Bay . Area . United . Against . War                     
Local Actions and Campaigns:



Good Anti-War Calendars:

  • Next BAUAW Meeting:


    Recent BAUAW Newsletter Posts:
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2007
  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER - MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2007

    Archives:
    09/05/2004 - 09/12/2004 09/12/2004 - 09/19/2004 09/19/2004 - 09/26/2004 09/26/2004 - 10/03/2004 10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004 10/10/2004 - 10/17/2004 10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004 10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004 10/31/2004 - 11/07/2004 11/07/2004 - 11/14/2004 11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004 11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004 11/28/2004 - 12/05/2004 12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004 12/12/2004 - 12/19/2004 12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004 12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005 01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005 01/09/2005 - 01/16/2005 01/16/2005 - 01/23/2005 01/23/2005 - 01/30/2005 02/13/2005 - 02/20/2005 02/20/2005 - 02/27/2005 02/27/2005 - 03/06/2005 03/06/2005 - 03/13/2005 03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005 03/20/2005 - 03/27/2005 03/27/2005 - 04/03/2005 04/03/2005 - 04/10/2005 04/10/2005 - 04/17/2005 04/17/2005 - 04/24/2005 04/24/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 05/08/2005 05/08/2005 - 05/15/2005 05/15/2005 - 05/22/2005 05/22/2005 - 05/29/2005 05/29/2005 - 06/05/2005 06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005 06/12/2005 - 06/19/2005 06/19/2005 - 06/26/2005 06/26/2005 - 07/03/2005 07/03/2005 - 07/10/2005 07/10/2005 - 07/17/2005 07/17/2005 - 07/24/2005 07/24/2005 - 07/31/2005 07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005 08/07/2005 - 08/14/2005 08/14/2005 - 08/21/2005 08/21/2005 - 08/28/2005 08/28/2005 - 09/04/2005 09/04/2005 - 09/11/2005 09/18/2005 - 09/25/2005 09/25/2005 - 10/02/2005 10/16/2005 - 10/23/2005 11/06/2005 - 11/13/2005 02/12/2006 - 02/19/2006 02/19/2006 - 02/26/2006 03/05/2006 - 03/12/2006 03/12/2006 - 03/19/2006 03/19/2006 - 03/26/2006 03/26/2006 - 04/02/2006 04/02/2006 - 04/09/2006 04/09/2006 - 04/16/2006 04/16/2006 - 04/23/2006 04/23/2006 - 04/30/2006 04/30/2006 - 05/07/2006 05/07/2006 - 05/14/2006 05/21/2006 - 05/28/2006 05/28/2006 - 06/04/2006 06/04/2006 - 06/11/2006 06/11/2006 - 06/18/2006 06/18/2006 - 06/25/2006 07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006 07/23/2006 - 07/30/2006 07/30/2006 - 08/06/2006 08/06/2006 - 08/13/2006 08/13/2006 - 08/20/2006 08/20/2006 - 08/27/2006 08/27/2006 - 09/03/2006 09/03/2006 - 09/10/2006 09/10/2006 - 09/17/2006 09/17/2006 - 09/24/2006 09/24/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 10/08/2006 10/08/2006 - 10/15/2006 10/15/2006 - 10/22/2006 10/22/2006 - 10/29/2006 10/29/2006 - 11/05/2006 11/05/2006 - 11/12/2006 11/12/2006 - 11/19/2006 11/19/2006 - 11/26/2006 11/26/2006 - 12/03/2006 12/03/2006 - 12/10/2006 12/10/2006 - 12/17/2006 12/17/2006 - 12/24/2006 12/24/2006 - 12/31/2006 12/31/2006 - 01/07/2007 01/07/2007 - 01/14/2007 01/14/2007 - 01/21/2007 01/21/2007 - 01/28/2007 01/28/2007 - 02/04/2007 02/04/2007 - 02/11/2007 02/11/2007 - 02/18/2007 02/18/2007 - 02/25/2007 02/25/2007 - 03/04/2007 03/04/2007 - 03/11/2007 03/11/2007 - 03/18/2007 03/18/2007 - 03/25/2007 03/25/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 04/08/2007 04/08/2007 - 04/15/2007 04/15/2007 - 04/22/2007 04/22/2007 - 04/29/2007 04/29/2007 - 05/06/2007 05/06/2007 - 05/13/2007 05/13/2007 - 05/20/2007 05/20/2007 - 05/27/2007 05/27/2007 - 06/03/2007 06/03/2007 - 06/10/2007 06/10/2007 - 06/17/2007 06/17/2007 - 06/24/2007 06/24/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 07/08/2007 07/08/2007 - 07/15/2007 07/15/2007 - 07/22/2007 07/22/2007 - 07/29/2007 07/29/2007 - 08/05/2007 08/05/2007 - 08/12/2007 08/12/2007 - 08/19/2007 08/19/2007 - 08/26/2007 08/26/2007 - 09/02/2007 09/02/2007 - 09/09/2007 09/09/2007 - 09/16/2007 09/16/2007 - 09/23/2007 09/23/2007 - 09/30/2007 09/30/2007 - 10/07/2007 10/07/2007 - 10/14/2007 10/14/2007 - 10/21/2007 10/21/2007 - 10/28/2007 10/28/2007 - 11/04/2007 11/04/2007 - 11/11/2007 11/11/2007 - 11/18/2007 11/18/2007 - 11/25/2007 11/25/2007 - 12/02/2007 12/02/2007 - 12/09/2007 12/09/2007 - 12/16/2007 12/16/2007 - 12/23/2007 12/23/2007 - 12/30/2007 12/30/2007 - 01/06/2008 01/06/2008 - 01/13/2008 01/13/2008 - 01/20/2008 01/20/2008 - 01/27/2008 01/27/2008 - 02/03/2008 02/03/2008 - 02/10/2008 02/10/2008 - 02/17/2008 02/17/2008 - 02/24/2008 02/24/2008 - 03/02/2008 03/02/2008 - 03/09/2008 03/09/2008 - 03/16/2008 03/16/2008 - 03/23/2008 03/23/2008 - 03/30/2008 03/30/2008 - 04/06/2008 04/06/2008 - 04/13/2008 04/13/2008 - 04/20/2008 04/20/2008 - 04/27/2008 04/27/2008 - 05/04/2008 05/04/2008 - 05/11/2008 05/11/2008 - 05/18/2008 05/18/2008 - 05/25/2008 05/25/2008 - 06/01/2008 06/01/2008 - 06/08/2008 06/08/2008 - 06/15/2008 06/15/2008 - 06/22/2008 06/22/2008 - 06/29/2008 06/29/2008 - 07/06/2008 07/06/2008 - 07/13/2008 07/13/2008 - 07/20/2008 07/20/2008 - 07/27/2008 07/27/2008 - 08/03/2008 08/03/2008 - 08/10/2008 08/10/2008 - 08/17/2008 08/17/2008 - 08/24/2008 08/24/2008 - 08/31/2008 08/31/2008 - 09/07/2008 09/07/2008 - 09/14/2008 09/14/2008 - 09/21/2008 09/21/2008 - 09/28/2008 09/28/2008 - 10/05/2008 10/05/2008 - 10/12/2008 10/12/2008 - 10/19/2008 10/19/2008 - 10/26/2008 10/26/2008 - 11/02/2008 11/02/2008 - 11/09/2008 11/09/2008 - 11/16/2008 11/16/2008 - 11/23/2008 11/23/2008 - 11/30/2008 11/30/2008 - 12/07/2008 12/07/2008 - 12/14/2008 12/14/2008 - 12/21/2008 12/21/2008 - 12/28/2008 12/28/2008 - 01/04/2009 01/04/2009 - 01/11/2009 01/11/2009 - 01/18/2009 01/18/2009 - 01/25/2009

  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER
    Subscribe/Unsubscribe

    Sunday, April 22, 2007
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2007

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

    "There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
    --Martin Luther King

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

    Hands Off Venezuela:
    Jorge Martin Speaking Tour Date in San Francisco
    When: Wednesday, May 9, 2007, 7:00 PM
    Where: Center for Political Education,
    3rd Floor Auditorium
    522 Valencia, near 16th St.
    (ring bell; not wheelchair accessible)
    Cost: $5/$3 students, seniors, unemployed
    Transit: BART station, 16th St.
    Parking nearby: Mission & Bartlett Garage;
    16th & Hoff Garage
    Visit our websites at:
    www.ushov.org
    www.handsoffvenezuela.org

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

    ONE COURT DECISION:
    EXECUTION OR THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

    Stand with Mumia Abu-Jamal May 17 in Philadelphia
    and San Francisco.

    On May 17, 2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal's lead attorney, Robert
    R. Bryan, will present oral arguments to the U.S. Court
    of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. Despite
    a mountain of evidence of his innocence, a U.S. criminal
    "justice" system saturated with race and class bias has
    reduced his case to just four issues: exclusion of Blacks
    from the jury panel, racial bias, improper instructions
    to the jury regarding the death penalty and prosecutorial
    misconduct.

    In a 1982 frame-up trial that has been condemned by groups
    and individuals including Amnesty International, the
    European Parliament, the NAACP, the National Lawyers
    Guild, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa,
    President Jacques Chirac of France, the Congressional
    Black Caucus, hundreds of U.S. and international trade
    unions and the Detroit, San Francisco, and Paris, France
    city councils, Mumia was falsely convicted of the murder
    of a Philadelphia police officer.

    Six eyewitnesses stated that the real
    killer fled the murder scene while
    Mumia himself was found near dead next
    to the slain police officer.
    Critical evidence of Mumia's innocence
    was destroyed or withheld.
    "Witnesses" never at the murder scene
    were coerced to state that they were
    present. Police distorted events and
    material evidence at the murder scene.
    Mumia himself was excluded from the
    majority of his own trial.

    Mumia was the victim of a political
    frame-up. He is an award-winning
    journalist, whose widely-respected
    social commentaries are today broadcast
    on 124 radio stations. In 1981, as
    a radio commentator and President of the
    Philadelphia Association of Black
    Journalists, he was a leading human
    rights critic of the Philadelphia Police
    Department, many of whose officers had
    been indicted and convicted on charges
    of corruption, witness intimidation and
    the planting of evidence.

    Mumia's judge, Albert Sabo, was overheard
    by court stenographer, Terri
    Maurer Carter, to say in his antechambers
    about Mumia, "Yeah, and I'm going
    to help 'em fry the n----r."

    Mumia has been on death row nearly 25 years.
    He has become a worldwide symbol in
    the fight against the barbaric and
    racist death penalty. Pennsylvania
    authorities seek, for the third time,
    to impose the death penalty and
    murder Mumia by lethal injection. We must
    make the political price of this
    execution and continued incarceration
    too high to pay. We stand with Mumia as
    he fights for his legal right to a new
    trial and for his life and freedom.

    Join us in Philadelphia on Thursday,
    May 17, 9:30 am at the U.S.
    Courthouse, 6th and Market Streets,
    Philadelphia. On the East Coast call:
    215-476-8812. On the West Coast, we
    mobilize at the U.S. Court of Appeals
    Building, 7th Street and Mission, San
    Francisco, 4-6 pm. Call: 415-255-1085

    Pam Africa; Ed Asner; Harry Belafonte;
    Heidi Boghosian, Exec. Dir, *National
    Lawyers Guild; Angela Davis; Hari Dillon,
    President, Vanguard Public Foundation;
    Eve Ensler; Bill Fletcher Jr., Co-founder,
    *Center for Labor Renewal; Danny Glover;
    Frances Goldin; Rick Halperin, President,
    *Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty;
    Dolores Huerta; Barbara Lubin, Dir., *Middle
    East Children's Alliance; Jeff Mackler; Robbie
    Meeropol, Exec. Dir., *Rosenberg Fund for
    Children; Michael Ratner, President, *Center
    for Constitutional Rights; Lynne Stewart;
    Alice Walker; Cornel West; Howard Zinn
    *Organization listed for identification
    purposes only.

    CONTRIBUTE TO THE EFFORT TO SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!

    Please make checks payable to: Mobilization
    to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, 298
    Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. -
    freemumia.org; alerts@freemumia.org

    Sponsors: The Mobilization to Free Mumia
    Abu-Jamal (Northern California);
    International Concerned Family and Friends
    of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
    Coalition (NYC); Chicago Committee to Free
    Mumia Abu-Jamal; Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

    ARTICLES IN FULL:

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

    1) Lordstown test case: Nonunion janitors,
    10-hour straight-time
    Jamie LaReau and Dave Barkholz | Automotive News / April 16, 2007
    [Via Email from: This is from a subscription site, AutoNews.com,
    which is why I am posting the entire piece.
    --Steven Matthews steve@panix.com]

    2) Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
    "Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame
    for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees..."
    By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
    Published: 15 April 2007
    http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

    3) Young People and the War in Iraq
    By JANET ELDER
    NY Times, April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/politics/18web-elder.html?8dpc

    4) Denying the Right to Choose
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/19thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

    5) Frolicking Visitor Delights Hearts, Then Dies
    By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and ANN FARMER
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19whale.html?ref=nyregion

    6) About Shaquanda Cotton: an interview with Terry Howcott
    John Calvin Jones
    "Editor's note: The recent story of Shaquanda Cotton,
    sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for her
    first offense, pushing a hall monitor at her high school
    in Paris, Texas, raises a number of social policy issues.
    Though Ms. Cotton was just released, given the revelations
    of abuses in the Texas Penal System, where youths were
    forced to have sex with guards, thousands of others are
    trapped behind bars and are being tracked for prison as
    we speak. Many people sought to shed light on the Shaquanda
    Cotton case and secure her release. One such woman was
    Terry Howcott. I was able to interview Ms. Howcott and
    get her thoughts on the Shaquanda Cotton affair and more."
    2007-04-09
    http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/About_Shaquanda_Cotton__an_interview_with_Terry_Howcott

    7) Girl in prison for shove released
    By Howard Witt
    Tribune senior correspondent
    March 31, 2007, 8:41 PM CDT
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070331shaquanda,1,2079171,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true

    8) The Plot Against Medicare
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    Op-Ed Columnist
    April 20, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp

    9) U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect
    By ANTHONY DePALMA
    April 20, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/americas/20posada.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

    10) Union, in Organizing Fight, Tangles With Celebrity Cook
    By MARIAN BURROS
    April 20, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20deen.html

    11) Statement from the revolutionary government of Cuba
    Translated by Granma International
    Havana, April 19, 2007
    http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/vier20/17declara.html

    12) U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart
    By EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?ref=world

    13) Marine Officer to Testify on Iraq Killings
    in Exchange for Immunity
    By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21abuse.html

    14) Growing Unrest Posing a Threat to Nigerian Oil
    By JAD MOUAWAD
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/worldbusiness/21oil.html?ref=business

    15) Um Noor
    April 16, 2007
    http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/2007/04/um_noor.html

    16) In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
    [Please note Cuba's Infant mortality rate:
    total: 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births
    male: 6.76 deaths/1,000 live births
    female: 5.26 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.) These
    figures are from:
    https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/cu.html
    ...bw]
    By ERIK ECKHOLM
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/health/22infant.html?hp

    17) 3 Suspects Talk After Iraqi Soldiers Do Dirty Work
    By ALISSA J. RUBIN
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22detain.html?hp

    18) Military Cites ‘Negligence’ in Aftermath of Iraq Killings
    By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22haditha.html?ref=world

    19) Hoping to Curb Drug Trade at a Housing Complex,
    the Newark Police Move In
    "Most important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
    indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers."
    By KAREEM FAHIM
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22newark.html?ref=nyregion

    20) In Arctic Foxes, Clues to Effects of Shrinking Habitat
    “They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
    “That whole population is extinct.”
    By HENRY FOUNTAIN
    April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17observ.html

    21) Why Darwinism Isn’t Depressing
    By Robert Wright
    April 21, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/opinion/21wright.html?hp

    22) TRAINING IRAQI TROOPS NO LONGER DRIVING FORCE IN U.S. POLICY
    By Nancy A. Youssef
    McClatchy Newspapers
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17104704.htm

    23) Castro resumes official business
    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6578539.stm

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

    1) Lordstown test case: Nonunion janitors,
    10-hour straight-time
    Jamie LaReau and Dave Barkholz | Automotive News / April 16, 2007
    [Via Email from: This is from a subscription site, AutoNews.com,
    which is why I am posting the entire piece.
    --Steven Matthews steve@panix.com]

    General Motors' Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant has become the
    test site for a companywide cost-cutting effort that could save
    hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

    As part of an ambitious productivity strategy dubbed "True North,"
    GM is asking local UAW leaders at all plants to consider a variety
    of once-taboo efficiency measures.

    In late February, GM opened negotiations with Lordstown's union
    officials. GM wants the union to accept nonunion janitors, work
    10-hour shifts without overtime pay, allow nonunion workers to
    replenish parts bins and let nonunion truckers deliver and unload
    parts shipments.

    The unstated threat: If the workers reject GM's proposals,
    production of the 2009 Cobalt might move to Mexico.

    If the union allows it, True North could generate big savings.
    According to a knowledgeable source, the companywide use of
    nonunion janitors -- who would earn about $12 per hour instead of
    $28 per hour -- alone could save GM $300 million to $500 million a
    year.

    Each UAW GM local would have to negotiate its own deal, but
    sources say the Lordstown talks could become an important
    precedent. Says a source close to GM: "The changes you see in
    Lordstown could foreshadow what you see in the rest of GM's
    contracts."

    Unprecedented concessions

    Traditionally, local union leaders negotiate each plant's work
    rules in the same year the UAW bargains new labor contracts with
    GM, Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler group.

    The national negotiations, which cover wages and benefits, get all
    the media attention. But local work rules have a big effect on
    each plant's productivity. And this year the Detroit 3 are
    demanding unprecedented concessions.

    "There's a lot of negotiating going on right now -- not just at
    GM, but Ford and Chrysler as well," says Laurie Harbour-Felax, a
    manufacturing consultant who is president of Harbour-Felax Group
    in suburban Detroit. "They need to get their labor agreements to
    be as competitive as possible."

    A similar plant-by-plant cost-cutting program launched last year
    by Ford could generate more than $600 million in annual savings.
    An agreement signed last year at just one plant -- Ford's Rouge
    assembly plant in Dearborn, Mich. -- will save $100 million a
    year.

    A GM source confirmed True North's existence, but declined an
    on-the-record interview. Lordstown appears to be a test site in
    part because it produces small cars -- a product segment that has
    not been profitable for the Detroit 3.

    No guarantees

    UAW Local 1112, which represents about 2,600 workers at Lordstown
    assembly, already has accepted some changes on behalf of some
    members who make headliners for Lear Corp. The Lear workers
    accepted a five-year pay freeze and eased work rules, and agreed
    to $12 weekly benefit co-pays.

    Those workers also agreed that skilled-trades workers would assume
    additional duties, such as sweeping the floors, without any change
    in pay.

    But Rich Rankin, Local 1112's Lear shop chairman, says he still is
    worried that Lordstown might lose the next-generation Cobalt.
    "Everybody is very nervous and on edge," Rankin says. "We're just
    fed up. We keep giving and giving with no guarantees."

    Other plants face similar cuts. At the Fairfax assembly plant in
    Kansas City, Kan., GM's cost-cutting target is $54 million.

    GM wants to shift about 20 percent of the work now performed by
    UAW members to outside contractors, says Jeff Manning, president
    of UAW Local 31. That would affect about 500 of the plant's 2,500
    union jobs, he said.

    Outside workers would assemble doors, wheels and engines.
    Outsiders also would operate forklifts and handle janitorial jobs.

    In exchange for the loss of those high-paying jobs, Fairfax would
    get a shot at a replacement vehicle when the plant stops producing
    the Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx and Saturn Aura in 2011.

    Management sacrifice?

    But Manning says the rank-and-file might not approve True North
    unless GM management shares the financial sacrifice. "It's going
    to be tough," he said. "It'd be far easier if management shared in
    the $54 million."

    GM has been cagey about its future plans for each assembly plant.
    Even if workers at Fairfax and Lordstown embrace True North, GM is
    not guaranteeing that those plants will stay open, union officials
    say.

    GM has not threatened to shut Lordstown if the plant's hourly
    workers refuse to budge. But UAW leaders know they're in a
    predicament.

    "They're asking us to come up with these new work rules, but with
    no guarantee of a product," says Dave Green, president of UAW
    1714, which represents Lordstown's stamping plant. "That's one of
    the sticking points. Everybody is on pins and needles."

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

    2) Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
    "Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame
    for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees..."
    By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
    Published: 15 April 2007
    http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

    It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror
    film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile
    phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's
    harvests fail.

    They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off
    by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer
    to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the
    natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that
    pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed
    that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread
    to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

    The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes
    with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously home
    loving species from finding their way back to their hives.
    Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back
    this up.

    Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's
    inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens,
    eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary
    Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought
    to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and
    other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left
    behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the
    abandoned hives.

    The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit
    half of all American states. The West Coast is thought
    to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population,
    with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

    CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain,
    Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple,
    one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23
    of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

    Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales
    and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment,
    Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no
    evidence of CCD in the UK."

    The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the
    world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein
    once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only
    four years of life left".

    No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites,
    pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed,
    but all have drawbacks.

    German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes
    near power lines.

    Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees
    refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed
    nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could
    provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

    Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government
    and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the
    Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

    The case against handsets

    Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing.
    But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the
    biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

    Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But
    an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones
    for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get
    a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

    Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that
    radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells,
    suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in
    the prime of their lives.

    Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility
    that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm
    counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified
    the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant
    texting.

    Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official
    inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use
    mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely
    ignored by ministers.

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

    3) Young People and the War in Iraq
    By JANET ELDER
    NY Times, April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/politics/18web-elder.html?8dpc

    The younger generation is opposed to the war in Iraq, right? Wrong.
    Actually, they're divided on the war, far more so than their
    grandparents, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll in March.
    Seems younger people are more supportive of the war and the president
    than any other age group.

    Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United
    States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq,
    while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That
    is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have
    lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group
    said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the
    United States should have stayed out.

    This is nothing new, said John Mueller, author of "War, Presidents
    and Public Opinion," and a professor of political science at Ohio
    State University. "This is a pattern that is identical to what we saw
    in Korea and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what
    the president is doing," he said.

    A review of the March poll suggests Mr. Mueller has a point. Overall,
    34 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the president
    was handling his job, and 58 percent disapproved. But younger
    Americans were more approving than older Americans. Forty percent of
    18-29 year olds said Mr. Bush was doing a good job, while 56 percent
    said he was not. While 29 percent of people 65 and older said they
    approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job as president, 62
    percent said they did not.

    The nationwide telephone poll was conducted March 7-11 with 1,362
    adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three
    percentage points.

    A look back at the Vietnam years showed a similar divide between
    young and old. Older Americans were defined as 50 and older, but the
    comparison is still apt. In October 1968, when Hubert Humphrey,
    Richard Nixon and George Wallace were running for president, a Gallup
    poll found that about half, 52 percent, of people under the age of 30
    supported the war in Vietnam. But among those 50 and older, 26
    percent supported the war.

    Some of the respondents to the March poll were called back to talk
    about the differences between the young and the not so young.
    "Experience," "the draft," "other wars," were mentioned by
    respondents on both sides of the generational divide.

    Mildred Jenkins, 68, a retired telephone operator from Somerville
    Tennessee, said: "We've experienced more than the younger people.
    Older people are wiser. We've seen war and we know." Ms. Jenkins said
    she usually votes Republican but "may go Democratic this time."

    More than one person who lived through the Vietnam war mentioned the
    draft and the absence of one for this war. "It's because of life
    experience," said Jimmie Powell, 73, a bartender and factory worker
    from El Reno, Oklahoma. "I don't think younger people really know a
    whole lot about anything. They don't care because there is no draft.
    If there were a draft, we'd finally have the revolution we need."

    Mr. Powell describes himself as a political independent.

    Some of the younger respondents said they were more aggressive than
    their elders by virtue of age.

    "I think old people tend to want to solve things more diplomatically
    than younger, more gung ho types," said Mary Jackson, 28 a homemaker
    from Brewton, Alabama. "Younger people are more combative."

    Younger people are also more optimistic. Forty-nine percent of them
    said the United States was either very likely or somewhat likely to
    succeed in Iraq, while only 34 percent of older people said the same
    thing.

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

    4) Denying the Right to Choose
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/19thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

    Among the major flaws in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision
    giving the federal government power to limit a woman’s right
    to make decisions about her health was its fundamental
    dishonesty.

    Under the modest-sounding guise of following existing
    precedent, the majority opinion — written by Justice Anthony
    Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
    Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — gutted
    a host of thoughtful lower federal court rulings, not to
    mention past Supreme Court rulings.

    It severely eroded the constitutional respect and protection
    accorded to women and the personal decisions they make about
    pregnancy and childbirth. The justices went so far as to
    eviscerate the crucial requirement, which dates to the 1973
    ruling in Roe v. Wade, that all abortion regulations must
    have an exception to protect a woman’s health.

    As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues
    responsible for this atrocious result are not doctors.
    Yet these five male justices felt free to override the
    weight of medical evidence presented during the several
    trials that preceded the Supreme Court showdown. Instead,
    they ratified the politically based and dangerously dubious
    Congressional claim that criminalizing the intact dilation
    and extraction method of abortion in the second trimester
    of pregnancy — the so-called partial-birth method — would
    never pose a significant health risk to a woman. In fact,
    the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
    has found the procedure to be medically necessary in
    certain cases.

    Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the
    procedure was good for women in that it would protect
    them from a procedure they might not fully understand
    in advance and would probably come to regret. This way
    of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must
    be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s place
    in the family and under the Constitution that have long
    been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by
    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John
    Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.

    Far from being compelled by the court’s precedents,
    Justice Ginsburg aptly objected, the new ruling is so at
    odds with its jurisprudence — including a concurring opinion
    by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (who has now been succeeded
    by Justice Alito) when a remarkably similar state abortion
    ban was struck down just seven years ago — that it should
    not have staying power.

    For anti-abortion activists, this case has never been
    about just one controversial procedure. They have correctly
    seen it as a wedge that could ultimately be used to undermine
    and perhaps eliminate abortion rights eventually. The court
    has handed the Bush administration and other opponents of
    women’s reproductive rights the big political victory they
    were hoping to get from the conservative judges Mr. Bush has
    added to the bench. It comes at a real cost to the court’s
    credibility, its integrity and the rule of law.

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

    5) Frolicking Visitor Delights Hearts, Then Dies
    By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and ANN FARMER
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19whale.html?ref=nyregion

    A 12-foot-long whale that had surfaced and frolicked near
    the mouth of the Gowanus Canal on Tuesday, delighting and
    surprising even the most hardened of Brooklyn residents,
    died yesterday, officials said.

    The whale — a minke, the second-smallest whale species —
    had been thought to be in good health because it was not
    surfacing erratically. Like other ocean mammals, whales
    must surface to breathe.

    Shortly before 5 p.m., during low tide, it was seen churning
    in the water. Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the Fisheries
    Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
    said, “It swam by a bulkhead” near the canal’s mouth, “thrashed
    a little, and then expired.” Neither its age nor sex were known.

    Earlier in the day, biologists speculated that the whale
    might have followed krill or another food source into the
    Gowanus Canal, whose polluted waters have cleared somewhat
    in recent years.

    Kim Durham, the rescue program director for the Riverhead
    Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, which arranges
    for rescues of dolphins and other sea animals, said the dying
    whale apparently beached itself after hitting rocks near a Hess
    oil refinery.

    Ms. Durham said she received an urgent phone call from
    researchers at the scene. “ ‘Kim, there’s a lot of splashing
    going on across the waterway,’ ” Ms. Durham recalled the
    researchers saying. “ ‘We’re going to check it out.’ Our
    team got on scene and the animal was dead.”

    The Riverhead team secured the whale’s carcass with ropes
    so it would not float out to sea, Ms. Durham said.

    The Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to transport the
    carcass, which weighs several tons, to its Caven Point center
    in New Jersey, across from Liberty Island. A necropsy is
    scheduled for today, Ms. Durham said.

    Word of the whale’s death reached Ms. Frady minutes after
    in a telephone interview in which she described the difficulties
    of rescuing an ill or hungry animal the size of a whale.

    “The animal’s not going to sit there and let you net it,”
    she said.

    Big nets might pull human rescuers into the water, Ms. Frady
    said. A flotilla of boats might not be able to coax the whale
    back to sea. And if the whale is sick, the trauma of the rescue
    attempt may hasten its death, Ms. Frady said.

    A minke (pronounced MINK-ee) is the smallest of the whales,
    except for the pygmy whales, according to Diana Reiss, a senior
    research scientist at the New York Aquarium.

    The largest whale, the blue whale, can reach 100 feet and
    weigh more than 100 tons. The minke is a fast-swimming and
    inquisitive species, and adult males can reach 26 feet and
    females 33 feet.

    For two days, the whale had been an object of admiration.
    Parents brought small children, whale watchers brought
    binoculars and photographers brought long lenses to the
    areas overlooking the canal.

    Debra Clarke, 36, an apartment and office organizer, arrived
    in the early evening yesterday only to learn of the whale’s
    death.

    “We just came hoping for good news,” she said, noting that
    she and her friends had spent most of the day watching
    broadcast news of the Virginia Tech massacre. “After Virginia,
    you come here rooting for the whale. You hope that something g
    ood has to happen, because it turns out these are days
    for tears.”

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

    6) About Shaquanda Cotton: an interview with Terry Howcott
    John Calvin Jones
    "Editor's note: The recent story of Shaquanda Cotton,
    sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for her
    first offense, pushing a hall monitor at her high school
    in Paris, Texas, raises a number of social policy issues.
    Though Ms. Cotton was just released, given the revelations
    of abuses in the Texas Penal System, where youths were
    forced to have sex with guards, thousands of others are
    trapped behind bars and are being tracked for prison as
    we speak. Many people sought to shed light on the Shaquanda
    Cotton case and secure her release. One such woman was
    Terry Howcott. I was able to interview Ms. Howcott and
    get her thoughts on the Shaquanda Cotton affair and more."
    2007-04-09
    http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/About_Shaquanda_Cotton__an_interview_with_Terry_Howcott

    Terry Lynn Howcott, MSW, is an educator and activist.
    She lives in Detroit, constantly working on matters of
    social justice and resisting discrimination and bigotries
    against people based upon their race, culture gender,
    what she calls “attractional orientation” and any number
    of other areas of oppression. She is the founder,
    co-builder and host of the website, terryhowcott.com

    John Calvin Jones: Ms. Howcott, tell us about your
    orientation on the topic of social justice and where
    you see that we need to work, in order to improve the
    lives of us all?

    Terry Howcott: Thank you and I appreciate your thinking
    of me for this interview. A discussion of social justice
    or lack thereof is so vast that one’s orientation almost
    requires one be somewhat disoriented or off balance.
    There are so many paths that the oppressor uses to clamp
    down on so many of us that it’s hard even for those
    of us who think we know a little something to wrap our
    brains around the magnitude. Somewhere I decided that
    too many people were preaching to the choir, i.e.
    activists, intellectuals, and others talking to themselves
    about racism, sexism, intra race bigotry and other forms
    of oppression, and that not enough work was being done
    to plant some seeds with folk who really don’t “get it.”

    I don’t have any magical ideas as to how we move from
    gathering together and agreeing with one another into
    a more mature community organizing model – but out of
    desperation terryhowcott.com was born which, in a nutshell,
    says that Black unity has to be unconditional. So far,
    we have placed so many barriers and controls against
    African people that we never even hear the word “unity”
    uttered anymore. Too many have actually pulled back
    from Black unity concepts that authentic unity might
    never be realized. To insist upon a partial coming
    together is an unhealthy thing and is not a valid
    approach to Black liberation. So, with my website,
    I hope to forge ahead as my numbers grow – and things
    are looking good – toward the planning of the first
    annual “Broad and Black” Family Reunion.

    JCJ: I had the pleasure of hearing you during an
    interview you had on KPFT (kpft.org), the Pacifica
    Radio station of Houston, Texas. You were discussing
    the case of Shaquanda Cotton, what can you tell us
    about Ms. Cotton and her current circumstances?

    TH: Shaquanda Cotton is a 15 year-old Black girl-child,
    who was sentenced and imprisoned for shoving a hall monitor
    at her school in Paris, Texas. Having heard about it,
    and perusing online I saw other people writing on the
    subject, but thought there were some additional points
    that ought to be raised.

    Of course, we know intuitively that the environment
    in Texas and in the South is especially oppressive.
    So a child who might already have social difficulties
    growing up in a racist, unsupportive environment would
    naturally be a prime candidate to act out, by pushing
    or shoving someone. But why was she picked out and
    given such a harsh sentence? We know that her mother,
    Ms. Creola Cotton, had long been an outspoken resister
    to racist practices, and the elder Ms. Cotton has
    reported problems in Paris, Texas for some time.
    And we also know the effects of racism and oppression
    on Shaquanda, since her incarceration we know that
    `Shaquanda has tried to hurt herself in prison.

    JCJ: Before we go further, tell us why you care about
    what happened to Shaquanda or her future. I mean,
    she is not related to you is she?

    TH: For me, Shaquanda is closer than kin. This
    teenage girl is a reflection of who I am, and vice
    versa. Her Black girlhood is my history just as much
    as I want to believe that my Black womanhood
    is her future.

    Let me give an anecdote. I was at a grocery store
    today, and after I got to the line, I realized I had
    forgotten something. I laid my stuff down and ran
    back to the aisle. When I returned, two women had
    joined the line, the one in front with a few items
    and the gracious one in the rear granted me space
    to get back to my place after I explained. The one
    in front, rolled her eyes and said “we don’t use
    food to hold our place in line here.”

    When I posed to her a quick diagnosis of her problem
    (that being that she was suffering some control dilemmas
    combined with old-time racism) she took her little hand
    basket and proceeded to slam it on top of my food,
    three times! The sister almost turned my grapes
    to grape juice. At that very moment, I felt Shaquanda’s
    spirit pass through me as I explained angrily to that
    woman “violence is no fun unless all parties get to
    participate.” I calmed down, but these kinds of
    incidents that we have suffered in some form or
    fashion inform us that Shaquanda might have experienced
    harassment, or some social intrusion that she might
    not be able to identify given her age and socio-
    political unawareness. I see Shaquanda and her case
    as an example where a young girl reacted in a manner
    that was meant to push away, shove and reject these
    types of subtle or overt acts of indignity and attitudes
    on our behalf.

    JCJ: When I heard your interview, you said that few
    details are known about the incident involving Shaquanda.
    Then you added, we do not know the background of the
    White man whom she supposedly pushed. From your
    perspective, as Black woman, as a Social Work Practitioner
    with a critical eye, tell us why you see questions
    of background as significant?

    TH: A person’s background and the social context, just
    as is the case with history, means everything. All events
    leading to a particular offense can change and rearrange
    our perceptions of what we think we know. Investigation
    of the facts is critical to our ability to reason and make
    proper decisions. We should know why Shaquanda chose to
    shove that particular guard. What did this hall monitor
    say to Shaquanda just before Shaquanda reacted? What,
    if any, past issues or incidents did these two have?
    What is the history of this hall guard with other Black
    and Brown students? I submit that a less than thorough
    exploration or law enforcement and school or organizational
    decision-making often mean that the officials in charge
    are exercising a deliberate misuse of power. They manipulate
    events or hide relevant facts that in turn generate criminal
    convictions that can destroy people’s lives.

    JCJ: On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman alluded to the fact
    that Shaquanda was singled out because her mother complained
    about racism in the schools in Paris, Texas, what do you
    know about that?

    TH: I only know of various press accounts about how
    Shaquanda’s mother, Creola, complained to the school
    board about racism in the schools in Paris, Texas.
    But from a larger perspective, I know first-hand of
    the overt and subtle reactions we receive when we
    challenge White superiority and racism, be it with
    institutions like schools or in private relationships
    with colleagues and friends.

    We know that even the most progressive White people
    can be incapable of evaluating their own bigotries
    unless they have discovered them on their own – which
    is often rare. We also know that too frequently,
    White people will pull back, become cold, stone like,
    emotionally unavailable if you raise issues of race
    or White Supremacy.

    If Creola Cotton pushed these school officials, and
    they reacted as most do, becoming defensive and
    resentful for hearing about their own bigotries, it
    is likely that they retaliated and Shaquanda was
    punished as a result. Instead of considering the
    complaints of the Cotton family in earnest, and
    accepting criticism in a way to construct an authentic
    learning environment, they retaliated, and struck out
    with the tool of punishment instead of healing.

    JCJ: What about Shaquanda, and the message the school
    administrators and the courts sent to her directly?

    TH: We can presume that Shaquanda is in tune with
    her mother’s questions and concerns. As such, we can
    suspect that Shaquanda might have also accused her
    hall monitors, teachers or school personnel of being
    racist. As we know, the status quo in this country
    is weak with fear of debate – especially over the top
    of racism and White Supremacy.

    So much of this fear manifests as discussions about
    control and regulating behavior of others. For example,
    recently the National Institute of Mental Health provided
    a report that gave suggestions as to what parents could
    do to keep their children “from being bad.” Authors of
    the NIMH report actually considered evidence of children
    being “bad” to include their being “argumentative.”
    So the position from government officials and Mental
    Health professionals is that a child who is smart enough
    to ask questions is “bad.” We will never find cures
    for cancer and AIDS if we allow schools to farm our
    children like ears of corn – depriving them of a sense
    of inquisitiveness and ability to challenge status quo
    positions on a given issue. From what I can see, this
    is how Shaquanda’s schools is and was operating.
    Any allegations by the school system that they were
    concerned about Shaquanda’s conduct, so much so, that
    they had to have this girl who had no criminal record,
    arrested and sent to prison, probably had more to do
    with this child claiming her right to share her thoughts.

    Fighting for the right of our children to speak their
    minds is our duty. As we can tell, even from the “Bong
    Hits for Jesus” case in the Supreme Court, no school
    administrators will ever side with children and their
    creativity and independence.

    JCJ: Shaquanda Cotton is from Paris, Texas (Northeast
    of Dallas and close to the Oklahoma border), but she
    is housed in a prison in Brownwood, Texas (275 miles
    to the Southwest), in the middle of Texas Brownwood
    is not even near a major airport. Hence Creola Cotton,
    Shaquanda’s mother, could not visit her often.
    My understanding is that such a practice is common,
    namely housing prisoners as far from their families
    as possible. Tell us what you know about the practice
    in general and how it affects both the incarcerated
    and the families.

    TH: I am glad that you raise that issue. We see
    similar conduct where I live in Michigan. In Detroit
    we had a Police Chief, Jerry Oliver, who proposed, on
    behalf of Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a program
    that would transport Detroit-area prisoners to other
    states. I had never seen such a vengeance-hearted policy.
    Of course we know that this practice of commodifying
    prisoners feeds the very corporations that strive to
    humiliate and victimize prisoners beyond the basic
    circumstances of imprisonment. In her particular case,
    the further away that Shaquanda is and was from her
    family and community, the less love and support she
    had via her Grandmother, Mother and other loved ones
    and friends.

    Shipping Shaquanda or any prisoners, so far from home,
    is an attempt to damage her psychologically, and serves
    as a microcosm of what is happening to our community
    at-large. Shaquanda and youths like her are considered
    future crop for corporate devils who work to create
    a steady flow of younger and younger Black bodies into
    their private prison system.

    I once wrote a paper on prisons. Through my research
    I learned that these private-prison corporations and
    their parent companies lobbies Congress against Head
    Start Programs, knowing full well that studies suggest
    children who engage Head Start are less likely to go
    to prison. Those who prey on Black and Brown and the
    poor actually lobby against good social policy and
    educational opportunities for Brothers and Sisters
    who are particularly at risk of being netted into
    prison. Thus the retaliation against the resistance
    offered by Creola Cotton came with the same message:
    “not only will we will get you, but we will get you
    by isolating Shaquanda and making it as unlikely as
    possible that she will be a success in her future.”

    JCJ: I see Shaquanda Cotton as a symbol for a larger
    complex of pathologies. That is, she attended
    a public school, in a system that is run more like
    a prison than a sanctuary for learning, and the State
    of Texas – like others, forces students to learn thousands
    of unintegrated facts and prepare to take multiple choices
    tests, which is really about teaching obedience over
    creativity. From your experience and perspective,
    comment about what you see happening in our schools
    and to masses of young people?

    TH: Our young people are rightfully unhappy in today’s
    public schools. We should point out that schools were
    never really made for us, Black and Browns. The highest
    ideal, of the public school as a place to develop future
    leaders through a classical or liberal arts education
    was not intended to benefit us. Further as the school
    system has split and created the Black and Brown, mindless
    skill track – designed to create a vocational class of
    passive workers – is not made for our styles of learning.
    Moreover, the schools have never been structured in a way
    that allows for truth telling.

    Black children are born to tell truths because truth is
    a reflection of their intelligence. However, Black
    children are acculturated to telling lies after matriculating
    into these schools. That is, we learn to discount our own
    reality and encouraged to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr.
    said that race is unimportant or should not be recognized
    or that the U.S. is not an imperialist nation. Like Kanye
    West said after Katrina, “George Bush doesn’t care about
    Black people.” We all see it. New Orleans and the entire
    Gulf Region have not been rebuilt, but billions are spent
    on war in Iraq and Afghanistan. When our public schools do
    not incorporate this neglect of our people into their lessons
    and truths, Black children learn that they are undervalued.
    I am not saying there aren’t some children, Black and White
    who learn dishonesty before they enroll in school, but I think
    you get my drift.

    JCJ: Your website is massive and has hundreds of links,
    news articles, stories, and commentaries. How did you put
    it together and what do you hope to do with it?

    TH: Well, I did that with a lot of help from some special
    people – a committee I formed to help prop me up and advise
    me, some of whom were Detroiters and others were monitoring
    and loving the process from afar. I envisioned its parts and
    researched and wrote artists and museums and photographers
    around the world begging for use of their wares, found an
    amazing site builder who saw the vision, loved what I had
    collected - and the rest is history.

    JCJ: Returning to the specifics and generalities of
    Shaquanda Cotton, I know that a few web pages encourage
    others to write to the judge who sentenced her, asking
    for mercy. But it seems to me, that such is like asking
    a member of the KKK to remove the rope during a lynching.
    Are there not a host of other strategies that are more
    practical and far reaching? What do you think?

    TH: I believe in the art of protest, and I strongly
    believe that it is important to protest and keep old
    anger flowing out to make room for what will enrage
    us soon thereafter. I also think that oppressive people
    generally only listen to other oppressive people.
    So one of them is going to have to say “Buck” or “Jeb”
    I think we gotta’ let that old Black girl go.” This is
    why at my page, I suggested contacting some of the folks
    who will be spending money in Texas this Spring Summer.

    Also, I think a day off from work from all the Black
    folk and their allies in Texas could cripple that state.
    That could help draw that first wave of attention to
    a national strike. As working people we hold the purse
    strings, much like a legislature, except we have the
    potential to have an immediate effect and we have much
    more courage than any legislators to stand up against
    economic power and oppression.

    JCJ: Is there anything more that you would like to add
    when you reflect on the Shaquanda Cotton case, and
    a wide range of social, economic and political issues
    that are manifest in her ordeal? Thankfully, due to
    social pressure and public scrutiny, Shaquanda was
    recently released.

    TH: Well, perhaps the most important thing is that
    I hope Shaquanda Cotton’s Mother, Creola, and Grandmother
    are holding themselves together with what must be a
    devastating and heartbreaking experience for them.
    The school system, the prosecutors and all those involved
    with this case must pay reparations to this family.
    Shaquanda Cotton needs some good strong professional
    support, cultural engagement and loads of tender loving
    care after this experience.

    I think that Shaquanda’s situation and the quality of
    response to her case with Black bloggers, radio hosts
    and others is indicative of the larger matter that people
    are really tired. Hopefully, the redress given Shaquanda
    can egg on Black people and other activists in this country
    to take the offensive saying: “We’re going to shoot back
    at oppression. We can take your best shot, and we will
    come back.”

    Lastly, I think that this nation is in a dangerous position
    considering that the president has made moves so that he can
    declare Martial Law more easily. G. W. Bush is a deeply
    troubled ideologue who might want to lock this country down
    and recreate it in his own image. I hope that we don’t fall
    for what appears to be exactly what he and his handlers want
    – that is violence. Bush is a man who has proven that he has
    no problem with ordering the killing a whole lot of innocent
    people, issuing orders for torture, and who is as ruthless
    and heartless as I have seen in my lifetime.

    Thank you.

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

    7) Girl in prison for shove released
    By Howard Witt
    Tribune senior correspondent
    March 31, 2007, 8:41 PM CDT
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070331shaquanda,1,2079171,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true

    HOUSTON -- After spending a year behind bars, Shaquanda
    Cotton walked out of a central Texas youth prison Saturday
    pretty much like many 15-year-olds would: eager for a hug
    from her mom and pining for a Big Mac.

    So McDonald's was the first stop for the soft-spoken black
    teenager, who was abruptly released by Texas officials
    after nationwide civil rights protests erupted over her
    sentence of up to 7 years for shoving a teacher's aide
    at her high school.

    "I feel like I have a second chance," she said, moments
    after devouring her hamburger. "I'm going to be a better
    person now. I'm a good person, but I want to be a better
    person."

    Soon after the restaurant stop, though, Cotton and her
    mother Creola headed out on the five-hour drive from the
    prison in Brownwood back home to Paris, the small northeast
    Texas town that has been roiled by protests and racial
    acrimony over her case and broader allegations of racial
    discrimination in the town's schools and courts.

    What reception awaits the teenager there in coming days
    is anyone's guess, but her mother says she is concerned.

    "I don't want to place my daughter in danger," Creola
    Cotton said. "I hope we can stay in Paris because this
    is where my family is. I would hate to have to pick up
    and leave."

    At the heart of the controversy, which exploded across
    hundreds of Internet blogs and then scores of newspapers
    and radio and TV stations in the last three weeks, was
    the seeming severity of the teenager's sentence for
    an offense that caused no documentable injury to the
    teacher's aide.

    Three months before Cotton, who had no prior criminal
    record, was sentenced by Paris Judge Chuck Superville
    in March, 2006, to up to seven years in youth prison
    for the shoving incident, Superville sentenced a 14-year
    -old white girl convicted of the more serious crime of
    arson to probation. Later, when the white teenager
    violated her probation, Superville gave her yet another
    chance and declined to send her to prison. Only when
    the youth violated her probation a second time did the
    judge order her locked up.

    School officials, the Paris district attorney and the
    judge have all strongly denied that race played a role
    in the prosecution and sentencing of Cotton. But her
    case has coincided with an ongoing investigation of
    the Paris school district by the U.S. Department of
    Education, which is examining allegations that the
    district systemically discriminates against black
    students by disciplining them more frequently and
    more harshly than whites.

    The furor over Cotton's case caused the special
    conservator now in charge of the Texas Youth Commission,
    the state's juvenile prison system, to examine it more
    closely last week, at the urging of civil rights leaders.

    The conservator, Jay Kimbrough, who is charged with
    completely overhauling the Texas Youth Commission
    because of a spreading sex scandal involving prison
    officials who allegedly coerced sex from inmates,
    decided Friday that Shaquanda merited immediate release.

    Kimbrough said his decision was not based on the
    circumstances of the teenager's prosecution and sentence
    but rather on the arbitrary way in which her indeterminate
    sentence had been extended by prison authorities since
    she had been incarcerated. Authorities penalized her
    because she was found with "contraband" in her cell—an
    extra pair of socks.

    "The TYC staff brought that file in to me [Friday] morning
    and were so surprised by what they saw that they felt like
    immediate action was justified, and I supported that
    wholeheartedly," Kimbrough said.

    Cotton was the first of an estimated 400 juveniles
    incarcerated across the state whom Kimbrough has ordered
    released, beginning Monday. Those youths have all satisfied
    their minimum sentences and have committed no serious
    violations while in custody.

    Kimbrough has also convened a special review panel to examine
    the sentences of all 4,700 juveniles in Texas Youth Commission
    custody, with the goal of releasing any whose sentences have
    been unjustly extended by prison authorities.

    "This is the right thing to do and TYC could have and should
    have done it long before Mr. Kimbrough took over," said
    Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas chapter
    of the ACLU. "Shaquanda was the first domino, but there
    will be hundreds if not thousands to follow."

    hwitt@tribune.com

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

    8) The Plot Against Medicare
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    Op-Ed Columnist
    April 20, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp

    The plot against Social Security failed: President Bush’s
    attempt to privatize the system crashed and burned when
    the public realized what he was up to. But the plot
    against Medicare is faring better: the stealth privatization
    embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress
    literally passed in the dead of night back in 2003,
    is proceeding apace.

    Worse yet, the forces behind privatization not only continue
    to have the G.O.P. in their pocket, but they have also been
    finding useful idiots within the newly powerful Democratic
    coalition. And it’s not just politicians with an eye on
    campaign contributions. There’s no nice way to say it:
    the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens
    have become patsies for the insurance industry.

    To appreciate what’s going on, you need to know what has
    been happening to Medicare in the last few years.

    The 2003 Medicare legislation created Part D, the drug
    benefit for seniors — but unlike the rest of Medicare,
    Part D isn’t provided directly by the government. Instead,
    you can get it only through a private drug plan, provided
    by an insurance company. At the same time, the bill sharply
    increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans, which
    also funnel Medicare funds through insurance companies.

    As a result, Medicare — originally a system in which the
    government paid people’s medical bills — is becoming,
    instead, a system in which the government pays the insurance
    industry to provide coverage. And a lot of the money never
    makes it to the people Medicare is supposed to help.

    In the case of the drug benefit, the private drug plans
    add an extra, costly layer of bureaucracy. Worse yet, they
    have much less ability to bargain for lower drug prices
    than government programs like Medicaid and the Veterans
    Health Administration. Reasonable estimates suggest that
    if Congress had eliminated the middlemen, it could have
    created a much better drug plan — one without the notorious
    “doughnut hole,” the gap in coverage once your annual
    expenses exceed $2,400 per year — at no higher cost.

    Meanwhile, those Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers
    12 percent more per recipient than standard Medicare. In
    the next five years that subsidy will cost more than $50 billion
    — about what it would cost to provide all children in America
    with health insurance. Some of that $50 billion will be passed
    on to seniors in extra benefits, but a lot of it will go to
    overhead, marketing expenses and profits.

    With the Democratic victory last fall, you might have expected
    these things to change. But the political news over the last
    few days has been grim.

    First, the Senate failed to end debate on a bill — in effect,
    killing it — that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate
    over drug prices. The bill was too weak to have allowed Medicare
    to get large discounts. Still, it would at least have
    established the principle of using government bargaining
    power to get a better deal. But in spite of overwhelming public
    support for price negotiation, 42 senators, all Republicans,
    voted no on allowing the bill to go forward.

    If we can’t even establish the principle of negotiation,
    a true repair of the damage done in 2003 — which would
    require having Medicare offer seniors the option of getting
    their drug coverage directly, without involving the insurance
    companies — seems politically far out of reach.

    At the same time, attempts to rein in those Medicare
    Advantage payments seem to be running aground. Everyone
    knew that reducing payments would be politically tough.
    What comes as a bitter surprise is the fact that minority
    advocacy groups are now part of the problem, with both
    the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens
    sending letters to Congressional leaders opposing plans
    to scale back the subsidy.

    What seems to have happened is that both groups have been
    taken in by insurance industry disinformation, which falsely
    claims that minorities benefit disproportionately from
    this subsidy. It’s a claim that has been thoroughly debunked
    in a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities —
    but apparently the truth isn’t getting through.

    Public opinion is strongly in favor of universal health
    care, and for good reason: fear of losing health insurance
    has become a constant anxiety of the middle class. Yet even
    as we talk about guaranteeing insurance to all, privatization
    is undermining Medicare — and people who should know better
    are aiding and abetting the process.

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

    9) U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect
    By ANTHONY DePALMA
    April 20, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/americas/20posada.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

    A 79-year-old anti-Castro Cuban exile and former C.I.A.
    operative linked to the bombing of a Cuban airliner was
    released on bail yesterday and immediately returned to
    Miami to await trial on immigration fraud charges.

    The man, Luis Posada Carriles, was released from the
    Otero County Prison in Chaparral, N.M., after posting
    a $350,000 bond on the immigration charges.

    His release infuriated the authorities in Cuba and Venezuela,
    who have been trying to extradite him to stand trial over
    the 1976 airliner bombing, which killed 73 people, including
    several teenage members of Cuba’s national fencing team.

    The United States Justice Department had tried unsuccessfully
    to prevent his release, arguing that his escape from
    a Venezuelan prison in 1985 increased the risk that he
    might flee before the scheduled start of his trial on
    immigration charges on May 11.

    The court rejected the Justice Department’s argument, but
    it increased security measures by ordering Mr. Posada to
    be fitted with an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts.
    He was ordered to remain under house detention with his
    wife in Miami until the immigration trial begins.

    Mr. Posada, a gray-haired former intelligence operative
    and United States Army officer, has been detained since
    May 2005, when he entered the United States illegally.

    President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said Thursday in Caracas,
    “We demand that they extradite that terrorist and murderer
    to Venezuela, instead of protecting him.”

    Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera, the chief of the Cuban
    Interests Section, Cuba’s diplomatic representation
    in Washington, told Agence France-Presse yesterday,
    “Cuba forcefully condemns this decision and holds the
    government of the United States totally responsible for
    the fact that Posada Carriles is free in Miami.”

    Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, reported last night
    that 50,000 people had gathered at a demonstration in Bayamo,
    a city in southeastern Cuba, to protest the release of
    Mr. Posada and to demand that he be tried for the jetliner
    bombing.

    The Cuban government has also accused Mr. Posada, an avowed
    opponent of the island’s Communist rule, of plotting to
    assassinate the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, in Panama in
    2000, and of planning a series of explosions in tourist
    hotels in Havana in 1997.

    Mr. Posada was jailed in Panama in connection with the
    attempt on Mr. Castro’s life but was later pardoned by
    Panamanian officials. He admitted, then later denied, that
    he had directed the wave of hotel bombings in 1997.

    He has also repeatedly denied responsibility for the bombing
    of the plane, known as Cubana Airlines Flight 455. The jet
    blew apart and crashed off the coast of Barbados
    on Oct. 6, 1976.

    Investigators in Venezuela, where Mr. Posada had been
    chief of operations in the secret intelligence police,
    traced at least one of the bombs to the plane’s luggage
    compartment. The investigators found that two Venezuelans
    had checked bags through to Havana but got off the plane
    at a scheduled stop in Barbados.

    The men had worked for Mr. Posada, who was arrested in
    Venezuela and charged with the bombing. He escaped from
    prison in 1985 dressed as a priest after associates bribed
    a guard.

    Cuban officials have accused the United States of hypocrisy
    in battling terrorists by not prosecuting Mr. Posada or
    deporting him to stand trial on terrorism charges in another
    country. They routinely refer to Mr. Posada as “the bin
    Laden of the Americas.”

    Mr. Posada’s shadowy past as a Central Intelligence Agency
    operative put the United States in a politically delicate
    position. In his early years, he had received military
    training in the United States and worked for the C.I.A.
    to bring down the Castro government. He participated in the
    failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Later he was involved
    in supplying arms to rebels in Nicaragua.

    The United States has acknowledged his long record of
    violent acts. In court papers filed in his immigration
    fraud case, the Justice Department described him as “an
    unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist
    plots.”

    Mr. Posada was detained in 2005 after he entered the
    United States on false pretenses. According to an indictment
    unsealed this year, he lied when he told border officials
    he had paid a smuggler to drive him from Mexico to Texas.
    He actually entered the country on a small boat. He also
    lied about using an alias.

    An immigration judge has blocked Mr. Posada’s extradition
    to Cuba or Venezuela, ruling that he could be subject
    to torture in those countries. Efforts to deport him
    to another country have failed because so far no other
    country has been willing to take him.

    His arrival in Miami yesterday afternoon set off mixed
    reactions among the area’s many Cuban exiles, who see
    him as both a patriot and an embarrassment.

    “We have been fighting this war on terror, and here we
    are releasing a man who has a history of terrorist acts
    and is a fugitive of justice in other countries,” said
    Elena Freyre, executive director of the Cuban-American
    Defense League, a moderate exile group in Miami.
    “It’s absolutely appalling.”

    But Miguel Saavedra, president of Vigilia Mambisa,
    a small, hard-line anti-Castro exile group, said he
    felt vindicated by Mr. Posada’s release on bail.

    “The only ones accusing him are the governments of Cuba
    and Venezuela,” Mr. Saavedra said. “They can only accuse
    him because they haven’t been able to prove anything.
    If he is sent to Cuba or Venezuela, it would be the
    equivalent of executing him.”

    Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.

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

    10) Union, in Organizing Fight, Tangles With Celebrity Cook
    By MARIAN BURROS
    April 20, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20deen.html

    WASHINGTON, April 19 — Paula Deen, the Food Network’s
    ebullient queen of butter-drenched Southern cooking,
    has found herself in the middle of a dispute between
    Smithfield Foods Inc. and a union that has long tried
    to organize one of the company’s pork processing plants.

    As part of a national campaign to win support for its
    effort, the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers,
    is trying to get Ms. Deen to sever her ties to Smithfield,
    for which she has been a paid spokeswoman since last fall.

    Within the growing world of food-celebrity endorsements,
    Ms. Deen is the first personality to have become entangled
    in such a fight.

    The latest round of it took place on Wednesday night
    at the National Museum of Natural History here, where
    Ms. Deen, on a national book tour, made an appearance
    before a sold-out crowd.

    Outside, as promised, about two dozen people supporting
    unionization of the huge plant, in Tar Heel, N.C., held
    a prayer vigil as the audience arrived. Inside, as Ms. Deen
    responded later to questions that had been submitted
    to her in writing, a member of the union tried to speak
    to her from the audience and deliver a letter. That woman,
    Leila McDowell, and a former Smithfield worker, Lenore
    Bailey, were swiftly ushered out by museum guards.

    Ms. Deen, for her part, issued a news release in which
    she said, “Now, I’m not an expert on the union situation
    but here’s what I do know: I know the folks at Smithfield
    care about their employees and work hard to support the
    communities where they live, work and raise their families.”

    In 2004, the National Labor Relations Board found that
    Smithfield, through threats, spying and firings, had
    prevented fairness in a 1997 election in which the union
    failed to organize the Tar Heel plant. A federal appeals
    court upheld the decision last year, concluding that
    Smithfield had engaged in “intense and widespread coercion”
    and ordering reinstatement of four fired workers, one of
    whom had been beaten by the plant’s police on the day
    of the election.

    The effort to speak with Ms. Deen on Wednesday followed
    a letter to her from the North Carolina Council of Churches
    describing conditions at the plant and suggesting that she
    would not have signed with Smithfield if she had known about
    them. Quoting a report based on data from the Occupational
    Safety and Health Administration, it said worker injuries
    were up 200 percent since 2003. The company says its
    injury rate is no different from the industry average.

    The union says it will continue to demonstrate against
    Ms. Deen, though on a larger scale, wherever she goes
    on her book tour.

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

    11) Statement from the revolutionary government of Cuba
    Translated by Granma International
    Havana, April 19, 2007
    http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/vier20/17declara.html

    Cuba condemns the shameful decision to release terrorist
    Luis Posada Carriles and points to the United States
    government as the only one responsible for this cruel
    and despicable action, which seeks to buy the terrorist’s
    silence regarding his crimes in the service of the CIA,
    particularly during the time when Bush Sr. was that
    agency’s general director.

    With this decision, the U.S. government has ignored
    the clamor that has arisen throughout the world,
    including in the United States, against the impunity
    and political manipulation involved in this action.

    This decision is an insult to the people of Cuba and
    other nations who lost 73 of their sons and daughters
    in the abominable 1976 attack that brought down a
    Cubana de Aviación civilian airliner off the coast
    of Barbados.

    This decision is an insult to the people of the United
    States themselves, and a categorical refutation of the
    so-called "war on terrorism" declared by the government
    of President George W. Bush.

    The U.S. government had only to certify Luis Posada
    Carriles as a terrorist to prevent his release and,
    in line with Section 412 of the U.S. Patriot Act, to
    acknowledge that his release would "threaten the national
    security of the United States or the safety of the
    community or any person."

    The U.S. government could also have implemented the
    regulations enabling Immigration and Customs Enforcement
    to detain a foreigner who is not admissible to U.S.
    territory and subject to deportation.

    For that, it would have sufficed for U.S. authorities
    to have determined that Posada Carriles is a threat to
    the community, or that releasing him would involve
    a flight risk on his part.

    Why did the U.S. government allow the terrorist to
    enter U.S. territory with impunity, despite the warnings
    sounded by President Fidel Castro?

    Why did the U.S. government protect him during the months
    he remained illegally in its territory?

    Why, having all the elements to do otherwise, did it
    limit itself this past January 11 to charging him with
    lesser crimes, essentially immigration-related, and not
    with what he actually is: a murderer?

    Why is he being released, when Judge Kathleen Cardone
    herself, in her April 6 ruling ordering the release of
    the terrorist, admitted that he was accused of "...having
    been involved in, or associated with, some of the most
    infamous events" of the 20th century? Some of the events
    include "the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Iran-Contra affair,
    the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, the tourist bombings
    of 1997 in Havana, and even — according to some conspiracy
    theorists — the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

    Why is the U.S. Homeland Security Department’s Immigration
    and Customs Enforcement agency not using the mechanisms it
    has at its disposal for maintaining the terrorist in prison,
    with the irrefutable argument, already used by the U.S.
    Attorney General’s office on a date as recent as this past
    March 19, that if he were released, there is a risk that
    he could flee?

    Why has the U.S. government ignored the extradition
    application submitted, in line with all relevant requirements,
    by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?

    How is it possible that today, the most notorious terrorist
    who has ever existed in this hemisphere is being released
    while five Cuban men remain in cruel imprisonment for the
    sole crime of fighting terrorism?

    For Cuba, the answer is clear. The terrorist’s release has
    been organized by the White House as compensation so that
    Posada Carriles will not divulge what he knows, so that he
    won’t talk about the countless secrets he holds in relation
    to his long career as an agent of the U.S. special services,
    in which he acted as part of Operation Condor, and in the
    dirty war against Cuba, Nicaragua and other nations in
    the world.

    The full responsibility for the terrorist’s release and
    the consequences deriving from it, fall directly on the
    United States government, and most particularly on the
    president of that country.

    Even now, after his release, the U.S. government has all
    the information and legal mechanisms to re-arrest him. All
    that is lacking is the political will to seriously combat
    terrorism, and to recall that, according to President Bush,
    "if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist,
    if you feed a terrorist, you will be as guilty as the
    terrorists."

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

    12) U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart
    By EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?ref=world

    BAGHDAD, April 20 — American military commanders in Baghdad
    are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening
    sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-
    long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite
    neighborhoods.

    Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad,
    a Sunni Arab stronghold, began construction of the wall last
    week and expect to finish it within a month. Iraqi Army
    soldiers would then control movement through a few checkpoints.
    The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents
    of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian
    tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi
    government to box in the minority Sunnis.

    A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would
    transform the residents into caged animals.

    “It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane
    manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying
    to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will
    be much greater between the two sects.”

    “The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.

    The American military said in a written statement that “the
    wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition
    and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”

    As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense
    Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted to the Iraqi government
    that it had to pass by late summer a series of measures
    long sought by the White House that were aimed at advancing
    reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite
    Arabs.

    Whether Parliament meets that benchmark could affect
    a decision that the Bush administration plans to make in
    late summer on extending the nearly 30,000 additional troops
    ordered to Iraq earlier this year, Mr. Gates said.

    His words were the bluntest yet by an American official
    in tying the American military commitment here to the
    Iraqi political process. It reflected a growing frustration
    among Bush administration officials at Iraq’s failure
    to move on the political elements of the new strategy.
    President Bush’s new security plan here is aimed at
    buying time for the feuding Iraqi factions to come
    to political settlements that would, in theory, reduce
    the violence.

    In recent weeks, Democrats in Congress have been intensifying
    pressure on the president, through negotiations on financing
    for the war, to set political deadlines for the Iraqis and
    tie them to the withdrawal of American troops.

    Speaking to reporters after talks with the Iraqi prime
    minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Gates urged Parliament
    not to adjourn for a planned summer recess without passing
    legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the purges of
    former Baath Party members from government positions and
    setting a date for provincial elections.

    “Our commitment to Iraq is long term, but it is not
    a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling
    Iraq’s streets open-endedly,” he said, adding that he
    told Mr. Maliki that “progress in reconciliation will
    be an important element of our evaluation in the late
    summer.”

    This is not the first time the Bush administration has
    set a timetable for Iraq to pass the reconciliation
    measures. Late last year, the White House gave the Iraqi
    government a goal of March to pass the legislation. March
    came and went, and senior administration officials shrugged
    off the missed target, saying it was counterproductive
    to press the Iraqis on the issue.

    Mr. Gates’s demand, with its strong hint of conditions
    attached, could force the Bush administration into a corner.

    If progress on the reconciliation measures proves impossible
    before the target date, as many Iraqi politicians say they
    believe, American officials will have to decide whether
    to follow through with the veiled threat. American military
    commanders have already indicated privately that it may be
    necessary to extend the troop reinforcements because the
    time between now and August is not be long enough for the
    new strategy to work.

    A senior White House official in Washington said that
    Mr. Gates had not threatened to remove American troops
    if Mr. Maliki cannot act by midsummer. Instead, the official
    argued, “He simply said what everyone has said, which
    is that the process of political accommodation has
    to speed up.”

    President Bush spoke with Mr. Maliki in a secure video
    conference on Monday morning and also emphasized the need
    to pass the legislation, aides said.

    Mr. Maliki’s office issued a statement on Friday saying
    that the prime minister was confident that steps toward
    reconciliation could be achieved this year.

    Mr. Gates delivered his message at the end of a week of
    major political turmoil and security setbacks for
    Mr. Maliki’s government. Mr. Maliki’s strongest political
    supporter, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr,
    withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet. Car bombs
    in Baghdad killed at least 171 people on Wednesday,
    puncturing Iraqi confidence in the security plan.

    Ceaseless violence is what led American commanders in
    Adhamiya to build a wall to break contact between Sunnis
    and Shiites. It is the first time the Americans have
    tried a project of that scope in Baghdad. The soldiers
    jokingly call it “The Great Wall of Adhamiya,” according
    to military officials.

    Commanders have sealed off a few other neighborhoods
    into what they call “gated communities,” but not with
    a lengthy wall. In the earlier efforts, American and
    Iraqi soldiers placed concrete barriers blocking off
    roads leading into the neighborhoods and left open
    one or more avenues of egress where people and vehicles
    were searched.

    Soldiers did that to a degree in the volatile district
    of Dora during a security push there last summer. More
    recently, American and Iraqi Army units have closed
    off almost all roads into the western Sunni Arab
    neighborhoods of Amiriya and Daoudi. Residents of
    Amiriya say violence dropped when the roads were first
    blocked off late last year, but has gradually increased
    again.

    Adhamiya is different, because it involves the building
    of a three-mile wall along streets on its eastern flank.
    It consists of a series of concrete barriers, each weighing
    14,000 pounds, that have been transported down to Baghdad
    in flatbed trucks from Camp Taji, north of the city.
    Soldiers are using cranes to put the barriers in place.

    Once the wall is complete, Iraqi Army soldiers will
    operate entry and exit checkpoints, Capt. Marc Sanborn,
    a brigade engineer for the Second Brigade, 82nd Airborne
    Division, said in a news release on the project issued
    this week by the American military.

    The wall “is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and
    the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence
    by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods,”
    Captain Sanborn said.

    Adhamiya has been rife with violence throughout the
    war. It is a stalwart Sunni Arab neighborhood, home
    to the hard-line Abu Hanifa mosque, and the last place
    where Saddam Hussein made a public appearance before
    he went into hiding in 2003. Shiite militiamen from
    Sadr City and other Shiite enclaves to the east often
    attack its residents, and Sunni insurgent groups battle
    there among themselves.

    “Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis
    are retaliating across the street,” Capt. Scott McLearn,
    an operations officer in the area, said in a written
    statement.

    Abu Hassan, the doctor in Adhamiya, said his neighborhood
    “is a small area.”

    “The Americans and Iraqi government should be able to
    control it” without building a wall, he said.

    Many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led
    government has choked off basic services to their
    neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets,
    banks to shut down and health clinics to languish.
    So the wall raises fears of further isolation.

    A spokesman for the American military, Maj. Gen. William
    B. Caldwell IV, said at a news conference on Wednesday
    that the military did not have a policy of sealing off
    neighborhoods.

    The American military has tried sealing off entire
    cities during the war. The most famous example is
    Falluja, in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province,
    where marines began operating checkpoints on all main
    roads into and out of the city after laying siege to
    it in late 2004.

    On Friday, a child was killed and nine people were
    wounded in a mortar attack in Baghdad, and 19 bodies were
    found across the capital. Hospital officials in Mosul
    said they were treating 130 Iraqi Army trainees suffering
    from stomach illness, in a possible case of mass poisoning
    at a training center north of the city.

    An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket
    attack on a base in Mahmudiya on Thursday night,
    the military said.

    Sahar Nageeb and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from
    Baghdad, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

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

    13) Marine Officer to Testify on Iraq Killings
    in Exchange for Immunity
    By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21abuse.html

    The officer in immediate command of three marines accused
    of killing civilians in a house-to-house attack in Haditha,
    Iraq, in 2005 has been granted immunity to testify at his
    subordinates’ military hearings, lawyers involved in the
    case said.

    In exchange, the officer, First Lt. William T. Kallop, agreed
    to answer all questions that prosecution or defense lawyers
    ask him, the lawyers said. The immunity granted to Lieutenant
    Kallop, who gave an order to take control of a house where
    several civilians were killed, could bolster the defense
    of the three enlisted men charged with murder in the case,
    lawyers said, because it would show that they were following
    orders.

    Lieutenant Kallop, 25, is one of at least eight marines
    granted immunity to testify about the attack on Nov. 19, 2005,
    that killed 24 people after the marines’ convoy was struck by
    a roadside bomb that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas. Four
    officers also face charges of dereliction of duty for the way
    they dealt with the initial report of what happened in Haditha.

    Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, the Marine
    officer overseeing the prosecution of the case, dismissed
    charges against a fourth enlisted marine, Sgt. Sanick
    P. Dela Cruz, 24.

    General Mattis granted immunity to Lieutenant Kallop
    on April 3, days after lawyers for another marine facing
    murder charges asked the Marine Corps to grant immunity
    to Lieutenant Kallop so he could testify at hearings for
    the men, said Kevin B. McDermott, a civilian lawyer for
    an officer charged in the case. The grant of immunity
    was first reported in The Washington Post yesterday.

    Several lawyers for the marines charged in the case said
    the deal strengthened the arguments of the three enlisted
    men.

    “It’s central to the case if an officer is telling marines
    to take the house,” said Brian J. Rooney, a civilian lawyer
    for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, the highest-ranking
    officer charged in the case.

    Mr. McDermott, who represents Capt. Lucas McConnell,
    the company commander who was not present during the
    killings, said the immunity deal bolstered his client’s
    case.

    “If the government’s not going to charge the lieutenant
    that was at the scene and gave the order to clear the
    house,” Mr. McDermott said, “I don’t know how he’s not
    in the same boat as McConnell.”

    At least seven other marines have also been granted
    immunity to testify at preliminary hearings scheduled
    for next month, lawyers said.

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

    14) Growing Unrest Posing a Threat to Nigerian Oil
    By JAD MOUAWAD
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/worldbusiness/21oil.html?ref=business

    PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — There are few safe places left for
    oil companies in the Niger Delta, the epicenter of this
    country’s petroleum industry.

    Armed rebel gangs have blown up pipelines, disabled pumping
    stations, and kidnapped over 150 foreign oil workers in the
    last year. Companies now confine employees to heavily
    fortified compounds, allowing them to travel only by
    armored car or helicopter.

    One company has fitted bathrooms with steel bolts to turn
    them into “panic” rooms, if needed. Another has coated the
    pylons of a giant oil-production platform 80 miles offshore
    with waterproof grease to prevent attackers from climbing
    the rig.

    The violence in the Niger Delta is likely to be one of the
    thorniest political problems for Nigeria’s new president,
    to be chosen in the election April 21. Oil, after all,
    is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, providing 65 percent
    of its revenue.

    The events in Nigeria, the world’s eighth-largest oil
    exporter, have rippled across energy markets, contributing
    to higher prices and tighter supplies.

    [On Friday, gunmen attacked a boat carrying oil workers
    to an offshore rig in the delta, pushing up oil prices by
    more than $1.50, to $63.38 a barrel.]

    The United States imports more than one million barrels
    of crude oil from Nigeria every day.

    Many analysts warn that tensions here could derail plans
    to boost oil production in this country of 140 million people.
    Already, a quarter of Nigeria’s oil output has been shut down,
    costing an estimated $12 billion in lost sales in over the last
    year. Some foreign operators have abandoned oil fields,
    or left the country altogether.

    “I can’t think of anything worse right now,” said Larry Johnson,
    a former United States Army officer who was recently hired
    to toughen security at a site here operated by Eni, an Italian
    oil producer. “Even Angola during the civil war wasn’t as bad.”

    Violence is not new to the Niger Delta, a vast area of 40,000
    square miles of swamps and creeks where the Niger River washes
    out into the Atlantic Ocean. The region, which produces most
    of the country’s oil, is also one of the nation’s poorest.

    In the 1990s, there were occasional kidnappings. But at the
    time, recalled Chris Haynes, a senior Shell executive, “you
    could usually get them released for a few bags of rice or
    a cow.”

    Since January 2006, however, violence in the delta has surged.
    So far in 2007, there have been at least 18 attacks against
    oil facilities or bases in the delta, according to Bergen Risk
    Solutions, a consultancy based in Bergen, Norway.

    And about 70 foreigners have been abducted in 2007, although
    most have been released within weeks in exchange for ransoms,
    typically hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oil companies
    find themselves in an uneasy position, stuck in a crisis
    that they, in a sense, helped create. For years, human rights
    groups accused them of turning a blind eye to the corruption
    of Nigeria’s successive military regimes while damaging the
    environment in the delta.

    Some companies have acknowledged these past grievances but
    say they changed after Nigeria returned to civilian rule
    in 1999.

    Still, gas flaring into the atmosphere remains a serious
    problem despite a government deadline to end the practice
    by 2008; few expect that deadline will be met. Also, oil
    spills continue to spoil the delta’s fragile environment.
    Energy executives blame locals for sabotaging their pipelines
    either to steal the oil or to gain lucrative cleanup contracts.

    By all accounts, petroleum profits have brought huge benefits
    to this country’s rulers, but few to its people. Oil companies
    typically keep 7 percent of the profits from oil sales; the
    government gets 93 percent.

    Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the
    world according to Transparency International, a Berlin-
    based anti-corruption group; 70 percent of the country’s
    population lives on $1 a day or less. Life expectancy
    is 47 years.

    Between 1960 and 1999, more than $380 billion was stolen
    or wasted, according to Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s top anti-
    corruption official. In that period, the country produced
    over $400 billion worth of oil.

    In an effort to redistribute wealth, the government now
    gives 13 percent of the proceeds from oil sales to the
    producing states but there is little accountability of
    how these funds are spent. Much of it simply disappears,
    wasted by inefficient or corrupt local officials, according
    to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

    The River States government, for example, had a budget
    of $1.3 billion in 2006, the report said. It includes
    transportation fees of $65,000 a day for the governor’s
    office; $10 million for catering, entertainment, gifts
    and souvenirs; and $38 million for two helicopters.
    Health services received $22 million.

    “Oil companies are caught in an impossible situation,”
    said Chris Albin-Lackey, a researcher with Human Rights
    Watch. “They cannot meet the expectations of the communities
    in which they operate. At the same time, you have
    a government unwilling to do anything about the delta.”

    Oil companies have all set up programs to build roads,
    hospitals or schools in their communities. Shell, for
    example, said it spends over $100 million each year on
    social and health programs in the Niger Delta. Exxon, which
    has set aside $21 million for similar projects in 2007,
    noted it had built 95 percent of the roads in the town
    of Eket, close to one of its operations.

    But in the absence of government services, executives
    say their programs alone cannot buy them sustained peace.

    “The government should really be the one who looks after
    everybody else,” said Basil Omiyi, Shell’s managing director
    in Nigeria. “I don’t think the capital program of oil and g
    as companies can be the government in the Niger Delta.”

    John Chaplin, Exxon’s top executive in Nigeria, said “The
    demands are limitless.”

    Critics say governments in Abuja, the country’s modern capital,
    have neglected the delta region and blame oil companies for
    being complicit in a system that ignores the communities
    where the oil is produced.

    “The situation here is deplorable,” said John Owubokiri,
    an advocate for the rights of the delta states in Port
    Harcourt. “The people are being shortchanged.”

    That message is now being delivered in a more forceful way
    than the largely nonviolent militancy of the past decade.
    A new group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
    Delta, has emerged in the past year and claimed responsibility
    for many of the kidnappings and attacks against oil companies.

    MEND wants more money for the delta states and has vowed
    to bring Nigeria’s oil exports to a stop if its demands
    are not met.

    “We are more than capable of escalating the violence,”
    the MEND spokesman, Jomo Gbomo, who regularly sends e-mail
    messages to the media, wrote in response to e-mailed
    questions. The group, he said, is prepared for “a protracted
    military confrontation.”

    The violence has driven some companies away. Willbros,
    one of the world’s largest independent contractors, left
    Nigeria last summer after nearly 45 years, because nine
    of its employees were held in the swamps for weeks. After
    their release, Willbros said the dangers in Nigeria “exceed
    our acceptable risk levels.”

    After one of Shell’s big export sites was bombed in February
    2006, the company abandoned its operations in the Western
    part of the delta and shut half its production, or 500,000
    barrels a day. In early April, Shell outlined plans to
    restart production within six months. Meanwhile, the
    government has been unable to quell the unrest, security
    consultants said. “Nigeria’s security forces are ill
    equipped, poorly led, unmotivated, and outgunned,” said
    Ian Pilcher, the head of Nigerian operations for ArmorGroup,
    a British security consultant.

    But Nigerian officials say they do not want to escalate
    tensions by sending more troops to the region.

    “It’s definitely not a first option,” said Edmund Daukoru,
    Nigeria’s oil minister, referring to a more forceful
    military response.

    The lack of security has created demand for private
    security firms to help oil companies make conditions
    safer for their workers who are adjusting to a new lifestyle.
    For example, Triple Canopy, an American security firm founded
    shortly after the Iraq invasion, opened its first office
    outside of the Middle East in Lagos last summer.

    While the attacks against oil companies have slowed recently,
    replaced largely by election violence, few analysts believe
    the militant movement will disappear soon.

    Just a few months ago, foreign employees in Port Harcourt,
    the center for oil operations in the delta, lived in
    apartments with their families and could relax at local
    bars, including one popular pub, Goodfellas.

    But after a rash of attacks around town last year, families
    have packed up and gone home, while workers and executives
    have retreated inside fortified bases surrounded by high
    walls and razor wire.

    On a recent evening, about a dozen men, mainly Italians,
    settled at the mess inside one such campus here operated
    by Eni to watch a live soccer game from Rome on satellite
    television. The 50-acre compound houses offices, dormitories,
    and some guest houses; there are tennis courts and manicured
    lawns, a swimming pool and a new gym.

    There is also a large field for soccer games between the
    company team and local soldiers. The cook, the food and
    the wine come from Italy.

    The Eni campus is an oasis compared with the rest of town,
    a chaotic cluster of five million people. But violence can
    visit here at any moment, as it did a few months ago when
    a cellphone-activated car bomb blew up just across the
    street.

    “It’s sad what is going on here,” said Marco Castelli,
    a manager at Eni, who moved to Nigeria last June. After
    years living alone in far-flung places like Kazakhstan,
    Congo and Iran, Mr. Castelli was looking forward to
    a quiet family assignment in Nigeria. His wife was about
    to quit her job as a marketing executive for a drug
    company in Italy to join him.

    But soon after he arrived, gunmen entered a bar in Aker
    Base, a slum outside of Port Harcourt, and kidnapped
    an Italian worker. An army sergeant was shot dead as
    he tried to stop the attackers. Later that day, soldiers
    returned to the scene and razed the village.

    The hostage was released the same week, but shortly
    after that event Mr. Castelli’s wife scrapped her
    plans to join him.

    “The more the situation worsened,” he said, “the more
    the restrictions became tough.”

    Still, many workers here say they are undeterred by the
    violence and few are considering leaving.

    Antonio Fiore, an engineer with Eni, has been confined
    to the Port Harcourt base since December. In his three
    decades with the company, Mr. Fiore helped build
    a refinery in Iraq in the 1970s, worked on a petrochemical
    plant near the Iranian town of Isfahan in 1989, and spent
    time in Kuwait after the first gulf war. He has been posted
    in Nigeria for the last three years.

    “What we’re doing here is important,” he said. “I have been
    in many critical areas. But for us, what happened last
    year was a nightmare.”

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

    15) Um Noor
    April 16, 2007
    http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/2007/04/um_noor.html

    Is there a proverb that says everything unpredictable
    happens in the morning?

    A knock on the front door at seven in the morning is not
    predictable; I jumped. What now?

    I look out the entrance window hesitantly to find a small
    lady covered in black from head to toe, standing outside.

    Um Noor!

    Um Noor (mother of Noor) is a sweet soul in a tiny
    frame, who used to come help me with household duties
    once a week, from 2000 until I went away in Feb, 2003.

    I am ecstatic! I have been trying to find her ever
    since I came back; she is so energetic and so proud
    of her faultless work.

    I open the door with a cry of welcome on my lips,
    and she comes in. She looks at me and bursts out crying.

    And the story comes pouring out.

    She was happily married for twenty years, when Iraq
    was occupied.

    After a while strange, little used words start
    flying around.

    Sunni … Shiite … Sunni … Shiite … Then fighting
    started breaking out because of this long submerged
    difference. In her neighborhood, as in the greater
    majority of Baghdad's neighborhoods, no one is really
    sure who on their bloc is Sunni, or Shiite; and nobody
    really cares.

    Soon after, the IEDs and car bombs started taking
    their toll from people still bewildered as to:
    Why is this happening?

    BOOM! She loses her husband, on his way to work,
    a Shiite.

    Being a Sunni herself, she is urged - very strongly
    - to move away; their part of Amil is Shiite controlled.

    Having nowhere to go, she stays.

    A car stops in front of their home.

    BANG, BANG, BANG! She loses her son (20), her
    brother, and nephew.

    She takes her remaining children and flees, finding
    no haven - except in Abu Ghraib, (Sunni controlled)
    where she lives in perpetual fear lest her dark secret
    be uncovered: that her kids are – of course – Shiite.

    Her two remaining sons (16 and 10) live imprisoned
    in their hut; she has buried all their IDs and tells
    everyone that they got lost …………and as a result they
    cannot receive rations.

    They are starving to death.

    How, and why, has it suddenly become important,
    this Sunni – Shiite business; and since when did
    Iraqis care?

    I myself had not even heard the terms until
    I was an adult.

    How to help????????

    Can anyone see a light at the end of this
    dark, dark, tunnel?

    Posted at 04:43 AM | Permalink

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

    16) In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
    [Please note Cuba's Infant mortality rate:
    total: 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births
    male: 6.76 deaths/1,000 live births
    female: 5.26 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.) These
    figures are from:
    https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/cu.html
    ...bw]
    By ERIK ECKHOLM
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/health/22infant.html?hp

    HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring
    states with large black populations and expanses of enduring
    poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But,
    in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress
    has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen
    in Mississippi and several other states.

    The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts
    in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and,
    many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes
    and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip
    the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

    “I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing
    trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,”
    said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss.,
    and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

    To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen
    the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age
    of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate
    jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in
    2003, the last year for which data have been compiled,
    was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama,
    North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina
    saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

    Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say,
    rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well
    above the national average.

    Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the
    large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths
    among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005
    from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among
    whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national
    average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)

    The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more
    babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for
    a total of 481.

    The toll is visible in Hollandale, a tired town in
    the impoverished Delta region of northwest Mississippi.

    Jamekia Brown, 22 and two months pregnant with her third
    child, lives next to the black people’s cemetery in the
    part of town called No Name, where multiple generations
    crowd into cheap clapboard houses and trailers.

    So it took only a minute to walk to the graves of
    Ms. Brown’s first two children, marked with temporary
    metal signs because she cannot afford tombstones.

    Her son, who was born with deformities in 2002, died
    in her arms a few months later, after surgery. Her daughter
    was stillborn the next year. Nearby is another green
    marker, for a son of Ms. Brown’s cousin who died at
    four months, apparently of pneumonia.

    The main causes of infant death in poor Southern regions
    included premature and low-weight births; Sudden Infant
    Death Syndrome, which is linked to parental smoking and
    unsafe sleeping positions as well as unknown causes;
    congenital defects; and, among poor black teenage mothers
    in particular, deaths from accidents and disease.

    Dr. William Langston, an obstetrician at the Mississippi
    Department of Health, said in a telephone interview that
    officials could not yet explain the sudden increase and
    were investigating. Dr. Langston said the state was
    working to extend prenatal care and was experimenting
    with new outreach programs. But, he added, “programs
    take money, and Mississippi is the poorest state in
    the nation.”

    Doctors who treat poor women say they are not surprised
    by the reversal.

    “I think the rise is real, and it’s going to get worse,”
    said Dr. Bouldin Marley, an obstetrician at a private
    clinic in Clarksdale since 1979. “The mothers in general,
    black or white, are not as healthy,” Dr. Marley said,
    calling obesity and its complications a main culprit.

    Obesity makes it more difficult to do diagnostic tests
    like ultrasounds and can lead to hypertension and
    diabetes, which can cause the fetus to be undernourished,
    he said.

    Another major problem, Dr. Marley said, is that some
    women arrive in labor having had little or no prenatal
    care. “I don’t think there’s a lack of providers or
    facilities,” he said. “Some women just don’t have the
    get up and go.”

    But social workers say that the motivation of poor
    women is not so simply described, and it can be affected
    by cuts in social programs and a dearth of transportation
    as well as low self esteem.

    “If you didn’t have a car and had to go 60 miles to
    see a doctor, would you go very often?” said Ramona
    Beardain, director of Delta Health Partners. The group
    runs a federally financed program, Healthy Start, that
    sends social workers and nurses to counsel pregnant
    teenagers and new mothers in seven counties of the Delta. “
    If they’re in school they miss the day; if they’re working
    they don’t get paid,” Ms. Beardain said.

    Poverty has climbed in Mississippi in recent years,
    and things are tougher in other ways for poor women,
    with cuts in cash welfare and changes in the medical
    safety net.

    In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising
    not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face
    meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in
    Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance
    program; locations and hours for enrollment changed,
    and documentation requirements became more stringent.

    As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly
    children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs
    declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years.
    According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program
    in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred
    by the new procedures from enrolling.

    One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned
    last year as head of an office that informed the public
    about eligibility, said that under the Barbour
    administration, her program was severely curtailed.

    “The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our
    activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.

    Mississippi’s Medicaid director, Dr. Robert L. Robinson,
    said in a written response that suggesting any correlation
    between the decline in Medicaid enrollment and infant
    mortality was “pure conjecture.”

    Dr. Robinson said that the new procedures eliminated
    unqualified recipients. With 95 enrollment sites available,
    he said, no one should have had difficulty signing up.

    As to Ms. Morris’s charge that information efforts had
    been curbed, Dr. Robinson said that because of the frequent
    turnover of Medicaid directors — he is the sixth since 2000
    — “our unified outreach program was interrupted.” He said
    it has now resumed.

    The state Health Department has cut back its system of
    clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage
    of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several
    days a week are now open once a week and some offer
    no prenatal care.

    The department has also suffered management turmoil
    and reductions in field staff, problems so severe that
    the state Legislature recently voted to replace the director.

    Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the
    Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops
    in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid
    and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster.
    Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor
    and unborn children suffer.”

    Visits with pregnant women and mothers in several Delta
    towns suggest that many poverty-related factors —
    including public policies, personal behaviors and
    health conditions — may contribute to infant deaths.

    Krystal Allen, a cousin of Jamekia Brown’s, was 17 when
    she had her first baby. When he was 4 months old, she
    said, he developed breathing problems. Ms. Allen took
    the child to an emergency room, where he was put on
    a vaporizer and given an antibiotic and a prescription
    and they were sent home, where they slept for a few hours.

    “When I woke up I thought he was sleeping, and I was
    getting ready for church,” Ms. Allen said. “But he
    was dead.”

    Now 21, a mother of two with a third on the way,
    Ms. Allen lives in a sparsely furnished house in
    Hollandale with her unemployed boyfriend and his mother.
    Her children live with her parents.

    Ms. Allen greeted visitors with breakfast in hand:
    a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.

    Janice Johnson, a social worker with Delta Health
    Partners, urged her to eat more healthily. “I’m going
    to change my diet one day,” Ms. Allen replied.

    She had been to a doctor for one visit but had to sign
    up for Medicaid to get continued care. That required
    a 36-mile trip to an office in Greenville.

    “Can’t you go this Friday?” Ms. Johnson asked.

    “Well, if my mom is going to Greenville,” Ms. Allen
    replied, “and if she has gas in the car.”

    As for Ms. Brown, having lost two babies and suffering
    from thyroid disease and hypertension, her latest
    pregnancy is considered high risk. Ms. Johnson has
    helped arrange for intensive medical monitoring.

    Eunice Brown, 21, another of Ms. Johnson’s clients,
    was fortunate nothing went wrong with her first pregnancy.
    She was afraid to tell her mother. In the eighth month
    of her pregnancy, she went to the hospital with a stomach
    ache and delivered a healthy baby.

    “I was 15 and I didn’t think prenatal care mattered
    that much,” she said in the one-bedroom home she shares
    with her mother, her three children and two nieces her
    mother is tending. Ms. Brown, who was three months’
    pregnant with her fourth child, said she would apply
    for Medicaid “when I get the transportation.” The family
    has lived mainly off her welfare checks and her intermittent
    work, in elderly day care, which led her welfare check
    to be reduced from $194 a month to $26 a month. A father
    “sometimes helps with money,” she said.

    In the past 10 years, the infant mortality rate for blacks
    in most of the Delta has averaged about 14 per thousand
    in some counties and more than 20 per thousand in others.
    But just to the south of Hollandale, Sharkey County, one
    of the poorest, has had a startlingly different record.
    From 1991 through 2005, the rate for blacks hovered
    at around 5 per thousand.

    State officials say the county’s population is too small
    — it registers only 100 births a year — to be statistically
    significant. But many experts feel it is no coincidence
    that a steep drop in infant deaths followed the start of
    an intensive home-visiting system run by the Cary Christian
    Center, using local mothers as counselors.

    “If this is a fluke it’s a 15-year fluke,” said Dr. Glick,
    the neonatologist.

    The program, which is paid for with private money, buses
    nearly all pregnant blacks in Sharkey and a small
    neighboring county to pre- and postnatal classes.

    Irma Johnson, who has worked for the Cary Center for
    14 years, was a soothing presence as she visited Erica
    Moore, a 24-year-old with young twins. With Vaseline,
    warm water, a toothbrush and soft murmurs, she showed her
    how to combat cradle cap, a scaly buildup on the scalp.

    But personal attention cannot always change ingrained
    attitudes.

    Barbara Williams, another veteran counselor of the
    Cary center, made an unannounced visit to a cluster
    of trailers in Anguilla occupied by the extended
    Jackson family.

    “I’ve been following this family for 18 years, and
    they’re in a bad cycle,” Ms. Williams said, noting that
    three generations of women had dropped out of high school.

    As Ms. Williams entered one crowded trailer a young
    woman tried to hide, then stood defiantly. The woman,
    Victoria Jackson, 22, already has three small children
    and was five months pregnant.

    No, she said, she has not signed up for Medicaid and
    she has not seen a doctor, and she brushed aside
    offers of help.

    Ms. Williams, visibly upset, said later, “Victoria
    never gives a reason why she doesn’t see a doctor.
    I guess she thinks she’s gotten away with it three
    times already.”

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

    17) 3 Suspects Talk After Iraqi Soldiers Do Dirty Work
    By ALISSA J. RUBIN
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22detain.html?hp

    BAGHDAD, April 21 — Out here in what the soldiers call
    Baghdad’s wild west, sometimes the choices are all bad.

    In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations
    in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya
    neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise
    on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three
    insurgent suspects who had provided information he
    believed would save American lives.

    “The detainee gave us names from the highest to the
    lowest,” Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers.
    “He showed us their safe houses, where they store
    weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims,
    how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they
    place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you
    detained this guy this is the first intelligence
    linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.”

    The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not
    know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that
    before handing over the detainees to the Americans,
    the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front
    of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the
    detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of
    a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown
    briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to
    take a picture.

    To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and
    necessary. They were proud of their technique and
    proud to have helped the Americans.

    “I prepared him for the Americans and let them take
    his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through
    an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We
    know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat
    them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and
    it makes him desperate.”

    As American and Iraqi troops set up these outposts
    in dangerous neighborhoods to take on the insurgents
    block by block, they find themselves continually facing
    lethal attacks. In practice, the Americans and Iraqis
    seem to have different answers about what tactics are
    acceptable in response.

    Beatings like this, which are usually hard to verify
    but appear to be widespread given the fears about the
    Iraqi security forces frequently expressed by ordinary
    Iraqis, present the Americans with a largely undiscussed
    dilemma.

    The beaten detainee, according to Captain Fowler, not
    only led the Americans to safe houses believed to be
    used by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but also confessed to
    laying and detonating roadside bombs along a section
    of road heavily traveled by American patrols. Just
    a month ago, four soldiers from Captain Fowler’s regiment
    died on that road after the explosion of a large, deeply
    buried bomb, possibly made in the bomb factory that the
    Americans were able to dismantle because of the detainee’s
    information, Captain Fowler said.

    But beating is strictly forbidden by the United States
    Army’s Field Manual, as well as American and Iraqi laws.
    When the Americans learned about the beating, they were
    quick to condemn it.

    The use of torture by American soldiers and contractors
    at Abu Ghraib only compounded Iraqi hatred of Americans
    and further undermined American moral claims in Iraq.
    It also produced little valuable information. Most
    experts, including in the military, say they believe
    that coerced confessions are an unreliable way to learn
    about enemy operations because people being tortured will
    often say whatever they think it will take to stop the pain.

    This joint security station in Ghazaliya opened on
    March 15, about a month after the latest increase
    in American troops began. The station, inhabited by
    about 70 soldiers of Company D of the Second Battalion,
    12th Cavalry, and their Iraqi counterparts, is named for
    Specialist Robert Thrasher, a member of the unit killed
    by sniper fire on Feb. 11 when the company was scouting
    for a station site.

    Thrasher, as the station is known, sits in the southern
    part of Ghazaliya, one of the roughest areas of western
    Baghdad. In the northern part, Shiite militias, led by
    the Mahdi Army, have been driving out Sunni Arabs through
    raids and assassinations. Sunnis have pushed Shiites out
    of the southern part.

    Sewage pools in the streets. Water and electricity are
    almost nonexistent, and fewer than half the houses are
    occupied. The neighborhood graffiti broadcasts the presence
    of an active insurgency: “Long live Abu Hamza al-Muhajar,”
    reads one scrawl, referring to a local insurgent leader.

    The outpost’s location, along one of the main arms
    smuggling routes from Falluja, was chosen because it was
    next to a litter-filled lot that was a dumping ground for
    bodies. When they first arrived, the American soldiers found
    30 bodies there, among them women and children.

    Now it is rare to find more than one or two, said Captain
    Fowler, who keeps photos of every one on his computer as
    a reminder of how much worse it was before his company took
    up residence. He can also point to other signs of progress:
    children have begun to play outside again, and women walk
    to the market.

    But the area remains far from calm. The radio in the joint
    operations room crackles all day long with reports of bomb
    explosions or newly sighted explosive devices that must
    be scouted by the soldiers. The distance to the next
    security station is barely half a mile, but it is so
    dangerous that the soldiers cannot walk there and do not
    like to drive more often than necessary.

    Although one tenet of the Baghdad security plan is that
    soldiers should patrol on foot to get to know local
    residents, it was on just such a patrol that Specialist
    Thrasher died. Now, said Sgt. Trevis Good, 34, “foot
    patrols don’t exist; they are not something we do.” The
    company’s partner is the Third Battalion, Fourth Brigade,
    of the Iraqi Army’s 10th Division. The soldiers come from
    Amara, the largest town in rural Maysan Province in the
    far south, a mostly peaceful area where in a year of active
    duty they never had an injury, much less a fatality.

    In just three weeks in Ghazaliya, the battalion has lost
    two officers and a soldier; 16 troops have been wounded.
    A few hundred Iraqi soldiers live in three attached houses
    just over a brick wall from the Americans. The houses,
    beefed up only by sandbags, lie outside the station’s
    fortified area. Visiting their quarters means crouching
    down and running behind vehicles until entering one of
    the houses.

    The Iraqi soldiers have their own network of informants,
    and they picked up the detainee who was later beaten,
    Mustafa Subhi Jassam, after seeing him loitering around
    a main patrol route twice in the same day. The other
    two insurgent suspects were picked up separately.

    After interrogating Mr. Jassam, a thin young man wearing
    a blue and red warm-up outfit, for much of the night,
    the Americans took him to point out one of the houses
    where the Qaeda militants made bombs. When the Americans
    arrived, a half-eaten lunch was on the table next to
    a couple of detonators and some blasting wire. The insurgents
    appeared to have been gnawing on chicken and flat bread while
    making fuses for I.E.D.’s, improvised explosive devices,
    the military’s term for the roadside bombs found here.

    On the table and in bags on the floor were mountains of soap,
    which can be used in homemade explosives. Blasting wire lay
    in coils. Buried in the garden were two large antiaircraft
    guns known as Duskas, three propane tanks, and an oxygen
    tank that was partly cut in preparation for being turned
    into a huge bomb, probably similar to the one that killed
    the four soldiers. On the roof a large pile of homemade
    explosives was drying in the sun.

    The Iraqi soldiers were ecstatic. They had delivered. They
    snapped photos of each other in front of the cache with the
    blasting cords in their mouths, grinning. The Americans were
    nervous. “One spark will blow this place up,” said First
    Lt. Michael Obal as an Iraqi soldier flicked a lighted
    cigarette butt within inches of one cache of explosives.
    “It’s highly unstable TNT.”

    Later, the Americans plotted into their computers the
    location of each of the Qaeda safe houses that Mr. Jassam
    had pointed out. “He was singing like a songbird,” said
    First Lt. Sean Henley, 24.

    After the prisoner was returned to the Iraqis, Captain
    Fowler was asked whether the Americans realized that
    the information was given only after the Iraqis had
    beaten Mr. Jassam. “They are not supposed to do that,”
    he said. “What I don’t see, I don’t know, and I can’t
    stop. The detainees are deathly afraid of being sent
    to the Iraqi justice system, because this is the kind
    of thing they do. But this is their culture.”

    Later, Captain Fowler said that he thought Mr. Jassam
    had talked because he hoped to be released. The captain
    wanted him let go so that he could act as an informant.
    The Iraqi soldiers vetoed the idea.

    Mr. Jassam is now being held in an Iraqi government
    detention center, widely rumored to be places where
    suspected insurgents are abused.

    Lieutenant Obal, the captain’s deputy, was distraught
    at the thought that the detainee had been beaten.
    “I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “We have
    intelligence teams, they have techniques for getting
    information, they don’t do things like that. It’s not
    civilization.”

    About 30 yards away, on the other side of the wall,
    the Iraqi soldiers suggested that the Americans were
    being naïve. The insurgents are playing for keeps,
    they say, and force must be answered with force.

    “If the Americans used this way, the way we use,
    nobody would shoot the Americans at all,” Captain
    Hassan said. “But they are easy with them, and they
    have made it easy for the terrorists.”

    “I didn’t beat them all, I beat Mustafa in front
    of the others. We tell him we’re going to string him
    up.” He demonstrated, his arms spread wide. “And,
    I made the others see him,” he said.

    Captain Hassan and his colleagues said they knew the
    Iraqi Army had rules against beatings, but “they tell
    us to do what we have to do,” he said.

    “For me it’s a matter of conscience, not rules,”
    he said.

    Captain Fowler’s proposal to release Mr. Jassam in
    the hope he would become an informant struck Captain
    Hassan as useless and quite possibly dangerous.

    “It’s kind of not a good idea,” he said carefully,
    as if explaining something to a child. “He’ll never
    become an informant. Al Qaeda will know he’s been captured.
    He’ll go back to them and say, ‘The Americans wanted me to
    be an informer, but I will be loyal to you.’ He will be
    more afraid of Al Qaeda guys than of the Americans.”

    But some detainees may have a simpler motivation:
    survival. The Iraqi soldiers say many of the insurgents
    are paid for their attacks, and they gain respect and
    protection from other militants.

    Another officer in the Iraqi unit, Major Hussain, who
    would not give his full name, said the only way to
    lure such militants out of the insurgent life would
    be to offer them a comparable standard of living.

    “Ziad, over there, wanted to come work with us,” Major
    Hussain said, indicating one of the insurgent suspects,
    Ziad Sabah Jasim, who became cooperative after witnessing
    the beating of Mr. Jassam. “He said, ‘Just let me join you,’ ”

    “Most of them don’t believe in this insurgency,” he said.
    “They are young people. They are having to stay home
    without employment. They want food. They want money.
    They want to be able to marry. But there are no jobs.
    If you offered them jobs, most of them would not be
    working with Al Qaeda.”

    The American soldiers would agree, but they also are
    clear that the only way to bring jobs is first to make
    the neighborhood secure. “You need a J.S.S. every kilometer
    or so,” Captain Fowler said. For now, there are nowhere
    near that many security stations on Baghdad’s west side.

    Ashley Gilbertson contributed reporting.

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

    18) Military Cites ‘Negligence’ in Aftermath of Iraq Killings
    By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22haditha.html?ref=world

    A military investigation has found that senior Marine Corps
    commanders in Iraq showed a routine disregard for the lives
    of Iraqi civilians that contributed to a “willful” failure
    to investigate the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis by marines
    in 2005, lawyers involved in the case said.

    The report, completed last summer but never made public,
    also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq
    learned of the killings within hours that day, Nov. 19,
    2005, in the town of Haditha, but failed to begin a thorough
    inquiry into how they occurred.

    The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of
    the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered
    up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine
    Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate
    civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse
    by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers
    who have read it.

    “All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties,
    even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural
    and intended result of insurgent tactics,” General Bargewell
    wrote in his report, according to two people who have read
    it. “Statements made by the chain of command during
    interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole,
    suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important
    as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing
    business, and that the Marines need to get the job done
    no matter what it takes.”

    The killings in Haditha, in Anbar Province, began with
    a roadside bombing that killed one American marine and
    wounded two. Several marines then began methodically
    killing civilians in the area, eventually going door
    to door in the village and killing women and children,
    some in their beds, according to a Naval criminal
    investigation.

    General Bargewell’s report, completed at the request
    of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the day-to-day commander
    of American forces in Iraq at the time, did not focus
    on the killings themselves, but rather on commanders’
    handling of the aftermath.

    The Washington Post published details of the report’s
    findings on Saturday. Spokesmen for the Marine Corps
    declined to comment, citing hearings for the three
    enlisted marines charged with murder in the case and
    for four officers charged with dereliction of duty
    for failing to ensure a proper investigation.

    General Bargewell’s report was said to have found what
    it called “inattention and negligence, in certain cases
    willful negligence,” among Marine officers who reported
    the civilian deaths immediately up their chain of command
    in ways that the report said were “untimely, inaccurate
    and incomplete.”

    It is critical of the Marine division commander, Maj. Gen.
    Richard A. Huck, and the regimental commander, Col. Stephen
    W. Davis, for fostering a perception that civilian Iraqi
    lives were not as important as American lives and for failing
    to investigate the civilian deaths in Haditha, lawyers
    who read the report said.

    Lawyers for the four officers charged with dereliction
    of duty — a lieutenant colonel, two captains and a first
    lieutenant — disagreed Saturday with the report’s
    conclusions about them.

    “Colonel Chessani, Colonel Davis and General Huck all viewed
    this — and still do — as a legitimate combat action,” said
    Brian J. Rooney, a civilian lawyer for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R.
    Chessani, who was relieved of his command and is the highest-
    ranking officer known publicly to be punished in the Haditha
    matter. “That same night and the next morning Colonel Chessani
    reported up the chain of command what he had learned about
    the attacks,” including that marines had killed civilians.
    “I don’t know how that’s untimely, inaccurate and incomplete.”

    The Bargewell report, which was recently declassified, also
    established that junior officers, including a captain who
    issued a news release on the episode that blamed a roadside
    bomb planted by insurgents for most of the deaths, knew
    from the beginning that marines had killed the civilians,
    the lawyers said.

    The captain, Jeffrey S. Pool, told General Bargewell’s
    investigators that he was given reports from battalion
    commanders that accurately described the marines’ killing
    of civilians, said lawyers who read the report. But Captain
    Pool said he issued a news release blaming insurgents for
    the deaths because he believed that the killings were
    ultimately a direct result of the roadside bombing of the
    marines, the lawyers said.

    “The way I saw it was this,” Captain Pool told two colonels
    questioning him, according to a lawyer who read the report
    to a reporter. “A bomb blast went off, or was initiated,
    that is what started, that is the reason they’re getting
    this, is a bomb blew up, killed people. We killed people
    back, and that’s the story.” (Since the investigation, the
    captain has been promoted to major and is again working as
    a public affairs officer in Anbar Province.)

    Lawyers for the four officers charged with failing to
    properly investigate the civilian killings blame the
    inaccurate news release for creating the false perception
    that the Marine Corps chain of command had covered up the
    killing of civilians. But one lawyer also said that the
    captain’s thinking reflected that of his superiors, who
    believed that civilian casualties, though regrettable,
    were an inevitable part of war.

    “That’s the rubric that the whole division was operating
    under,” the lawyer said. The report, he said, came to
    a similar conclusion. “It just was the culture of the
    Marine Corps,” he said, paraphrasing the report, “to
    think that the Iraqis’ story was propaganda, and didn’t
    investigate.”

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

    19) Hoping to Curb Drug Trade at a Housing Complex,
    the Newark Police Move In
    "Most important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
    indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers."
    By KAREEM FAHIM
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22newark.html?ref=nyregion

    NEWARK, April 21 — One man, in all seriousness, asked whether
    President Bush was here.

    Here is Pennington Court, a public housing project in Newark’s
    East Ward. And the man’s question was not totally unreasonable,
    given what he and other residents saw in the courtyard early
    Saturday: police officers on horseback, on motorcycles and
    in a helicopter, along with a mobile police tower that can
    lift a watchful officer up to 24 feet.

    The arrival of the officers was part of an eight-month
    investigation into the illegal narcotics trade at the housing
    project, conducted by the Newark police, the federal Drug
    Enforcement Administration and others. Knocking on doors
    before the sun rose on Saturday, the police made 21 arrests.
    In recent days, they also arrested Simmied Tut, 41, whom
    officials called the ringleader of the local drug trade.

    The drug raid, which also targeted narcotics distributors
    in Pennsylvania, was named after Mr. Tut and the housing
    project where the police said he ran his business: Operation
    King and His Court.

    If the snappy name conjured images of yet another inner-city
    drug raid, officials said this one was different: Most
    important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
    indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers.

    A page of mug shots — of men arrested in the raid, and men
    who are still wanted — was passed around the basketball
    court as if it were a celebrity magazine.

    “They got Abdul? The fat one?” said one woman in her 50s,
    referring to Abdul Oliver, who is known as Butch and who
    the police allege was Mr. Tut’s second in command. The
    woman, who refused to give her name, tapped a grill next
    to her. “This is his barbecue,” she said.

    In the summer, residents said, the dealers cook for some
    of the 260 families living here, and give the children
    money for ice cream. And when Carlos Denizac and his family
    dress up and go to church, three times a week, the dealers
    are respectful, he said, momentarily moving their trade
    out of the family’s view.

    But for every resident who spoke of the drug dealers’
    largess, there were others who talked about how bad the
    situation had become. Even Mr. Denizac said he welcomed
    the police presence. The question for him, and others,
    was how long the officers would stay at the Court, as the
    complex of three-story red brick buildings is known.

    “We’re not going to walk away until it’s done,” said
    Garry F. McCarthy, Newark’s police director, who promised
    in January, after announcing the formation of a new
    narcotics squad, that he would reclaim parts of the
    city from drug dealers.

    To go with the police presence, the Newark Housing Authority
    has begun cleaning up Pennington Court, whitewashing
    graffiti-filled hallways. The strategy is in many ways
    a throwback to New York City’s “model block” program,
    which Mr. McCarthy presided over in the late 1990s in the
    Washington Heights neighborhood.

    Pennington Court is not the most dangerous of Newark’s
    housing projects, and is surrounded by the residential
    streets and industrial pockets of the city’s Ironbound
    district. But the drug trade in the Court is stubborn,
    and the dealers have more staying power than the police,
    some residents said.

    “The drugs are like cockroaches,” said Maritza Felix,
    who said she had served jail time on drug-related charges.
    “You’re not going to get rid of them.”

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

    20) In Arctic Foxes, Clues to Effects of Shrinking Habitat
    “They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
    “That whole population is extinct.”
    By HENRY FOUNTAIN
    April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17observ.html

    If its habitat starts to shrink and shift, several things
    can happen to a species. It can stay and adapt to new
    conditions. It can move with the habitat. Or it can do
    neither and die off.

    While there has been much research on what happens to
    species when habitat expands — no surprise, they tend
    to expand into it — there has been little research into
    what happens when habitat contracts.

    Love Dalen, currently at the University of London,
    and colleagues examined the subject using a species,
    the Arctic fox, whose habitat has changed markedly since
    the last ice age. Back then, 10,000 years ago, the species
    had the run of continental Europe, which because of the
    cold climate had tundra-like vegetation. But as the planet
    warmed again and the ice sheets receded, the fox’s habitat
    shifted northward and decreased. The animals are now
    found in Scandinavia and Siberia.

    “We wanted to know what happened with the Arctic foxes
    over the transition from the ice age to the current warm
    period,” Dr. Dalen said. “When the tundra shifted up to
    Scandinavia and Siberia, did they move too?”

    The researchers analyzed DNA from fossilized fox bones
    found at European ice age sites, and compared it with
    DNA from the current Scandinavian and Siberian populations.
    They found that there was no connection between the
    ancient and modern populations.

    “They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
    “That whole population is extinct.”

    The researchers, whose findings were published in The
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest
    that Scandinavia was probably repopulated by foxes from
    the part of northeastern Siberia known as Beringia, which
    wasn’t frozen over during the ice age and thus served
    as a refuge for many species.

    The findings have implications for how species may
    respond to global climate change, as certain habitats
    shift northward or shrink. “Scientists need to be able
    to understand which species will make it and which won’t,”
    Dr. Dalen said. “We need to get a picture of exactly how
    this process takes place.”

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

    21) Why Darwinism Isn’t Depressing
    By Robert Wright
    April 21, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/opinion/21wright.html?hp

    Scientists have discovered that love is truth.

    Granted, no scientist has put it quite
    like that. In fact, when scientists
    talk about love—the neurochemistry,
    the evolutionary origins—they make it
    sound unlovely.

    More broadly, our growing grasp of the
    biology behind our thoughts and
    feelings has some people downhearted.
    One commentator recently acknowledged
    the ascendancy of the Darwinian paradigm
    with a sigh: “Evolution doesn’t
    really lead to anything outside itself.”

    Cheer up! Despair is a plausible response
    to news that our loftiest feelings
    boil down to genetic self-interest,
    but genetic self-interest actually turns
    out to be our salvation. The selfishness
    of our genes gave us the
    illuminating power of love and
    put us on the path to a kind of
    transcendence.

    Before hiking to the peak, let’s pause
    for some sobering concessions. Yes,
    love is physically mediated, a product
    of biochemistry. (Why this would
    surprise anyone familiar with alcohol
    and coffee is something that has long
    baffled scientists.) And, yes, the
    biochemistry was built by natural
    selection. Like it or not, we are
    survival machines.

    But survival machines are unfairly
    maligned. The name suggests, well,
    machines devoted to their survival.
    In truth, though, natural selection
    builds machines devoted ultimately
    to the survival of their genes, not
    themselves.

    Hence love. A love-impelled grandparent
    sacrifices her life to save a
    child’s life. Too bad for the grandparent,
    but mission accomplished for the
    love genes: they’ve kept copies of
    themselves alive in a vibrant vehicle
    that was otherwise doomed, and all
    they’ve lost is a vehicle that, frankly,
    didn’t have the world’s most auspicious
    odometer anyway. Love of offspring
    (and siblings) is your genes’ way
    of getting you to serve their agenda.

    Feel manipulated? Don’t worry—
    we get the last laugh.

    Genes are just dopey little particles,
    devoid of consciousness. We, in
    contrast, can perceive the world.
    And how! Thanks to love, we see beyond our
    selves and into the selves around us.

    A thought experiment: Suppose you
    are a parent and you (a) watch someone
    else’s toddler misbehave and then
    (b) watch your own toddler do the same.
    Your predicted reactions, respectively,
    are: (a) “What a brat!” and (b)
    “That’s what happens when she skips her nap.”

    Now (b) is often a correct
    explanation, whereas (a)—the “brat”
    reaction—isn’t even an explanation.
    Thus does love lead to truth. So, too,
    when a parent sees her child show
    off and senses that the grandstanding is
    grounded in insecurity. That’s an
    often-valid explanation—unlike, say, “My
    neighbor’s kid is such a showoff”—
    and brings insight into human nature.

    Yes, yes, love can warp your perception,
    too. Still, there is an
    apprehension of the other—an
    empathetic understanding—that is at least
    humanly possible, and it would never
    have gotten off the ground had love not
    emerged on this planet as a direct
    result of Darwinian logic.

    Some people, on hearing this, remain
    stubbornly ungrateful. They hate the
    arbitrariness of it all. You mean I
    love my child just because she’s got my
    genes? So my “appreciation” of her
    “specialness” is an illusion?

    Exactly! If you’d married someone else,
    there would be a different child you
    considered special—and if you then
    spotted the child that is now yours on
    the street, you’d consider her a brat.
    (And, frankly ... but I digress.)

    O.K., so your child isn’t special.
    This doesn’t have to mean she’s not
    worthy of your love. It could mean
    instead that other people’s kids are
    worthy of your love. But it has
    to mean one or the other. And—especially
    given that love can bring truth—
    isn’t it better to expand love’s scope than
    to narrow it?

    I’m a realist. I don’t expect you
    to get all mushy about the kid next door.
    But if you carry into your everyday
    encounters an awareness that empathetic
    understanding makes sense, that’s progress.a

    Transcending the arbitrary narrowness
    of our empathy isn’t guaranteed by
    nature. (Why do you think they call
    it transcendence?) But nature has given
    us the tools—not just the empathy,
    but the brains to figure out how
    evolution works, and thus to see
    that the narrowness is arbitrary.

    So evolution has led to something outside
    itself—to the brink of a larger,
    more widely illuminating love, maybe
    even to a glimpse of moral truth.
    What’s not to like?

    Robert Wright, author of “The Moral Animal,”
    is a senior fellow at the New
    America Foundation and runs the
    Web site Bloggingheads.tv.

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

    22) TRAINING IRAQI TROOPS NO LONGER DRIVING FORCE IN U.S. POLICY
    By Nancy A. Youssef
    McClatchy Newspapers
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17104704.htm

    WASHINGTON -- Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up
    Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now
    believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure
    control of troubled provinces.

    Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush
    administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials
    in Baghdad and Washington said.

    No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said
    training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our
    mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing
    security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

    But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no
    longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no
    new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch
    28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition
    of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift
    publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training
    Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.

    In a reflection of the need for more U.S. troops, the Pentagon decided
    earlier this month to increase the length of U.S. Army tours in Iraq from

    12 to 15 months. The extension came amid speculation that the U.S.
    commander there, Army Gen. David Petraeus, will ask that the troop increase
    be maintained well into 2008.

    U.S. officials don't say that the training formula -- championed by Gen.

    John Abizaid when he was the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and
    by Gen. George Casey when he was the top U.S. general in Iraq -- was doomed
    from the start. But they said that rising sectarian violence and the
    inability of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to unite the country changed the
    conditions. They say they now must establish security while training Iraqi
    forces because ultimately, "they are our ticket out of Iraq," as one senior
    Pentagon official put it.

    Casey's "mandate was transition. General Petraeus' mandate is security.
    It is a change based on conditions. Certain conditions have to be met for
    the transition to be successful. Security is part of that. And General
    Petraeus recognizes that," said Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the
    Iraq Assistance Group in charge of supporting trained Iraqi forces.

    "I think it is too much to expect that we were going to start from scratch .
    . . in an environment that featured a rising sectarian struggle and lack of
    progress with the government," said a senior Pentagon official. "The
    conditions had sufficiently changed that the Abizaid/Casey approach alone
    wasn't going to be sufficient."

    Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who's in charge of training Iraqi troops, said in
    February that he hoped that Iraqi troops would be able to lead by December.
    "At the tactical level, I do believe by the end of the year, the conditions
    should be set that they are increasingly taking responsibility for the
    combat operations," Dempsey told NBC News.

    Maj. Gen. Doug Lute, the director of operations at U.S. Central Command,
    which oversees military activities in the Middle East, said that during the
    troop increase, U.S. officers will be trying to determine how ready Iraqi
    forces are to assume control.

    "We are looking for indicators where we can assess the extent to which we
    are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces, not as a replacement to them,"
    he said. Those signs will include "things like the number of U.S.-only
    missions, the number of combined U.S.-Iraqi missions, the number where
    Iraqis are in the lead, the number of Joint Security Stations set up," he
    said.

    That's a far cry from the optimistic assessments U.S. commanders offered
    throughout 2006 about the impact of training Iraqis. President Bush first
    announced the training strategy in the summer of 2005. "Our strategy can be
    summed up this way," Bush said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand
    down."

    Military leaders in Baghdad planned to train 325,000 Iraqi security forces.
    Once that was accomplished, those forces were to take control.

    Casey created military transition teams that would live side by side with
    their Iraqi counterparts to help them apply their training to real-world
    situations. Throughout 2006, Casey and top Bush administration leaders
    touted the training as a success, asserting that eight of Iraq's 10
    divisions had taken the lead in confronting insurgents.

    But U.S. forces complained that the Iraqi forces weren't getting the support
    from their government and that Iraqi military commanders, many who worked
    under Saddam Hussein, weren't as willing to embrace their tactics.

    Among everyday Iraqis, some said they didn't trust their forces, saying they
    were sectarian and easily susceptible to corruption. Most important,
    insurgents and militiamen had infiltrated the forces, using their power to
    carry out sectarian attacks.

    In nearly every area where Iraqi forces were given control, the security
    situation rapidly deteriorated. The exceptions were areas dominated largely
    by one sect and policed by members of that sect.

    In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, which Bush celebrated last year as
    an example of success, suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents set off a bomb last
    month that killed as many as 150 people, the largest single bombing attack
    of the war. Shiite Muslim mobs, including some police officers, pulled
    Sunnis from their homes and executed dozens afterward. U.S. troops were
    dispatched to restore order.

    Earlier this month, U.S. forces engaged in heavy fighting in the southern
    city of Diwaniyah after Iraqi forces, who'd been given control of the region
    in January 2006, lost control of the city.

    U.S. officials said they once believed that if they empowered their Iraqi
    counterparts, they'd take the lead and do a better job of curtailing the
    violence. But they concede that's no longer their operating principle.
    Pentagon officials won't say how many U.S. troops are engaged in training,
    though they said that the number of teams assigned to work alongside trained
    Iraqi troops hasn't changed.

    Military officials say there's no doubt that the November U.S. elections,
    which gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress, helped push
    training down the priority list. The elections, they said, made it clear
    that voters didn't have the patience to wait for Iraqis to take the lead.

    "To the extent we are losing the American public, we were losing" in the
    transition approach, said a senior military commander in Washington.
    Military analysts cite a number of reasons that the training program didn't
    work.

    "The goal was to put the Iraqis in charge. The problem is we didn't know how
    to do it and we underestimated the insurgency," said Anthony Cordesman, of
    the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

    Said Paul Hughes of the U.S. Institute for Peace: "In our initial efforts
    to hand security missions over to Iraqi forces, we took the training wheels
    off too early -- and the bike fell over."

    Military officials now measure success by whether the troops are curbing
    violence, not by the number of Iraqi troops trained.

    Many officials are vague about when the U.S. will know when troops can begin
    to return home. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
    the U.S. is trying to buy "time for the Iraqi government to provide the good
    governance and the economic activity that's required."

    One State Department official, who also asked not to be named because of the
    sensitivity of the subject, expressed the same sentiment in blunter terms.
    "Our strategy now is to basically hold on and wait for the Iraqis to do
    something," he said.

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

    23) Castro resumes official business
    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6578539.stm

    Cuba's Fidel Castro has held talks with a top
    delegate from China in what is thought to be his
    first official act since his illness last year.

    Mr Castro - who has handed over power temporarily
    to his brother, Raul - has appeared to play a
    greater role in Cuba over the last few weeks.

    The Communist Party newspaper Granma said the
    talks were "fruitful".

    Its website also carried a photograph of Mr
    Castro, standing and shaking hands with the
    Chinese delegation.

    The latest pictures published by Cuban official
    media also show him talking and apparently taking
    notes during Friday's meeting.

    Mr Castro's health, which remains a state secret,
    came under close scrutiny by international media
    after he had stomach surgery last July.

    The Cuban president has not been seen in public
    since then but his ally, Venezuelan President
    Hugo Chavez, has been giving regular updates on
    his condition and recently said Mr Castro was
    "almost totally recovered".

    The speculation now is whether Mr Castro might
    soon be fit enough to appear in public, reports
    the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Havana.

    The forthcoming International Labour Day on 1 May
    is one possible date. For most of the last 47
    years of his rule, Mr Castro has marked the
    occasion with a lengthy speech in Havana's
    revolution square.

    While few expect Mr Castro to address the crowd
    this year, some sort of appearance is not being
    ruled out, our correspondent says, Mr Castro held
    talks for about an hour with Wu Guanzheng, a
    member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo,
    Granma reported.

    Mr Castro was handed a letter from Chinese
    President Hu Jintao, in which he praised the
    "excellent ties" between the two countries, the
    newspaper said.

    In 2006 China became the country's second largest
    trading partner, with trade between the two
    nations worth some $1.8m (1.4m euros; £0.94m) last year.

    Mr Wu is on a four-day visit to boost political
    and trade ties between the two communist allies.

    After his meeting with Mr Castro, Mr Wu also held
    talks with Raul Castro.

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

    LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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

    FOCUS | Key Part of Bush's "No Child" Law Under Federal Probe
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042207Y.shtml

    Now That Imus is Gone, What About All The Right-Wing Lies?
    Fire The Media
    by Mark T. Harris; April 22, 2007
    http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=91&ItemID=12633

    William Fisher | Guantanamo Detainees in Isolation,
    Diplomatic Limbo
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042107A.shtml

    Lower Manhattan, Higher Testosterone
    "Since 2000, men, mostly between ages 25 and 44, have
    accounted for more than three-fourths of the population
    increase in Lower Manhattan. As a result, according to
    a special census calculation, the sex ratio there increased
    to 126 men per 100 women in 2005, from 101 men per 100 women
    in 2000. In the rest of Manhattan, and in the city over all,
    there were only 90 men for every 100 women."
    By SAM ROBERTS
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22downtown.html?ref=nyregion

    Blue Angel Jet Crashes at S.C. Air Show
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Blue-Angel-Crash.html?ref=us

    A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
    By JASON DePARLE
    April 22, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22Workers.t.html?ref=world

    War Resister Agustin Aguayo Released
    "Army medic Agustin Aguayo was released this week after
    more than six months in military custody for refusing
    to deploy to Iraq a second time.
    Aguayo went AWOL for weeks after refusing the order.
    He was taken into military custody and jailed after
    turning himself in. We speak with Agustin Aguayo's
    wife, Helga."
    Listen/Watch/Read
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336213

    Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H on His Journey to Actor and
    Activist
    "Actor Mike Farrell is perhaps best known for his role
    as Captain B.J.Hunnicutt in the popular TV series
    M*A*S*H. But aside from that, he is also
    known for his decades of social justice activism.
    Farrell has just come out with a new book called "Just
    Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and
    Activist."
    Listen/Watch/Read
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336220

    VIDEO | Depleted Uranium: Poisoning Our Planet
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042007B.shtml

    FOCUS | Soldier Says He Was Deployed With Head Injury
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042107Z.shtml

    Ongoing Defiance/Political Gridlock in Lebanon
    April 20, 2007
    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/lebanon/000575.php

    Maryland: Bodies of Miners Are Found
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Workers found the bodies of two miners trapped when a wall
    section collapsed in an open-pit coal mine in western Maryland,
    a federal mine official said. The official, Bob Cornett,
    acting regional director for the federal Mine Safety and
    Health Administration, said the men, one of whom was found
    in a backhoe, and the other, found in a bulldozer, appeared
    to have died instantly. The cause of the collapse was under
    investigation. Mr. Cornett said heavy rain and the ground’s
    freezing and thawing could be a factor. The mine, about
    150 miles west of Baltimore, has had no fatal injuries since
    at least 1995 and was not cited for violations in its most
    recent inspection, which began March 5, according the federal
    mine agency.
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21brfs-BODIESOFMINE_BRF.html

    Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great Lakes
    By SUSAN SAULNY
    "CHICAGO, April 20 — A virus that has already killed tens
    of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading,
    scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic
    species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways."
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21fish.html

    Army’s Documents Detail Secrecy in Tillman Case
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21tillman.html

    Anger and Alternatives on Abortion
    By GINA KOLATA
    April 21, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21docs.html

    World Opposed to U.S. as Global Cop
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/617/

    Supreme Court Backtracks on Abortion Rights
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/616/

    Report: World Needs to Axe Greenhouse Gases by 80 Pct
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/638/

    Iraq Refugees: The Hidden Face of the War
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/622/

    World Bank May Target Family Planning
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/636/

    2 Miners Trapped in Maryland Under Up to 100 Feet of Rock
    By SEAN D. HAMILL
    April 20, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20miners.html

    Leading Article: A global warning from the dust bowl of Australia
    Published:?20 April 2007
    http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2465904.ece

    General strike in the Spanish province of Cadiz to support
    employees of Delphi
    April 18, 2007
    http://euronews.net/index.php?page=eco&article=417644&lng=1

    Graffiti Figure Admired as Artist Now Faces Vandalism Charges
    By THOMAS J. LUECK
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19grafitti.html?ref=nyregion

    Pet Food Recall Expanded
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pet-Food-Recall.html?ref=us

    Pet Food Recall
    Updated: April 19, 2007
    http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html

    Gates Reassures Israel About Arms Sales in Gulf
    By DAVID S. CLOUD
    April 19, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/world/middleeast/19cnd-gates.html

    A Lot of Uninvited Guests
    Inter Press Service
    Dahr Jamail
    "DAMASCUS, Apr 18 (IPS) - The massive influx of Iraqi refugees
    into Syria has brought rising prices and overcrowding, but most
    Syrians seem to have accepted more than a million of the
    refugees happily enough."
    http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000571.php

    Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET
    April 18, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Abortion.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

    Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter
    By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
    April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html

    Housing Slump Takes a Toll on Illegal Immigrants
    By EDUARDO PORTER
    "HURON, Calif. — Some of the casualties of America’s housing
    bust are easy to spot up and down California’s Central Valley."
    April 17, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/business/17construct.html?hp

    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
    GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

    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

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

    [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

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

    '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

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

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

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

    "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]

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

    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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    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

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

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

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

    "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]

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

    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

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

    A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
    Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
    of these illegal weapons
    http://poisondust.org/

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

    You may enjoy watching these.
    In struggle
    Che:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
    Leon:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4

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

    FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
    By Sylvia Weinstein
    http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html

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

    [The Scab
    "After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
    and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
    which he made a scab."
    "A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
    a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
    Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
    principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
    men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
    the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
    "No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
    is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
    or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
    Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
    For betraying his master, he had character enough
    to hang himself." A scab has not.
    "Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
    Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
    Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
    a commision in the british army."
    The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
    his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
    promise from his employer.
    Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
    to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
    a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
    his family and his class."
    Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
    http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]

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

    END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
    Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
    Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
    https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
    JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Happy Holidays!

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

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

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

    0 Comments:

    Post a Comment



    << Home

    This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?