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The Lost Children of Haiti
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html
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Homeless people need housing, not incarceration.
Jails are not homes.
Homelessness is not a crime.
Stop criminalizing homelessness and poverty!
avimecca@yahoo.com
Everyone
A very small group of neighbors in the Haight and a couple high-profile outsiders are trying to bring back a sit/lie law which would enable police to harass and arrest homeless folks and others in the city for sitting or lying on the sidewalk. The law was first enacted in 1968 and until it was repealed (because it was declaredunconstitutional by the courts) 11 years later, it was used against hippies in the Haight and gay men in the Castro.
It was a bad law then, it's still a very bad law.
These days, I have no doubt that it will be used against homeless youth in the Haight, young homeless queers in the Castro and day laborers in the Mission.
The Board of Supervisors' public safety committee will hold a public hearing on sit/lie on Monday, March 1 at 10am. We need folks opposed to this law to come out in force.
Please send this email to 10 or more people you know and ask them to send it to 10 more. Call or send an email to committeemember Bevan Dufty and ask him to oppose sit/lie! (bevan.dufty@sfgov.org/ 554-6968). The other committeemembers are Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu (ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org/ 554-7630; david.chiu@sfgov.org/554-7450).
And get your organization to oppose this measure.
If we all speak out against this now, maybe we can prevent it from ever being introduced at the Board.
Homeless people need housing, not incarceration.
Jails are not homes.
Homelessness is not a crime.
Stop criminalizing homelessness and poverty!
TALKING POINTS:
1) Assault, battery, robbery, and sidewalk-obstruction laws all already exist. What this is, is carte-blanche to harass homeless people.
2) This kind of change represents the will of a small minority of Haight residents and a couple of high-profile outsiders. Most Haight residents want a neighborhood where the Constitution and basic rights still apply.
3) Police are not the right people to engage homeless people in services: social workers are.
4) Most young homeless people are victims of a broken foster system or abusive households. Law enforcement targeting will only further alienate them, and is downright cruel. An arrest record will make it more difficult for them to get housing in the future.
thanks
Don't forget to send this email to 10 or more people you know!
Tommi Avicolli Mecca
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STOP SPENDING TRILLIONS ON THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
END US/UN MILITARY OCCUPATION OF HAITI! FOOD NOT GUNS IN HAITI!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN!
FREE PALESTINE!
MONEY FOR HEALTHCARE, JOBS AND EDUCATION!
U.S. HANDS OFF LATIN AMERICA!
SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 11:00 A.M., CIVIC CENTER
GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT MARCH 20!
Volunteers Needed!
Postering and Flyering Work Sessions every Tues. 7pm and every Sat. 2pm
Volunteers are needed to help put up posters, hand out leaflets and make alert phone calls to fellow activists. Call 415-821-6545 for more info and for office hours. Come by the office to pick up posters and flyers in English, Spanish or Chinese. Participate in an Outreach Work Session held every Tues. 7pm and Sat. 2pm, meeting at the ANSWER Coalition Office: 2489 Mission St. #24 (at 21st St.), San Francisco, near 24th St. BART/#14, #49 MUNI.
Call 415-821-6545 for leafleting and posting schedule.
DONATIONS NEEDED:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr004=nou1lpg115.app202a
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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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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Join Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF to promote the March 20 Coalition antiwar demonstration.:
Sunday, 28 February 2010
12:15 pm
@ Unitarian Universalist Center
1187 Franklin Street (@ Geary), SF, 94109
We invite you to...
-- Lunch (vegetarian) and
-- Movie, Howard Zinn: You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train
A vegetarian lunch will start @ 12:15. We're asking "guests" for $1 - $5 contribution. (UU members, the usual $5). It includes a brief program on "Why I will be protesting the wars on March 20"
RSVP by 25 Feb so we know how much lunch to prepare: blee1931@yahoo.com (415.668.9572) or doloresmp@aol.com (415.387.2287)
The inspiring documentary on recently departed Howard Zinn will start about !:15 pm. Length approx 78 mins.
Donations will be solicited to benefit the March 20 Coalition to defray expenses of the anti-war march & rally on:
Saturday 20 March 2010
11 am
Civic Center Plaza, SF
This lunch and movie social is hosted by Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF, a member of the March 20 Coalition, calling for an end to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan: to use our taxes for health care, jobs and education, not death and destruction!
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VICTORY:
"FELONY ARSON" CHARGES AGAINST JR VALREY DISMISSED BY ALAMEDA COUNTY
Currently, only one other defendant, punk rock artist Holly Works, still faces charges. Her trial is set for March 1. Readers are urged to pack the courtroom so that her charges, too, will be dismissed.
DEFEND HOLLY WORKS!
Monday, March 1st - Holly's trial begins
8 AM - Protest outside the court
9 AM - Proceedings, Room 11
Alameda County Court House • 12th & Oak St, Oakland
(from 12th Street BART Station, walk down 12th St toward Lake Merritt.
Demonstrate / enter court at 12th and Oak St)
Holly Works is the remaining defendants of the Oakland 100, the arrestees in the police crackdown against the protests in Oakland over the police murder of Oscar Grant, on New Years Day, 2009. Framed on felony charges, both are facing years behind bars, but... Holly is innocent!
Holly Works, a local musician and activist, was arrested before she even arrived at the protest! Walking down the street with a friend, she was detained and fraudulently charged with... assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer!
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RALLY FOR CALIFORNIA'S FUTURE!
Rally at Civic Center in Defense
Of Public Education and All Public-Sector Services!
Thursday, March 4, 5:00 P.M.
The San Francisco Labor Council calls on all labor affiliates, community organizations, and student groups to mobilize their memberships to attend the 5 p.m. rally and demonstration at the San Francisco Civic Center on March 4.
This rally is being organized and sponsored by United Educators of San Francisco, AFT Local 2121, and the California Faculty Association as part of the statewide March 4 Strike/Day of Action in Defense of Public Education that was called by a statewide conference of students, faculty, and staff unions held in Berkeley on October 24, 2009.
Responding to layoffs, furloughs and widespread cutbacks, the October 24 conference summoned all sectors of education to struggle collectively to save public education in California. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and California Teachers Association (CTA) have endorsed the Day of Action. Massive demonstrations are being organized across the state on March 4.
The San Francisco Labor Council believes that those who work in the education sector should not be placed in competition with state workers, where each fights against the other for scarce funds.
That is why we are urging that California enact a program of progressive taxation. This could ensure that all our communities can thrive. We could create ample funds so that everyone has the opportunity, through quality, accessible education, to fully develop their potential and become productive members of society. And, at the same time, we could establish fully funded social services and job security for public workers.
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Note: UESF is calling on all teacher unionists and K-12 families to gather at 4 p.m. at the State Building on the corner of Van Ness & McAllister, before joining the mass rally at the Civic Center.
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NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition presents:
The Future of Honduras
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia (between 15th and 16th Streets)
San Francisco
$5-25 donations
(No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.)
415-924-3227
www.mitfamericas.org, www.balasc.org
Come hear Andres Conteris tell the story of his 129 days inside the Brazillian Embassy under seige with President Mel Zelaya after the Honduran coup.
Andres was the last English speaking journalist inside the Embassy, staying until the day that Zelaya was allowed to leave.
Now returned to San Francisco, Andres will tell us about those months withi the Embassy, and inform us of the most recent developments from Honduras.
Andres Conteris is a Latin American Correspondent with Democracy Now! and Flaspoints; has lived in Honduras; and has been involved in human rights activism for many years.
Andres will also be leading a human rights delegation to Honduras later in March, organized through the Task Force on the Americas. Proceeds from the March 10th presentation will benefit the Honduras Delegation Scholarship Fund.
Endorsed by: Chiapas Support Committee; FMLN Northern California; Haiti Action Committee; Nicaragua Center for Community Action; SOA Watch West; Task Force on the Americas
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Angela Davis, Linda Evans, Susan Rosenberg & Laura Whitehorn
invite you to:
SPARKS FLY 2010 -
An evening in celebration of Marilyn Buck and Women Political Prisoners
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7 PM
10 PM Dance Party with DJ Kuttin Kandi
Uptown Body and Fender Garage
401 26th St., Oakland (Telegraph Ave)
Art Auction, Speakers & Music including, Maisha Quint, devorah major, Phavia Kujichagulia, Kayla Marin, Yuri Kochiyama, Graciela Perez-Trevisan & Bomberas de la Bahia Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Plena
$10-50 (no one turned away)
Sparks Fly has honored women political prisoners for 20 years. Marilyn Buck is scheduled to get out of prison later this year after serving more than 25 years. Let's welcome her home! All money raised will go to the Release Fund for Marilyn Buck.
During this evening we also pay tribute to Safiya Bukhari on publication of her posthumous book, The War Before.
For book tour dates go to http://www.feministpress.org/books/safiya-bukhari/war.
Endorsed by: AK Press, All of Us or None, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, BACORR, California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Code Pink, East Bay Prisoners Support, East Side Arts Alliance, Freedom Archives, Free the SF 8 Comm. Friends of Marilyn Buck, Haiti Action Committee, Kevin Cooper Defense Comm, KPFA Women's Magazine, LAGAI, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Long Haul, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, National Lawyers Guild/Bay Area, Out of Control, PM Press, Prison Activist Resource Center, Prison Radio Project, QUIT, Radical Women, SF Dyke March, SF Women In Black, Speak Out!, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network
wheelchair accessible
for more information: sparksfly2010@gmail.com
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LABOR'S STAKE IN ENDING THE WARS
Why are we in Afghanistan?
San Francisco
Saturday, March 20, 10:00 A.M.-12:00 Noon*
Plumbers Hall
1621 Market Street (Near Franklin)
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and its consequences.
Program Includes:
--"Why Are We in Afghanistan" a short video.
--Stephen Zunes, USF Professor and Middle East specialist
--Afghanistan War Veteran
--Military Families Speak Out
--Labor Leaders
Speakers followed by Q&A and Audience Response
Followed by a Labor Contingent march to Civic Center to join antiwar rally and march in solidarity with Unite HERE Local 2 members at downtown hotels. (Bring union banners and colors)
*Coffee, bagels and music at 10:00 A.M., march to Civic Center at Noon. Park in lot next to building or exit Civic Center BART station, walk about 6 blocks west on Market to Franklin.
Sponsored by:
San Francisco Labor Council and Bay Area U.S. Labor Against the War
Endorsed by:
Alameda Labor Council; AFT Local 2121; Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice; ILWU Local 10; Oakland Education Association; OPEIU Local 3; Peralta Federation of Teachers; SEIU Local 1021; Unite HERE Local 2; United Educators of San Francisco.
This list is in formation. Additional endorsements are invited.
For more information: 510-263-5303
labor-for-peace-and-justice@igc.org
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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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Check out:
Hotter than a Motherfucker!
By: Warren E. Henderson
ISBN: 1-4257-8463-1 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4257-8463-8 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
Pages : 130
Book Format :Trade Book 6x9
Subject :
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / People of Color
HISTORY / United States / General
LITERARY CRITICISM & COLLECTIONS / American
Availability
Trade Paperback 6x9 ($17.84)
Please choose book availability
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=39510
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I AM SEAN BELL, black boys speak
by Stacey Muhammad plus
1 year ago 1 year ago: Thu, Jan 1, 2009 6:22pm EST (Eastern Standard Time)
http://vimeo.com/2691617
I AM SEAN BELL
black boys speak
A Short Form Documentary from Wildseed Films
Directed by Stacey Muhammad
Asst. Directed by Shomari Mason
Edited by: Stacey Muhammad & R.H. Bless
Principal Photography: May 17, 2008
Brooklyn, NY
Running Time 10:30
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A Carnival Artist Without a Carnival
A Haitian Artist Struggles to Show His Work
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html
War veterans and resisters say "All Out for March 20th-National March on Washington!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsLfG9JjF8
Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
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New York Times Video: For Haitian Children, a Crisis Escalates
Front page of the Times, February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/
This video shows the frustration of doctors that haven't the supplies or equipment to help severely wounded Haitian children. One child, the doctor explains, had her foot amputated by her family in order to free her from the rubble she was buried under. They finally got her to the hospital after two weeks. By then, of course, the wound was infected. But, not having enough antibiotics, her other foot got infected and that had to be amputated. She is still rotting away at the hospital that can't care for her properly--as hard as the doctors are trying--and they are trying hard.
As it stands now--they haven't got the antibiotics and surgical supplies and they can't get the children to a hospital in the U.S. Since the attempted kidnapping of children by the American missionaries, the children are not allowed out of the country without papers--even when accompanied by their parents. The thing is, nobody has papers in Haiti so the parents can't prove it's their child. Nobody has driver's licenses, birth cirtificates--not the parents nor the children--if such proof exists, it's buried under the rubble along with all their other belongings. So, again, the innocent suffer because of the inability/unwillingness of the wealthiest nation in the world to bring the stuff that is needed to the people who need it because they are experts at bringing bombs, daisy-cutters and white phosphorous, not humanitarian aid. ...bw
The article of the same title is:
Paperwork Hinders Airlifts of Ill Haitian Children
By IAN URBINA
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/world/americas/09airlift.html?ref=world
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Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
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Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
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Security in an Insecure Land
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/30/world/americas/1247466794033/security-in-an-insecure-land.html?hp
What the US/UN police and military are doing in Haiti -- really.
This video takes us to the poorest section of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil. It looks like a giant concentration camp in the middle of a desert. The UN Police caravan have nothing with them but cameras and guns! People--men, women, children, are standing alongside the road begging for help. They say they have had no help at all since the earthquake.
The UN police bring NO AID with them. No food, water--nothing! Then the police, guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons, and their camera stop among a large group of people. The UN cop, Alix Sainvil, a Haitian-American United Nations police officer who worked to secure Cité Soleil before the earthquake, is talking to the camera; he explains that since the jail collapsed and prisoners escaped after the earthquake, he worried about how the "gangs" are taking over again.
The camera pans the faces of ALL the men.
One "gang member" (synonym "male") overhears what Soleil is saying to the camera and speaks up and says, "Even if your not a looter, when you walk past a store police will just shoot you for no reason. That's the only thing you do!" That, of course, designates him a "gang member."
The cop, Soleil, says as they are driving away, "that young man is a 'troublemaker.'"
This video illustrates just what the UN has been doing in Haiti. They have been patrolling these slums with automatic weapons and targeting anyone who shows any signs of resistance to the deplorable state of poverty they live in. It is a heinous atrocity orchestrated by the U.S.!
Haiti is US/UN occupied territory now. AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN OUT ANY MEANINGFUL AMOUNTS OF AID! They typically pull up with one-tenth of the supplies needed so that most go hungry and get nothing but their fury ignited. And who the hell wouldn't be furious? This is Katrina in powers of ten!
In another article in the Times, "Food Distribution Retooled; Americans Arrested," by DAMIEN CAVE, (number 19, below) "After two weeks of often chaotic food distribution, the United Nations announced plans on Saturday for a coupon-based system that aims to give rice to 10,000 Haitians a day at each of 16 locations around Port-au-Prince." (The article points out that the rice will be given to women only.)
AFTER TWO WEEKS THEY WILL BEGIN THIS WEEK?!?!? I guess they're thinking it'll be cheaper in the long run if more people die first. And that's the bottom line for this government! By the way, the ten Americans were arrested by the Haitian government for trying to take 33 Haitian children across into the Dominican Republic for "adoption." The thing is, they had no proof the children were orphans. I wonder how much they were going to charge for them?
--Bonnie Weinstein
Also see:
Haitian Law Enforcement Returns
The Haitian police are back on patrol in Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
Haitians Scramble for Aid
France24 reports on desperate Haitians trying to get some aid food in the Cité Soleil district of Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
HOW MANY CRIMES CAN THE U.S. COMMIT IN A CENTURY? EVIDENTLY THEIR PENCHANT FOR MORE AND MORE EGREGIOUS CRIMES ARE LIMITLESS! IT'S UP TO US TO STOP THEM! U.S. OUT OF HAITI NOW! LEAVE THE FOOD AND SUPPLIES AND GET THE HELL OUT! AND TAKE YOUR MARINES, GUNS AND TANKS WITH YOU!
U.S. Marines prevent the distribution of food to starving people due to "lack of security." They bring a truck full of supplies then, because their chain of command says they haven't enough men with guns, they drive away with the truckload of food leaving the starving Haitians running after the truck empty-handed! This is shown in detail in the video in the New York Times titled, "Confusion in Haitian Countryside." The Marines-the strong, the brave--turn tail and run! INCAPABLE, EVEN, OF DISTRIBUTING FOOD TO UNARMED, STARVING, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/22/world/americas/1247466678828/confusion-in-the-haitian-countryside.html?ref=world
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Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
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Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
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The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
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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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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
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 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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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
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 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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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) Israel Unveils Drones Able to Hit Iran
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html?ref=world
2) List of Troubled Banks at 16-Year Peak, F.D.I.C. Says
By ERIC DASH
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/business/24fdic.html?hp
3) Countless Lost Limbs Alter Life in Haiti's Ruins
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/americas/23amputee.html?ref=world
4) Flight Data Show Rendition Planes Landed in Poland
By NICHOLAS KULISH and SCOTT SHANE
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/europe/23poland.html?ref=world
5) Applications for Help on Heat Bills Rise by 15%
By ERIK ECKHOLM
February 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/us/23fuel.html?ref=us
6) DiNapoli: Wall Street Bonuses Up 17 Percent
"Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown..."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/23/business/AP-US-Wall-Street-Bonuses.html?dbk
7) Second Strike Paralyzes Greece
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/world/europe/25greece.html?hp
8) Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift
By GINGER THOMPSON
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/americas/24orphans.html?ref=world
9) Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace
"The demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," [Antiwar = AntiPeace. More Orwellian doublespeak...bw]
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24nato.html?ref=world
10) More Satellites Will Act as Eyes for Troops
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/asia/24satellites.html?ref=world
11) Illness Hinders Plans to Close Immigration Jail
By NINA BERNSTEIN
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/nyregion/24varick.html?ref=us
12) A Vote to Fire All Teachers at a Failing High School
By KATIE ZEZIMA
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/education/24teacher.html?ref=education
13) Doctor Training Aided by Drug Industry Cash
By DUFF WILSON
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/business/23docs.html?adxnnl=1&ref=education&adxnnlx=1267031207-nhb26464GE6S1L2hT+5NKg
14) The Torture Lawyers
Editorial
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/opinion/25thur1.html
15) Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/global/25swaps.html?hp
16) At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks
By MICHAEL LUO
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25stress.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
17) Charges Filed in Katrina Inquiry
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25orleans.html?ref=us
18) Patriot Act Elements Extended
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/politics/25brfs-PATRIOTACTEL_BRF.html?ref=us
19) A Jumble of Strong Feelings After Vote on a Troubled School
By KATIE ZEZIMA
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/education/25central.html?ref=education
20) Iraq to Rehire 20,000 Hussein-Era Army Officers
By MARC SANTORA
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?ref=world
21) Union Election Further Complicates a Tangled City Budget
By GERRY SHIH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/us/26sflabor.html?ref=us
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1) Israel Unveils Drones Able to Hit Iran
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html?ref=world
TEL NOF AIR FORCE BASE, Israel (AP) - Israel's Air Force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting Iran within their range.
The new aircraft, called the Heron TP, has a wingspan of 86 feet, making it the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military.
The commander of Israel's Air Force, Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, said the aircraft "has the potential to be able to conduct new missions down the line as they become relevant."
Israel's military refused to disclose the size of the new fleet or whether it was designed for use against Iran.
Israel considers Iran an enemy because of its nuclear program, missiles and repeated threats.
Israel has hinted at the possibility of a military strike against Iran if world pressure does not halt the Iranian nuclear program, despite Iranian assertions that the program is for peaceful ends.
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2) List of Troubled Banks at 16-Year Peak, F.D.I.C. Says
By ERIC DASH
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/business/24fdic.html?hp
Correction Appended
After weathering the nation's worst run of bank failures in nearly two decades, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced Tuesday that it had added 450 institutions to its list of challenged lenders in 2009 and warned that the industry was likely to remain under stress.
The number of so-called problem banks rose to 702 at the end of 2009, compared to 252 at the beginning of the year. Both the number of troubled institutions and their total assets are at the highest level since 1993, putting enormous strain on the government-administered insurance fund that protects customer deposits.
The F.D.I.C. does not disclose which banks it considers at risk. Lenders on its list are not necessarily in imminent danger of failure.
With banks failing in growing numbers, the F.D.I.C. said its insurance fund fell deeper into the red, ending 2009 with a deficit of $20.9 billion. That position was nearly $38.1 billion weaker than a year earlier. The bulk of that decline reflects funds that the F.D.I.C. is setting aside to cope with future losses.
In its annual report on the banking industry, the agency suggested that many of the nation's 8,100 lenders essentially broke even during 2009 but that many remain in fragile condition. Many smaller lenders, in particular, are struggling. Bad credit card, mortgage and corporate loans escalated in the final months of 2009 - the 12th straight quarterly increase - albeit at a slower pace. Fewer than a third of banks reported a net loss for the fourth quarter, which officials held out as a glimmer of good news.
"There is incremental improvement," said Sheila C. Bair, the F.D.I.C. chairwoman, said in a news conference in Washington on Tuesday morning. "We are seeing some encouraging signs here. Over all, the banking system is challenged but stable."
Last week, the Federal Reserve raised the rate it charges banks for emergency loans, suggesting Fed officials consider the overall industry has recovered from the worst days of the financial collapse. Federal regulators are also expected to withdraw several government support programs shortly. But with high unemployment levels and few signs the housing market has bottomed-out, the broader outlook for many banks remains murky at best.
Collectively, banks posted a $914 million profit in the fourth quarter, compared to a $2.8 billion profit in the third quarter.
For all of 2009, the banking industry posted a $12.5 billion profit, far below the $100 billion in annual profits that the industry raked in two years earlier at the height of the boom. Although the financial industry benefited ultra-low interest rates, most banks also faced record loan losses. Many midsize and community lenders, which do not have big trading businesses, suffered big losses last year. Officials worry that they will be reluctant to lend to small businesses and other customers until they replenish their coffers. "Large banks need to step up to the plate here," Ms. Bair added.
The troubles may get worse in the coming months. Once the Fed starts tightening credit, banks will no longer be able to rely on the easy profits of the last two years to cushion their losses. The extra strain could causes dozens of additional banks to fail, just as similar interest-rate swings dealt hurt many lenders following the saving-and-loan crisis.
So far, the F.D.I.C. has seized and sold about 20 banks in 2010, compared with 140 bank failures in 2009. That was the largest number of failures in 17 years. Analysts expect at least several hundred more small lenders to collapse over the next few years, a prospect that seems more likely given the surge in the number of problem institutions last year. The number of problem banks rose by 150 in the fourth quarter alone, bringing it to nearly 1 in 11 lenders.
That is putting significant pressure on the F.D.I.C. fund, which safeguards deposits. Banks pay premiums that insure individual accounts for up to $250,000, but the crushing load of bank failures last year left it severely depleted. The fund had a negative $8.2 billion balance at the end of the third quarter as it slipped into the red for the first time since the early 1990s, the agency said.
Since the bulk of the insurance fund's losses stem from money previously set aside to cover future bank failures, it can continue to operate in the red. But F.D.I.C. began taking steps to shore up the fund last year - and make up a projected $50 billion shortfall.
Last fall, officials ordered its thousands of member banks to begin prepaying their annual assessments that would have otherwise been due through 2012. That move is expected to add about $45 billion to the insurance fund coffers. Officials have imposed a special assessment fee and began striking more loss-sharing agreements, which lowers the amount of cash the agency outlays up-front.
Of course, some analysts still believe that the agency may need additional cash. The F.D.I.C. has the ability to access an emergency line of credit from the Treasury Department if conditions worsen, though officials are reluctant to do so. Such a move would draw a firestorm of bad publicity and runs the risk of unnerving consumers.
In late August, Ms. Bair said she did not anticipate having to tap that line of credit immediately, although she did not rule it out. "I never say never," Ms. Bair said at the time.
Correction: February 23, 2010
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that 500 institutions had been added to the troubled-lender list in 2009. It also erred in reporting that the collective bank profit in the fourth quarter was an improvement over the previous quarter.
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3) Countless Lost Limbs Alter Life in Haiti's Ruins
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/americas/23amputee.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - "Don't cut off my leg!" Fabienne Jean screamed repeatedly as she was carried through the gates of the General Hospital here after the earthquake. "I'm a dancer. My leg is my livelihood. Please, don't take my leg."
After four days on the hospital's cluttered grounds, lying among what she described as the "dead and living all mixed up," Ms. Jean was wheeled into an operating tent where her crushed, infected right leg was amputated below the knee.
"It is a sad story," Ms. Jean, 31, a slim, graceful woman who danced for the Haitian National Theater, said recently, massaging her bandaged stump. "But what can I do? I can't kill myself because of this, so I have to learn to live with it."
More than a month after the earthquake, thousands of new amputees are facing the stark reality of living with disabilities in a shattered country whose terrain and culture have never been hospitable to the disabled.
Some remain in hospital tents swarming with flies; others have moved to makeshift post-surgical centers; and those who healed quickly, like Ms. Jean, have been discharged to the streets, where they now live. All need continuing care in a nation with no rehabilitation hospital, few physical therapists, no central prosthesis factory since the quake and a skeletal supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs gradually being reinforced by donations.
"The situation for newly disabled persons is very delicate," said Michel Péan, Haiti's secretary of state for the integration of the disabled. "They urgently need not only medical care but food and a place to live. Also, we cannot forget those disabled before the disaster who, because of their handicap, are having trouble getting access to humanitarian aid."
Rough estimates of the number of new amputees are based on information from overburdened hospitals that did not keep good records of surgeries. The Haitian government believes that 6,000 to 8,000 people have lost limbs or digits. Handicap International estimates that 2,000 to 4,000 Haitians underwent amputations, and many thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed well.
Dr. Péan, who is blind and serves in a relatively new post as government advocate for people with disabilities, said that Haiti's disabled - some 8 percent of the population even before the quake - had long been treated as second-class citizens. But the government has recently taken legal steps to recognize their rights and opened offices to serve them in the countryside, he said.
Ideally, Dr. Péan said, post-earthquake reconstruction could provide an opportunity to make Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, more accessible to people with disabilities and the impetus to create a national institute for rehabilitation.
For the moment, though, the urgent focus is on the uncertain present: making sure the thousands who underwent life-saving amputations have a future.
Handicap International, based in France, has been coordinating the postdisaster rehabilitation effort with CBM, a Germany-based Christian disability group, and with the Haitian government. Its volunteers - about five dozen therapists, nurses, technicians and community workers - have been providing postsurgical care and physical therapy at 12 hospitals here, and the organization is setting up a prosthetics workshop, too.
"We know that persons with injuries and disabilities are going through a difficult time right now, but they should not feel they're alone," said Aleema Shivji, an emergency response specialist with the group. "There are services available, and they're increasing by the day."
Recently, Caryn Brady, a physical therapist from Canada, made rounds through the sweltering postoperative tents outside the General Hospital. The patients there are being seen by such a revolving cast of international medical professionals, with charts so poorly kept that scribbled messages on bandaged stumps communicate the essentials: "See again on Feb. 23. Thanks. (Smiley face.)"
Bedside, Ms. Brady led Emmanuel Souverain, a university student whose right arm was amputated, through a series of exercises meant to prevent contractures and keep his muscles healthy for a prosthesis - although there is no plan yet to manufacture upper-body prosthetics.
Proceeding on to Mana Alexandre, 22, a double amputee in a white slip, Ms. Brady smiled when Ms. Alexandre showed off, bicycling her two leg stumps fiercely, a proud smile on her face. After more exercises, Ms. Alexandre moved, with the therapist's guidance, into a wheelchair, but worried about how to get back into bed.
"Well," her petite, dimple-faced mother, Evenie Belizaire, said, "I've been lifting you your whole life, with God's help."
Ms. Alexandre's stumps dangled over the seat of the wheelchair. "At home, there are chairs with a padded extension that can slide out and provide support," Ms. Brady said. "But maybe they can find a board?"
The need to adapt is challenging for all new amputees, but here newly discharged patients like Ms. Jean, the dancer, do not even have homes in which to recover or level, paved surfaces on which to plant their crutches or walkers.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Jean sat on a plastic chair in front of her family's new home, a small green tent on a rocky hillside. Her sister-in-law stood behind her, stroking Ms. Jean's long, fine braids protectively as she spoke.
"Dancing was my hobby, my work, my passion, my everything," Ms. Jean said. She dug out her purse and offered up a couple of photographs of herself in folkloric costume: one, a Judith Jamison-like pose, the other, a slinky Carnival performer. "That was me," she said. "The before pictures."
When her house shook violently on the day of the earthquake, Ms. Jean had been preparing to shower. She ran outside in her underwear, a towel wrapped around her waist, she said.
Standing beside a wall, she breathed in relief at having escaped before her home partly collapsed. And then the wall fell on top of her. Pulling herself out of the rubble, she found her leg snapped in two, bound it together with her towel and hopped back into her house to retrieve some clothes.
Ms. Jean does not remember who took her to the hospital, a scene of utter chaos. Two days later, a doctor promised to try to save her leg, she said, but she never saw him again. She lost her leg four days after the earthquake, and her emotions have oscillated since.
After 10 days, the hospital sent Ms. Jean to a makeshift rehabilitation center near the mass graves in Titanyen. An American prosthetics specialist, Dennis Acton, who examined her there, described the place as a kind of "squalid homeless shelter for amputees."
From there, Ms. Jean was discharged, with a walker, to her doting family. Her father, Roigner Trazile, 48, dabbing at his eyes, said that his hope in life had been lost along with his dancing daughter's leg.
"Before, when she actually had two legs, I thought she would become somebody, and then I would become somebody, too," he said.
But, Ms. Jean said that "some foreigners" - Mr. Acton, actually, who was there with a team from New Hampshire - have promised her not only a regular prosthetic but a high-performance one, too, that could allow her to dance again.
"O.K.," she said, smiling. "I am waiting."
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4) Flight Data Show Rendition Planes Landed in Poland
By NICHOLAS KULISH and SCOTT SHANE
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/europe/23poland.html?ref=world
BERLIN - Two human rights groups released government flight logs Monday that showed aircraft linked to the Central Intelligence Agency's program for secretly detaining, moving and housing terrorism suspects had landed in Poland.
Polish authorities have long denied that the country hosted one of the "black sites," part of a network of clandestine overseas prisons where suspected prisoners from Al Qaeda were subjected to brutal interrogation methods under the C.I.A.'s so-called rendition program. Prosecutors in Poland are investigating the country's possible participation in the program.
The Polish Air Navigation Services Agency confirmed that it provided the flight logs to the two rights groups, the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. The logs showed six flights in 2003 by two aircraft, a Gulfstream V and a Boeing 737, five of which originated in Kabul, Afghanistan, and one in Rabat, Morocco, before landing at Szymany airport.
Former American intelligence officials have said that the chief plotter of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was interrogated at the secret base near Szymany airport after his capture in 2003, but the agency has refused confirm that. "The agency does not discuss publicly where facilities related to its past detention program may, or may not, have been located," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano.
Adam Bodnar, head of the legal division at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Warsaw, said that after years of anonymous reports, the flight records were the first official confirmation of the C.I.A. flights to Poland. "We are getting closer to the truth," he said.
"Of course Polish authorities may help the C.I.A. in the fight against terrorism, but they are bound by the Polish Constitution, which prohibits torture," Mr. Bodnar said.
The Polish government declined to comment on the contents of the rights groups' report. "The prosecutor's office is investigating the reports about the alleged use of the Szymany airport," said Piotr Paszkowski, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Robert Majewski, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, told the Polish news agency PAP on Monday that he did not expect the investigation "to end soon."
C.I.A. officials have said that fewer than 100 prisoners were kept in the secret prisons between the creation of the program in 2002 and the transfer of the remaining 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba in 2006.
Maciej Rodak, vice president of the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency, confirmed that the agency had sent the records to the human rights groups. He said that the agency could not provide passenger lists, which the groups had also requested.
"The thing that is quite shocking is that the European investigations requested these specific flight records some four years ago," said Darian Pavli, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights group in New York. "The Poles all these years said they could not locate them, the flights didn't exist."
Nicholas Kulish reported from Berlin, and Scott Shane from Washington.
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5) Applications for Help on Heat Bills Rise by 15%
By ERIK ECKHOLM
February 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/us/23fuel.html?ref=us
The number of households applying for home heating assistance has climbed to record levels for the third straight year, rising by 15 percent to a projected 8.8 million this winter, state energy officials said Monday. This compares with almost 7.7 million recipients last year and 5.7 million in 2008.
Average heating costs have declined slightly since 2009, and the increase in applications reflects, in part, the mounting troubles of those suffering prolonged unemployment, including many people who had not sought the aid in the past, said Mark Wolfe, director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, which represents state aid officials in Washington.
Under the federally financed aid program, known as Liheap, states provide low-income applicants with grants averaging about $500 - or considerably more in colder northern states where heating a home with fuel oil can easily run to $1,800 or more for the winter. Later in the season, some people in dire straits also receive smaller emergency grants.
Congress approved $5.1 billion for the energy program, the same as last year. In the fall, with indications of another jump in demand, some states reduced the benefit amounts to stretch the money further. Unless Congress votes to provide extra money, state officials said, some states may cut off applications in the next month or two and scale back aid for weatherization and summer cooling.
A large majority of recipients are low-income elderly and disabled people and families living beneath the federal poverty line, which is $22,050 for a family of four. But households with incomes up to 150 percent or even double the poverty line are eligible in many states and, this year, applications have risen from people who are newly on the borderline of poverty.
"New applicants run the gamut from fixed-income seniors to an increase in the working poor to those of modest means who have lost their jobs or been displaced from homes they may have lost to foreclosure," said Phil Hailer, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development.
In Massachusetts, where applications are up by at least 15 percent over last year, the state has reduced the maximum benefit amount to $1,240, from $1,495 in 2009.
Among larger states, aid applications have climbed particularly in California (17 percent), Michigan (28 percent), New Jersey (24 percent) and Wisconsin (20 percent), according to data provided to the national association of assistance directors.
Many states forbid utility shutoffs in the winter, and, with or without aid, struggling families sometimes put off payments, building up arrears. Officials expect a surge in shutoffs of gas and electricity in the spring, when the moratoriums end and consumers find themselves owing large amounts.
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6) DiNapoli: Wall Street Bonuses Up 17 Percent
"Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown..."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/23/business/AP-US-Wall-Street-Bonuses.html?dbk
Filed at 6:57 a.m. ET
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Tuesday.
Total compensation at the largest securities firms grew beyond that figure and profits could surpass what he calls an unprecedented $55 billion last year, DiNapoli said. That's nearly three times Wall Street's record increase, a rate of growth that is boosted in part by the record losses in 2008 of nearly $43 billion, the Democrat said.
''Wall Street is vital to New York's economy, and the dollars generated by the industry help the state's bottom line,'' said DiNapoli. ''But for most Americans, these huge bonuses are a bitter pill and hard to comprehend. ... Taxpayers bailed them out, and now they're back making money while many New York families are still struggling to make ends meet.''
DiNapoli supports reforms that require Wall Street bonuses to be tied to long-term profitability, to force more stability in the volatile markets and ''make sure the securities industry thrives without driving the rest of us out on a fragile economic limb.''
DiNapoli reviews tax collections each year and bases his annual projection of Wall Street bonuses on income and other taxes paid in New York City.
DiNapoli notes the bonuses help state revenues tremendously as it faces an $8.2 billion deficit, but they are a ''bitter pill'' to most taxpayers nationwide.
The bonus estimate doesn't include compensation that Wall Streeters chose to take in stock options and other kinds of deferred payment.
He said the bonus pool is a third less than the amount paid out two years ago when Wall Street had its previously most profitable year.
The estimate does not include stock options that have not yet been realized or other forms of deferred compensation. This year's estimated bonus pool is third less than the amount paid two years ago, the previous most profitable year.
For example, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman could receive a stock bonus currently valued at $8.1 million for 2009 if he meets certain performance targets, the bank said in January. Gorman is getting deferred stock worth $5.4 million but no cash bonus for 2009, Morgan Stanley said in a filing. Gorman can't cash in the stock for three years.
Banks had been expected to hand out near-record compensation for last year's performance. Several banks earned huge profits in 2009, aided by billions in government bailout funds and a rebounding stock market.
State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has pressed the nation's eight biggest banks to reveal how much they plan to pay out in employee bonuses for 2009. The Democrat also sought the size of the banks' bonus pool would have been affected if the banks hadn't received a taxpayer rescue at the height of the financial crisis in late 2008.
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7) Second Strike Paralyzes Greece
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/world/europe/25greece.html?hp
ATHENS - Flights at Greek airports were canceled, public transportation was halted, and schools closed Wednesday as public-sector employees and private-sector workers walked off their jobs in the second 24-hour strike in two weeks against austerity measures.
The government is under intense pressure to plug a budget deficit estimated at 12.7 percent of gross domestic product and to avert the first national default among the 16 countries that use the euro.
The day was largely peaceful, though police officers fired tear gas to disperse around 50 young demonstrators who pelted them with stones and paint near the Parliament building in the city center. They were part of a crowd of more than 20,000 who marched holding banners reading "tax the rich" and "hands off our pension funds."
At the same time, government officials and representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund were discussing the imposition of additional measures to reduce state spending and increase revenue. But the strike included journalists, effectively creating a media blackout that kept Greeks in the dark about any progress.
Greece has already announced wage freezes, bonus cuts, tax crackdowns and pension reforms over the past month meant to save some $6.7 billion.
The new measures, which the government has not yet confirmed but are expected to be announced next week, include a 2 percent increase in the 19 percent value-added tax, higher fuel prices and the possible abolition of one of two additional months of pay received by public-sector workers and by employees at many private firms.
"What else are they going to cut, the air that we breathe?" said Kiki Oikonomou, a 47-year-old administrative employee at a state school for disabled children. "This is like a jail sentence. Where's the hope?"
According to Paraskevi Androni, 26, an unemployed engineer whose short-term contract with the privatized state carrier Olympic Air expired recently, the abolition of the extra pay would bring misery to workers and businesses alike.
"People rely on this additional wage to pay for basic needs," she said. "If it gets cut, people will stop spending and even more small businesses will close." As for her own employment prospects, she said "I try to be optimistic but I'm worried about the future."
Another engineer milling in the crowd before Wednesday's march said he believed many more protests would follow. "If people see the minority living a good life and their wages plummeting, they're going to take to the streets," said Haralambos Dramantis, a 60-year-old employee with the state power board. "We haven't seen the big uprising yet but it will come."
He added that the strike, by farmers, tax collectors, customs officials and others in recent weeks was "just the beginning."
Addressing a sea of protesters from a lectern bedecked with a banner reading, "People and their needs above the markets," the head of main labor union encouraged public resistance to the government's austerity measures. "We refuse to pay the price for a crisis that we didn't create," the leader, Yiannis Panagopoulos, said.
He added that Greece has become "a Ping-Pong ball in a game being played by global speculators," a reference to the financial markets.
The strike came a day after the international credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded Greece's four largest banks on fears that Greece's efforts to bring down its deficit through austerity measures would reduce demand for loans and curb bank profits.
"It is clear," said Giorgos Lakopoulos of Ta Nea, a center-left daily, that European Union officials "do not believe the austerity measures heralded to date are adequate to reduce the deficit by four percentage points this year."
"They want more," he said.
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8) Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift
By GINGER THOMPSON
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/americas/24orphans.html?ref=world
PITTSBURGH - It was widely billed as the first uplifting story in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital: two young American women rescued 54 Haitian orphans in an airlift organized by Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and supported by top Obama administration officials.
More than a month later, Governor Rendell is enjoying a reprieve from months of negative budget news coverage, the local church that sponsors the American women's work with orphans is reportedly receiving record donations and 42 of the orphans are in the care of American families who had applied to adopt them.
But for 12 of the children, last month's airlift transported them from one uncertain predicament to another. As it turns out, those children - between 11 months and 10 years old - were not in the process of being adopted, might not all even be orphans and are living in a juvenile care center here while the authorities determine whether they have relatives in Haiti who are able to take care of them.
The details of the children's departure - and what that could mean for relations between the United States and the Haitian government, which later detained 10 Americans for trying to take children out of the country without authorization - remain unclear.
Ambassador Raymond Joseph, Haiti's envoy to the United States, said he refused to approve Governor Rendell's request to remove children from the country who were not already in the adoption pipeline. But an aide to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the Haitian government accepted assurances from Mr. Rendell and American officials that the children would be well cared for in the United States. The adviser, Alice Blanchet, said of the governor, "I have no reason to second guess his intentions."
Senior Obama administration officials acknowledged in interviews that the lines of authority were fuzzy in Haiti on the day of the rescue mission, Jan. 18. And they said that American officials concerned about the well-being of the children had allowed Mr. Rendell to remove them from Haiti even though they had not received clear authorization to travel by the Haitian government and were not in the process of being adopted by American families, as required by a United States humanitarian parole policy announced the day Mr. Rendell landed in Haiti.
"This wasn't supposed to happen this way," said one senior State Department official, who like others asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly about the episode. "But it's not as if it was a normal day in Haiti, either."
When asked what he had done to persuade the administration to grant an exception for the 12 children, Mr. Rendell said in a phone interview, "I don't know how it happened, but I didn't ask a lot of questions, and if you had seen the faces of those children as we loaded them onto the airplane, you wouldn't have asked a lot of questions, either."
Several administration officials who spoke at length about the rescue effort suggested that they were led by their hearts. There were two American women and 54 small children living in precarious conditions without reliable access to food, water and sanitation. Telephone lines were down. And nearly all government offices had been flattened.
Matt Chandler, a spokesman at the Department of Homeland Security, said: "This was an extraordinary situation. There wasn't the benefit of time. And there was a gut decision that the administration believed was in the best interests of the children."
Child-protection advocates, who generally believe that hastily removing unaccompanied children from areas hit by disasters risks severing family bonds and exposing the children to further trauma, took a different view.
Diane Paul, an expert on natural disasters and human rights at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that most children living in Haitian orphanages had families who gave them up during hard economic times, but ultimately hoped to recover them. "How do we know someone in Haiti is not looking for them?" she asked, referring to the 12 children.
For now, they are living in a sweeping 5,000-square-foot cottage at the Holy Family Institute just outside Pittsburgh. The institute's snow-covered playground and indoor swimming pool make it seem a world away from the squalid streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The director, Linda Yankoski, said leaders of Pittsburgh's small Haitian community were volunteering to cook for and work with the children. And she said the children did not seem traumatized by their transition.
In coming days, officials said, Red Cross workers plan to interview the children and establish if they have families in Haiti.
The Pennsylvania governor, a Democrat, said he got involved with the rescue effort after learning about two Pittsburgh-area women - Jamie and Ali McMutrie - who were caring for dozens of children outside a Port-au-Prince orphanage that had been damaged in the earthquake.
From their camp amid the rubble, the young and telegenic McMutrie sisters started a campaign on Facebook and Twitter that captured the attention of people across Pennsylvania. Their pleas for help became part of a national outcry by families seeking to adopt Haitian children that led the Obama administration to take the unusual step of offering humanitarian parole to hundreds of orphans.
Most of the 54 children in the McMutrie sisters' care were eligible for parole, the authorities said. But the women refused to leave Haiti without the dozen children who were not.
That is where Mr. Rendell's high-level political connections became most important. Upon landing at the Port-au-Prince airport, he said, he used a cellphone and a BlackBerry that faded in and out of service to press for authorization to take all the children to the United States.
He and Representative Jason Altmire, another Democrat who was also participating in the mission, began contacting everyone they thought could help back in Washington, including Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, Huma M. Abedin, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Pennsylvania's two senators, Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, both Democrats.
Denis McDonough, the president's deputy national security adviser, who happened to be at the Port-au-Prince airport trying to fly home that day, was also enlisted to help.
Mr. Altmire recalled getting one or two more children approved with nearly every phone call. Mr. McDonough got a message on his BlackBerry granting the children authority to come to the United States. And five and a half emotionally exhilarating hours later, most of the group was on its way to Pittsburgh.
One little girl, named Emma, had gotten left behind in the shuffle and was brought to Pittsburgh the next day.
Since then, Mr. Altmire said, no one involved with the effort had looked back. He recalled one little boy who clutched a photo of his adoptive parents.
"That put the whole thing in perspective for me," Mr. Altmire said. "I knew all our efforts were worth it."
Simon Romero contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
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9) Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace
"The demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," [Antiwar = AntiPeace. More Orwellian doublespeak...bw]
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24nato.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has long called European contributions to NATO inadequate, said Tuesday that public and political opposition to the military had grown so great in Europe that it was directly affecting operations in Afghanistan and impeding the alliance's broader security goals.
"The demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," he told NATO officers and officials in a speech at the National Defense University, the Defense Department-financed graduate school for military officers and diplomats.
A perception of European weakness, he warned, could provide a "temptation to miscalculation and aggression" by hostile powers.
The meeting was a prelude to the alliance's review this year of its basic mission plan for the first time since 1999. "Right now," Mr. Gates said, "the alliance faces very serious, long-term, systemic problems."
Mr. Gates's blunt comments came just three days after the coalition government of the Netherlands collapsed in a dispute over keeping Dutch troops in Afghanistan. It now appears almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops there will be withdrawn this year. And polls show that the Afghanistan war has grown increasingly unpopular in nearly every European country.
The defense secretary, putting a sharper point on his past criticisms, outlined how NATO shortfalls were exacting a material toll in Afghanistan. The alliance's failure to finance needed helicopters and cargo aircraft, for example, was "directly impacting operations," he said.
Mr. Gates said that NATO also needed more aerial refueling tankers and intelligence-gathering equipment "for immediate use on the battlefield."
Yet alliance members, he noted, were far from reaching their spending commitments, with only 5 of 28 having reached the established target: 2 percent of gross domestic product for defense. By comparison, the United States spends more than 4 percent of its G.D.P. on its military.
Dana Allin, a senior fellow with the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, called Mr. Gates's remarks "very striking."
"Whether this is a conscious statement to sound a real sharp warning, there's no question that the frustration among the American military establishment is palpable regarding coalition operations in Afghanistan," he said.
Mr. Gates did soften his message a bit, noting that, not counting United States forces, NATO troops in Afghanistan were to increase to 50,000 this year, from 30,000 last year.
"By any measure," he said, "that is an extraordinary feat."
More sobering, he said, was that just two months into the year, NATO was facing shortfalls of hundreds of millions of euros - "a natural consequence of having underinvested in collective defense for over a decade."
NATO's problems - greatly magnified by the expansion of its mandate beyond European borders, following 9/11 - called for "serious, far-reaching and immediate reforms," Mr. Gates said.
Indeed, the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, last month turned to an unlikely source - Russia - to request helicopters for use in Afghanistan, arguing that this would help reduce the terrorism threat and drug trade on a border of the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Rasmussen, speaking at the same meeting as Mr. Gates, said that NATO's members needed to better coordinate their weapons purchases. The European Union and NATO should collaborate on developing capabilities like heavy-lift helicopters, he said, and avoid "spending double money."
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10) More Satellites Will Act as Eyes for Troops
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/asia/24satellites.html?ref=world
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. - Across the unforgiving terrain of Afghanistan, American combat forces have come to rely on satellites as well as their rifles and body armor to carry out missions effectively, and to stay alive.
But American units have found that satellite signals are weakened and even blocked outright by the breathtaking peaks and backbreaking valleys of Afghanistan - making it hard to pinpoint the troops' location, navigate on patrol, identify friend from foe in battle or call in bombs and artillery when under attack.
So the top officer of the military's Strategic Command, which is better known for control of the nation's nuclear arsenal, has ordered up what might be called a "satellite surge" to increase the coverage and accuracy for GPS devices in the war zone.
The constellation of operational satellites that allows GPS devices to work is being expanded over the next year or two to 27 from 24.
The increase will benefit civilians as well as soldiers. Drivers, sailors, hikers and golfers around the globe will share in the improved performance of their GPS devices.
"We've got more than 24 satellites up there," said Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, the top officer at Strategic Command, during an interview at his headquarters here. "Can we better optimize support to the regional war fighter, particularly as you look at the terrain in Afghanistan?"
His order to increase the number of operational GPS satellites was intended to assist coalition forces carrying out missions in Afghanistan's deep valleys, where troops say they lose signals because of the narrow window to the sky between mountain peaks and within canyon walls.
Four separate satellite signals are required to pinpoint a location on the earth, including elevation. The more satellites overhead, the more opportunities to get the minimum number of signals. Additional readings beyond four provide even greater accuracy.
While it might seem odd that the commander of America's nuclear arsenal would spend time focusing on the conventional mission in Afghanistan, General Chilton visited the country in late January for meetings with Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the No. 2 American commander, who is in charge of day-to-day operations there.
In an e-mail message from his headquarters in Afghanistan, General Rodriguez said he welcomed the increased satellite coverage and noted that "the additional capability will help support the operations here."
The military always keeps extra GPS satellites in space, hibernating in orbit close to active satellites, but ready to be called from standby status should an operating satellite fail or fall out of position.
Moving the three new satellites into position involves a delicate, calculated effort to expend as little fuel as possible, and then let inertia gently guide the satellite into place without wasting energy. Satellites are expensive to build and expensive to lift into space; once a satellite's fuel is gone, it is lost.
So while the need for improved GPS signaling to Afghanistan is a priority, the long-term obligation of preserving fuel aboard the satellites prompted Strategic Command, and its subordinate unit overseeing satellites, Air Force Space Command, to allow up to two years to get the new satellites in place.
The first of the new satellites has already begun sailing toward its operating orbit. A Strategic Command spokesman said the second and third additional satellites could be in place as early as next January, a year ahead of the official schedule.
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11) Illness Hinders Plans to Close Immigration Jail
By NINA BERNSTEIN
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/nyregion/24varick.html?ref=us
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced last month that they would close New York City's only immigration jail and relocate its roughly 300 detainees to New Jersey, they described the step as part of a larger overhaul to improve health care and cost-effectiveness in the nation's detention system.
But with only three days to go before the official end of detention operations at the jail, the Varick Federal Detention Facility in Greenwich Village, on Friday, officials have found that the detainees hardest to relocate are those with serious medical problems.
And each day, dozens of noncitizen New Yorkers - some with acute or chronic ailments - are still entering Varick, which immigration officials say they will keep using only as a processing hub for about 11,000 men a year, to be held no more than 12 hours.
For years the immigration jail, on the fourth floor of a federal office building at Varick and Houston Streets, was supposed to be a brief holding place for New York detainees. But it ended up keeping hundreds of detainees for months, especially those with medical or mental problems who were often denied admission by county jails in New Jersey where immigration authorities rent cells.
Immigrant advocates predict the same problem will recur. "Whether they plan on it or not, detainees are going to be held longer than intended at Varick," said Udi Ofer, advocacy director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who analyzed hundreds of detainee grievances obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, in a report to be released Wednesday.
"Moving detainees from New York to New Jersey is not going to fix the problem of inadequate care for immigration detainees," Mr. Ofer added, echoing other advocates who question whether the government should be detaining so many in the first place. "The absence of legally enforceable standards leads to situations where detainees are being mistreated, whether they're being held for a day, a month or a year."
Last week, as federal officials took a reporter on a rare tour of the jail, past the crowded holding cells into locked dorms and disciplinary cells that double as "medical holds," one of the longtime detainees waiting to learn his fate was Adler Michel, 52, a legal resident from Haiti with diabetes, high blood pressure and a swollen jaw.
Mr. Michel, a Brooklyn barber with two drug convictions but no record of violence, has spent more than 20 months at Varick while battling deportation. Officials said one reason he stayed was that at least one New Jersey jail had refused to accept him because of medical concerns. He is ineligible for bond under laws that require detention for immigrants who have ever been convicted of misdemeanor drug possession, or any of a long list of other offenses.
"Obviously, his medical needs must and will be addressed by us while he is in our custody," said Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for the immigration enforcement agency. The 100 detainees remaining on Tuesday were expected to be reduced to 70 by the end of the day, he added.
Beth Gibson, senior counsel to the agency's chief, who joined Mr. Hale on the tour of Varick, said opening the jail to a reporter underscored the Obama administration's commitment to transparency and reform. Plans she cited include streamlining cumbersome paperwork requirements that delay needed care.
"We didn't get where it is overnight," Ms. Gibson said.
But immigrant advocacy groups see the handling of Varick detainees as an illustration of the unfairness and waste in the $1.7 billion detention system.
A coalition of 16 legal and advocacy organizations offered this month to collaborate on a case-by-case review to identify detainees eligible for release, parole, or alternatives to detention like electronic monitoring, which costs about $14 a day, instead of Varick's $253 or the $111 at the Hudson County Correctional Center, where many detainees are being transferred.
But last week, their request was rejected by federal officials, who said they lacked the resources to conduct such a review before the transfers.
At most of the New Jersey jails, health care is provided by a company with a record of medical cost-cutting that has sometimes proved lethal. Federal officials pledged that a government physician at Varick, Dr. Peter D'Orazio, would oversee the care of the relocated New York detainees and screen those entering the jail.
But that does not reassure the Civil Liberties Union lawyers, who said that Dr. D'Orazio was no help when they tried to get proper care for a detainee suffering from infected teeth and gastrointestinal ailments.
"As I write this, I am in so much pain that I want to hit my head against the wall and cry," the detainee, then 23, wrote last July, in one of more than 210 grievances filed by Varick detainees between August 2008 and August 2009. About 30 percent of the complaints cited medical neglect.
A medical screening record notes that the detainee had a tooth abscess when he entered the jail in October 2008. But despite his pleas to see a dentist, it went untreated for 10 months and spread to seven teeth, Mr. Ofer said, even as the detainee was put on a liquid diet because he could no longer chew.
Only after Mr. Ofer intervened did the man get to see a dentist, who offered extraction, records show. The detainee, who remains at Varick, instead wants to save the teeth with root canals at his own expense, Mr. Ofer said. The government has refused, citing liability issues.
Asked about the case, Dr. D'Orazio first denied that the detainee had an abscessed tooth, then said: "We addressed his issue. Now it's up to him to seek the care."
Most grievances cannot be checked and outcomes are not known because detainee names were redacted by the government under privacy laws. But one described an attempt to deport a detainee with prostate cancer two days after he had requested a doctor's appointment.
The detainee, a 47-year-old Russian, wrote in November 2008 of being locked in a van at Kennedy International Airport for hours in acute pain as guards refused to let him go to the bathroom. He was eventually returned to Varick and catheterized, he wrote.
Records confirm that he had been found to have cancer at Beth Israel Medical Center before his detention and that he had been advised to get immediate treatment. But on Dec. 9, 2008, the detainee, still waiting for a medical appointment, wrote in a grievance, "Will it be after my death?"
An official's handwritten note adds that the detainee was deported 12 days later.
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12) A Vote to Fire All Teachers at a Failing High School
By KATIE ZEZIMA
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/education/24teacher.html?ref=education
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. - A plan to dismiss the entire faculty and staff of the only public high school in this small city just west of the Massachusetts border was approved Tuesday night at an emotional public meeting of the school board.
The board voted 5 to 2 to accept a plan proposed by Schools Superintendent Frances Gallo to fire the approximately 100 faculty and staff members at the chronically underperforming Central Falls High School on the last day of this school year in June.
The plan will also create a new school governance structure and requires the high school's new teachers to take part in "professional development" that meets federal standards.
As soon as the meeting ended, the board went into a closed session and members were not available for comment.
Dr. Gallo said during the meeting that she chose what she called a "turnaround" plan, one of four offered by the state, after the teachers' union rejected conditions in another state plan that called for increased hours without the promise of salary increases.
"Union leadership went too far because I would not commit to monetary incentives," Dr. Gallo said.
Teachers and union members said Dr. Gallo and the board had not bargained with them in good faith.
"We have been at the table," Jane Sessums, president of the Central Falls Teachers Union, said at a premeeting rally at a local park attended by hundreds of teachers, students and supporters. "They have not been willing to bargain."
Dr. Gallo said she had been instructed by the state commissioner of education, Deborah A. Gist, to choose one of the four state reform plans, which were modeled on federal recommendations and included the school's closing. Central Falls High is one of six of the state's lowest-achieving - the only one not in Providence - and has a four-year graduation rate of 48 percent. It has 800 students.
Dr. Gallo has 120 days to submit a more detailed plan to the state.
On Tuesday night, several hundred teachers and students, many wearing Central Falls High's colors of red and blue, packed into the meeting, shouting at Dr. Gallo and school board members. As a board member read the names of people slated for termination, many people were crying.
Joe Travers, 44, a longtime physical education teacher, said after the vote: "They sat up there, looked us in the eye, told us we were not good enough. That's an embarrassment."
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13) Doctor Training Aided by Drug Industry Cash
By DUFF WILSON
February 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/business/23docs.html?adxnnl=1&ref=education&adxnnlx=1267031207-nhb26464GE6S1L2hT+5NKg
More than half of the nation's medical residency programs to train doctors in internal medicine accepted financial support from the drug industry, even though three-fourths of the programs' directors said accepting the aid was "not desirable," a survey found.
At issue are potential conflicts of interest as the residency programs accept drug company support to help train tens of thousands of new doctors at a point in their careers when they are beginning to prescribe drugs, according to the survey report.
The article was published Monday in the Web version of The Archives of Internal Medicine. "Program directors are aware of the problem, but right now they don't have the funds to be free," Dr. Joanne M. Conroy, chief health care officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, who was not involved in the survey, but had seen the report.
The survey, conducted in 2006 and 2007, found that drug companies paid for educational materials like pocket guides in 83 percent of the programs that accepted support, meals in 90 percent, office supplies in 68 percent and drug samples in 57 percent.
Medical residency programs in the southern United States were much more likely to accept the industry largess than those in the Northeast - 72 percent to 47 percent. The overall rate of accepting drug industry financing was 55 percent, but that was down from the 88 percent level reported in a 1990 survey.
The Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine conducted the survey. Responses were returned by 236 of the nation's 381 internal medicine program directors, who together train more than 22,000 doctors.
Of special note in the survey results, the authors wrote, programs where fewer graduates passed tests from the American Board of Internal Medicine - "one indicator of program quality" - were also more likely to accept the assistance.
Dr. Furman S. McDonald, a co-author of the survey report and director of internal medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic, said it was unclear whether the lower test scores indicated a lack of overall support for the residency programs that took industry money, or a negative effect from the information being imparted by the pharmaceutical industry.
"As the pass rates went down," he said of the new doctors' test scores, "the odds of accepting pharmaceutical support went up." Dr. McDonald called for more research in that area.
Residency programs in internal medicine typically last three years after medical school, "a particularly formative time for physicians," the study said.
Other surveys have indicated that medical residents do not think that their own actions are influenced by industry gifts, but that they do think that their colleagues are influenced. Surveys have also shown that gifts as small as a pen or food can influence prescribing patterns.
Meals are often provided for busy residents during educational presentations.
Dr. Martin J. Blaser, chairman of the department of medicine at New York University, said his organization's internal medicine residency program decided about five years ago to stop accepting food or financial support from industry.
"I spend a fair amount of my budget feeding my residents," Dr. Blaser said, "but then they can learn in a way that is not unduly influenced by who is feeding them."
"Our lunches are not quite as opulent as the lunches they used to have, but they have sufficient nutrition," said Dr. Blaser, who was not involved in conducting the survey.
While 72 percent of the survey respondents said drug industry financing was not desirable, many of those skeptics still took the money, the survey showed. The reason, for two-thirds of the directors who reported taking industry money, was inadequate financing from other sources.
They also cited the popularity of drug industry perks among residents in 40 percent of the programs, and encouragement from the administration in 19 percent.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education is the one place that could possibly ban such pharmaceutical financing in all medical residency programs, Dr. McDonald said. The survey did not call for a blanket ban, but for more research.
The accreditation council declined comment on Monday.
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14) The Torture Lawyers
Editorial
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/opinion/25thur1.html
Is this really the state of ethics in the American legal profession? Government lawyers who abused their offices to give the president license to get away with torture did nothing that merits a review by the bar?
A five-year inquiry by the Justice Department's ethics watchdogs recommended a disciplinary review for the two lawyers who produced the infamous torture memos for former President George W. Bush, but they were overruled by a more senior Justice Department official.
The original investigation found that the lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, had committed "professional misconduct" in a series of memos starting in August 2002. First, they defined torture so narrowly as to make it almost impossible to accuse a jailer of torturing a prisoner, and they finally concluded that President Bush was free to ignore any law on the conduct of war.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said appropriate bar associations should be asked to look at the actions of Mr. Yoo, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mr. Bybee, who was rewarded for his political loyalty with a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. It was a credible accounting, especially since some former officials, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, refused to cooperate and e-mails from Mr. Yoo were mysteriously missing.
But the more senior official, David Margolis, decided that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee only had shown "poor judgment" and should not be disciplined. Mr. Margolis did not dispute that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee mangled legal reasoning and produced work that ultimately was repudiated by the Bush administration itself. He criticized the professional responsibility office's investigation on procedural grounds and excused Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee by noting that everyone was frightened after Sept. 11, 2001, and that they were in a hurry.
Americans were indeed frightened after Sept. 11, and the Bush administration was in a great rush to torture prisoners. Responsible lawyers would have responded with extra vigilance, especially if, like Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, they worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. When that office renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. Poor judgment is an absurdly dismissive way to describe giving the green light to policies that have badly soiled America's reputation and made it less safe.
As the dealings outlined in the original report underscore, the lawyers did not offer what most people think of as "legal advice." Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee were not acting as fair-minded analysts of the law but as facilitators of a scheme to evade it. The White House decision to brutalize detainees already had been made. Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee provided legal cover.
We were glad that the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Representative John Conyers Jr. and Senator Patrick Leahy, committed to holding hearings after the release of the Justice Department documents.
The attorney general, Eric Holder Jr., should expand the investigation into "rogue" interrogators he initiated last year to include officials responsible for facilitating torture. While he is at it, Mr. Holder should assign someone to look into the disappearance of Mr. Yoo's e-mails.
The American Bar Association should decide whether its rules are adequate for deterring and punishing ethical failures by government lawyers.
The quest for real accountability must continue. The alternative is to leave torture open as a policy option for future administrations.
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15) Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/global/25swaps.html?hp
Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.
Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.
These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.
"It's like buying fire insurance on your neighbor's house - you create an incentive to burn down the house," said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.
As Greece's financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country's problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.
Last September, the company, the Markit Group of London, introduced the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which is based on such swaps and let traders gamble on Greece shortly before the crisis. Such derivatives have assumed an outsize role in Europe's debt crisis, as traders focus on their daily gyrations.
A result, some traders say, is a vicious circle. As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece's debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety - and the whole thing starts over again.
On trading desks, there is fierce debate over what exactly is behind Greece's recent troubles. Some traders say swaps have made the problem worse, while others say Greece's deteriorating finances are to blame.
"This is a country that is issuing paper into a weakening market," said Ashish Shah, co-head of credit strategy at Barclays Capital, referring to Greece's need for continual borrowing.
But while some European leaders have blamed financial speculators in general for worsening the crisis, the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, last week singled out credit-default swaps. Ms. Lagarde said a few players dominated this arena, which she said needed tighter regulation.
Trading in Markit's sovereign credit derivative index soared this year, helping to drive up the cost of insuring Greek debt, and, in turn, what Athens must pay to borrow money. The cost of insuring $10 million of Greek bonds, for instance, rose to more than $400,000 in February, up from $282,000 in early January.
On several days in late January and early February, as demand for swaps protection soared, investors in Greek bonds fled the market, raising doubts about whether Greece could find buyers for coming bond offerings.
"It's the blind leading the blind," said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R&R Consulting in New York. "The iTraxx SovX did not create the situation, but it has exacerbated it."
The Markit index is made up of the 15 most heavily traded credit-default swaps in Europe and covers other troubled economies like Portugal and Spain. And as worries about those countries' debts moved markets around the world in February, trading in the index exploded.
In February, demand for such index contracts hit $109.3 billion, up from $52.9 billion in January. Markit collects a flat fee by licensing brokers to trade the index.
European banks including the Swiss giants Credit Suisse and UBS, France's Société Générale and BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank of Germany have been among the heaviest buyers of swaps insurance, according to traders and bankers who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
That is because those countries are the most exposed. French banks hold $75.4 billion worth of Greek debt, followed by Swiss institutions, at $64 billion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. German banks' exposure stands at $43.2 billion.
Trading in credit-default swaps linked only to Greek debt has also surged, but is still smaller than the country's actual debt load of $300 billion. The overall amount of insurance on Greek debt hit $85 billion in February, up from $38 billion a year ago, according to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which tracks swaps trading.
Markit says its index is a tool for traders, rather than a market driver.
In a statement, Markit said its index was started to satisfy market demand, and had improved the ability of traders to hedge their risks. The index and similar products, it added, actually make it easier for buyers and sellers to gauge prices for instruments that are traded among players over the counter, rather than on exchanges.
"These indices have helped bring transparency to the sovereign C.D.S. market," Markit said. "Prior to their creation, there was no established benchmark index enabling investors to track the performance of segments of the sovereign C.D.S. market."
Some money managers say trading in Greek swaps alone, not the broader index, is the problem.
"It's like the tail wagging the dog," said Markus Krygier, senior portfolio manager at Amundi Asset Management in London, which has $40 billion in global fixed-income assets. "There is a knock-on effect, as underlying positions begin to seem riskier, triggering risk models and forcing portfolio managers to sell Greek bonds."
If that sounds familiar, it should. Critics of these instruments contend swaps contributed to the fall of Lehman Brothers. But until recently, there was little demand for insurance on government debt. The possibility that a developed country could default on its obligations seemed remote.
As a result, many foreign banks that held Greek bonds or entered into other financial transactions with the government did not hedge against the risk of a default. Now, they are scrambling for insurance.
"Greece is not a small country," said Mr. Raynes, at R&R in New York. "Credit-default swaps give the illusion of safety but actually increase systemic risk."
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16) At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks
By MICHAEL LUO
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25stress.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
The first to have a heart attack was George Kull Jr., 56, a millwright who worked for three decades at the steel mills in Lackawanna, N.Y. Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home.
Less than two hours later, he was pronounced dead.
A few weeks after that, a co-worker, Bob Smith, 42, a forklift operator with four young children, started having chest pains. He learned at the doctor's office that he was having a heart attack. Surgeons inserted three stents, saving his life.
Less than a month later, Don Turner, 55, a crane operator who had started at the mills as a teenager, was found by his wife, Darlene, slumped on a love seat, stricken by a fatal heart attack.
It is impossible to say exactly why these men, all in relatively good health, had heart attacks within weeks of one another. But interviews with friends and relatives of Mr. Kull and Mr. Turner, and with Mr. Smith, suggest that the trauma of losing their jobs might have played a role.
"He was really, really worried," George Kull III said of his father. "With his age, he didn't know where he would get another job, or if he would get another job."
A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues.
In perhaps the most sobering finding, a study published last year found that layoffs can affect life expectancy. The paper, by Till von Wachter, a Columbia University economist, and Daniel G. Sullivan, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, examined death records and earnings data in Pennsylvania during the recession of the early 1980s and concluded that death rates among high-seniority male workers jumped by 50 percent to 100 percent in the year after a job loss, depending on the worker's age. Even 20 years later, deaths were 10 percent to 15 percent higher. That meant a worker who lost his job at age 40 had his life expectancy cut by a year to a year and half.
Additional investigation is still needed to understand the exact connection between job loss and poor health, according to scientists. The focus is mostly on the direct and indirect effects of stress. Acute stress can cause biochemical changes that trigger heart attacks, for example. Job loss and chronic stress can also lead to lifestyle changes that damage health.
Studies have, for instance, tied job loss to increased smoking and greater chances of former smokers relapsing. Some laid-off workers might start drinking more or exercising less. Increased prevalence of depression has been tied to both job loss and the development of heart disease.
"We're just at the very beginning of studying pathways," said William T. Gallo, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Hunter College in New York. "We want to find out how we can intervene so we can lessen the effects of job loss, or eliminate them."
The anxiety among the 260 workers at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, actually began months, even years, before the company announced in mid-December 2008 that it was closing. Bethlehem Steel, the previous owner, had shut the main steel mill in 1985. After it shuttered the coke ovens across the street from the galvanizing mill in 2001, two workers committed suicide.
Bethlehem went bankrupt in 2003, passing the galvanizing operation on to International Steel Group, which merged with ArcelorMittal in 2005. Workers had been fighting to preserve their jobs ever since.
Even before the plant finally closed last April, Anthony Fortunato, president of Local 2604 of the United Steelworkers of America, counted at least a half-dozen workers who had coronary problems dating to 2006.
A 2009 study led by Sarah A. Burgard, a professor of sociology and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, found that "persistent perceived job insecurity" was itself a powerful predictor of poor health and might even be more damaging than actual job loss.
Nevertheless, it was not until after company officials announced that the Lackawanna plant was closing that any of the workers actually died from a heart attack.
The news of the closing hit Mr. Kull hard, according to his family. He had always been a drinker, but now he was drinking almost every night and seemed depressed.
"He was going out and trying to forget about all of this stuff," his son said.
Mr. Kull, who was 5-foot-8 and a stocky 200 pounds, had a history of high blood pressure but had passed his company physical the year before, including a stress test. On Dec. 28, 2008, he sat down to watch a Buffalo Bills game and have a few drinks. He got up to make dinner but collapsed on the sofa.
Weeks later, his co-worker, Mr. Smith, thought he might have pulled a muscle while raking snow off the roof when he started having chest pains in bed. It did not cross his mind, he said, that he might be having a heart attack. He had no problems with his blood pressure, his cholesterol was low and he was in decent shape, often playing hockey with his boys on their backyard rink.
But his wife, Kim, watched as he tossed and turned at night, fretting about whether he would find a job that paid as much as his position at the mills. When he was still feeling uncomfortable the next day, she made him see a doctor.
"I think the stress just got to him," she said.
Mr. Turner's wife, Darlene, noticed that he was smoking more after he learned about the plant closing. He was up to more than two packs a day, from a little over a pack. She also saw that he seemed to be laboring more when he exerted himself.
About the same time, they found out that her hours had been cut at her accounting job, to just one day a week. Still, he kept his worries to himself. At his funeral she learned from colleagues that he had been asking for Tums at work.
"My husband was the type of person that just kept everything inside," Mrs. Turner said.
She came home on Feb. 13, 2009, and found her husband sitting on the love seat, his hat and gloves still on.
At first she thought he had fallen asleep.
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17) Charges Filed in Katrina Inquiry
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25orleans.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS - On Sept. 4, 2005, with floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina still standing in much of the city, Lt. Michael J. Lohman of the New Orleans Police Department arrived at the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans. A group of police officers had rushed there just ahead of him in response to a radio call for assistance.
At the bridge, Lieutenant Lohman found that six civilians had been shot by police officers, two fatally. None of them had weapons.
Almost immediately, federal authorities said Wednesday in a blistering series of accusations, he and the other officers began to plot a cover-up, planting a gun near the site to make the shootings appear justified.
That action led to Lieutenant Lohman's appearance in a federal courtroom on Wednesday afternoon, where he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to obstruct justice. It is the first charge in a wide-ranging inquiry into police misconduct that led to civilian deaths in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, and it is unlikely to be the last.
"Know this," Jim Letten, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said to reporters after the hearing. "The investigation continues. It is ongoing."
It is also not the only federal investigation into civilian deaths caused by the police force in the days after the hurricane. The fact that the accusations go beyond the shooting to a larger cover-up "is really indicative of a systemic integrity issue," said Rafael C. Goyeneche III, a former New Orleans prosecutor who is the president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group. "It's going to rock the Police Department to the core."
A spokeswoman for the Police Department declined to comment.
The bill of information, which contains charges but is not an indictment, and was unsealed Wednesday, is the clearest picture yet of the federal investigation into the Danziger Bridge shootings.
The documents filed by the authorities said that five of the civilians had been walking to get food and supplies, and that the other two were on their way to a family member's dentistry office when they were fired upon by police officers. Four were seriously injured.
James Brissette, 19, and Ronald Madison, who was 40 and mentally disabled, were killed. Mr. Madison's brother Lance, who was in the courtroom on Wednesday, was arrested and charged with eight counts of attempted murder in trumped-up charges related to the cover-up, but was later cleared.
Lieutenant Lohman, 42 and now retired, concluded shortly after arriving on the scene that the shooting was "legally unjustified," federal authorities said. He encouraged the officers to "come up with a plausible story" that would allow him to conclude that the shooting was justified, the authorities said.
When another police investigator told Lieutenant Lohman that he was going to plant a gun under the bridge to bolster the story that the officers were being fired at, Lieutenant Lohman went along, and even asked if the gun was traceable, the authorities said.
At the encouragement of Lieutenant Lohman, the officers who were involved made up details, the authorities said, like a claim that one victim had reached for a "shiny object" in his waistband.
At one point, according to the documents, Mr. Lohman was frustrated that the cover-up story in the report, which was drafted by a police sergeant, "was not logical," so he drew up one of his own, which broadly changed details to fit the false story. The sergeant later replaced that report with a shorter one that was changed to fit the audiotaped statements of the police who were involved.
That sergeant is unnamed by the authorities, but the police report is signed by Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, who was assigned to investigate the Danziger shooting. He prepared a supplemental report later with another police sergeant, which was widely criticized.
Sergeant Kaufman and at least one other officer, who was directly involved in the shooting, have received letters informing them that they are targets in the investigation, their lawyers acknowledged.
Lieutenant Lohman faces up to five years in prison, but Mr. Letten said the officer had been cooperating with the authorities, an indication that charges against others might be coming.
In 2006, the seven officers who were directly involved in the shooting were charged with murder and attempted murder, but the charges were dismissed in late 2008 by a judge who cited improprieties in the handling of the case. The United States Attorney's Office, along with the F.B.I. and the civil rights division of the Justice Department, picked the case up soon afterward.
During the federal investigation throughout 2009, dozens of police officers testified before grand juries, federal agents seized files from the police homicide division, and the Danziger Bridge was shut down for hours as agents looked for evidence.
Several other cases are under investigation by the federal authorities, including the shooting death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, whose remains were eventually discovered in a burned car parked behind a police station in the Algiers section of New Orleans. That case was brought to the attention of the authorities by an article that appeared in The Nation magazine in December 2008 and on the Web site ProPublica.org.
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18) Patriot Act Elements Extended
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/politics/25brfs-PATRIOTACTEL_BRF.html?ref=us
The Senate on Wednesday extended for a year key provisions of the nation's counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. One provision authorizes court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. A second allows court-approved seizure of records and property in antiterrorism operations. A third permits surveillance against a noncitizen suspected of engaging in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group. In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act. The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote with no debate. It now goes to the House.
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19) A Jumble of Strong Feelings After Vote on a Troubled School
By KATIE ZEZIMA
February 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/education/25central.html?ref=education
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. - Like many other teenagers in this troubled city, Sheila Gomes said she found a surrogate family outside her home at Central Falls High School.
But with the school board's decision on Tuesday to dismiss the entire faculty as part of a turnaround plan for the chronically underperforming school, some say they are losing one of the few constants in the state's poorest city, where 41 percent of children live in poverty and 63 percent of the high school's students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
"My teachers, they're there for me. They push me forward," said Ms. Gomes, a 17-year-old senior whose father is largely absent and whose mother works long hours at a factory. "My parents, they tried to, but they don't know how. I don't think they fully know me as a person to help me."
This former mill town of about 19,000, where unemployment is 13.8 percent, is now embroiled in a battle over school reform similar to those that have taken place in troubled districts in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, where officials have tried to fix failing schools by starting over with new staff members. Seventy-four teachers and 19 staff members in Central Falls will lose their jobs.
"The status quo needs to change," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview. "This is not the kind of stability I want. I'm looking for improvement."
Teachers acknowledge that change is needed - the school's graduation rate is 48 percent, and only 7 percent of students are proficient in mathematics by 11th grade - but they say they are struggling against difficult odds.
"We're carrying this immense burden here," said George McLaughlin, 60, a guidance counselor at the school. "We have a bag of bricks on our back that you don't get at places where it's taken for granted that everyone will succeed."
Central Falls has always been a city of immigrants, and boasts that it crowds "the whole world" into just over a square mile. Densely packed with triple-deckers, Central Falls calls itself "a city with a bright future," but the poverty rate has consistently been high and the budget low.
In 1991, Central Falls transferred operation of its schools to the state. The city maintains the buildings, but state and federal financing pays for the schools.
The system is under the direction of Rhode Island's education board, which deemed it one of the state's six worst-performing schools, instructing the superintendent, Frances Gallo, to choose one of four federally mandated models for school turnaround. Dr. Gallo said she chose the model called a "turnaround" plan after the teachers union rejected conditions in another state plan.
While teachers and students at the close-knit school said they considered one another family, Dr. Gallo said the current model was not working.
"If it's such a family, then how do you account for losing more than half your family each year?" Dr. Gallo said, referring to the dropout rate. "We are about to change the culture of Central Falls."
But many in the school think the culture of the school is one of its biggest assets.
"I leave here at 6, 7 at night, working with kids, coaching, getting lesson plans, doing interactive literacy. That's what people don't see," said Frank DelBonis, who teaches history to English as a Second Language students in a school where 70 percent of students are Hispanic.
Other teachers said progress was hampered by the high turnover at the school, where one in three students leaves each year.
"They're a transient community. It's more than test grades," said Kathy Casalino, a math teacher. "We give them a family. We show them how to live."
Theresa Agonia, 18, a freshman at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., is one of dozens of former students who are returning to the school to protest the move. She attended a rally before the board meeting Tuesday night.
"I feel like they're saying my education, my certificate, was worth nothing," said Ms. Agonia, who graduated in 2009. "I worked for my diploma, as everyone else did. To be just a statistic is hurtful."
Hope Evanoff, a French teacher, said she felt the decision was undermining her career.
"It makes you feel like all of your expertise, all that you know, any degree you might have, is worthless," Ms. Evanoff said. "I've never been fired from anything, and to be fired, it's devastating."
The faculty members have been offered counseling by the district, according to one of the fired teachers.
The Central Falls Teachers Union plans to fight the plan, saying it comes in the middle of a three-year contract.
Dr. Gallo said the district was "looking for partners" like Teach for America to provide teachers for the school, which has also been receiving "résumés from all over the nation" as news of the plan spread.
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican and a former math teacher, said he supported the board's decision, calling it "courageous," and he criticized the union as being an "obstacle" to change.
"We can no longer stand by as our schools underperform," Mr. Carcieri said in a statement.
But Ms. Agonia and others said they would keep fighting.
"These teachers mean a lot to me," she said. "They didn't turn their back on me, and I won't turn my back on them."
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20) Iraq to Rehire 20,000 Hussein-Era Army Officers
By MARC SANTORA
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government said Thursday that it would reinstate 20,000 army officers who served under Saddam Hussein, a surprising move given that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has focused his campaign in the coming parliamentary elections around denouncing the former Baath government.
Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said the prime minister approved the reinstatement of the officers, which he said would begin immediately.
With just over one week before Iraq holds its first national elections since 2005, the announcement, made on state-run television, was greeted with skepticism by Mr. Maliki's rivals.
"This is purely a means of trying to gain more votes," said Mayson al-Damalogi, a spokesman for Iraqiya, a coalition of Sunni and secular candidates headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi Army was disbanded as the governing authority at the time, the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority, instituted a policy of de-Baathification. However, the move is now widely seen as helping fuel an insurgency. In 2004, there were efforts to bring many of the officers from Mr. Hussein's time back into the army and many returned. However, thousands remained outside the fold.
Mr. Askari said that officers from Mr. Hussein's government would be hired back immediately, making them eligible to participate in early voting scheduled for March 4. However, government officials with knowledge of the plan could not be reached for comment.
The reinstatement was especially confusing, critics said, because it came on the heels of a government decision to bar hundreds of candidates from the elections, supposedly for supporting the former government.
One of the leading members of the Iraqiya list, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni, was included on the list of barred candidates. In response, his party, the National Dialogue Front, called for a boycott of the election by Sunnis.
But at a news conference in Baghdad on Thursday, Mr. Mutlaq said that his party now wanted everyone to vote. His party's earlier call for a boycott seemed to have largely fallen flat.
"Stand up!" Mr. Mutlaq shouted to the cameras, banging his fist on the lectern. "Stand up and support your country."
Mr. Allawi, standing beside Mr. Mutlaq, claimed that his coalition continued to be subjected to injustices.
"Every day they are arresting people, they are chasing people," he said. "The reasons for the attacks against us by these sick individuals is that surveys show we have a chance in this election."
As the election draws closer, the language has grown more pointed, as have the allegations of misconduct. And as politicians exchange bitter barbs, the backdrop for the election remains violence.
There were scattered attacks around Iraq on Thursday, with the most unrest in the ethnically mixed northern city of Mosul.
The police found the body of a woman whose head had been cut off in the street on Thursday morning. There were several drive-by shootings and other attacks as well that left four people dead and two others wounded.
In recent weeks, attacks on Christians in Mosul have also increased. At least eight Christians there have been murdered in less than two weeks.
"The government condemns the attacks on Christians, one of our people, and has decided to form a commission of inquiry," said Ali al-Dabagh, a government spokesman.
About 20,000 Christians live in Mosul. Many fled the region after being singled out by militants in 2008.
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21) Union Election Further Complicates a Tangled City Budget
By GERRY SHIH
February 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/us/26sflabor.html?ref=us
When the ballot counters at Local 1021 of the Service Employees International Union announce the results of the union's bitter leadership election Saturday, the news will be felt keenly in two quarters.
One is the fractious world of labor: the former leaders pushed aside during a reorganization of regional unions three years ago are seeking to return to power by promising to hold back the recent tide of pay cuts and layoffs. The leadership installed three years ago is making similar promises to retain power.
The second is in San Francisco City Hall, which spends 52 percent of its $6.6 billion budget on personnel costs. Unless it can manage to trim what it pays those nurses, social workers and janitors, the city will not be able to make ends meet next year.
What this means in the near term is that the city's goal of winning labor's backing for the short- and long-term solutions to budget deficits is likely to be difficult to achieve.
The looming deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1, and the difficult decisions it brings, comes on the heels of cuts made by the city to close last year's $438 million gap. Last June, services like substance-abuse programs were sharply reduced and more than 500 public employees were laid off.
In the longer term, the results could loosen the knots that have bound unions with the dominant Democratic Party and its mayors and supervisors, which would be a striking change for a city where labor leaders like Harry Bridges once held sway.
Despite all the young professionals and affluent retirees who have arrived in the decades since, and notwithstanding all the other issues the left has rallied around along the way, like gay rights, steadfast support for labor has been the beating heart of this city's progressive politics.
It is a banner carried today by members of the Board of Supervisors like David Campos and Eric Mar. "I used to be a shop steward for the S.E.I.U. and organized in the workplace," Mr. Mar said. "This is a strongly labor town and as one of the elected officials, I'm doing my best to make sure they are represented."
But, he added, "we're in the worst economic crisis of our lifetime, and people's fears of the economy and their pocketbooks will drive their decision making."
Steve Ponder, a compensation analyst in the city's Department of Human Resources said that while San Francisco's unionized city workers were paid about the same as other public employees in the Bay Area, they did considerably better than private-sector peers.
A janitor working for the city can make as much as $50,000 in base salary, not including $27,800 in benefits. Mr. Ponder said a janitor in the private sector typically earned less than half that amount in total compensation.
Against that backdrop, the city is facing both short- and long-term bills accumulated during decades of mutual support between labor unions and City Hall.
The unified city and county government now spends about 13 percent of the budget, or $890 million, on pensions and benefits. By 2014, these alone will rise 57 percent, to $1.4 billion. Most of the expenditures will come from general fund dollars - now a pie of around $3 billion, or less than half the city's total budget. That portion of the budget represents most of what can be easily shifted around as the supervisors and the mayor wrangle over for economic and social priorities.
The trend lines laid out by city economists describe a government with a shrinking capacity to deliver vital services or underwrite new initiatives, particularly if pension obligations keep expanding. And then there is the immediate problem of the near-record $522 million deficit for the coming fiscal year.
"This is the toughest year that anyone has seen in recent history," said David Chiu, the president of the Board of Supervisors, "in large part because last year we cut to the bone, and this year, we're cutting bone."
Yet city management and labor leaders alike say that at this critical time, with so many jobs at stake, bargaining efforts have by been hindered by a labor movement dogged by infighting.
"Hopefully with the outcome of the elections in the next month we'll see some unity that will allow them to speak with one voice," said Mike Casey, the president of the city's labor council. "Right now, that kind of unity doesn't exist. It's not even close."
The mayor's office says the city is seeking $70 million from wage givebacks alone, excluding additional savings from layoffs or reconfigurations of the workweek. Mayor Gavin Newsom's spokesman, Tony Winnicker, said the city could lay off 10,000 of the 26,000 city workers -who now work a 40-hour week - and then rehire most of them to work for 37.5 hours. This would be an effective 6.5 percent pay cut and would save $50 million.
Damita Davis-Howard, the interim director of Local 1021 of the S.E.I.U., has told reporters that Mr. Newsom's plan was "not the right track; it's the next step in a downward spiral for the city and its citizens." Through a spokesman, she declined to be interviewed for this article.
The fight over pensions is just as barbed. Ben Rosenfield, city budget director, said in an interview, "Every dollar we are spending on benefits is a dollar not available to solve deficits or fund city services. The challenge at the moment is that our cost increases are expected to consume the vast majority, if not all, of our expected revenue growth. What that means is while we are dealing larger macroeconomic issues like declining revenues from the state, we really don't have the benefit of local tax revenues to help us."
Most city unions already contribute 7.5 percent of their wages toward pensions, except for the S.E.I.U., which argues that its members are paid less than any other union workers on the payroll. The city has picked up S.E.I.U. members' contributions for the past decade as part of an arrangement made years ago when the union gave up a 7.5 percent raise.
In December, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd introduced a well-received measure that would require all city employees to contribute 7.5 percent of their annual pension payments. The labor council made a counterproposal with relatively minor changes.
Mr. Elsbernd's bill originally calculated the pension payouts based on an average of worker's salary over the final three years. The council wanted to average the last two years.
But this month, Supervisors Mar and Campos, who represent two labor-heavy districts, introduced a further amendment to Mr. Elsbernd's bill that would negate the pension contributions with a pay raise for the S.E.I.U., a move that would in fact increase costs to the city, according to the city controller.
The internal battles within the service employees union have also created confusion in the negotiations.
"When I meet with the other unions," Mr. Elsbernd said, "they all send their president or attorney or two or three people. I have to sit down with 65 to 85 people from the S.E.I.U. bargaining team every time because they're simply unable to delegate the responsibility of conferring."
This chaotic approach is the result of lingering distrust between the factions vying for control of the union, city official and representatives of other unions said.
One source of bitterness revolved around accusations of skullduggery over the union's response last year to the city's effort to have S.E.I.U. members give up a 3.75 percent raise that had been promised for years.
Brenda Barros, a union activist who supports the existing leadership under Ms. Davis-Howard, accused allies of Sin Yee Poon, the head of the rival faction, of altering the agreement while key negotiators were on vacation. The revisions were later disavowed at a rowdy membership meeting. Union members said it was not clear whether Ms. Davis-Howard or Ms. Poon would prevail in the contest for control of the union. But Ms. Poon said the election had one clear result already: "It's moved us closer to directing our resources and focusing our energies to get what we need to stand up against the attacks on pensions and other unfair demands."
The negotiations between the unions and the city are expected to continue until June, the deadline for passing next year's budget.
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