BARRIO UNIDO FOR GENERAL AND UNCONDITIONAL
AMNESTY FOR ALL!
EMERGENCY PICKET LINE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2007, 4:00 - 7:00 P.M.
FEDERAL BUILDING
450 GOLDEN GATE AVE.
BETWEEN POLK AND LARKIN STREETS, S.F.

STOP THE ICE RAIDS! FREE THE WORKERS!
STOP THE DEPORTATIONS! DEMAND THEIR JOBS BACK!
IMMEDIATE, GENERAL AND UNCONDITIONAL
AMNESTY FOR ALL! DEFEND THE RIGHT OF
ALL WORKERS TO ORGANIZE UNIONS IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE!

All human beings have basic, inalienable human rights to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. If your family is starving and you
can not find work, you have the right to find someplace where you can
feed, clothe and house your family.

If capital can go all over the world exploiting workers, then workers
have the right to move to find work for their family's basic survival.

IMMIGRANT WORKERS ARE GUILTY OF NOTHING
BUT WORKING HARD TO SUPPORT THEMSELVES
AND THEIR FAMILIES.

From South America, Latin America, China, Africa, India--in countries
all over the world, not to speak of the war in Iraq--a war of blood
for oil--U.S. businesses are raking in huge profits off the backs of workers
who earn slave wages and work under the most dangerous working conditions
at best, and under a state of war at worse.

Meanwhile, here at home, they are laying off workers, closing factories, doing
away with benefits and working conditions won by worker's struggles
in the past--installing two, three, many-tiered pay scales--driving down
wages to below the scale parents are earning--leaving our children
with the heritage of a guaranteed life of poverty without union
representation.

WORKERS HAVE THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE UNIONS!

And now they launch an all-out war against the most vulnerable workers
--who are driven to work in these meatpacking plants. Whether
documented or not, this is brutal, dangerous and difficult work.

And not so coincidentally, these same workers just happen
to be in the midst of a fight to win union recognition!

THESE ARRESTS ARE A THREAT TO ALL WORKERS
AND ALL UNIONS!

These mass arrests are terrorist tactics designed as a warning
to all workers that if they struggle for a better life and better
working conditions, they will be persecuted in every way
imaginable.

This is an all-out assault on every worker and it is being
executed by a terrorist government--the U.S. Government--
who uses pre-emptive war based upon outright lies to further
their oil profits; who will stop at nothing to increase their
rate of profit.

The ultimate goal of the U.S. Government is for American big
business to continue to accumulate unimaginable wealth
at the expense of the hardworking majority all over the
world--nothing is off-limits to them in this, their fundamental
pursuit!

STOP THE ICE RAIDS! FREE THE WORKERS!
STOP THE DEPORTATIONS! DEMAND THEIR JOBS BACK!
IMMEDIATE, GENERAL AND UNCONDITIONAL
AMNESTY FOR ALL! DEFEND THE RIGHT OF
ALL WORKERS TO ORGANIZE UNIONS IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE!

An injury to one is an injury to all! We are only as strong as our
weakest link. If we allow these terrorists from ICE to continue
to carry out these assaults against the basic human rights
of any of us--no matter what our immigration status--they
will not hesitate one second to use these same tactics of mass
firings, arrest, etc. against all of us who dare to struggle
in our own defense and in our own, basic human interests and
for our own basic rights as workers and human beings!

It's up to us to organize and fight back! If we are united, we cannot loose!

WE ENCOURAGE ALL WORKERS AND ALL LABOR AND COMMUNITY
ORGANIZATIONS TO ENDORSE THIS ACTION AND COME OUT TO
PICKET THE FEDERAL BUILDING TO PROTEST THESE RAIDS!
BRING YOUR OWN BANNERS AND SIGNS!

For more information contact:

Barrio Unido por una Amnistia
General e Incondicional
Cristina Gutierrez,
415-431-9925
companeros98@hotmail.com

Bonnie Weinstein, www.bauaw.org
415-824-8730
bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

MUST SEE: PBS VIDEO NOTEBOOK: A DAY AT THE PLANT
NOW's Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa takes us inside the
world's largest pork processing plant, located in Tar Heel, North
Carolina. As the first TV journalist ever allowed to film inside the
plant, owned by The Smithfield Packing Company, Hinojosa gives
us an insider's view of what conditions are like in a plant that
slaughters over 33,000 hogs per day.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/smithfield.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) Broken By War, And Ordered Back
By LISA CHEDEKEL
Courant Staff Writer
December 10, 2006
From courant.com
http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-ptsdcallup1210.artdec10,0,1928399.story?track=mostemailedlink

2) Mass. Troopers to Detain Illegal Aliens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:15 a.m. ET
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-On-the-2008-Trail.html

3) U.S. Raids 6 Meat Plants in ID Case
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/us/13raid.html?ref=us

4) CUNY Chief Orders Names Stripped From Student Center
By KAREN W. ARENSON
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/nyregion/13cuny.html

5) Broader Inquiries Are Urged on Underpayment of Wages
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/nyregion/13labor.html

6) Gore Vidal, Prophet and Rebel
Lisandro Otero - Prensa Latina
A CubaNews Translation by Sue Ashdown
ORIGINAL http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/noticias/n0075.html

7) Sunrise and Sunset
By BOB HERBERT
December 14, 2006
Baton Rouge, La.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/opinion/14herbert.html?hp

8) Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121201697.html

9) Cut Off Funding for the Iraq War
San Francisco Labor Council Resolution -
adopted December 11, 2006 by unanimous vote
[story via email...be]

10) Ships That Don’t Dare to Sail
New York Times Editorial
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/opinion/14thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

11) Palestinian Leader Blocked From Entering Gaza
By GREG MYRE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/world/middleeast/15mideastcnd.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=e298b131f7fb1c90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

12) OPEC Calls for 2nd Cut in Oil Output
By JAD MOUAWAD
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/business/15opeccnd.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=4ff7dc75eade4060&ei=5094&partner=homepage

13) Political Drama Re-enacts Moments in a Death Chamber
By JESSE McKINLEY
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/us/14tookie.html?ref=us

14) Illegal Immigrants at Center of New Identity Theft Crackdown
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/washington/14immig.html

15) Navajo elders blockade power plant site, face arrest
Support is requested from Dine Elders and Youth!
Please send far and wide!!!!
URGENT Support is requested from Dine Elders and Youth!
Enei Begaye
Executive Director
Black Mesa Water Coalition
408 E. Route 66, Suite #1
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
Office #: (928) 213-9760
PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
[via email...bw]

16) Sand Creek Massacre
For Immediate Release
[via email...bw]

17) U.S. Troops Raid Hospital Again
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

18) This Wickedly Morbid Joke is Making the Rounds in Baghdad
Posted 8 hr. 45 min. ago
http://www.iraqslog ger.com/index. php/post/ 194/Iraqi_ Joke_of_the_ Day

19) A Gag on Free Speech
New York Editorial
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/opinion/15fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

20) Top Commanders Appear Set to Urge Larger U.S. Military
By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/world/middleeast/15military.html

21) Florida Death Row Inmate Dies Only After Second Chemical Dose
By TERRY AGUAYO
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/us/15death.html

22) Sergeant Felt Gun in Struggle Before Police Shot Man, Kelly Says
By CARA BUCKLEY
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/nyregion/15shooting.html?ref=nyregion

23) At Chrysler Now, the Fast Track Runs Downhill
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/business/15chrysler.html?ref=business

24) Immigration Raids May Affect Meat Prices
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:03 a.m. ET
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Immigration-Raids-Meatpackers.html

25) ICE TERRORIZING IMMIGRANT WORKERS BECAUSE
OF FAILED U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 13, 2006
CONTACT:
press@ufcw.org

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) Broken By War, And Ordered Back
By LISA CHEDEKEL
Courant Staff Writer
December 10, 2006
From courant.com
http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hc-ptsdcallup1210.artdec10,0,1928399.story?track=mostemailedlink

Nothing was stranger for Mary Jane Fernandez than the events of last
Christmas, which had her 24-year-old son, newly returned from the war in
Iraq, downing sedatives, ranting about how rich people were allowed to
sit in recliners in church, and summoning the Waterbury police to come
arrest him.

This Christmas may top that.

Despite being diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and
rated 70 percent disabled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
Damian Fernandez has been called back to duty and told to prepare for
another deployment to Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Fernandez, who was discharged from active duty in the
Army last year and was working to settle back into civilian life,
abruptly received orders to report to Fort Benning, Ga., on Jan. 14.

When the FedEx letter from the Army arrived Nov. 28, he calmly told his
mother and girlfriend, "I got my orders," staring hard at them with
vacant eyes.

That night, he snapped. He told his girlfriend, Riella Darko, that he
wanted to die and asked her to take him to the emergency room of St.
Mary's Hospital, where he was placed on a suicide watch. He has since been
transferred to a locked ward in the Northampton VA Medical Center in
Massachusetts.

His callback orders have not yet been rescinded. Even if they are, his
mother said, simply being told he must go back into combat has set back
his recovery.

"I don't understand why the military would put him through this," Mary
Jane Fernandez said. "He was just starting to come back to reality a
little, and now he's lost again."

Fernandez is one of 8,262 soldiers who have left active duty but have
been ordered back under a policy that allows the military to recall
troops who have completed their service but have time remaining on their
contracts. About 5,700 of those called up have already been mobilized,
with Fernandez among about 2,500 ordered to report in the coming weeks.

The practice of recalling inactive soldiers involuntarily is itself
controversial, with some members of Congress and veterans' advocates
calling it a backdoor draft.

All soldiers have an eight-year military service obligation, but
typically are released from duty after two to six years. The Army, strained
by the war, announced in mid-2004 that it would begin tapping a pool of
about 100,000 soldiers who had time left on their service obligations,
to fill vacancies in Reserve and National Guard units.

The fact that some of those being summoned have been ruled disabled by
the VA or the military, with service-connected PTSD and other medical
problems, is raising alarm among veterans' advocates and families. In
Fernandez's case, the 70 percent disability rating indicated the serious
degree to which doctors had judged his mental state to be impaired.

Steve Robinson, director of government relations for Veterans of
America, said he knew of a number of other war veterans with PTSD who had
been called back to Iraq.

"If you have a war-related injury that you're being compensated for,"
he said, "to be sent back into a situation that might exacerbate the
problem just doesn't make sense."

Going Back

Paul Sinsigalli, 30, of Andover, was just starting the fall semester at
Manchester Community College when he received a letter ordering him
back to duty Nov. 5.

Two years ago, he served a rough tour in Baghdad, where he conducted
house-to-house raids and witnessed a group of women and children being
blown up by a suicide bomb. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD and a
degenerative disk problem in his back.

After sending the Army his medical and college records, he was granted
a two-month delay and now must report to Fort Jackson, S.C., by Jan. 7
or risk criminal prosecution, as the call-up orders warn.

"I've tried really hard to adjust to being out. I thought, `They won't
call me back - I'm disabled,'" said Sinsigalli, who receives
compensation for his PTSD, which the VA has deemed 10 percent disabling.

"If I have to go back [to Iraq], obviously I'm going to do whatever it
takes to get my head back into it. But it's hard - I'm pretty shook
up," he said. "The thing that gets me is, if I tried to re-enlist, they
wouldn't even take me unless I waived my disability."

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, acknowledged that recalling
inactive soldiers - many of whom have settled into jobs or college and
have had no association with the military in recent years - was a last
resort.

"We do look every other place" to fill combat slots, Hilferty said.
"However, the nation's at war, and it's better for us, and the soldiers,
to send fully manned units."

Hilferty said veterans can seek exemptions from being recalled and
receive medical screenings before being deployed. But he said a physical or
mental disability, including PTSD, was not "an automatic exemption"
from serving.

"Clearly, many soldiers are disabled in some way after war," he said.
"Many of them remain on active duty."

Hilferty said the Army does not have a system for checking every
veteran's disability status before sending out the call-up orders. Soldiers
are picked at random, based on the job specialties that are needed. They
have the responsibility to provide documentation of their medical
conditions, he said.

"You may request a delay or exemption only under circumstances of
extreme hardship or physical inability," the recall notices say.

To date, about 24 percent of the 10,917 soldiers who have received
mobilization orders have been granted exemptions, Army figures show.

Last summer, the Marines also began recalling some inactive reservists
to fill critical jobs.

Mary Jane Fernandez said she already has notified the Army about
Damian's chronic PTSD, and is stunned that he has not been excused. She said
a friend of Damian's, who also has severe PTSD, has opted to go back to
Iraq because "he misses killing people," the friend told her. A
veterans' counselor familiar with the case confirmed that account.

Mary Jane said she cannot picture Damian, whose symptoms include
paranoia and hallucinations, back in a war zone.

"I don't trust him taking out the garbage, let alone watching someone's
back on the battlefield," she said.

Army and Defense Department officials acknowledged to The Courant
earlier this year that they were redeploying soldiers with PTSD - even
though medical standards for enlistment in the armed forces disqualify
recruits who suffer from PTSD. The practice of recycling troops with PTSD
into war has drawn criticism from some combat-stress experts, who say
that re-exposure to trauma increases the risk of serious psychiatric
problems.

Last month, Assistant Secretary of Defense William Winkenwerder Jr.
issued a new policy that steps up psychological screening of troops, after
a Courant series detailing gaps in mental health care brought pressure
from Congress for improvements. Among other things, the policy deems
PTSD a "treatable" condition, but directs that troops with psychiatric
disorders should be sent to war only if they are stable and "without
significant symptoms" for at least three months prior to deployment.

Because the policy is new and still allows military clinicians broad
discretion in deciding which mental conditions should preclude
deployment, its impact is uncertain.

A Broken Son

Before he received his recall orders, Damian Fernandez's PTSD symptoms
had just begun to subside, his mother and girlfriend said.

Riella Darko, 24, recently learned that she was pregnant, and Damian's
outlook had brightened slightly at the prospect of becoming a father.
At a baby shower last month, "He actually looked a little happy," Riella
said.

"Happy" hasn't been in Damian's emotional repertoire since he arrived
home in June 2005 from a year in Iraq, Riella and Mary Jane said. The
once-upbeat soldier who went club-hopping with friends, enjoyed writing
and drawing and talked of becoming a state cop never made it back from
Iraq. The man who returned in his place, they barely recognized.

"I used to have to track him down on his cell all the time," said Mary
Jane, who shares a two-family house with her son. "Now, I never have to
call him because I know where he is - upstairs."

Damian had spent most of the last 18 months upstairs, playing video
games or drinking himself to sleep, Mary Jane and Riella said. He attended
community college classes for a few weeks, but abruptly quit after an
incident in which he mistook a noise outside for a gunshot and flew into
a panic because he could not find his gun, they said.

A simple "What do you want for dinner?" can ignite his temper.

"He throws things a lot. We have holes in just about every wall,"
Riella said.

Mary Jane, who is widowed, said she worries that the war has "broken"
her only child. When he first came home from Iraq, his car stereo - a
prized possession - was stolen. He was despondent for weeks, she said.

"He asked me, `These are the people I fought for?'" she recounted,
choking up.

Although Damian has not spoken much about his experiences in Iraq, he
told Mary Jane and Riella about a day a school bus exploded on a bridge,
and children's body parts fell from the sky.

"He said he accidentally stepped on a kid's insides - the liver or
something," Riella said.

After Damian fell apart last Christmas, Mary Jane said she convinced
him to go to the VA to get help. He was diagnosed with PTSD and placed on
an antidepressant. This September, he was admitted to a three-week
inpatient program at the Northampton VA. His discharge records say:
"Suicidal ruminations resolved. Otherwise unchanged from admission."

The recall orders drove him back to the same facility.

Mary Jane and Riella said that while Damian had worried about being
sent back to Iraq someday, he had begun to relax in recent months. That
changed when the letter arrived.

"He feels guilty that if doesn't go back, he'll be deserting his
buddies," Mary Jane said of her son, who received commendations for prior
tours in Korea and Africa. "But if he does go back, he's afraid he won't
be able to do his part.

"He's all torn up now."

Non-Assurances

Because the Army has no policy exempting soldiers with PTSD from
returning to war, counselors at the New Haven Vet Center have been unable to
offer Damian assurances he will be excused. Mary Jane said one
counselor suggested that Damian's best bet might be to stay "locked up" in the
hospital through January.

Still, Donna Hryb, team leader at the Hartford Vet Center, said she
would be surprised if the Army deploys a soldier as severely impaired as
Damian.

"It would be counterproductive for the unit and for him," she said.

Hilferty, the Army spokesman, acknowledged that redeploying soldiers
with "severe" psychological problems could jeopardize other troops'
safety. He noted that the Army is not calling back soldiers who have served
in combat within the last 12 months, to allow them time between
deployments. Hilferty also said officials are working to better monitor
soldiers' "readiness."

Robinson and other veterans' advocates said the Defense Department and
the VA should be sharing medical records, so that the call-ups are
targeted to healthy soldiers, not those with psychiatric disorders. Because
many veterans are not even aware that they can be summoned to active
duty, the orders alone can cause panic, the advocates said.

Paul Sinsigalli said he has had trouble sleeping and concentrating
since his orders arrived. Only recently had he gotten comfortable driving
again, without worrying that every stray object on the side of a road
might be a bomb. Now, he wonders if he ever should have let down his
guard.

He has put off plans to apply to the University of Connecticut's
nursing program and he has moved up his wedding date.

"I'm going to go down there [to Fort Jackson] with all my medical
records, but I know when I get there, they're going to try to get me to go
over," he said. "It's pretty simple: They need bodies."

Contact Lisa Chedekel at lchedekel@courant.com.
Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

2) Mass. Troopers to Detain Illegal Aliens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:15 a.m. ET
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-On-the-2008-Trail.html

BOSTON (AP) -- Gov. Mitt Romney, who is weighing a White House
bid, signed an agreement Wednesday that allows Massachusetts
State Police troopers to detain illegal aliens they encounter over
the course of their normal duties.

Under the terms of the agreement, made with the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency, an initial group of 30 troopers
will receive five weeks of specialized training next year, paid
by the federal government.

The troopers will be drawn from the Violent Fugitive Apprehension
Squad, the Criminal Investigation Section, the Anti-Gang Unit,
the Drug Enforcement Unit and the Community Action Team.

''The scope of our nation's illegal immigration problem requires
us to pursue and implement new solutions wherever possible,''
Romney said in a statement. ''State troopers are highly trained
professionals who are prepared to assist the federal government
in apprehending immigration violators without disrupting their
normal law enforcement routines.''

The governor, who has been burnishing his conservative
credentials in anticipation of a campaign for the 2008 Republican
presidential nomination, has advocated building a wall along
the U.S.-Mexico border to check the flow of illegals into the
country.

Yet the duration of the new policy is in doubt, because
Romney leaves office Jan. 4 and his successor, Democrat
Deval Patrick, has said he opposes placing the additional
burden on the troopers.

''I'm going to investigate what power I have,'' the governor-
elect told reporters last week. ''You know that I think it's
a bad idea for state troopers to be involved in immigration
enforcement. They have enough to do as it is, and I said
that consistently.''

The agreement also comes at an embarrassing time for Romney,
who has pledged to announce his decision about a presidential
candidacy early next year.

The Boston Globe reported recently that the landscaper
who maintains the governor's 2.5-acre property in Belmont
has been employing illegal aliens.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) U.S. Raids 6 Meat Plants in ID Case
By JULIA PRESTON
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/us/13raid.html?ref=us

In simultaneous dawn raids, federal immigration agents swept into
six Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states yesterday,
rounding up hundreds of immigrant workers in what the agents
described as a vast criminal investigation of identity theft.

More than 1,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement
appeared at 6 a.m. at the Swift plants with warrants to search for
illegal immigrants. Inside, agents separated American citizens from
immigrants, interviewing all the foreign workers and taking hundreds
away in buses to immigration detention centers.

In a new enforcement tactic, federal officials said they planned
to bring criminal charges against some of the immigrants accused
of using stolen identities. They said the raids were tied to complaints
from United States citizens who discovered that their names were
being used by Swift plant workers.

“There are several hundred Americans who were victimized,” said
Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the immigration agency,
known as I.C.E.

Other immigrants who are found to be living illegally in the United
States will be deported, Mr. Raimondi said.

The raids brought protests from Swift, the only business singled
out, and from the United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union, which organizes employees at five of the six plants.

Sam Rovit, chief executive of Swift, said the company learned
of the I.C.E. investigation in March, but had been “rebuffed
repeatedly” when it offered to cooperate. Mr. Rovit said the
company had participated since 1997 in a federal program
known as Basic Pilot, which allows employers to use a federal
database to verify documents presented by job-seekers.

“We have complied with every law that is out there on the
books,” Mr. Rovit said in an interview.

The six plants employ more than 10,000 people, Swift
executives said.

Mr. Rovit said the company had been careful to avoid inquiring
too deeply into backgrounds of job applicants. He said
the Justice Department sued Swift in 2001 charging that
it discriminated against immigrant workers. The case was
settled for $200,000, a company statement said.

Illegal immigrants frequently use false Social Security cards
or residency documents known as green cards when they
apply for jobs. I.C.E. officials said the operation focused
on immigrants who had obtained documents with identity
information corresponding to that of United States citizens,
in some cases by buying them from underground organizations
that traffic in false documents.

Officials at the union called the operation a “wholesale roundup”
and said they would seek injunctions on behalf
of the detained workers.

“Worksite raids are not an effective form of immigration reform,”
said Jill Cashen, a spokeswoman for the union. “They terrorize
workers and destroy families.”

The immigration agency raided plants in Hyrum, Utah; Greeley, Colo.;
Cactus, Tex.; Grand Island, Neb.; Marshalltown, Iowa;
and Worthington, Minn.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4) CUNY Chief Orders Names Stripped From Student Center
By KAREN W. ARENSON
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/nyregion/13cuny.html

The chancellor of the City University of New York yesterday directed
the president of City College to remove the names of two fugitives
linked to violent crimes from the entrance to a student clubroom.

Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor, called the designation of the
room as the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and
Student Center “unauthorized and inappropriate.”

Ms. Shakur — once known as Joanne Chesimard — was a member
of the Black Liberation Army convicted in the 1973 killing
of a New Jersey state trooper. She is currently a federal fugitive
living in Cuba. Mr. Morales, also in Cuba, was a leader of the
Puerto Rican independence group known as the F.A.L.N.,
which claimed responsibility for a tavern bombing in Lower
Manhattan that killed four people and injured others.
Both were students at City College.

Students at the center yesterday said the names had been
posted there for 17 years, since a student group won the right
to use the lounge in the aftermath of a campus shutdown over
proposed tuition increases in 1989.

A number of City College students interviewed yesterday —
as well as Gregory H. Williams, the college president — said the
names on the door had meant nothing to them. But one student
who recognized them, Sergey Kadinsky, said he wanted to “raise
awareness and raise a debate.”

The Daily News printed a letter from him on Monday complaining
about the names, and followed up with an article and an editorial
yesterday headlined “Celebrating killers at City College.”
The News said the college had no intention of renaming
the room.

But yesterday the college was hit with complaints. City Council
members James S. Oddo, Dennis P. Gallagher and Andrew J. Lanza,
the council’s three Republicans, said in a letter to CUNY released
publicly, “Unfortunately, this demonstrates that City College
is woefully out of touch with the taxpayers who subsidize
the university.”

They added, “The fact that CUNY employees would attempt
to defend this outrage begs the question: ‘What is going
on over at CUNY?’ ”

They also said, “A terrorist is a terrorist ... period.”

David Jones, president of the New Jersey State Troopers
Fraternal Association, said, “These are criminals, and there
is no way they should be endorsed in a public institution
with their names on the door.”

After receiving Chancellor Goldstein’s directive that the names
be removed, Dr. Williams said yesterday in an interview that
he would do just that and was trying to talk to the students.
“Hopefully they will see the error of their ways, and will take
it down,” he said. “If not, we will take steps to take it down.”

But the students were not ready to acquiesce.

Rodolfo Leyton, a City College senior and the center’s director,
said students planned to speak to a lawyer, Ronald B. McGuire,
and possibly “seek legal remedies.” The center sued college
and university officials in 1998 when it discovered a surveillance
camera in a smoke detector across from it. That suit is still pending.

Mr. Leyton also said that while others view Ms. Shakur as guilty,
“we see her as a leader in her community who was framed and
unlawfully convicted.” He said minutes of college proceedings
in September 1989 dedicated the room to one of the groups still
using the center, Students for Educational Rights. Others also
use the space.

College officials said that they had not been able to track down
the agreement giving the room to the students. Even those
involved at the time were hazy about the 1989 tuition protests
and what followed.

Bernard W. Harleston, City College’s president in 1989, said
yesterday that while he had appointed a committee of student,
faculty and staff after the protests, he did not recall
any specifics about the room.

And Mario M. Cuomo, New York’s governor at the time, whom
the student protesters had demanded to meet to discuss tuition
increases, said yesterday that he did not recall much about
the situation, except that he had vetoed the increase. He
dismissed the debate over the names. “Considering the
problems we have in society,” he said, “I’m not sure this
is one of the major upsets to our tranquillity and equilibrium.”

Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

5) Broader Inquiries Are Urged on Underpayment of Wages
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
December 13, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/nyregion/13labor.html

Troubled by what they call a proliferation of wage violations in New
York, two dozen immigrant and worker advocacy groups want
Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer to make the state’s Labor Department
move more aggressively against industries with widespread violations.

In a report to be issued today, the groups say that instead of
responding mainly to individual worker complaints, the
department should initiate broad investigations of industries
with a history of violations.

“The Department of Labor needs to shift to a more forceful strategy
that uses investigations of a whole industry to stop unscrupulous
companies so that they don’t drag down the rest of an industry,”
said Annette Bernhardt, one of the report’s authors and the deputy
director of poverty programs at the Brennan Center for Justice
at New York University’s School of Law.

The advocacy groups, including the New York Immigration Coalition
and the Latin American Workers Project, complain that minimum
wage and overtime violations are widespread in many industries,
including restaurants, landscaping, laundries, agriculture and apparel.

“Workplace violations are becoming standard practice in many
of the state’s low-wage industries,” the report said. “Law-abiding
employers are forced into a race to the bottom when unscrupulous
competitors pay below the minimum wage.”

The groups call for legislation that would increase penalties for wage
violations. They also want the state to pursue criminal action against
companies that fire employees for filing wage complaints.

The report urges the Labor Department to speed up investigations
and to insist that violators give workers six years of back pay,
as the law allows.

“Investigations often drag on for more than a year,” said Omar
Henriquez, chairman of the Workplace Project, an immigrants’
rights group based in Hempstead on Long Island. “When low-wage
workers depend on their salaries to survive, it’s obvious they need
their money as soon as possible. And if the employer owes
$10,000, we don’t like it when the Labor Department negotiates
so they only have to pay $5,000.”

Many of the groups behind the report, which also include the
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, MFY Legal
Services and the Tompkins County Workers Center, have
complained that Gov. George E. Pataki’s Labor Department
has been understaffed and unassertive.

Robert M. Lillpopp, a Labor Department spokesman, said his
agency had long pursued violations in the apparel industry
and had recently created a Fair Wages Task Force, focusing
on other low-wage industries.

“We continue to be as aggressive as possible when we pursue
violations,” Mr. Lillpopp said. “When we get tips, we investigate.”

In 2005, the Labor Department collected $10.4 million in back
wages, a 36 percent increase from 2004 and the highest amount
in state history.

Denis Hughes, president of the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O.,
said organized labor would support the coalition’s recommendations.

“We want a Labor Department that is an advocate for those workers
who are most apt to be exploited,” he said. “We want an activist
Labor Department that is reminiscent of Frances Perkins,” who
was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s crusading labor secretary and
before that was New York State’s industrial commissioner.

The coalition urged the department to work closely with
community and immigrant groups to educate low-wage workers
about their rights. The coalition said the department could use
those groups as their eyes and ears because low-wage workers
often approach them first about workplace violations.

The report said the department needed more bilingual investigators
and recommended legislation to make it harder for employers
to bypass minimum wage and overtime laws by classifying workers
as independent contractors.

Mr. Lillpopp said the Labor Department had increased its outreach
efforts, conducting 304 labor law seminars last year for
3,484 people at 309 businesses.

The coalition also urged the Labor Department not to discourage
workers who are illegal immigrants from filing complaints.
Mr. Lillpopp said his department did not take immigration status
into account when deciding whether to pursue a worker’s complaint.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) Gore Vidal, Prophet and Rebel
Lisandro Otero - Prensa Latina
A CubaNews Translation by Sue Ashdown
ORIGINAL http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/noticias/n0075.html

The United States was perhaps the only nation to emerge victorious
from World War I. It entered late and its material costs were far
below those of its allies. It emerged however, as an influential
power on the world stage.

A victorious Wilson took over from the isolationists Harding and
Coolidge, who had assumed the new leadership almost as an
embarrassing and undesirable commitment. Hoover's Republican
government brought the country to the breaking point with its
laissez-faire policies.

Speculators enriched themselves on Wall Street with a spectacular
rise in stock market values. In 1929 the bubble burst. The economic
depression and unemployment cast a shadow over North American life
until Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the New Deal.

This period produced a generation of intellectuals conscious enough
to ask what kind of country they were living in, and so U.S.
literature has not lacked for writers committed to social criticism
and political analysis.

Edmund Wilson, Susan Sontag, Lionel Trilling, Joan Didion, Arthur
Miller, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer and Liilian Hellman have been
among the most prominent. But perhaps the one who has practiced it
most has been Gore Vidal.

For many years he lived in the Neapolitan coast of Amalfi, in a
beautiful cliffside villa named "La Rondinaia," Swallow's Nest, where
he accumulated page after written page, consolidating his position as
one of the most prestigious intellectuals in his country as well as
the world.

Gore came from a high-society family. His grandfather had been a
Senator, and in her second marriage, his mother married a rich lawyer
and landowner, Hugh D. Auchincloss, who was also Jacqueline Bouvier's
stepfather, which made them step-siblings.

When Jacqueline married John F. Kennedy, who came to be the country's
president, Vidal was a frequent dinner guest at the White House.

His first novel, "Williwaw" (1946) was based on his experiences in
the Second World War, but in the third person. "The City and the
Pillar" (1948) dealt with the taboo subject of homosexuality, in an
era when it was difficult to discuss and the public didn't tolerate
open airing of such thorny subjects.

The rejection provoked by this work forced him to write television
scripts for some time, at which he was quite successful.

Undoubtedly, his historical novels about the evolution of the United
States were what solidified his position: "Washington D.C." (1967);
"Burr" (1974); "1876" (1976) and "Lincoln" (1984) allowed him to
offer his readers a vision of the ins and outs of government of
recent years through independent epic literature.

In those pages there were affirmations such as: "For the average
North American, freedom of expression is simply the freedom to repeat
whatever everyone is going around saying, and that's all."

And, "It's always seemed strange to me that a nation whose prosperity
is based on the cheap labor of immigrants practices such relentless
xenophobia." And more, "There isn't a single mainstream publication
in the entire United States that merits the attention of an
intelligent man."

Gore Vidal wrote several books of essays in which he developed the
thesis that the United States owed its prosperity to the Second World
War, which followed twelve years of recession, after which the arms
industry magnates came to govern the United States - multiplying
their riches through the conflict and deciding that the best way to
maintain their interests was to keep the country functioning as the
world's policeman and whose finances should be written into a
permanent war economy.

John Foster Dulles figured that in a perpetual arms race, the
Russians would bankrupt themselves first. Albert Einstein had already
taken notice, as early as 1950, that the class leading the United
States had no interest in ending the Cold War.

Vidal attributed to Theodore Roosevelt the original thuggish plans to
take over Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, following Alfred
Thayer Manhan's theories - taken from British history - which
postulate that a country can only be a great power if it has a great
military fleet and acquires overseas possessions.

Gore recalled that at that moment, Mark Twain proposed that a new
banner be substituted for the flag with stars and stripes - that of a
skull and crossbones.

Vidal is one of the United States' most lucid thinkers and his
strategic vision of his country as a shipwreck has granted him a
reputation for fairness and immense influence in the minds of his
fellow citizens.

Lisandro Otero is a writer and journalist, and the Director of the
Cuban Academy of Language.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) Sunrise and Sunset
By BOB HERBERT
December 14, 2006
Baton Rouge, La.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/opinion/14herbert.html?hp

They look for all the world like internment camps. The long rows
of identical white trailers sit on flat, grim, barren expanses of land
that are enclosed by metal fences. Armed guards are stationed
at the entrances around the clock.

More than a year after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina,
thousands of the poorest victims from New Orleans are still
living in these trailer parks run by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. They have ironic names, like Mount Olive
Gardens and Renaissance Village. A more accurate name would
be Camp Depression, after the state of mind of most of the residents.

The “parks” are nothing more than vast, dusty, gravel-strewn lots
filled with trailers that were designed to be hitched to cars for brief
vacations or weekend getaways. The trailers, about 200 square
feet each, were never meant to serve as homes for entire families.
But in these FEMA parks, it’s common for families of five or six,
or even more, to be jammed into one trailer.

I stood outside a trailer at the Mount Olive encampment on Monday
afternoon, talking with Geraldine Craig and her 21-year-old daughter,
Danielle Craig. The women, who have been unable to find jobs,
seemed baffled and depleted by their long ordeal. As we talked,
Danielle’s 2-year-old son, Javonta, scampered around in the dust
and gravel.

Danielle’s daughter, Miracle, was 5 months old when Katrina struck.
The baby was ill and receiving oxygen when it became clear that the
family had to evacuate. “The doctors were taking care of her and
she couldn’t hardly breathe,” Danielle said. “After we left we ended
up in a shelter, and I said that my baby needed oxygen but they
told us we had to wait.

“They finally sent us to a medical building and they put her on
oxygen for about two hours, but the doctor said there was nothing
wrong with her.”

Like so many thousands of others left destitute and all but
despondent by Katrina, the family moved on — to Texas, back
to Louisiana, eventually to Baton Rouge. It was too much for Miracle,
who never got the proper medical treatment. She died last March.
Her heart disease wasn’t accurately diagnosed until an autopsy
was performed.

“I felt like it was my fault,” said Danielle. “I’m still depressed.”

When I asked if she’d been treated for depression, she shook
her head.

“That baby was one of the many victims of the storm who were
never officially counted as such,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, president
of the Children’s Health Fund, which has been providing medical
and mental health services to children in the FEMA parks.

Dr. Redlener, a professor at Columbia University and the author
of “Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters
and What We Can Do,” said he was outraged that so many thousands
of the poorest victims of Hurricane Katrina are still stuck in limbo —
unable to find jobs or permanent housing, denied adequate medical
and educational services and with no idea when, or if, they will
be able to return to New Orleans.

“The recovery of this catastrophe in the gulf has been as badly
mangled by the government as the initial response,” he said.
“Fifteen months have gone by and you still have these thousands
of people who in essence are either American refugees living
in other states who have no idea what’s going to happen to them,
or they are living in these trailer camps, or in isolated trailers
on their old property, which has been destroyed. They’re just
waiting for something to happen. And the wait is interminable.”

Geraldine Craig said: “We just recently went down to New Orleans
and they got nothing going yet, not in our neighborhood. So we’re
going to be here for a while.”

The residents of Mount Olive Gardens and the even larger trailer
camp at Renaissance Village in nearby Baker, La., face challenges
that seem almost insurmountable. Even minimum-wage jobs are
very difficult to find and difficult to get to because there is little
public transportation. Many of the residents are elderly, or disabled,
or illiterate. Some are mentally handicapped.

These are encampments of profound stress and sadness.

As I was telling Geraldine and Danielle Craig goodbye, and wishing
them the best for the coming holidays, Danielle shyly handed me
a photograph of her daughter. At the top was written, “Miracle
Breyonne Craig.” At the bottom: “Sunrise: 3-19-05. Sunset: 3-10-06.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

8) Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121201697.html

The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent
increases in personnel, as senior officials in both services assert
that the nation's global military strategy has outstripped their
resources.

In addition, the Army will press hard for "full access" to the 346,000-
strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves
by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the
Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary
call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.

The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have sharply decreased the readiness of Army
and Marine Corps units rotating back to the United States,
compromising the ability of U.S. ground forces to respond
to other potential conflicts around the world.

"The Army has configured itself to sustain the effort in Iraq and,
to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan. Beyond that, you've got
some problems," said one of the senior Army officials. "Right
now, the strategy exceeds the capability of the Army and
Marines." This official and others interviewed for this report
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk publicly about the matter.

The Army, which has 507,000 active-duty soldiers, wants
Congress to fund a permanent "end strength," or manpower,
of at least 512,000 soldiers, the Army officials said. The Army
wants the additional soldiers to be paid for not through
wartime supplemental spending bills but in the defense
budget, which now covers only 482,000 soldiers.

The Marine Corps, with 180,000 active-duty Marines, seeks
to grow by several thousand, including the likely addition
of three new infantry battalions. "We need to be bigger.
The question is how big do we need to be and how do we
get there," a senior Marine Corps official said.

At least two-thirds of Army units in the United States today
are rated as not ready to deploy -- lacking in manpower,
training and, most critically, equipment -- according to senior
U.S. officials and the Iraq Study Group report. The two ground
services estimate that they will need $18 billion a year
to repair, replace and upgrade destroyed and worn-out
equipment.

If another crisis were to erupt requiring a large number of
U.S. ground troops, the Army's plan would be to freeze its
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and divert to the new conflict
the U.S.-based combat brigade that is first in line to deploy.

Beyond that, however, the Army would have to cobble together
war-depleted units to form complete ones to dispatch to the
new conflict -- at the risk of lost time, unit cohesion and
preparedness, senior Army officials said. Moreover, the
number of Army and Marine combat units available for an
emergency would be limited to about half that of four years
ago, experts said, unless the difficult decision to pull forces
out of Iraq were made.

"We are concerned about gross readiness . . . and ending
equipment and personnel shortfalls," said a senior Marine
Corps official. The official added that Marine readiness has
dropped and that the Corps is unable to fulfill many planned
missions for the fight against terrorism.

Senior Pentagon officials stress that the U.S. military has ample
air and naval power that could respond immediately to possible
contingencies in North Korea, Iran or the Taiwan Strait.

"If you had to go fight another war someplace that somebody
sprung upon us, you would keep the people who are currently
employed doing what they're doing, and you would use the
vast part of the U.S. armed forces that is at home station,
to include the enormous strength of our Air Force and our
Navy, against the new threat," Marine Gen. Peter Pace,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing
last month.

But if the conflict were to require a significant number of
ground troops -- as in some scenarios such as the disintegration
of Pakistan -- Army and Marine Corps officials made clear
that they would have to scramble to provide them. "Is it the
way we'd want to do it? No. Would it be ugly as hell? Yes,"
said one of the senior Army officials. "But," he added, "we
could get it done."

According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander
for the Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot
sustain even a modest increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S.
commanders for Afghanistan have asked for more troops but
have not received them, noted the Iraq Study Group report,
which called it "critical" for the United States to provide more
military support for Afghanistan.

"We are facing more operational risk than we have for many,
many years," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed
Services Committee. He called it "shocking and scandalous" that
two-thirds of Army units are rated "non-deployable." He said
the country has not faced such a readiness crisis since the
aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The U.S. military has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and
20,000 in Afghanistan, including 17 of the Army's 36 available
active-duty combat brigades. When Army and Marine Corps
combat units return from the war zone, they immediately lose
large numbers of experienced troops and leaders who either
leave the force, go to school or other assignments, or switch
to different units.

The depletion of returning units is so severe that the Marines
refer to this phase as the "post-deployment death spiral." Army
officials describe it as a process of breaking apart units and
rebuilding them "just in time" to deploy again.

Training time for active-duty Army and Marine combat units
is only half what it should be because they are spending about
the same amount of time in war zones as at home -- in
contrast to the desired ratio of spending twice as much time
at home as on deployment. And the training tends to focus
on counterinsurgency skills for Iraq and Afghanistan, causing
an erosion in conventional land-warfare capabilities, which
could be required for North Korea or Iran, officials say.

If a conflict with North Korea or Iran were to break out and
demand a medium to large ground force, the Army would
be forced to respond with whatever it had available.

The U.S. military today could cobble together two or three
divisions in an emergency -- compared with as many as six
in 2001 -- not enough to carry out major operations such
as overthrowing the Iranian government. "That's the kind
of extreme scenario that could cripple us," said Michael
E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution.

Unable to count on a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq,
the Army seeks to ease the manpower strain by accelerating
plans to have 70 active-duty and National Guard combat
brigades available for rotations by 2011. Next year, for
example, the Army intends to bring two brigades on
a training mission back into rotation. It is investing $36 billion
in Guard equipment in anticipation of heavier use of the Guard.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) Cut Off Funding for the Iraq War
San Francisco Labor Council Resolution -
adopted December 11, 2006 by unanimous vote

Whereas the war in Iraq is continuing, and

whereas the American people in the last election have clearly
stated their opposition to this war, and

whereas the war can't continue without war funding, and

whereas a major factor in ending the Vietnam war was
the cut-off of funding by Congress, and

whereas the Bush administration will ask for further funding
for war early next year - up to $160 billion on top of the $70 billion
approved by Congress last October; therefore,

Be it resolved that the SF Labor Council communicate its opposition
to continued war funding directly with Representatives Nancy Pelosi
and Tom Lantos and Senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein
by setting up delegations to discuss the issue of ending war funding
in order to bring the troops home now.

Submitted by Allan Fisher, David Welsh, and Rodger Scott

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

10) Ships That Don’t Dare to Sail
New York Times Editorial
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/opinion/14thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The Coast Guard, supposedly our first line of defense against water-
borne terrorists and drug smugglers, has been staggered by
a shipbuilding scandal of enormous proportions. A long-term
modernization program to replace nearly all of the Coast Guard’s
ships, planes and helicopters — begun four years ago in the wake
of 9/11 — is foundering while its projected costs are skyrocketing.
In Iraq, lax government oversight and incompetence or profiteering
by contractors have disabled reconstruction efforts. Now the same
disease is undermining our coastal defenses.

The Coast Guard fiasco was laid out in depressing detail by Eric
Lipton in The Times last Saturday, and in a similar article in The
Washington Post. The misjudgments and slipshod work would
be grist for slapstick comedy if the consequences, in cost and
weakened defenses, were not so serious.

As described by Mr. Lipton, the estimated costs of the project,
known as Deepwater, have ballooned from $17 billion when it
started in 2002 to $24 billion today. The plans call for 91 new
ships, 124 small boats, 195 new or rebuilt helicopters and
49 unmanned aerial vehicles. But don’t count on any of the
new vehicles working.

The initial venture — converting the Coast Guard’s rusting patrol
boats into bigger, more versatile cutters — has been canceled
because hull cracks and engine failures made the first eight
ships unseaworthy. Plans for a new class of ships with an innovative
hull design were halted after the design was found to be flawed.
And even the radios placed in small open boats proved faulty;
they shorted out because they had not been made waterproof.

In the latest chapter in this disgraceful performance, Mr. Lipton
reports in today’s paper that the Coast Guard did not inform
Congress that it was warned two years ago by its chief engineer
that a proposed National Security Cutter, meant to be the flagship
of its fleet, had “significant flaws” in its structural design and
should not be started until the problems were addressed. The
Coast Guard began construction anyway. It plans to reinforce
the first two versions that are being built and change the design
on the remaining six.

How could this happen? Mostly because the Coast Guard, in an
astonishing abdication of responsibility, gave two large military
contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, near total
freedom to plan, supervise and deliver the new ships and
helicopters. In some cases, the contractors made boneheaded
decisions, as when their shipyard partner ignored warnings
by Coast Guard engineers that the converted patrol boats
might buckle under the extra weight. In other cases, they
might have put their own interests ahead of the nation’s, as
when they adopted a risky hull material that had never been
tried on a large American military ship but was pushed by
Northrop, which had just opened a new plant to manufacture
the hulls.

No wonder the contractors are ducking for cover as the scandal
reverberates, and are leaving all comment to the hapless Coast
Guard. The Coast Guard seems, belatedly, to be moving in the
right direction by giving its own engineers more supervisory
power over the work and creating a division to oversee
procurement and maintenance of ships and planes. Even so,
the new Congress and the Department of Homeland Security,
which is responsible for the Coast Guard, will need to keep
a sharp eye on the Coast Guard’s performance. The industrial
contractors have proved they were not up to the job.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

11) Palestinian Leader Blocked From Entering Gaza
By GREG MYRE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/world/middleeast/15mideastcnd.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=e298b131f7fb1c90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

JERUSALEM, Dec. 14 — Israel ordered a border crossing between
the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt sealed off today, preventing the
return to Palestinian territory of the Palestinian prime minister, because
he was allegedly carrying tens of millions of dollars in cash, Israeli
security officials said.

The Israeli move immediately sparked a highly charged confrontation,
as dozens of Hamas gunmen loyal to the prime minister, Ismail Haniya,
descended on the Rafah border crossing at the southern end of the
Gaza Strip. The Palestinian side of the border is operated by security
forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in conjunction
with European Union monitors.

Mr. Haniya was returning to Gaza after receiving promises of large
sums of financial aid from Iran and other countries during a trip
abroad. He is a leader of the Hamas group that dominates the
government; Mr. Abbas is from the rival Fatah group.

Israeli military forces are no longer in the Gaza Strip. But the Israeli
defense minister, Amir Peretz, had ordered the European monitors
at the crossing to close it down, the security officials said.

Palestinians may legally carry unlimited sums of money into Gaza
as long as they declare it. But a senior Israeli security official
who spoke on the condition that his name not be used said
that Israel was acting in this case because “we have reason
to believe the money will be used to strengthen Hamas and
will be used for terror.”

The border crossing was expected to remain closed until Friday
morning. The security officials said that Israel has no intention
of stopping Mr. Haniya again, as long as he does not have large
sums of money with him.

Palestinian government employees have received only partial
and sporadic salary payments since Hamas, the militant Islamic
group, came to power in the spring after winning Palestinian
legislative elections in January.

Israel, the European Union and the United States all cut off flows
of money to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took over.
They have demanded that the Palestinian Authority meet several
conditions, including the recognition of Israel, before restoring
the financial flows; Hamas leaders in the government have
refused to do.

So in order to meet expenses, Palestinian officials have carried
hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars
in cash across the border.

In October, the Palestinian interior minister, Said Siam, took
home $2 million in cash from Muslim countries when he returned
to the Gaza Strip from a trip that included Syria and Iran.

An aide at the time said the Interior Ministry, which is responsible
for various security agencies, planned to spend half the money
by making $50 payments to 20,000 members of the security
forces, and then put the rest toward restoring the Interior
Ministry building.

In June, the foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar, returned with
$20 million stuffed in suitcases. And in May, a prominent
spokesman for the ruling Hamas faction, Sami Abu Zuhri,
was caught trying to smuggle some $815,000 into Gaza
from Egypt to circumvent the economic blockade.

The Palestinian Authority is desperately short of cash and
has not been able to raise anywhere near the $150 million
or more that it needs each month to pay salaries and cover
basic operating expenses.

Several Arab and Muslim countries have pledged to help.
However, the United States has threatened to impose sanctions
on banks that conduct transactions with Hamas. The banks,
unwilling to risk their access to international financial markets,
have refused to handle such transactions.

Greg Myre reported from Jerusalem and Christine Hauser
reported from New York.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

12) OPEC Calls for 2nd Cut in Oil Output
By JAD MOUAWAD
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/business/15opeccnd.html?hp&ex=1166158800&en=4ff7dc75eade4060&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC)
"OPEC’s mission is to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies
of Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil prices
in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of
petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and
a fair return on capital to those investing in the petroleum
industry."
http://www.opec.org/home/
...FYI...bw]

OPEC said today that it planned to reduce its oil production by
nearly 2 percent in February, the group’s second output cut in
two months and its strongest signal yet that it aims to keep oil
prices above $60 a barrel next year.

Representatives from OPEC nations agreed to pare their production
to 25.8 million barrels a day, from 26.3 million barrels, starting
on Feb. 1. The group had already agreed to cut its production
by 4 percent in October to prop up prices.

“I hope the market appreciates we are working so diligently
to bring supply and demand in balance, to have inventories
at a reasonable level so that we do not have gyrations,” Ali Al-Naimi,
the Saudi oil minister, told reporters at the meeting, held
in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which
already accounts for 40 percent of the world’s oil exports, also
said Angola would join the group next year, becoming its first
new member since 1975. The addition of a second African
country after Nigeria is a powerful boost to the OPEC, which
currently has 11 members. Foreign oil companies have invested
heavily in Angola in recent years and expect its production
to grow dramatically in the coming decade.

OPEC have producers expressed concern that slowing demand
next year might cause prices to fall if production was left
unchecked. But with oil prices still firmly above $60 a barrel
and commercial inventories sharply down over the past
month, analysts were surprised by OPEC’s decision.

“This makes an incredibly tight market even tighter,” said
Edward Morse, the chief energy economist at Lehman
Brothers in New York. “It’s a very aggressive, assertive
move. Clearly, some OPEC members want to keep a $60 floor.”

Oil futures jumped today on the New York Mercantile Exchange
following OPEC’s announcement. This afternoon, crude
oil for January delivery was trading up $1.12, or 1.8 percent,
to $62.49 a barrel.

Oil prices had lost more than $20 a barrel since hitting
a record of $77.03 a barrel this summer. That fall prompted
OPEC to abandon its two-year policy of keeping production
flowing in order to keep markets well supplied.

After hitting a low for the year of about $55 a barrel in November,
prices have since rebounded as a result of OPEC’s policy.

“They are jawboning the market and trying to show they are
being aggressive,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director at
PFC Energy, a consultant in Washington. “The question is,
are they being too aggressive?”

“They want to show they are willing to manage supplies tightly,”
he said. “But are they under-estimating demand and over-estimating
supplies from non-OPEC sources? Are they acting on a too
pessimistic scenario?”

In a statement released at the end of its one-day meeting
in Abuja, OPEC said it expected global oil demand to grow
by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2007. But the group said that
would be more than offset by the growth in supplies from
producers outside of OPEC, which it expects to grown by 1.8
million barrels a day, the largest rise in non-OPEC supplies
since 1984.

In the lead-up to the meeting, Nigeria’s oil minister, Edmund
Daukoru, suggested that there was a general support for
a production cut. The representatives of Algeria, Venezuela,
Iran and Indonesia all agreed about a need to trim
production further.

“We are committed to supplying the market but we want to
establish a balance between supply and demand,” said
Mr. Daukoru, OPEC’s president this year.

According to the latest report from the International Energy
Agency, OPEC production fell by 550,000 barrels a day
in November to 28.9 million. That figure includes the
production of Iraq, which does not have an OPEC quota.

Analysts at the energy agency, which represents consumers,
have warned OPEC not to cut its production more, as higher
energy prices could erode economic growth. The agency
cut its forecast for Chinese demand growth to 5.6 percent
in 2006, from a previous estimate of 6.2 percent.

The backdrop to the OPEC meeting was a sharp reduction
in oil inventories held by consuming nations in recent weeks.
In the United States, the world’s biggest market, oil product
stocks have fallen by 54 million barrels since October,
a drop of nearly 1 million barrels day.

One oil industry analyst said that while OPEC was concerned
about oversupplied oil stocks last September, such concerns
were no longer legitimate. Despite relatively mild weather,
oil markets have tightened considerably in recent weeks as
the impact of OPEC’s production cuts reach consumers.

Lawrence J. Goldstein, the president of the Petroleum Industry
Research Foundation in New York, said OPEC ministers should
be careful about how they manage the market in coming months.

He suggested that high energy costs, which have already
contributed to a slowing global economy, could end up
backfiring on OPEC by reducing consumption.

“That’s a trend OPEC and the Saudis should not be ignoring
because at the end of the day they want to sell, and if you
want to sell, you need a vibrant economy, particularly
in the United States.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

13) Political Drama Re-enacts Moments in a Death Chamber
By JESSE McKINLEY
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/us/14tookie.html?ref=us

BERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 13 — As drama, what happened on stage
at the Black Repertory Theater of Berkeley early Wednesday morning
was not classic theatrical fare. The actors were mostly motionless,
the play had only one line, and everyone in the audience knew how
the story was going to end.

But creating a compelling narrative may not have been the authors’
point. The play was a re-enactment of the execution of the convicted
killer Stanley Tookie Williams, staged on the first anniversary
of his death by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison.

The performance was written and produced by Barbara Becnel
and Shirley Neal, two friends of Mr. Williams and death penalty
opponents, who were unapologetic about their play’s being
agitprop.

“This is political theater in the extreme,” Ms. Becnel told a crowd
of about 150 people who gathered to watch the performance.
“But it’s political theater in the extreme because we need it.”

The execution of Mr. Williams, 51, a founder of the Crips gang
who was convicted of murdering four people in 1979, has
continued to be a rallying point for death penalty opponents
as well as a source of contention about the methods
of lethal injection.

In September, a representative of the state attorney general’s
office acknowledged that prison guards and nurses had botched
Mr. Williams’s lethal injection, failing to hook up a backup
intravenous line to his arm. Ms. Becnel said Mr. Williams was
in agony during his execution, which took 35 minutes to complete.

“I was there, I saw what they did,” Ms. Becnel said. “And I can
tell you it was a 35-minute torture-murder.”

State officials deny that Mr. Williams suffered unnecessarily.
“The execution went exactly as the protocol is designed
to carry it out,” said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Attorney
General Bill Lockyer. “The lack of the extra IV line was definitely
a mistake, but it didn’t affect the execution.”

Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation, an advocate for victims’ rights and law enforcement,
said he believed Mr. Williams was a bad role model for a play.

“I think it hurts the anti-death-penalty movement to hold up as
dastardly a criminal as Tookie,” Mr. Rushford said, citing
Mr. Williams’s work with the Crips, a violent gang based
in Los Angeles.

Mr. Rushford added that Wednesday morning’s performance
was simply “preaching to the choir” of Mr. Williams’s supporters,
many of whom rallied in front of San Quentin the night of his
execution.

“I don’t expect an accurate portrayal of what happened,” he said.
“But when you’ve made such a big deal of it, you can’t just
let it drop after a year.”

Mr. Williams’s experiences in the death chamber were part of a
Federal District Court hearing in September — stemming from
a lawsuit by Michael Morales, a condemned rapist and killer —
that may affect death penalty methodology in California. The judge
overseeing the hearings, Jeremy Fogel, effectively halted executions
in California until he could hear arguments on whether methods
of lethal injection caused undue pain. Judge Fogel is expected
to issue a ruling soon.

For supporters of Mr. Williams, his execution, which drew
international press attention and a cadre of celebrity protesters,
was unjust, in part because of his post-incarceration work speaking
about the dangers of gangs through a series of children’s books,
lectures and memoirs, many of which were written with Ms. Becnel.
Mr. Williams also claimed to be innocent.

On Wednesday, the theatrical re-enactment began at 12:01 a.m.,
the time Mr. Williams entered the death chamber. It was performed
by six actors, including Darby Tillis, 64, an exonerated death
row inmate from Chicago who played Mr. Williams and said he
had little trouble connecting with the role.

“When you’re on death row, you always have an imaginary scene
that you live out many times: how you would feel if you went
down for an execution,” Mr. Tillis said.

With a simple set — folding chairs, a gurney and a platform —
the play’s action was minimal: three witnesses stood, a guard
strapped Mr. Tillis to a gurney, a nurse fumbled with an IV. Only
once did anyone speak, when Mr. Tillis asked the actor playing
the frustrated nurse whether she knew what she was doing.
The entire performance took about 12 minutes — about a third
of the actual execution time.

And while the audience was silent throughout, some said the
experience had left them shaken. Kirya Traber, 22, who wore
a Save Tookie T-shirt, said she had been outside San Quentin
the year before, but felt a lot closer to the drama on Wednesday.

“Here tonight,” Ms. Traber said, “was a lot more solemn.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

14) Illegal Immigrants at Center of New Identity Theft Crackdown
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
December 14, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/washington/14immig.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
on Wednesday announced a broad new plan to crack down on illegal
immigrants who steal the identities of American citizens to get jobs.
The strategy, he warned, would likely have economic consequences
for the industries that rely heavily on illegal workers.

The announcement came one day after homeland security agents
swept into Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states and
arrested nearly 1,300 workers, almost 10 percent of the company’s
work force, in what Mr. Chertoff hailed as the largest workplace
crackdown on illegal immigration.

Of the 1,282 workers detained, 65 were charged with identity
theft or other crimes, officials said. The rest face administrative
charges for being in the United States illegally and will likely
be deported. The company, which cooperated with the government,
was not charged with any criminal or civil violations.

Mr. Chertoff said illegal immigrants had assumed the stolen
identities of hundreds of American citizens to get jobs at
Swift & Company. And he warned that he intended to aggressively
pursue document-theft rings and the illegal immigrant workers
who use them, even though he acknowledged that “when we
remove the illegal workers, there’s going to be some kind
of a slowdown.”

“Obviously, when — even unwittingly — a business is significantly
built on illegal labor, once we enforce the law, that’s going to
have a ripple effect,” Mr. Chertoff said at a news conference in
response to questions about the impact of the new strategy
on businesses and the economy.

“It’s going to be a deterrent to illegal workers,” he said. “It’s
going to cause them to say that, you know, this happened
in Swift, it could easily happen somewhere else. In fact, I’m
pretty much going to guarantee we’re going to keep bringing
these cases.”

The news sent shudders through the nation’s businesses because
Swift & Company, the world’s second largest processor of fresh
beef and pork, had tried to weed out illegal workers and had
relied on a federal program designed to help employers detect
fake identity documents. Mr. Chertoff acknowledged that the
program, known as Basic Pilot, is unable to detect authentic
identity documents that have been stolen.

In a statement, Swift & Company executives said the raids had
forced the company to temporarily suspend operations on
Tuesday in its plants in Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota,
Iowa and Utah. They said work resumed on Wednesday, but
warned that production was expected to fall “below normal
levels in the short term.” Union officials said that employee
attendance dipped slightly on Wednesday because some
immigrants were afraid to return to work.

Homeland security officials emphasized that only the company’s
workers — not the company — had been charged with wrongdoing,
though the investigation is continuing. They said Swift’s
situation demonstrated the need for a temporary worker
program, such as the one advocated by President Bush,
to ensure that companies have access to foreign workers.

Mr. Chertoff also urged Congress to pass legislation that would
allow Social Security officials to pass along information about
valid Social Security numbers being used in multiple workplaces,
which then would allow the Basic Pilot program to capture such
data and give it to employers.

Homeland security officials also noted that Swift fired scores
of workers it determined were illegal, without informing the
government, which had notified the company of its
investigation. Swift also unsuccessfully sought a court
order to prevent federal officials from conducting raids.
Both instances, officials suggested, raised questions about
the company’s willingness to cooperate with the government.

But that did little to reassure jittery executives.

“This is any business’s nightmare, whether you are in the
meat industry or outside the meat industry,” said Janet Riley,
spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute.

Randy Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber
of Commerce, warned that the raids would lead companies
to question the value of participating in the Basic Pilot program.
And Laura Reiff of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition,
said she was deluged on Wednesday with calls from business
owners upset by the Department of Homeland Security’s actions.

“They’re frightened; they’re outraged,” said Ms. Reiff, whose
coalition represents hotels, restaurants, construction
companies and other service industries. “Companies have
tried to work with them in good faith. For them to target
a company that is using a program that they’re trying
to sell is disingenuous.”

This week’s sweep reflects the Bush administration’s continuing
efforts to demonstrate that it is determined to enforce the
nation’s long-neglected immigration laws, even as it works
to revive legislation that would create a temporary worker
program that would legalize most of the 12 million illegal
immigrants believed to be in the United States.

In 2002, immigration officials arrested or charged 25 people
for criminal violation of immigration law. During fiscal year 2006,
which ended on Sept. 30, that number surged to 716. Hundreds
more were arrested and deported for living here illegally.

Richard Siklos contributed reporting from New York.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

15) Navajo elders blockade power plant site, face arrest
Support is requested from Dine Elders and Youth!
Please send far and wide!!!!
URGENT Support is requested from Dine Elders and Youth!
Enei Begaye
Executive Director
Black Mesa Water Coalition
408 E. Route 66, Suite #1
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
Office #: (928) 213-9760
PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Sithe Global & DPA are proposing to build the Desert Rock power
plant, a 1,500 MW Coal Fired plant in the Four Corners area on the
Navajo Reservation. This is an area already polluted by 2 other major
coal power plants. Local Navajo residence and community members
oppose this project for many harmful reasons!! This Desert Rock power
plant is still in the environmental review process and has NOT yet
been permitted.

However, Desert Rock company trucks have began moving onto the
backyard of Alice Gilmore, an elderly navajo woman, and her family on
wednesday to begin drilling efforts. Desert Rock officials and police
have not shown any documents or permits to the local residents
stating their purpose or permission to be there. Dine supporters and
community members have joined Alice and her family to blockade the
road. They are elderly women and youth, and they have been camped out
on the road over night since Tuesday! Desert Rock trucks have
repeatedly rushed them and have almost run-over people a number of
times as they attempt to get by. Desert Rock power company is
violating the lease rights of the local Navajo residences and is
harassing elderly Navajo women and youth! This is an urgent time and
support is needed!!!

Please read on to find out how you can help! and Please pass this
onto others!

Lucy A. Willie, right, stands at the proposed Desert Rock Power Plant
site outside of Burnham on Wednesday where she and
several friends and family stayed overnight to stop a contractor for
Desert Rock Energy Company from doing preliminary work.

What they need:
- More People Support
- Fire wood
- $$
- Attention!

how You can Help!

- More People! More people are needed to sit in support! All are
welcome!
directions to the area are below:
The site is between Gallup, NM and Shiprock, NM (northeastern, NM).
Take the road between Gallup and Shiprock, the 491. at the Mustang
Service Station (one of the only service stations between the two),
turn East on road #5 towards Burnham Chapter. From Burnham Chapter
turn North onto gravel road #5082. About 10-12 miles up the road turn
West until you see the encampment. There will be markers (balloons)
out on the roads. (if you begin to see a dragline, you've gone too far)

- Fire wood! it is cold outside and many of the resisters are elderly
women. if you can get firewood to the site it is very very much
needed! the directions to the site are above.

- $ Money! Resisters are in need of money for gas and food, and also
for bail money if necessary. Please send donations to local resident
and supporter:

Elouise Brown
1015 Glade Lane 34
Farmington, NM 87401
Elouise can also be reached at: thebrownmachine@hotmail.com

- ATTENTION! the more media and observers are present the least
likely Desert Rock is likely to run people over or harass them.
contact the media, tell them what is going on. Contact Navajo
Authorities, tell them you are extremely concerned. Be a legal
observer. Spread this Alert!

Media Contact: Lori Goodman, cell #: (970) 759-1908, e-mail address:
kiyaani@frontier.net

Contact the Following Authorities! Tell them you have heard about
Desert Rock's harassment of Navajo elders and youth. Tell them you
are extremely concerned! If enough people contact these offices they
will know that the world is watching.

Shiprock Police Department
phone: (505) 368-1350
fax: (505) 368-1293

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley's Office
P.O. Box 9000 Window Rock, Arizona, 86515
phone #: (928) 871- 6352

also: George Hardeen, Navajo Nation Communications Director Office of
the President
Office #: 928-871-7000
Cell #: 928-380-7688
e-mail: georgehardeen@opvp.org

Bureau of Indian Affairs (Gallup Office) they are conducting the
Environmental Impact Statement.
Harrilene Yazzi, NEPA Coordinator Bureau of Indian Affairs, Navajo
Regional Office
P.0. Box 1060 Gallup, New Mexico 87305
Phone: 505-863-8314
Fax: 505-863-8324

Be a Legal Observer - get to the site and help record/witness what is
happening

Send this Action Alert Far and Wide!

Thank you for your support!!!

Enei Begaye
Executive Director
Black Mesa Water Coalition
408 E. Route 66, Suite #1
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
Office #: (928) 213-9760
PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

16) Sand Creek Massacre
For Immediate Release

Hello, Everyone,
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.

Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:

Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.

You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.

Happy Holidays!

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html

SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

17) U.S. Troops Raid Hospital Again
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches
http://dahrjamailiraq.com

FALLUJAH, Dec. 14 (IPS) - Iraqi doctors and medical staff are outraged
over yet another U.S. military raid at Fallujah General Hospital.*

The raid followed a roadside bombing Dec. 7 where four Iraqi policemen
were killed and two civilians injured. The injured were taken to
Fallujah General Hospital.

Shortly after this attack, a U.S. Marine who was on a patrol in the city
was wounded by a gunshot.

"U.S. soldiers replied to the source of fire then headed straight to the
general hospital across the (Euphrates) river hoping that they had shot
and injured the sniper," an eyewitness told IPS.

"American soldiers seem to have some imagination to think wounded
fighters might go to that so-called hospital," a retired surgeon told
IPS. "We know that they do not trust that place because of the
continuous raids by the U.S., and lack of everything in that hospital."
The hospital is functioning at minimal capacity due to lack of medicines
and equipment, the surgeon said.

Eyewitnesses at Fallujah General Hospital said U.S. soldiers raided the
hospital "as if it were a military target."

"We panicked at the way they entered, kicking open doors and blasting
locked ones," a nurse told IPS. "A doctor tried to tell them he had keys
for the locked doors, but they pointed their guns to his face. Then they
told us to go out of the building and they kept us under guard in the
garden until the early hours of next morning."

The nurse said the soldiers "would not even allow us to get some
blankets to keep us warm; the temperature was below five degrees
centigrade."

Doctors and medical staff were arrested and insulted, and some were
called terrorists, witnesses said. The hospital was then closed, and
could no longer offer even minimal treatment.

"We are used to that kind of behaviour from American soldiers," a
hospital employee told IPS. "This was the third time I was in handcuffs
with my face down. They have been more vicious with medical staff than
others because they consider us the first supporters of those they call
terrorists."

The U.S. military said that Marines from Regimental Combat Team 5
entered Fallujah General Hospital in order to search for fighters after
two Marines were wounded the previous day in the city.

Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, spokesperson for the Multi-National Forces in
Iraq, told reporters: "Coalition forces searched the hospital to ensure
that it continues to be a safe place for the citizens of Fallujah to
receive the medical treatment they deserve."

This hospital has been raided many times before, particularly in the
U.S. military assault on the city April and November 2004.

Two years back, on Dec 13, 2004, IPS reported that the U.S. military was
impeding Iraqi health workers around and inside Fallujah, and was
deliberately targeting ambulances. In November 2005 IPS reported that
the U.S. military had raided two hospitals in Ramadi.

Many Iraqi doctors have been arrested by U.S. forces for various periods
of time on suspicion of "supporting terrorism" in Iraq. Many have fled
the country for fear of repeated arrests or even killings by U.S.
soldiers or sectarian militia death squads.

The independent Iraq Medical Association announced last month that of
the 34,000 Iraqi physicians registered prior to 2003, over half have
fled the country, and that at least 2,000 have been killed.

Article 12 of the first Geneva Convention states: "(Combatants) who are
sick and wounded...shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Party
to the conflict in whose power they may be..." The article goes on to
state that "any attempts on their lives, or violence to their persons,
shall be strictly prohibited..."

Article 24 of the first Geneva Convention states: "Medical personnel
exclusively engaged in...transport or treatment of the wounded or
sick...(and) staff exclusively engaged in the administration of medical
units and establishments...shall be respected and protected in all
circumstances."

Under the fourth Geneva Convention, Article 18 reads: "Civilian
hospitals organised to care to the wounded and sick, infirm and
maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but
shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the
conflict."

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

18) This Wickedly Morbid Joke is Making the Rounds in Baghdad
Posted 8 hr. 45 min. ago
http://www.iraqslog ger.com/index. php/post/ 194/Iraqi_ Joke_of_the_ Day

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the highway.

Suddenly a man knocks on his window. The driver rolls down his
window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists down the road have kidnapped George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney," the man says, "They're asking $100 million
ransom. Otherwise they're going to douse them with gasoline
and set them on fire. We're going from car to car taking
up a collection."

The driver asks, "How much is everyone giving on average?"

The man responds: "Most people are giving about a gallon."

James Starowicz
Blog: Imagine A World Of,
"PTSD: You didn't fight Alone Then,
You needn't fight Alone Now!!"

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

19) A Gag on Free Speech
New York Editorial
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/opinion/15fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The Bush administration is trampling on the First Amendment and
well-established criminal law by trying to use a subpoena to force
the American Civil Liberties Union to hand over a classified document
in its possession. The dispute is shrouded in secrecy, and very little
has been made public about the document, but we do not need
to know what’s in it to know what’s at stake: if the government
prevails, it will have engaged in prior restraint — almost always
a serious infringement on free speech — and it could start using
subpoenas to block reporting on matters of vital public concern.

Justice Department lawyers have issued a grand jury subpoena
to the A.C.L.U. demanding that it hand over “any and all copies”
of the three-and-a-half-page government document, which was
recently leaked to the group. The A.C.L.U. is asking a Federal District
Court judge in Manhattan to quash the subpoena.

There are at least two serious problems with the government’s action.
It goes far beyond what the law recognizes as the legitimate purpose
of a subpoena. Subpoenas are supposed to assist an investigation,
but the government does not need access to the A.C.L.U.’s document
for an investigation since it already has its own copy. It is instead
trying to confiscate every available copy of the document to keep
its contents secret. The A.C.L.U. says it knows of no other case
in which a grand jury subpoena has been used this way.

The subpoena is also a prior restraint because the government is
trying to stop the A.C.L.U. in advance from speaking about the
document’s contents. The Supreme Court has held that prior
restraints are almost always unconstitutional. The danger is too
great that the government will overreach and use them to ban
protected speech or interfere with free expression by forcing
the media, and other speakers, to wait for their words to be cleared
in advance. The correct way to deal with speech is to evaluate
its legality after it has occurred.

The Supreme Court affirmed these vital principles in the Pentagon
Papers case, when it rejected the Nixon administration’s attempts
to stop The Times and The Washington Post from publishing
government documents that reflected badly on its prosecution
of the Vietnam War. If the Nixon administration had been able
to use the technique that the Bush administration is trying now,
it could have blocked publication simply by ordering the newspapers
to hand over every copy they had of the papers.

If the A.C.L.U.’s description of its secret document is correct,
there is no legitimate national defense issue. The document does
not contain anything like intelligence sources or troop movements,
the group says. It is merely a general statement of policy whose release
“might perhaps be mildly embarrassing to the government.” Given
this administration’s abysmal record on these issues, this case could
set a disturbing and dangerous precedent. If the subpoena is enforced,
the administration will have gained a powerful new tool for rolling back
free-speech rights — one that could be used to deprive Americans
of information they need to make informed judgments about their
elected leaders’ policies and actions.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

20) Top Commanders Appear Set to Urge Larger U.S. Military
By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
December 15, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/world/middleeast/15military.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 — The review of Iraq policy by senior
commanders appears to be headed toward a recommendation
to increase the size of the American military, both to sustain
a long-term commitment in Iraq and to leave the United States
better positioned to deal with potential adversaries, in particular
Iran and North Korea, Pentagon and military officials said Thursday.

The latest indication came when the Army chief of staff,
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, called for expanding the force by adding
more active-duty troops and by making more use of the National
Guard and Reserve.

His statement, on Thursday, came a day after President Bush met
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon’s secure conference
room to discuss reshaping strategy in Iraq. That session, officials
said, included a detailed discussion of whether the armed services
are large enough to sustain the mission in Iraq and meet other
global security threats.

Officials who took part in the session or who were briefed on it
would not give specific figures that were being discussed for growth
goals. But their descriptions revealed a broad conclusion that has
received increasing support in Washington: that regardless of the
exact shape of President Bush’s new strategy on Iraq, the Army
and Marine Corps are stretched thin by their commitments around
the globe, in particular in Iraq.

That conclusion is being punctuated by the departure of Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who officially leaves his post on
Friday and who was long the champion of the idea that high
technology and better intelligence could substitute for a bigger
military.

Although expanding the Army’s size would be too slow a process
to provide immediate relief for the force in Iraq, several ideas
are being considered to fill the short-term demand for troops
there, especially in Baghdad.

One proposal being studied, according to Pentagon officials,
is accelerating the arrival in Iraq of a handful of combat brigades
already scheduled to deploy there in 2007. Sending troops
in early or keeping soldiers in Iraq past their scheduled
departure has been a way to temporarily increase American
troop presence in Iraq without ordering in forces that had
not been on the deployment roster.

A new study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative
research group in Washington, that was released on Thursday
also called for a surge of forces to Baghdad over the near
term on the grounds that the nascent Iraqi security force
is not up to the task.

The report was written by the military historian Frederick
W. Kagan and by Jack Keane, the retired general who served
as vice chief of staff of the Army. It calls for adding four
to five additional combat brigades to Baghdad and deploying
them in neighborhoods that have mixed Sunni and Shiite
populations and have been the scene of sectarian violence.

The report argues that this can be done without stretching
the Army and Marines to the breaking point, but it also advocates
increasing both forces by a total of at least 30,000 per year
for the next two years.

At the Pentagon, even those not supporting the surge option
argue that the Army needs to grow to sustain the force levels
required in Afghanistan and Iraq and to meet other national
security threats.

Officials who were briefed on the president’s discussion with
the Joint Chiefs said there was a consensus that the review
of administration strategy in Iraq must be broadened to include
decisions on how to prepare the American military for the global
counterterrorism mission beyond Iraq.

In particular, they said there was a need to show enough force
strength to deter potential adversaries from aggressive moves
based on an assumption that American power was bogged
down in Iraq.

“A lot of it was discussed yesterday with President Bush,” said
a senior Pentagon official who was briefed on the discussions
by one of those in attendance.

The nation faces three choices or “we will break the active
component,” General Schoomaker said in an appearance before
the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves. He said
the c