
In May, the Obama administration denied a visa to world-famous Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez, who had hoped to perform at a concert in New York marking the legendary Pete Seeger's 90th birthday. I suppose it's possible to draw a distinction -- Rodriguez is known as a true believer in the communist system that Fidel Castro installed, while Varela, without explicitly criticizing the regime, uses nuance and metaphor to question the government and express the impatience of Cuban youth. But since when is the United States afraid of exposure to a competing ideology?
The Obama administration has inched forward in the right direction. Last April, the president lifted restrictions on how often Cuban Americans can visit relatives on the island and how much money they can send to family members. Basically undisturbed, however, are the main pillars of a half-century' s worth of failed policy toward Cuba: the ban that effectively keeps almost all other Americans from traveling to Cuba, and the trade embargo that forbids U.S. companies from doing business there.
Granted, the president already has plenty on his plate. He may be reluctant to introduce yet another variable. It's not hard to imagine a senator or a group of House members holding, say, health-care reform hostage over Cuba policy.
But it's difficult for me to believe that Obama fails to see how insane our current policy really is. He needs to change it -- and he can begin by ceasing to pretend that looking for al-Qaeda terrorists on flights from Cuba is anything but a big waste of time.
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