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DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!

See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255

ACTION:

We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.

Call, Email and Write:

1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]

National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/

Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml

Related:

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece

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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]

Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html

Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY

My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic

Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o

Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw

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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html

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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ

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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]

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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en

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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/

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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_

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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/

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Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327

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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489

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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/

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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"

CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.

"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."

"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "

Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.

The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.

Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.

Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.

Contact:

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) All That You Can Be
Risk Management
by Lauren Collins
April 9, 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/09/070409ta_talk_collins

2) No hope in Guantánamo
BY JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN
MIAMI HERALD
Apr. 05, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/v-print/story/64032.html

3) WE'VE BEEN SURGING FOR YEARS
By Don Monkerud
TomPaine.com
April 6, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/weve_been_surging_for_years.php

4) Permanent drought predicted for Southwest
"Study says global warming threatens to create a
Dust Bowl-like period. Water politics could
also get heated."
By Alan Zarembo and Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writers
April 6, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-swdrought6apr06,0,122112.story?coll=la-home-headlines

5) Democrats at War
WALL STREET JOURNAL
EDITORIAL
April 6, 2007; Page A10
[Via Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]

6) Ford Pays Chief $28 Million for 4 Months’ Work
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/business/06ford.html?ref=businessspecial

7) Comcast Chief Executive Receives $26 Million
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
March 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/businessspecial/30comcast.pay.html?ex=1176091200&en=a355f91bce1d207c&ei=5070

8) No Bonuses for Top G.M. Executives
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/businessspecial/29gmpay.html?ex=1176091200&en=b3bcb33a8bceaa23&ei=5070

9) Cuban jet bombing suspect ordered free on bail in U.S.
"Venezuela and Cuba want Luis Posada Carriles in a 1976 plane bombing
that killed 73. But in this country, the former CIA operative
is charged with lying to immigration officials."
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer
April 7, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-posada7apr07,1,7020766.story?coll=la-news-a_section

10) City asks court to quit Abu-Jamal case
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer1
April 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/ap_on_re_us/mumia_abu_jamal

11) Hot and Cold
Editorial
April 8,2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08sun1.html?hp

12) Doctor’s Index Predicts Fate for Migrants in the Desert
"...more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/08immig.html

13) Trail of Tears
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
(RE: THE LONG EXILE
A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic.
By Melanie McGrath.
268 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Royte.t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176050987-kCJ3ZpwQ2uOi7Yadi5MjcA

14) Sociable Darwinism
By NATALIE ANGIER
April 8, 2007
(RE:EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE
How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the
Way We Think About Our Lives.
By David Sloan Wilson.
390 pp. Delacorte Press. $24.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Angier.t.html?ref=review

15) Sweet Little Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp

16) 6-Year-Olds Under Arrest
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
Avon Park, Fla.
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html?hp

17) Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
By TIM GOLDEN
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html

18) Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09awol.html?ref=us

19) CLOSE CONTACT
To Woo Afghan Locals,
U.S. Troops Settle In
Tactic Wins Friends,
Isolates Insurgents,
But Boosts Casualties
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
April 9, 2007; Page A1
WALL STREET JOURNAL
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]

20) Crop Prices Soar,
Pushing Up Cost
Of Food Globally
New Demand for Biofuels
Feeds Inflation Pressure;
China, India Feel Pinch
By PATRICK BARTA
April 9, 2007; Page A1
The Wall Street Journal
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]

21) Injured troops shipped back into battle
"Salon has uncovered further evidence that the military sent soldiers
with acute post-traumatic stress disorder, severe back injuries and
other serious war wounds back to Iraq."
By Mark Benjamin
April 9, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/04/09/injured_soldiers/print.html

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1) All That You Can Be
Risk Management
by Lauren Collins
April 9, 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/09/070409ta_talk_collins

In the wake of a rise in substantiated instances
of misconduct by its recruiters, the United States
military, it was reported last month, is considering
installing surveillance cameras in its recruiting
stations. The military may also want to assess the
tactics that its employees use in the virtual realm.
This admissions season, an Army recruiter has been
e-mailing recent college graduates with the offer
of hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarship
money to pay for medical school, in exchange for
four years of service. Nothing new there. What’s
surprising is his assertion to students that they
would be better off in Baghdad than in Georgetown.

Susan Kahane, who is twenty-two, graduated from
Columbia last spring. When she took the MCAT,
in August, she checked a box to signal that she
wished to receive information about outside sources
of financial aid. Soon, she was inundated with
e-mails from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force
(“FREE MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!”). One, sent on January 31st
by Captain Christopher D. Mayhugh, of the Army
Medical Service Corps, stood out. “Upon finishing
your residency,” the message read, “you will be
assigned to one of a variety of locations including
Germany, Italy and Hawaii and your obligation will
be complete.” (The Medical Service Corps’s Web page,
in contrast, notes prominently that its officers
have participated in combat operations in Korea,
Kosovo, Somalia, Panama, and Iraq.)

Mayhugh’s omission of Iraq, Kahane recalled last week,
“seemed a little bit strange.” Still, she said,
“These e-mails were often slightly tempting to me,
because of my worries about paying for medical school.”

On March 14th, Kahane received another e-mail from
Mayhugh, with the subject “Medical school scholarships
still available.” This time, rather than invoking
European and tropical destinations, Mayhugh addressed
the prospect of being posted to a less than desirable
locale. “What if you get sent to Iraq?” he wrote
in the letter’s final paragraph. He continued:

Well, consider this: there has been an average of
160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during
the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that
gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate
in Washington, D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means
that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and
killed in our Nation’s Capitol, which has some
of the strictest gun control laws in the nation,
than you are in Iraq.

Kahane recalled, “After reading it once, I felt
strongly that something was wrong, but I didn’t
know what.” She looked up the figures and did the
math herself, and found that all the statistics
in the e-mail were either outdated or incorrect,
and that, even if they had been correct, Mayhugh
seemed to be comparing a yearly figure for Washington
with a monthly one for Iraq. (Going by Mayhugh’s
numbers, there would be nearly fifteen gun murders
in Washington every day. In reality, there were
about three murders, of any kind, per week in 2006.
In the same period, an average of sixteen American
troops died each week in Iraq.) Kimberly Thompson,
an associate professor of risk analysis and decision
science at Harvard’s School of Public Health, agreed,
last week, to evaluate Mayhugh’s claim and found the
discrepancy even starker. In her estimate, the risk
of being killed in Iraq is ten times higher than
the risk of being killed in Washington, D.C. “The
recruiter’s e-mail message is really amazingly
misleading,” she said.

It turns out, as Kahane learned with a subsequent
Google search, that “D.C. is more dangerous than
Iraq” is a well-worn canard. Representative Steve
King, a Republican from Iowa, promulgated a variation,
involving his wife’s safety, last year on the floor
of the House, while Mayhugh’s paragraph was plucked,
verbatim, from an e-mail that circulated in 2005.
The realization that Mayhugh’s message derived—one
could see, with nominal research—from a Web fallacy
was dispiriting to Kahane. She had written a letter
to Mayhugh, but didn’t send it. “I thought, I guess
he knows the math isn’t right, so what’s the point
of telling him?” she said.

Reached last week at his office in Maryland, Mayhugh
stood by the e-mail, saying, “Most people’s perception
of Iraq is that ‘Oh, my God, people are being murdered
over there by the thousands.’ I think if you look at
any type of situation where you have several hundred
thousand people on the ground and now you throw in the
fact that what they’re doing is dangerous and they
have very big heavy vehicles and firearms with live
ammunition, the number of people being killed over
there is pretty small.”

He acknowledged that the paragraph had come from
a forwarded e-mail, but said that, before pasting
it into his pitch, he had done “some simple calculations”
that supported its conclusions. “In what I’ve seen
in dealing with the war and the misperceptions of it,”
he said, “it seemed to me like those would be the right
numbers.” He went on, “I work in D.C. on a daily basis,
and I’m afraid to get out of my car in a lot of places.
I hear about police officers being murdered every day
in D.C. and Baltimore. And I’ve had thousands of friends
and colleagues go to Iraq and come back safely.”

Illustration: TOM BACHTELL

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2) No hope in Guantánamo
BY JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN
MIAMI HERALD
Apr. 05, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/v-print/story/64032.html

On Monday, I was at Guantánamo Bay to meet with Jumah
Al Dossari, one of the detainees my firm represents.
As always, I spent the first few hours of our meeting
trying to convince Jumah to fight the desperation
and hopelessness that threaten what little spirit
he has left.

Jumah has been at Guantánamo for more than five
years. The government has never charged him with
a crime and does not accuse him of taking any action
against the United States. For several years, Jumah
has been held alone in solid-wall cells from which
he cannot see other detainees or communicate except
by yelling. He has spent 22 to 24 hours a day by
himself in these cells. He has been short shackled,
threatened with death and, once, severly beaten.
Interrogators have told him that he will be at
Guantánamo for the next 50 years and that there
is no law at Guantánamo.

Sometimes the idea of spending the rest of his
life locked up thousands of miles from his family
is too much for Jumah. On Oct. 15, 2005, I walked
into an interview room to visit him. There was
blood on the floor. I looked up and saw Jumah
hanging by his neck from the other side of a metal
mesh wall that divided his cell from our meeting
area. He was bleeding from a gash in his arm.

I couldn't reach Jumah because the door to the
cell was locked. I yelled for guards who came,
unlocked the door and cut the noose from Jumah's
neck. I was ordered out of the room but later learned
that Jumah had survived. Since that day, Jumah
has tried to kill himself three times. Last spring
he slashed his throat with a razor, spraying blood
on the ceiling of his cell.

During our meeting on Monday, we talked about Jumah's
court case, a bleak—and therefore dangerous—subject.
I explained again that the Bush administration insists
it may detain anyone it designates an ''enemy combatant''
forever without a trial. I explained how Congress blessed
that notion in last year's Military Commissions Act,
which bars foreign ''enemy combatants'' from going to
court to challenge that designation. I explained that
lawyers for the detainees had challenged the act as
unconstitutional, but that in February a federal appeals
had ruled against us on the grounds that people like
Jumah have no rights.

Desperately wanting to boost his spirits, I also told
Jumah that there was reason to be optimistic. We had
asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court
decision and we felt pretty sure that our request
would be granted. Were that to happen, Jumah might
be a step closer to a court hearing.

At noon, I went to the galley—as the cafeteria at
Guantánamo is called—to get lunch for Jumah and myself.
While waiting for a burger, I glanced up at a television
tuned to CNN. Text ran across the bottom of the screen:
``Supreme Court refuses to hear Guantánamo detainee
appeals until alternative procedures are exhausted.''

Our request—the one reason I had given Jumah to be
optimistic—had been denied. The Supreme Court was
saying it might consider the detainees' cases, but
not until the detainees subjected themselves
to proceedings created by the Military Commissions Act.

It is a disturbing ruling because the government
says the purpose of these proceedings is not to
determine if a detainee is actually an ''enemy combatant''
but rather to determine if the military followed its own
rules in applying the ''enemy combatant'' label. For that
reason, detainees will have no chance to produce evidence
of their innocence that the military didn't consider
or to challenge the use of evidence obtained through
torture. Worse yet, these procedures will be held
before the same appeals court that recently found
the detainees have no rights at all.

I walked slowly back to the room where Jumah sat
shackled. I wondered if there was a good way to tell
a suicidal man that all three branches of our government
appear content to let him rot at Guantánamo. Nothing
came to mind.

Maybe I shouldn't have worried. Jumah's reaction
to bad legal news has become as muted as his emotions
generally. He long ago stopped believing that a court
will ever hear his case and thinks I'm naive for hoping
otherwise. Instead, Jumah believes that he has been
condemned to live forever on an island where there
is no law. He may well be right.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, an attorney, represents
several Guantánamo detainees.

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3) WE'VE BEEN SURGING FOR YEARS
By Don Monkerud
TomPaine.com
April 6, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/weve_been_surging_for_years.php

The number of U.S. forces involved in Iraq are at least twice the number
quoted in the media. The administration uses a number of deceptions,
definitional illusions and euphemisms -- including counting only "combat
forces" and "military personnel" -- to drastically undercount the invasion
force.

Even President Bush's January announcement of a "surge" of 21,500 U.S.
troops, opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has now morphed into 30,000
troops with an additional "headquarters staff" of 3,000 -- or more than 50
percent more than the official number. The currently reported total U.S.
military in Iraq is 145,000, forces which are required to occupy a country
slightly more than twice the size of Idaho.

The real number is almost impossible to find in government-released
information, even with a great amount of interpretation. It’s hidden
because few in the administration want to disclose the true extent of vast
U.S. resources invested in personnel, material, and other costs.

GlobalSecurity.org is a public policy organization that provides
background information on defense and homeland security. They note that
keeping track of American forces has become "significantly more difficult
as the military seeks to improve operational security and to deceive
potential enemies and the media as to the extent of American operations."

According to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, there are a number
of other reasons affecting the accurate counting of the number of military
forces involved in Iraq. Large numbers of troops are activated with
unspecified duties to unspecified areas; many small units from various
locations are being mobilized from the Army and National Guard, which
count units differently; and groups rotate in and out of Iraqi so quickly
it's impossible for anyone but the Pentagon to calculate how many are
there. The Pentagon tracks these numbers, but Pike says they aren't
telling.

"We only try to nail the numbers down when we think Americans are getting
ready to blow someone up," Pike says. "The Pentagon knows the numbers and
we have certainly not done anything to highball it. Certainly, if there's
a chance to release or hold numbers, they are parsimonious."

Additionally, private enterprise military "contractors" almost double the
number of U.S. forces in Iraq. After four contractors were hung from a
bridge in Fallujah in March 2004, the Bush administration stonewalled
congressional efforts to force the Pentagon to release information about
the number of contractors in Iraq. Finally, the Pentagon reported a total
of 25,000.

In "The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security,"
Deborah D. Avant, director for the Institute for Global and Internal
Studies at George Washington University, reports that official numbers are
difficult to find, but "This is the largest deployment of U.S. contractors
in a military operation."

In October, the military's first census of contractors totaled 100,000,
not counting subcontractors. And in February 2007, the Associated Press
reported 120,000 contractors (which would put Bush's "surge" closer to
50,000). Contractors, which some call mercenaries, provide support
services essential to maintaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Ten
times the number of contractors employed during the Persian Gulf War,
these contract mercenaries now cook meals, interrogate prisoners, fix flat
tires, repair vehicles, and provide guard duty.

Military personnel formerly filled these types of jobs until former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld instituted his "Total Force" plan,
which relies on a smaller U.S. military force with "its active and reserve
military components, its civil servants, and its contractors." Senator
Jim Webb of Virginia called this a "rent-an-army."

What are the total of U.S. forces are in Iraq? The government reported
145,000 U.S. military forces in Iraq, but John Pike estimates the current
total at 150,000. Another 20,000 will arrive as part of the "surge," a
last gasp public relations effort to save the operation from total
failure.

John Pike estimates another 30,000 are "in the theater" to provide
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" support. The Army and Marines have another
10,000 to 20,000 in Kuwait, and a nearby Air Force wing-bombing group has
5,000. Current naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, which represents a
show of force against Iran, include 10,000 U.S. personnel, the carrier
groups Eisenhower and the Stennis, and 15 warships.

Add the 120,000 contract mercenaries and the forces involved in the Iraqi
operation and the total comes to 300,000 to 360,000, more than twice the
"official" figure of 145,000 troops. This isn't counting the more than
5,000 British combat troops and navy, down from a high of 40,000 during
the initial invasion, or the ragtag remnants of the highly vaunted
"Coalition of the Willing," which has dwindled since the beginning of the
occupation to 27, mostly small, countries such as Armenia, Estonia,
Moldavia, and Latvia.

Manipulated figures and private military contractors provide the Bush
Administration with political cover to escape public scrutiny and keep
injuries, deaths, and secret operations out of the public eye. A more
accurate and honest view of participation in the Iraqi occupation by the
government could give Americans more reason to oppose the waste of lives
and resources on this ill-conceived, poorly planned, and disastrous
venture.

--Don Monkerud is an California-based writer who follows cultural, social
and political issues. He can be reached at monkerud@cruzio.com.


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4) Permanent drought predicted for Southwest
"Study says global warming threatens to create a
Dust Bowl-like period. Water politics could
also get heated."
By Alan Zarembo and Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writers
April 6, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-swdrought6apr06,0,122112.story?coll=la-home-headlines

The driest periods of the last century ˜ the Dust
Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s ˜
may become the norm in the Southwest United
States within decades because of global warming,
according to a study released Thursday.

The research suggests that the transformation may
already be underway. Much of the region has been
in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's
analysis of computer climate models shows as the
beginning of a long dry period.

The study, published online in the journal
Science, predicted a permanent drought by 2050
throughout the Southwest ˜ one of the fastest-
growing regions in the nation.

The data tell "a story which is pretty darn scary
and very strong," said Jonathan Overpeck, a
climate researcher at the University of Arizona
who was not involved in the study.

Richard Seager, a research scientist at
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia
University and the lead author of the study, said
the changes would force an adjustment to the
social and economic order from Colorado
to California.

"There are going to be some tough decisions on
how to allocate water," he said. "Is it going to
be the cities, or is it going to be agriculture?"

Seager said the projections, based on 19 computer
models, showed a surprising level of agreement.
"There is only one model that does not have
a drying trend," he said.

Philip Mote, an atmospheric scientist at the
University of Washington who was not involved in
the study, added, "There is a convergence of the
models that is very strong and very worrisome."

The future effect of global warming is the
subject of a United Nations report to be released
today in Brussels, the second of four installments
being unveiled this year.

The first report from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change was released in February. It
declared that global warming had become a
"runaway train" and that human activities were
"very likely" to blame.

The landmark report helped shift the long and
rancorous political debate over climate change
from whether man-made warming was real to what
could be done about it.

The mechanics and patterns of drought in the
Southwest have been the focus of increased
scrutiny in recent years.

During the last period of significant, prolonged
drought ˜ the Medieval Climate Optimum from about
the years 900 to 1300 ˜ the region experienced
dry periods that lasted as long as 20 years,
scientists say.

Drought research has largely focused on the
workings of air currents that arise from
variations in sea-surface temperature in the
Pacific Ocean known as El Niño and La Niña.

The most significant in terms of drought is La
Niña. During La Niña years, precipitation belts
shift north, parching the Southwest.

The latest study investigated the possibility of
a broader, global climatic mechanism that could
cause drought. Specifically, they looked at the
Hadley cell, one of the planet's most powerful
atmospheric circulation patterns, driving weather
in the tropics and subtropics.

Within the cell, air rises at the equator, moves
toward the poles and descends over the subtropics.

Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, the
researchers said, warms the atmosphere, which
expands the poleward reach of the Hadley cell.
Dry air, which suppresses precipitation, then
descends over a wider expanse of the
Mediterranean region, the Middle East
and North America.

All of those areas would be similarly affected,
though the study examined only the effect on
North America in a swath reaching from Kansas to
California and south into Mexico.

The researchers tested a "middle of the road"
scenario of future carbon dioxide emissions to
predict rainfall and evaporation. They assumed
that emissions would rise until 2050 and then
decline. The carbon dioxide concentration in the
atmosphere would be 720 parts per million in
2100, compared with about 380 parts per million
today.

The computer models, on average, found about a
15% decline in surface moisture ˜ which is
calculated by subtracting evaporation from
precipitation ˜ from 2021 to 2040, as compared
with the average from 1950 to 2000.

A 15% drop led to the conditions that caused the
Dust Bowl in the Great Plains and the northern
Rockies during the 1930s.

Even without the circulation changes, global
warming intensifies existing patterns of vapor
transport, causing dry areas to get drier and wet
areas to get wetter. When it rains, it is likely
to rain harder, but scientists said that was
unlikely to make up for losses from a shifting
climate.

Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western
Regional Climate Center in Reno, who was not
involved in the study, said he thought the region
would still have periodic wet years that were
part of the natural climate variation.

But, he added, "In the future we may see fewer
such very wet years."

Although the computer models show the drying has
already started, they are not accurate enough to
know whether the drought is the result of global
warming or a natural variation.

"It's really hard to tell," said Connie
Woodhouse, a paleoclimatologist at the University
of Arizona. "It may well be one of the first
events we can attribute to global warming."

The U.S. and southern Europe will be better
prepared to deal with frequent drought than
most African nations.

For the U.S., the biggest problem would be water
shortages. The seven Colorado River Basin states
˜ Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico,
Arizona and California ˜ would battle each other
for diminished river flows.

Mexico, which has a share of the Colorado River
under a 1944 treaty and has complained of U.S.
diversions in the past, would join the struggle.

Inevitably, water would be reallocated from
agriculture, which uses most of the West's
supply, to urban users, drying up farms.
California would come under pressure to build
desalination plants on the coast, despite
environmental concerns.

"This is a situation that is going to cause water
wars," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colo.

"If there's not enough water to meet everybody's
allocation, how do you divide it up?"

Officials from seven states recently forged an
agreement on the current drought, which has left
the Colorado River's big reservoirs ˜ Lake Powell
and Lake Mead ˜ about half-empty. Without some
very wet years, federal water managers say,
Lake Mead may never refill.

In the next couple of years, water deliveries may
have to be reduced to Arizona and Nevada, whose
water rights are second to California.

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5) Democrats at War
WALL STREET JOURNAL
EDITORIAL
April 6, 2007; Page A10
[Via Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]

Democrats took Congress last fall in part by opposing the war in Iraq,
but it is becoming clear that they view their election as a mandate for
something far more ambitious -- to wit, promoting and executing their own
foreign policy, albeit without the detail of a Presidential election.

Their intentions were made plain this week with two remarkable acts by their
House and Senate leaders. Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsed Senator Russ
Feingold's proposal to withdraw from Iraq immediately, cutting off funds
entirely within a year. He promised a vote soon, as part of what the
Washington Post reported would also be a Democratic offensive to close
Guantanamo, reinstate legal rights for terror suspects, and improve
relations with Cuba.

Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her now famous sojourn to Syria,
donning a head scarf and advertising that she was conducting shuttle
diplomacy between Jerusalem and Damascus. If there was any doubt that her
trip was intended as far more than a routine Congressional "fact-finding"
trip, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos put it to rest by declaring
that, "We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy. I view my job as
beginning with restoring overseas credibility and respect for the United
States."

Americans should understand how extraordinary this is. There have been
previous battles over U.S. foreign policy and fierce domestic criticism.
In the 1990s, these columns defended Bill Clinton against "the Republican
drift toward isolationism and political opportunism" amid the Kosovo
conflict. But rarely in U.S. history have Congressional leaders sought to
conduct their own independent diplomacy, with the Speaker acting as a Prime
Minister traveling with a Secretary of State in the person of Mr. Lantos.

Yes, Congressional Republicans have visited Syria too. But Ms. Pelosi isn't
some minority back-bencher. Without a Democrat in the White House, she and
Mr. Reid are the national leaders of their party. Even Newt Gingrich, for
all his grand domestic ambitions in 1995, took a muted stand on foreign
policy, realizing that in the American system the executive has the bulk of
national security power. He also understood he would do the country no
favors by sending a mixed message to our enemies -- at the time, Slobodan
Milosevic.

What was Ms. Pelosi hoping to accomplish, other than embarrassing President
Bush? "We were very pleased with reassurances we received from the president
that he was ready to resume the peace process," she told reporters after
meeting with dictator Bashar Assad. "We expressed our interest in using our
good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria."

She purported to convey a message from Israel's Ehud Olmert expressing
similar interest in "the peace process," except that the Israeli Prime
Minister felt obliged to issue a clarification noting that Ms. Pelosi had
got the message wrong. Israel hadn't changed its policy, which is that it
will negotiate only when Mr. Assad repudiates his support for terrorism and
stops trying to dominate Lebanon. As a shuttle diplomat, Ms. Pelosi needs
some practice.

Mr. Lantos probably got closer to their real intentions when he told
reporters that "This is only the beginning of our constructive dialogue
with Syria, and we hope to build on it." The Pelosi cavalcade is intended
to show that if only the Bush Administration would engage in "constructive
dialogue," the Syrians, Israelis and everyone else could all get along.

This is the same Syrian regime that has facilitated the movement of money
and insurgents to kill Americans in Iraq; that has been implicated by a U.N.
probe in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; and that
has snubbed any number of U.S. overtures since the fall of Saddam Hussein in
2003. Perhaps if he works hard enough, Mr. Lantos can match the 22 visits to
Damascus that Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Warren Christopher made in
the 1990s trying to squeeze peace from that same stone.

In fact, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Lantos both voted for the Syria Accountability
and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 that ordered Mr. Bush to
choose from a menu of six sanctions to impose on Damascus. Mr. Bush chose
the weakest two sanctions and dispatched a new Ambassador to Syria in a
goodwill gesture in 2004. Only later, in the wake of the Hariri murder and
clear intelligence of Syria's role in aiding Iraqi Baathists, did Mr. Bush
conclude that Mr. Assad's real goal was to reassert control over Lebanon and
bleed Americans in Iraq.

With her trip, Ms. Pelosi has now reassured the Syrian strongman that
Mr. Bush lacks the domestic support to impose any further pressure on his
country. She has also made it less likely that Mr. Assad will cooperate with
the Hariri probe, or assist the Iraqi government in defeating Baathist and
al Qaeda terrorists.
* * *

Back in Washington, Harry Reid says his response to Mr. Bush's certain veto
of his Iraq spending bill will be to escalate. He now supports cutting off
funds and beginning an immediate withdrawal, even as General David
Petraeus's surge in Baghdad unfolds and shows signs of promise. If Mr. Bush
were as politically cynical as Democrats think, he'd let Mr. Reid's policy
become law. Then Democrats would share responsibility for whatever mayhem
happened next.

So this is Democratic foreign policy: Assure our enemies that they can
ignore a President who still has 21 months to serve; and wash their hands of
Baghdad and of their own guilt for voting to let Mr. Bush go to war. No
doubt Democrats think the President's low job approval, and public
unhappiness with the war, gives them a kind of political immunity. But we
wonder.

Once we leave Iraq, America's enemies will still reside in the Mideast; and
they will be stronger if we leave behind a failed government and bloodbath
in Iraq. Mr. Bush's successor will have to contain the damage, and that
person could even be a Democrat. But by reverting to their Vietnam message
of retreat and by blaming Mr. Bush for all the world's ills, Democrats on
Capitol Hill may once again convince voters that they can't be trusted with
the White House in a dangerous world.

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6) Ford Pays Chief $28 Million for 4 Months’ Work
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/business/06ford.html?ref=businessspecial

The Ford Motor Company paid its new chief executive,
Alan R. Mulally, $28.18 million in his first four months
on the job, the automaker said in a regulatory filing
yesterday.

His compensation included an $18.5 million bonus that
Ford, which reported a record $12.7 billion loss last
year, disclosed in September when it hired him from
Boeing.

Figures in Ford’s annual proxy statement show that his
pay was more than three times that of any other executive
at the company. That includes the executive chairman,
William Clay Ford Jr., who has kept a 2005 promise not
to accept any new salary, bonus or stock awards until
Ford consistently earns a profit.

The second-highest pay, $8.67 million, was also for only
a few months’ work; it went to James J. Padilla, who
retired as president and chief operating officer in July.

Three executives received bonuses for their roles
in reducing manufacturing capacity, cutting costs
and achieving other goals as part of Ford’s overhaul
plan, known as the Way Forward. The awards were part
of a retention program that the company recently
abandoned.

Mark Fields, president of the Americas division, earned
$2.29 million of his $5.57 million in total compensation
from that program. Lewis W. K. Booth, executive vice
president for Europe, received a $1.7 million retention
incentive, while Don R. Leclair, Ford’s chief financial
officer, received $1.32 million.

Ford said it spent $517,560 to give Mr. Fields use
of a company jet in 2006, a perk he stopped using
in January after it received considerable negative
publicity. Ford now buys first-class commercial airfares
to fly Mr. Fields from company offices in Dearborn, Mich.,
to his family’s home in South Florida each weekend.

Executive compensation at all three Detroit automakers
has been closely scrutinized since they began revamping
plans that will close dozens of factories and eliminate
tens of thousands of jobs. They are trying to overcome
multibillion-dollar losses and compete better with
foreign-based rivals like Toyota and Honda.

This year, as the automakers negotiate a new labor
agreement with the United Automobile Workers union,
workers are certain to resist demands for concessions
if they consider executive salaries to be excessive.

Union members have criticized the awarding of restricted
stock option bonuses to top executives at General Motors
— although G.M. paid no cash bonuses for the second
consecutive year — and a proposal at Ford to pay bonuses
to executives there. Ford later announced a program
to pay modest bonuses of at least $300 to all employees.

Mr. Mulally earned a base salary of $666,667, or $2 million
annualized. He was granted a $7.5 million signing bonus
and $11 million to make up for bonuses and stock options
he forfeited by leaving Boeing. Ford valued the stock and
option awards he received last year at $8.68 million.

In his final year at Boeing, where he headed the commercial
airplanes division, Mr. Mulally earned a total
of $9.96 million.

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7) Comcast Chief Executive Receives $26 Million
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
March 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/businessspecial/30comcast.pay.html?ex=1176091200&en=a355f91bce1d207c&ei=5070

The Comcast Corporation, the nation’s largest cable company,
paid its chief executive, Brian L. Roberts, a total
of $26 million last year, according to its proxy
statement released today.

That figure included a salary of $2.5 million, a bonus
of $3 million and other payments including a cash
bonus of $8.4 million.

Mr. Roberts’s pay exceeded by just $2 million that
of his father, Ralph J. Roberts, who is chairman
of the executive and finance committees.

The pay package for Ralph Roberts, who was a founder
of the company but is no longer its chief executive
or chairman, has annoyed some investors over the years.
Mr. Roberts, who is 87, earned a total of $24.1 million
last year, a figure that included a salary of $1.8 million,
an option award of $3.7 million and another payment
of $10.3 million, which included $4.1 million related
to life insurance premiums.

David L. Cohen, the company’s executive vice president,
defended the compensation structure. "Our compensation
plan is carefully designed to align executive
compensation with the company’s annual and long-term
performance goals and with shareholder interests,”
he wrote in an e-mail message.

Comcast’s stock did better last year than it had done
previously, rising from $17.48 a share at the beginning
of the year to $28.22 a share at the end of the year.

In 2005, Glass Lewis & Company, a research firm that
advises institutional shareholders on governance issues,
argued that Brian Roberts, his father and three top managers
were grossly overpaid. At the time several investors said
privately that they were particularly annoyed that Ralph
Roberts continued to receive a lucrative pay package when
he was no longer chairman. In 2005, Comcast stock declined
21 percent. The company said that a portion of Ralph Roberts’
pay was determined by arrangements made when he was the
chief executive.

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8) No Bonuses for Top G.M. Executives
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/businessspecial/29gmpay.html?ex=1176091200&en=b3bcb33a8bceaa23&ei=5070

DETROIT, March 28 — General Motors, which significantly
improved its financial performance in 2006 yet did not
earn a profit, said on Wednesday that for a second
consecutive year, it would not pay cash bonuses
to top executives.

Such bonuses would undoubtedly have rankled members
of the United Automobile Workers union ahead of this
summer’s contract talks, although a G.M. spokeswoman,
Renee Rashid-Merem, declined to say whether the pending
negotiations were a factor.

“It’s a decision that’s made on an annual basis,”
Ms. Rashid-Merem said. She added that the decision
affected about 20 managers, including the chief
executive, Rick Wagoner, and the vice chairman,
Robert A. Lutz.

Full details on executives’ compensation will be
released next month when the company files its annual
proxy statement.

Last week, some U.A.W. members expressed anger
after G.M. disclosed in regulatory filings that
Mr. Wagoner and other top executives would receive
bonuses in the form of restricted stock options.
G.M. had not awarded stock options since 2003.

The union, which concluded a two-day collective
bargaining convention Wednesday in Detroit, also
grew irritated recently when executives at the
Ford Motor Company said they were considering
management bonuses. Instead, Ford said it would
give bonuses of at least $300 to all employees.

Union members say the leaders of Detroit’s automakers
should not receive incentives at a time that they
are eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and
cutting benefits for hourly workers and retirees.
Ford lost $12.7 billion last year, while G.M.
posted a $2 billion loss.

G.M.’s decision to forgo cash bonuses this year,
as it did in 2006 after the company lost $10.4 billion,
was first reported Wednesday afternoon
by Bloomberg News.

During this week’s bargaining convention, the U.A.W.’s
president, Ron Gettelfinger, repeatedly criticized
executives at the Delphi Corporation, the auto supplier
that declared bankruptcy in 2005, for collecting
bonuses while trying to cut hourly workers’ pay
and benefits. Delphi says the $37 million in incentive
pay recently approved by a bankruptcy judge is necessary
to keep top executives from leaving.

Mr. Gettelfinger did not specifically disparage executives
at the automakers, but he made clear that the union intended
to vigorously fight any demands made during the contract
talks that workers agree to concessions.

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9) Cuban jet bombing suspect ordered free on bail in U.S.
"Venezuela and Cuba want Luis Posada Carriles in a 1976 plane bombing
that killed 73. But in this country, the former CIA operative
is charged with lying to immigration officials."
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer
April 7, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-posada7apr07,1,7020766.story?coll=la-news-a_section

MIAMI — A federal judge Friday ordered Cuban militant Luis Posada
Carriles freed from a New Mexico jail, ruling he be allowed to live
under electronic surveillance with his family in Miami while awaiting
trial May 11 on charges of lying to immigration authorities.

The move to free the 79-year-old, who is suspected of blowing up a
Cuban airliner in 1976 and bombing Havana hotels in the late 1990s,
sparked outrage in Cuba. The Communist Party newspaper Granma posted
the news on its website under a headline that read: "Blackmail Gets
Results."

Posada has never been charged in U.S. courts in connection with those
terrorist acts, his critics contend, because he likely threatened to
disclose other violence committed during his decades of covert work
with the CIA.

A Bay of Pigs veteran who once served time in Panama for plotting to
kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Posada has become a political
conundrum for the Bush administration. The president and his
Republican allies have benefited from the support of influential
Cuban exiles in Miami, many of whom view Posada as a patriotic
freedom fighter.

Posada entered the United States illegally in March 2005, about eight
months after he and three other Florida-based Cuban militants were
pardoned on illegal weapons and conspiracy charges by outgoing
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.

The move came four years into Posada's eight-year sentence, and was
seen as a favor to Bush, whose reelection in November 2004 was riding
on the continued backing of Miami Cubans.

The other three men, all U.S. citizens, arrived here to a hero's
welcome while Posada — Cuban-born and Venezuela-naturalized — made
his way home clandestinely. Posada held a Miami news conference,
fueling foreign outcry that the U.S. government was providing refuge
for a terrorist. He was arrested in May 2005. Cuba and Venezuela want
Posada extradited to stand trial for the Cubana de Aviacion bombing
that killed all 73 on board the Caracas to Havana flight.

Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela in 1985 while he awaited a
third trial in the jetliner bombing off Barbados. He was acquitted
twice.

After his 2005 arrest, Posada first was held in an immigration lockup
in El Paso — where he told officials he had made his way to the
United States with the help of a smuggler via Mexico and Texas.

Cuban media, however, reported that Posada actually was picked up
from Mexico's Yucatan peninsula by a shrimp boat owned by Cuban
American developer Santiago Alvarez and brought to a Gulf Coast
marina. Alvarez is in jail following a guilty plea on weapons
violations charges.

The El Paso immigration court ordered Posada deported in September
2005, but U.S. authorities were unable to persuade any of the seven
allied countries contacted to accept him. A federal judge ruled that
he couldn't be extradited to Cuba or Venezuela because of the
possibility he would be tortured or abused in the custody of those
governments.

Last fall, Posada's Miami lawyer, Eduardo Soto, filed a writ of
habeas corpus seeking his release. Another Texas judge ordered the
federal government to charge Posada with a crime by Feb. 1 or release
him.

Then a federal grand jury in January indicted Posada on immigration
violations and transferred him to a prison in Otero County, N.M. —
voiding the deadline by placing him in custody pending a criminal
proceeding.

On Friday, shortly before the court closed for Easter weekend, U.S.
District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso ordered Posada released.
She did not address a government request to keep him jailed pending
an appeal.

Posada's El Paso attorney, Felipe D.J. Millan, could not be reached
for comment. But he told the Associated Press it was unlikely Posada
would be released over the holiday weekend.

"He deserves to go home and live in peace and enjoy his family,"
Millan said. "Obviously we'll do whatever we need to do to post bond.
We'll try to get him [out] as soon as possible."

Cardone's nine-page ruling required Posada to post a $250,000 bond,
and mandated that his wife and two adult children put up $100,000
bond to ensure their compliance with other conditions of his release,
including 24-hour home confinement and wearing an electronic
monitoring device.

carol.williams@latimes.com

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10) City asks court to quit Abu-Jamal case
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer1
April 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/ap_on_re_us/mumia_abu_jamal

Prosecutors want the entire 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse
itself from the latest appeal for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal because
Gov. Ed Rendell ˜ whose wife serves on the court ˜ was district attorney
during his trial.

Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter and Black Panther, was convicted in
1982 of killing a police officer. In his latest appeal, his attorneys say
prosecutors practiced racial discrimination during jury selection; an
allegation prosecutors deny.

"Since Mr. Rendell was the elected district attorney at the time in
question, and so would have been responsible for the supposed 'routine'
racially discriminatory practices of Philadelphia prosecutors, Abu-Jamal's
accusations necessarily implicate Mr. Rendell personally," Assistant
District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr. wrote in a motion last week.

A federal judge in 2001 overturned Abu-Jamal's death sentence but upheld
his conviction. Both sides appealed that ruling to the 3rd Circuit, whose
members include the governor's wife, Marjorie O. Rendell.

Prosecutors could simply ask for Judge Rendell to recuse herself but they
want to avoid any possible grounds for a future appeal.

Abu-Jamal was convicted in the Dec. 9, 1981, shooting death officer Daniel
Faulkner after the officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother. He remains on
death row during the appeals.

His writings and taped speeches on the justice system have made Abu-Jamal
a popular figure among activists who believe he was the victim of a racist
justice system. Abu-Jamal is black; Faulkner was white.

Abu-Jamal's lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, opposes Byrne's
motion, according to court records. He did not return telephone messages
seeking comment.

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11) Hot and Cold
Editorial
April 8,2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08sun1.html?hp

Last week began with a Supreme Court decision declaring
that the federal government had the authority to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions and all but ordering the Bush
administration to do so. It ended with a report from
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the
world’s authoritative voice on global warming — warning
that failure to contain these emissions will have
disastrous environmental effects, especially in poorer
countries, which are least able to defend themselves
and their people against the consequences of climate
change.

One would hope that these events would shake President
Bush out of his state of denial and add his authority
to the chorus of governors, legislators and business
leaders calling for an aggressive regulatory and
technological response to the dangers of global warming.
They haven’t. When asked about the Supreme Court decision,
the president said he thought he was already doing enough.

He argued further that there was little point in the
United States’ doing any more unless other polluters
like China acted as well. That ignores the reality
that no developing country is going to move unless
the United States — which produces one-fourth
of the world’s emissions with only 5 percent
of its population — takes the lead.

The report from the intergovernmental panel was
the second of three due this year. The first
concluded with “90 percent certainty” that humans
had caused the rise in atmospheric temperatures
over the last half-century. The most recent
focused on the consequences, few of them positive.

The northern latitudes will have longer growing
seasons. But elsewhere climate change will lead
to more severe storms, the flooding of tropical
islands and coastlines inhabited by hundreds of
millions of people, the likely extinction of at
least one-fourth of the world’s species and,
in poorer countries in Asia and Africa, drought
and hunger.

Some of these changes have begun. “We’re no longer
arm-waving with models,” said Martin Parry, the
co-chairman of the team that wrote the report.
But the report also makes clear that while
emissions already accumulated in the atmosphere
make some damage inevitable, the worst can be
avoided if the world’s nations take swift action
to stabilize and then reverse emissions.

What must be avoided, the report said, is a rise
of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which
truly devastating effects will begin to kick in.
But such a rise is almost inevitable over the
next century if the world continues to do
business as usual.

The panel’s next paper will discuss alternatives
to business as usual. These policies will almost
certainly require a major shift in the way energy
is produced and used, as well as massive investments
in new technologies. They will also be expensive.
But what the world’s scientists are telling us,
with increasing confidence, is that the costs
of doing nothing will be far greater than the
costs of acting now.

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12) Doctor’s Index Predicts Fate for Migrants in the Desert
"...more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/08immig.html

TUCSON, April 7 (AP) — An emergency room physician
has devised a scientific index to predict the likelihood
that illegal immigrants will die while walking through
the Arizona desert in extreme heat conditions.

The physician, Dr. Samuel Keim, concluded that the
probability of death reached 50 percent when the
temperature climbed to 104 degrees.

“It’s like a weather forecast,” said the Rev. Robin
Hoover, whose Humane Borders group maintains water
stations at desert sites in southern Arizona and
northern Mexico. “If he can forecast it to the
U.S. Border Patrol, more of their agents can be
scattered out looking for people in trouble.”

Dr. Keim said he hoped to begin issuing daily
forecasts by May, but he had not determined how
to disseminate the information and with whom
to share it.

“We’re still negotiating that with various different
entities,” he said, declining to give specifics
because of worries that the intense political
debate surrounding illegal immigration could
scare off participants.

Deaths of migrants on the Arizona-Mexico border
have soared in recent years as tighter border
security sends people to more-remote desert
areas. Some migrants cross 50 or more miles
of desert.

In July 2005, Border Patrol agents recovered
72 dead illegal immigrants in the agency’s
Tucson sector. Nearly all died from heat
exposure.

Ron Bellavia, commander of the Border Patrol’s
rescue operations in the Tucson area, said
an index like Dr. Keim’s “would be an appropriate
measure to probably reduce exposure or
environmental injuries.”

The forecasts could also be shared with groups
near Mexican migrant-staging areas, where the
warnings could be posted, Mr. Hoover said.

For years, the Border Patrol and the Mexican
government have issued announcements about the
desert’s heat-related perils, but Dr. Keim said
he did not know whether migrants read or heeded
them.

Dr. Keim matched heatstroke victims with dates
of death and desert temperatures using data
collected from 2002 to 2006 in Pima County.

Dr. Keim, an associate professor at the University
of Arizona and an emergency room physician in Tucson,
said that in recent years more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County.

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13) Trail of Tears
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
(RE: THE LONG EXILE
A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic.
By Melanie McGrath.
268 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Royte.t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176050987-kCJ3ZpwQ2uOi7Yadi5MjcA

Throughout human history, seemingly simple turns of events
have changed the fates of individuals and nations. In 1906,
Thomas Watt Coslett invented a way to keep iron corset
stays from rusting, and the bottom fell out of the
whale-bone market. The whalers who remained on the
eastern shore of Hudson Bay switched to trading for
the creamy pelts of the Arctic fox, which local Inuit,
on the Ungava Peninsula, began to trap in ever greater
numbers. But when prices for skins fell in 1950, at
a time when fox populations had also crashed, trappers —
formerly subsistence hunters — moved to trading posts
and begged rations from the Canadian police.

Meanwhile the cold war raged, and the Canadian
government became increasingly concerned about
its sovereignty in the east Arctic archipelago.
The United States and Canada jointly ran a weather
station on Ellesmere Island, but Canadian officials
wanted permanent residents there. The remedy to both
the geopolitical and welfare problems was simple:
uproot the Ungava Inuit and plant them 1,200 miles
north, on Ellesmere. In “The Long Exile,” Melanie
McGrath tells the story of this forced relocation —
a tale of almost unrelenting horror — with so much
moral vigor and descriptive verve that one quits
reading only long enough to shake one’s head in
disbelief. And then, with a shiver, reads on.

To succeed on Hudson Bay, the Inuit needed to know
everything about their immediate surroundings: the
landmarks, the animals’ travel and migration routes,
the location of fresh-water springs, berries, bird
eggs and willow-worm cocoons to dip into seal fat
for dinner. Describing the land’s natural features
with lyrical precision, McGrath emphasizes that
the harsh physical realities of this place shaped
not only how the Inuit lived but also their
personalities, making a strong case that psychology
is destiny. At one time, expressing rage, lust or
ambition were considered so threatening to Inuit
group survival that persistent offenders were
banished. But while serenity and self-restraint
were adaptive in the Inuit’s ancestral environment,
their unwillingness to speak out, on Ellesmere,
would almost kill them.

It was the late summer of 1953 when the Canadian
government deposited three reluctant Inuit families,
including a master carver named Paddy Aqiatusuk,
on a narrow Ellesmere beach. They had been promised
abundant game and a return ticket in one year’s
time if they were unhappy. They were, in fact,
instantly miserable.

At 81 degrees north latitude, Ellesmere is, McGrath
notes, the harshest terrain that humans have ever
continuously inhabited. A high arctic desert, its
interior is “an impenetrable mass of frozen crags
and deep fjords.” The Inuit soon learned that marine
mammals were scarce, as were caribou, fox and fresh
water. Their clothing wasn’t warm enough, and their
sleds and harnesses were all wrong for the rocky
terrain. The rough waters made hunting by kayak
impossible, and the dry wind made their dogs’ lungs
bleed. Sufficient snow for snow houses arrived late,
leaving the settlers in flimsy canvas tents until
late winter. There wasn’t enough fuel for fires.
The air was almost 30 degrees colder than back home,
and the near constant wind made it feel more than
50 degrees worse. Four months of darkness “made
hunting an almost daily terror,” McGrath writes.
Ellesmere supported a small musk ox population,
but the police detachment, 40 miles from the Inuit
encampment, forbade killing them. The starving
Inuit ate bird feathers, made broth from boot
liners. “The children leaked diarrhea then vomit
which the women in the camp fed to the dogs rather
than have it go to waste.”

Too reticent to complain, even when to save her
family from starvation, Aqiatusuk’s 6-year-old
granddaughter was forced onto the ice to hunt in
total darkness, the Inuit persevered. When they
finally screwed up their courage and asked to go
home, the police refused. It was logistically
complicated: the Inuit must cope. Government careers
were on the line: the colony had to succeed. Its
inhabitants were the equivalent of national flags
fluttering in the wind.

McGrath, wickedly talented, brings every bit of
this to life (helped by her Inuit subjects’
preternatural memory for details). We hear the
gnash of the ice (“a terrible, raw, geologic sound”),
feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. We feel, too,
the Inuit’s aching sense of abandonment and betrayal,
their utter disorientation in a land where they knew
nothing of the animal routes, the sea’s eddies and
currents or the habits of wind and ice. Such details
are not a matter of comfort, they are a matter
of survival. McGrath is a meticulous researcher
— she took the trouble to learn the names and
colors of lichens that grow on rocks beneath
bird colonies and fox lookouts — and she writes
as if she’d lived in the Arctic for years. The
book moves quickly, to a drumbeat of doom. As
the Inuit approach their new home, “the frail
summer had already begun to sicken and the sky
pressed down on the land like a dead hand.”

McGrath, who has written three previous books,
is smart to focus on Aqiatusuk and his extended
family. They humanize her tale, which includes
a history of exploration in the eastern Canadian
Arctic and of the relentless exploitation of Inuits
by whites. Aqiatusuk was the adoptive father of
a boy named Josephie, whose real father was the
American Robert Flaherty, the director of “Nanook
of the North.” Filmed on the Ungava Peninsula
in the 1920s, the so-called documentary idealized
the Inuit as innocents in an unblemished land.
The movie colored the Western view of Inuit life
in the Arctic for generations as it traveled the
globe winning prizes, immortalizing a world that
never existed. Actually, the Inuit way of life
was already tainted by white fur traders by the
time Flaherty arrived (he himself was financially
backed by a trader), and the film’s starring family
was entirely contrived, just like the settlement
on Ellesmere, a place with no history or purpose
beyond politics. According to McGrath, Flaherty
made Nanook out of admiration for the Inuit’s “raw
unquestioning confidence,” qualities shattered by
the move to Ellesmere. As an adult, Josephie Flaherty,
whose mother starred in “Nanook” (and cohabited
with Flaherty), would follow Aqiatusuk to Ellesmere
and die there, a broken man. But his daughter Martha,
the child hunter and granddaughter of Robert Flaherty,
eventually escaped and later forced the Canadian
government to reckon with its crimes.

As the years wore on, the Inuit gradually learned
how to survive on Ellesmere. They constructed huts
from scrap wood, revamped their sleds and dog harnesses.
They learned the beluga’s migration route and would
eventually hunt over a range of 6,864 square miles
each year. In 1962, the government sent a teacher
to the island, but only two school books: one on
how to run a bank, the other called “The Roads
of Texas.”

Forty years after the first families left Ungava
for Ellesmere, the Canadian government held hearings
to investigate the relocation program. At its conclusion,
the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples called
the relocation “one of the worst human rights violations
in the history of Canada.” The country was shocked
by the abuse and arrogance of its leaders, who
eventually made financial reparations of 10 million
Canadian dollars to the survivors and their families.
But the government has yet to apologize.

Elizabeth Royte, whose “Garbage Land: On the Secret
Trail of Trash,” has recently been published
in paperback, is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

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14) Sociable Darwinism
By NATALIE ANGIER
April 8, 2007
(RE:EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE
How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the
Way We Think About Our Lives.
By David Sloan Wilson.

390 pp. Delacorte Press. $24.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Angier.t.html?ref=review

Just as in the classic clashes of nature, where every
mutational upgrade in a carnivore’s strength or cunning
is soon countered by a speedier or more paranoid model
of antelope, so the pitched struggle between evolutionary
theory and its deniers has yielded a bristling diversity
of ploys and counterploys. The heavyhanded biblical
literalism of creationist science evolves into the
feints and curlicues of intelligent design, and the
casual dismissiveness with which scientists long
regarded the anti-evolutionists gives way to a belated
awareness that, gee, the public doesn’t seem to realize
how fatuous the other side is, and maybe it’s time
to combat the creationist phylum head on. And so,
over the last few years, scientists have unleashed
a blitzkrieg of books in defense of Darwinism,
summarizing the Everest of supportive evidence
for evolutionary theory, filleting the arguments
of the naysayers or reciting, yet again, the story
of Charles Darwin, depressive naturalist extraordinaire,
whose increasingly pervasive avuncular profile has
lofted him to logo status on par with Einstein and
the Nike swoosh.

David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at
Binghamton University, takes a different and decidedly
refreshing approach. Rather than catalog its successes,
denounce its detractors or in any way present
evolutionary theory as the province of expert tacticians
like himself, Wilson invites readers inside and shows
them how Darwinism is done, and at lesson’s end urges
us to go ahead, feel free to try it at home. The result
is a sprightly, absorbing and charmingly earnest book
that manages a minor miracle, the near-complete
emulsifying of science and the “real world,” ingredients
too often kept stubbornly, senselessly apart. Only when
Wilson seeks to add religion to the mix, and to show
what natural, happy symbionts evolutionary biology
and religious faith can be, does he begin to sound
like a corporate motivational speaker or a political
candidate glad-handing the crowd.

In Wilson’s view, Darwin’s theory of evolution by
natural selection has the beauty of being both
simple and profound. Unlike quantum mechanics or
the general theory of relativity, the basic concepts
behind evolutionary theory are easy to grasp; and
once grasped, he argues, they can be broadly applied
to better understand ourselves and the world — the
world both as it is and as it might be, with the
right bit of well-informed coaxing. Wilson has long
been interested in the evolution of cooperative and
altruistic behavior, and much of the book is devoted
to the premise that “goodness can evolve, at least
when the appropriate conditions are met.” As he sees
it, all of life is characterized by a “cosmic” struggle
between good and evil, the high-strung terms we apply
to behaviors that are either cooperative or selfish,
civic or anomic. The constant give-and-take between
me versus we extends down to the tiniest and most
primal elements of life. Short biochemical sequences
may want to replicate themselves ad infinitum, their
neighboring sequences be damned; yet genes get together
under the aegis of cells and reproduce in orderly
fashion as genomes, as collectives of sequences,
setting aside some of their immediate selfish urges
for the sake of long-term genomic survival. Cells
further collude as organs, and organs pool their
talents and become bodies. The conflict between being
well behaved, being good, not gulping down more than
your share, and being selfish enough to get your fair
share, “is eternal and encompasses virtually all species
on earth,” he writes, and it likely occurs on any other
planet that supports life, too, “because it is predicted
at such a fundamental level by evolutionary theory.”
How do higher patterns of cooperative behavior emerge
from aggregates of small, selfish units? With carrots,
sticks and ceaseless surveillance. In the human body,
for example, nascent tumor cells arise on a shockingly
regular basis, each determined to replicate without
bound; again and again, immune cells attack the
malignancies, destroying the outlaw cells and themselves
in the process. The larger body survives to breed, and
hence spawn a legacy far sturdier than any tumor mass
could manage.

As with our bodies, so with our behaviors. Wilson
explores the many fascinating ways in which humans
are the consummate group-thinking, team-playing animal.
The way we point things out to one another, for example,
is unique among primates. “Apes raised with people
learn to point for things that they want but never
point to call the attention of their human caretakers
to objects of mutual interest,” Wilson writes, “something
that human infants start doing around their first birthday.”
The eyes of other apes are dark across their entire span
and thus are hard to follow, but the contrast between
the white sclera and colored iris of the human eye makes
it difficult for people to conceal the direction in which
they are looking. In the interdependent, egalitarian
context of the tribe, the ancestral human setting,
Wilson says, “it becomes advantageous for members
of the team to share information, turning the eyes
into organs of communication in addition to organs
of vision.” Humans are equipped with all the
dispositional tools needed to establish and maintain
order in the commons. Studies have revealed a deep
capacity for empathy, a willingness to trust others
and become instant best friends; and an equally
strong urge to punish cheaters, to exact revenge
against those who buck group rules for private gain.

Of course, even as humans bond together in groups
and behave with impressive civility toward their
neighbors, they are capable of treating those outside
the group with ruthless savagery. Wilson is not naïve,
and he recognizes the ease with which humans fall into
an us-versus-them mind-set. Yet he is a self-described
optimist, and he believes that the golden circles
of we-ness, the conditions that encourage entities
at every stratum of life to stop competing and instead
pool their labors into a communally acting mega-entity,
can be expanded outward like ripples on a pond until
they encompass all of us — that the entire human race
can evolve the culturally primed if not genetically
settled incentive to see our futures for what they are,
inexorably linked on the lone blue planet we share.

Toward the end of the book he offers a series of
evolutionarily informed suggestions on how we might
help widen the geometry of good will, beginning with
the italicized, boldface pronouncement that “we are
not fated by our genes to engage in violent conflict.”
Our bloody past does not foretell an inevitably bloody
future, and violent behaviors that make grim sense
in one context can become maladaptive in another.
“The Vikings of Iceland were among the fiercest people
on earth, and now they are the most peaceful,” he
observes. “In principle, it is possible to completely
eliminate violent conflict by eliminating its preferred
‘habitat.’ ” For their universal appeal and basal power
to harmonize a crowd, he recommends more music and
dancing and asks, “Could we establish world peace if
everyone at the United Nations showed up in leotards?”
He also believes that the world’s religions should
be tapped for their “wisdom.” This is a fine idea
in the abstract, but given current events and the
fissuring of the world along so many theo-sectarian
lines, I wish we could forgo the sermon and just
strike up the band.

Natalie Angier is a science columnist for The Times.
Her latest book, “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour Through
the Beautiful Basics of Science,” will be published in May.

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15) Sweet Little Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent
threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power
of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official
claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their
leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has
sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation
invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another,
and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power.
Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that
the person facing all these accusations must have done
something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants
of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans,
the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions.
Most people found it inconceivable that an American president
would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and
Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because
a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly
mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly
relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater,
Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate.
At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff
members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging
from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each
case that there was no there there, if reported at all,
received far less attention. The effect was to make
an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and
well run — especially compared with its successor —
seem mired in scandal.

Even in the post-9/11 environment, little lies never
went away. In particular, promoting little lies seems
to have been one of the main things U.S. attorneys,
as loyal Bushies, were expected to do. For example,
David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico,
appears to have been fired because he wouldn’t bring
unwarranted charges of voter fraud.

There’s a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin,
where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the
state’s purchasing supervisor over charges that a court
recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral
testimony, with one judge calling the evidence “beyond
thin.” But by then the accusations had done their job:
the unjustly accused official had served almost four
months in prison, and the case figured prominently
in attack ads alleging corruption in the Democratic
governor’s administration.

This is the context in which you need to see the wild
swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House
had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to
California. One Republican leader denounced her
“arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became
clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that
he had never had any evidence.

Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria,
which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike
the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen
a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to
China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the
administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s
more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip
is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted
by news organizations that give little lies their
time in the sun.

Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but
name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy
— which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic
politicians not to do anything, like participating
in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate
a legitimate news organization.

But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time’s Joe Klein,
a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip
that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere
has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about
Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”

The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique
is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced
to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer.
But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S.
political scene will remain ugly — as long as many
people in the news media keep playing along.

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16) 6-Year-Olds Under Arrest
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
Avon Park, Fla.
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html?hp

When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her
kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not
have known that the full force of the law would be
brought down on her and that she would be carted off
by the police as a felon.

But that’s what happened in this small, backward city
in central Florida. According to the authorities,
there were no other options.

“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio,
the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police.
“She was yelling, screaming — just being
uncontrollable. Defiant.”

“But she was 6,” I said.

The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet:
“Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve
arrested?”

The child’s tantrum occurred on the morning of March 28
at the Avon Elementary School. According to the police
report, “Watson was upset and crying and wailing and
would not leave the classroom to let them study, causing
a disruption of the normal class activities.”

After a few minutes, Desre’e was, in fact, taken to
another room. She was “isolated,” the chief said.
But she would not calm down. She flailed away at the
teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one
woman’s hair. She was kicking.

I asked the chief if anyone had been hurt. “Yes,”
he said. At least one woman reported “some redness.”

After 20 minutes of this “uncontrollable” behavior,
the police were called in. At the sight of the two
officers, Chief Mercurio said, Desre’e “tried to
take flight.”

She went under a table. One of the police officers
went after her. Each time the officer tried to grab
her to drag her out, Desre’e would pull her legs
away, the chief said.

Ultimately the child was no match for Avon Park’s
finest. The cops pulled her from under the table
and handcuffed her. The officers were not fooling
around. In the eyes of the cops the 6-year-old was
a criminal, and in Avon Park she would be treated
like any other felon.

There was a problem, though. The handcuffs were
not manufactured with kindergarten kids in mind.
The chief explained: “You can’t handcuff them on
their wrists because their wrists are too small,
so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”

As I sat listening to Chief Mercurio in a spotless,
air-conditioned conference room at the Avon Park
police headquarters, I had the feeling that I had
somehow stumbled into the middle of a skit on
“Saturday Night Live.” The chief seemed like the
most reasonable of men, but what was coming out
of his mouth was madness.

He handed me a copy of the police report: black
female. Six years old. Thin build. Dark complexion.

Desre’e was put in the back of a patrol car and
driven to the police station. “Then,” said Chief
Mercurio, “she was transported to central booking,
which is the county jail.”

The child was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken.
“Those are the normal procedures for anyone who
is arrested,” the chief said.

Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official,
which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption
of a school function and resisting a law enforcement
officer. After a brief stay at the county jail,
she was released to the custody of her mother.

The arrest of this child, who should have been placed
in the care of competent, comforting professionals
rather than being hauled off to jail, is part of
an outlandish trend of criminalizing very young
children that has spread to many school districts
and law enforcement agencies across the country.

A highly disproportionate number of those youngsters,
like Desre’e, are black. In Baltimore last month,
the police arrested, handcuffed and hauled away
a 7-year-old black boy for allegedly riding a dirt
bike on the sidewalk. The youngster was released
and the mayor, Sheila Dixon, apologized for the
incident, saying the arrest was inappropriate.

Last spring a number of civil rights organizations
collaborated on a study of disciplinary practices
in Florida schools and concluded that many of them,
“like many districts in other states, have turned
away from traditional education-based disciplinary
methods — such as counseling, after-school detention,
or extra homework assignments — and are looking
to the legal system to handle even the most minor
transgressions.”

Once you adopt the mindset that ordinary childhood
misbehavior is criminal behavior, it’s easy to start
seeing young children as somehow monstrous.

“Believe me when I tell you,” said Chief Mercurio,
“a 6-year-old can inflict injury to you just
as much as any other person.”

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17) Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
By TIM GOLDEN
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html

A long-term hunger strike has broken out at the American
detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with more than
a dozen prisoners subjecting themselves to daily force-
feeding to protest their treatment, military officials
and lawyers for the detainees say.

Lawyers for several hunger strikers said their clients’
actions were driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum
security complex. About 160 of the roughly 385 Guantánamo
detainees have been moved to the complex since December.

Thirteen detainees are now on hunger strikes, the largest
number to endure the force-feeding regimen on an extended
basis since early 2006, when the military broke a long-
running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners
into restraint chairs while they are fed by plastic
tubes inserted through their nostrils.

The hunger strikers are now monitored so closely that
they have virtually no chance to starve themselves.
Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle
between detainees and guards at Guantánamo has
continued even as the military has tightened its
control in the past year.

“We don’t have any rights here, even after your Supreme
Court said we had rights,” one hunger striker, Majid
al-Joudi, told a military doctor, according to medical
records released recently under a federal court order.
“If the policy does not change, you will see a big
increase in fasting.”

A military spokesman at Guantánamo, Cmdr. Robert Durand
of the Navy, played down the significance of the current
strike, calling the prisoners’ complaints “propaganda.”

But the protests come as criticism of Guantánamo
continues to rise in the United States and abroad. Last
week, after the Supreme Court denied a new appeal
on behalf of the detainees, the head of the International
Committee of the Red Cross delivered a rare public
reprimand to the Bush administration, saying the
prisoners’ ability to contest their detention was
inadequate.

Newly released Pentagon documents show that during
earlier hunger strikes, before the use of the restraint
chairs, some detainees lost more than 30 pounds in
a matter of weeks. By comparison, the current hunger
strike — in which 12 of the 13 detainees were being
force-fed as of Friday — seems almost symbolic.

For instance, the medical records for Mr. Joudi,
a 36-year-old Saudi, showed that when he was hospitalized
on Feb. 10, he had been fasting for 31 days and had
lost more than 15 percent of his body weight.

By the time he was transferred a few days later to
a “feeding block” where more serious hunger strikers
are segregated from other prisoners, his condition
had stabilized and his weight was nearly back to an
ideal level for a man his size. (His exact weight
gain was not recorded.) Mr. Joudi was subsequently
flown home and turned over to the Saudi authorities,
his lawyer said.

Lawyers for several detainees held in the new maximum
security complex, known as Camp 6, compared it to
“supermax” prisons in the United States. The major
differences, they said, are that the detainees have
limited reading material and no television, and only
10 of the Guantánamo prisoners have been charged.

The Camp 6 inmates are generally locked in their
8-foot-by-10-foot cells for at least 22 hours a day,
emerging only to exercise in small wire cages and
to shower. Besides those times, they can talk with
other prisoners only by shouting through food slots
in the steel doors of their cells.

“My wish is to die,” one reported hunger striker
in the camp, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, a 27-year old
Yemeni, told his lawyer on Feb. 27, according
to recently declassified notes of the meeting.
“We are living in a dying situation.”

Commander Durand, the Guantánamo spokesman, dismissed
such accounts as part of an effort by the prisoners
and their lawyers to discredit the detention mission.
He described the new unit as much more comfortable
than the detainees’ previous quarters, and denied
that they suffered any greater sense of isolation
in the new cell blocks.

“This was designed to improve living conditions,”
Commander Durand said, “and we think it has.”

Camp 6 was originally designed as a modern, medium-
security prison complex for up to 200 inmates, with
common areas where they could gather for meals and
a large fenced athletic field where they could jog
or play soccer outside the high concrete walls.

But after a riot last May and the suicides of three
prisoners in June, the unit was retrofitted before
opening to limit the detainees’ freedom and reduce
the risk that they might hurt themselves or attack
guards, military officials said.

As Camp 6 was opening, senior officials expressed
concern about how prisoners would react to its greater
isolation. Most had been held in makeshift blocks
of wire-mesh cells that — while often hot, noisy and
lacking privacy — allowed them to communicate easily,
pray together and even pass written messages.

Guantánamo’s other maximum-security unit, Camp 5,
has cells that face each other across a short hallway,
allowing the roughly 100 detainees there to converse
fairly easily. In Camp 6, the prisoners can see one
another from their cells only when one of them is being
moved. At other times, they look out on the stainless-
steel picnic tables in the common areas they are not
allowed to use.

Lawyers for several Camp 6 detainees said their clients
were despondent about the move even though, as military
officials note, the new cells are 27 square feet larger
than the old ones and have air-conditioning, nicer toilets
and sinks, and a small desk anchored to the wall.

“They’re just sitting on a powder keg down there,” said
one lawyer, Sabin Willett, who, like others, described
growing desperation among the prisoners. “You’re going
to have an insane asylum.”

Lawyers who visited Guantánamo recently said the detainees
reported a higher number of hunger strikers than had
the military — perhaps 40 or more. Military officials said
there were sometimes “stealth hunger strikers,” who pretend
to eat or surreptitiously vomit after eating, but they
dismissed the detainees’ estimates as exaggerations.

Because reporters are prevented from speaking with detainees
or visiting most of their cell blocks, it is difficult
to verify the conflicting accounts.

Hunger strikes have been part of life at Guantánamo
almost since the detention center opened in January 2002.

They reached a peak in September 2005, when more than
130 detainees were classified as hunger strikers,
having refused at least nine consecutive meals, military
records show. As the strikes went on, some detainees
being force-fed continued to lose weight by vomiting
or siphoning their stomachs with the feeding tubes.
But by early February 2006, shortly after the military
began using restraint chairs during the forced feedings,
the number of hunger strikers plunged to three.

The number rose again sharply but briefly last May,
reaching 86 after three detainees attempted suicide
and a riot broke out as the guards searched for contraband.
Yet even then, no more than seven strikers were forced
into the restraint chair regimen.

Three detainees who had been hunger strikers hung
themselves on June 10. After July, no more than three
detainees subjected themselves to extended forced feeding.

That number began to grow again as detainees were
moved into Camp 6 in December. By mid-March, the
number of hunger strikers reached 17. For the first
time, as many as 15 detainees continued with the
strikes despite being force-fed in the restraint
chairs.

Military officials have described the restraint chair
regimen as unpleasant but necessary. They originally
said prisoners needed to be restrained while digesting,
so they could not purge what they were fed.

Now, the rationale has changed. The restraints are
generally applied “for safety of the detainee and
medical staff,” records show