OCTOBER 28 LOCALLY COORDINATED
ANTIWAR ACTIVITIES: A CALL TO ACTION

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has initiated a call for locally
coordinated protests on Saturday, October 28th, just
days before the pitiful charade known as the 2006 mid
-term elections. The people will force the issue of the
Iraq war onto the U.S. political stage by taking to streets
in demonstrations in cities and towns throughout the
United States. Tens of thousands of people will take
to the streets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago,
Seattle, New York, Miami, Washington D.C. and in
other large and small cities and towns throughout
the United States.

http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage

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A new movie, "The Road to Guantanamo" is touring film fests
right now, and it will also be playing in San Francisco starting
this Friday. For more specifics about the film, which is a docu-
drama about three prisoners' lives, go to
http://www.roadtoguantanamomovie.com/ .

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Iraq Body Count Press Release 13, 9th March 2006.
For current totals, see our database page.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php

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JUNE 27 "National Day of Action" To Stand With Lt.Watada!
On June 7th, 2006, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada
became the first commissioned officer to publicly announce his
opposition to the Iraq war and his intent to refuse to deploy with
his unit to Iraq.
“My son, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, is not the same person who
entered the military service three years ago. His decision to refrain
from deploying to Iraq comes through much soul searching. It is an act of
patriotism. It is a statement to all Americans, to men and women in
uniform, that they need not remain silent out of fear, that that they have
the power to turn the tide of history: to stop the destruction of a
country and the killing of untold numbers of innocent men, women, and
children. It is a message that states unequivocally that blindly
following orders is no longer an option. My son, Lt. Watada’s stance is
clear. He will stay the course. I urge you to join him in this effort.”
-Carolyn Ho, Ehren's mother
To demonstrate our support for Ehren, and
his couregeous stand, we call for a
National Day of Action on June 27th to
support Ehren as he officially resists deployment
this week.
We are urging you today to join with people
across the country and attend or organize
a coordinated action in your community on
June 27th supporting Ehren’s refusal of orders!
Supporters have planned events across the country.
For more information go to:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

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Eyewitness Account from Oaxaca
A website is now being circulated that has up-to-date info
and video that can be downloaded of the police action and
developments in Oaxaca. For those who have not seen it
elsewhere, the website is:
www.mexico.indymedia.org/oaxaca
http://www.mexico.indymedia.org/oaxaca

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DRCNet Alert:
Sources have informed us that the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical
marijuana vote in the House of Representatives is going to happen
NEXT WEEK. This amendment if passed will forbid the US Dept.
of Justice from interfering with state medical marijuana laws.
Your help is needed -- it is crucial that more members of Congress
vote for medical marijuana this year than did last year. Please visit
http://stopthedrugwar.org/medicalmarijuana/
to e-mail your member of Congress today!
http://stopthedrugwar.org/index.shtml

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THIS JUST IN
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"Operation Return to Sender" Police-ICE Raid Against Immigrants
June 18, 2006

From: dorindamoreno@comcast.net
mailto:dorindamoreno@comcast.net

"Operation Return To Sender" is a team of "POLICE ICE"
has just arrested and deported over 150 undocumented
immigrants . The immigrants are from Vista, Ca.

Police ICE looks for the following:

1. Mexican congregating at local bars speaking Spanish
and no English.

2. Mexicans having a party in large groups and the
undercover police officer hearing ONLY Spanish spoken
about their home country. This is a give away for the
immigrant.

3. They are hitting the apartments where large numbers
of Mexican live and work in the agriculture fields.

4. They hone in on Home Depot areas, 7/11 stores, and
others categorized Mexican corners.

5. Be prepared if they take on the K-12 schools and
colleges.

6. Be prepared if ICE takes on the Mexican patients in
the hospitals.

7. ICE will be targeting Mexicans in any undisclosed
area. The hit will come as a surprise in the early
morning hours and when Mexican least expect the visit.

8. ICE comes in para-military uniforms in white with
black bullet proof jackets. They work in teams of five
to ten to an apartment complex and have their trucks
parked half a block away.

9. This information was on our San Diego local news
and might be in the National News tonight.

10. Being 23 miles from the Mexican border I see all
kinds of Mexican round-ups and massive deportations.

11. What I find most disturbing is that ICE might next
hit our schools in September, 2006. All large cities
with Mexicans populations might see extensive raids.

I hope the immigrant community now start to acquire
their USA documents.

Pedro Olivares

Related:

Immigration Sweep Brings Fear to Community
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writer
June 18, 2006
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/photos/8/84cd1c7d-2976-4559-846e-171afc930239.html?SITE=NVLAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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PLEASE FORWARD ** PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY ** PLEASE FORWARD

SAVE THE DATE! Thursday, June 29 @ 1 pm
Stand with families who have lost children in California's
youth prisons
Sacramento (exact location TBA)

GOV SCHWARZENEGGER ON CA's YOUTH PRISON CRISIS
November 2004
"This will not just be dialogue, this will be action,
because I am the Action Governor."
November 2004 - present
All talk, no action...

When news of the human rights abuses in California's youth
prisons first made headlines, the governor promised to
"blow up the box" and reform the juvenile justice system.
He has not lived up to that promise.

The "Action Governor" has taken virtually no action at all.
Five young people have died in these monstrous youth prisons.
Many more have attempted suicide to escape the conditions.
Still, Schwarzenegger is content to "plan." He has even refused
to talk with families whose children died in his youth prisons,
on his watch.

Well, we've had enough waiting patiently while the governor
whiles away his time in office "planning" to fix the problem.
From June 27-June 29, families whose children have died
in California youth prisons will stand vigil at the state Capitol,
demanding that Schwarzenegger keep his promise to end
the suffering and abuse in the CYA.

SAVE THE DATE

On the last day, Thursday, June 29, we want you to join us
in Sacramento as we call on the governor to keep his word.
Stand with these families in demanding action from the
so-called "Action Governor."

We will e-mail you with more information about where and
when to meet in Sacramento, and about possible ridesharing
from the Bay Area and elsewhere. To get the latest information,
please contact Sumayyah Waheed:
Sumayyah Waheed, Books Not Bars Organizer
sumayyah@ellabakercenter.org
510.428.3939 x221

We look forward to seeing you in two weeks!

Many thanks,
Jakada "J" Imani
Director of Books Not Bars

* The Ella Baker Center can't survive without the
support of people like you.
Please take a moment to support us today:
http://www.ellabakercenter.org/donate

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DEFEND SPC. SUZANNE SWIFT WHO SAID NO TO THE WAR!

At 9:50 AM -0700 6/12/06 Larry Hildes, attorney
for Suzanne Swift, wrote:

SPC. Suzanne Swift has been diagnosed with PTSD as a result
of constant and pervasive sexual harassment by multiple sergeants,
both in Iraq, and then back here, one of whom coerced her into
a long-term sexual relationship. She complained to command
about these sergeants; only one was disciplined, and then only
with a reprimand.

She finally reached her limit and went AWOL in January.
We've been attempting to resolve the situation with command,
and have built up the documentation of her PTSD and were getting
ready to negotiate her turning herself in when she got picked
up by the Eugene, Oregon, police at 11:00 last night.

The police forced their way in to the house, assaulted Suzanne's
mother, and took Suzanne to the Lane County, Oregon, jail where
she is right now. The Army indicated they're expecting to pick
her up in the next day or two and ship her back to Ft. Lewis,
Washington.

More publicity is needed. Also calls to the Lane County Jail
(541)682-2245, and to Lt. Col Switzer, her commander
at Ft. Lewis-(253) 967-4921.

Thanks,

Larry Hildes (360) 715-9788,
P.0. Box 5405, Bellingham, WA 98227

Related:

A Moment of Silence Is Not Enough
By Sara Rich
t r u t h o u t | Statement
On March 18th Sara Rich, mother of an AWOL US soldier,
gave this address at an antiwar rally
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032006S.shtml

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Friends and Family of Lt. Ehren Watada
www.ThankYouLt.org
ACTION ALERT
June 14, 2006

CONTACT ARMY TO DEMAND:

"DROP INVESTIGATION INTO LT. WATADA'S PROTECTED
FREE SPEECH AGAINST ILLEGAL WAR"

On Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army
First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the
first U.S. commissioned officer to
publicly speak out in opposition to the
Iraq War and occupation. Lt. Watada
outlined why he believes the war to be
illegal, and why he would have
to refuse to obey any future order to
participate in it.

The following day, Thursday, June 8th
Lt. Watada's commanding officer moved
to prosecute Lt. Watada for nothing
more than his protected free speech. Lt.
Watada was read his rights and
declined to make a statement without a lawyer
present. Although the Fort Lewis
military public affairs officer has stated
that Lt. Watada "hasn't done
anything wrong" so far, an official
investigation into his public speech is underway.

When soldiers join the military they
swear to uphold our Constitution. They
do not give up their basic right to
freedom of speech. Outlined in
Department of Defense Directive
1325.6, members of the military have the
right to say what they think and
feel about the military, and even
participate in peaceful demonstrations,
as long as they are off-duty, out of
uniform, off-base, and within the United States.

PLEASE WRITE AND CALL:

"Dear Col Stephen Townsend; Please drop
the investigation currently underway
against First Lt. Ehren Watada of 3-2 SBCT
for his protected free speech in
opposition to the war in Iraq. Respectfully,"

TO:
Col Stephen Townsend
Commanding Officer
3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division
Fort Lewis WA 98433
(253) 967-9601

CC:
Lt Gen James Dubik
Fort Commander
Fort Lewis WA 98433

For background information:

Military attempts to stop Lt. Watada
from speaking against illegal war
By Friends and Family of Lt. Ehren Watada.
June 9, 2006
http://www.thankyoult.org/go/100.html

When soldiers refuse to fight: Is the
US Army trying to silence Lt. Watada?
By Sarah Olson, Truthout.com. June 14, 2006
http://www.thankyoult.org/go/101.html

For up-to-date and additional information:
http://www.ThankYouLt.org

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Sign the petition to save Bayview Hunters Point: No more Fillmore!
Editorial by Willie Ratcliff,
http://www.sfbayview.com/060706/signthepetition060706.shtml

As urban Black displacement grows, Bayview kicks off referendum
drive to stop Redevelopment by Randy Shaw,
http://www.sfbayview.com/060706/displacement060706.shtml

Hands off Bayview Hunters Point!
An open letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
http://www.sfbayview.com/050306/handsoff050306.shtml

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"The Democrats always promise to help workers, and the don't!
The Republicans always promise to help business, and the do!"
- Mort Sahl

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"It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
- Emilano Zapata
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Please circulate widely

Join the Campaign to
Shut Down the Guantanamo Torture Center

We urge you to join us in a nationwide campaign and petition
drive to shut down the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
The campaign is a project of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and
VoteNoWar. Org which was the largest grassroots peoples
referendum opposing the launch of the Iraq war.

The goal of the campaign is to ignite a mass movement
of the people of the United States and around the world
to close Guantanamo and all the secret prisons and torture
centers set up around the world by the Bush administration.
Each and every official must be held accountable for their
criminal conduct from Bush and Cheney to Rumsfeld and
General Geoffrey Miller.

Click here to send a letter to Congress and the White House:
Shut Down Guantanamo and all torture centers and prisons.

We will be gathering hundreds of thousands of names
on the printed "Shut It Down" petition, available at
http://www.shutitdown.org/. We will flood Congress with
emails, faxes and phone calls. We will be launching a mass
education campaign in the mainstream media and in the
alternative media. With your help we will be placing
newspaper ads around the country. We will be coalescing
with organizations and movements who focus on civil rights,
legal rights, faith-based and student communities,
and within the labor movement. This is an issue that
affects everyone.  

As someone who has been active in and supporting the
anti-war movement you are well aware that the most
important counter-weight to the Bush Administration's
criminal policies has been the creation of a global progressive
movement. Millions of people have been in the streets
in countless demonstrations in the past few years. Now
Bush's approval ratings have dropped to 29% and the
anti-war movement's political position has been proven
to be correct. But unless we act now, and help the rest
of the country join in this movement, the criminals in the
White House will continue on their path.

Please make a donation to help support the organizing
efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay torture facility.

Suicides and Torture in Guantanamo

Three men who had been held for four years resorted
to hanging themselves this last weekend, according
to Guantanamo prison authorities. Scores of others have
tried to kill themselves. In a shocking but inadvertent
admission of the depravity of the Guantanamo authorities,
the Camp Commander Rear-Admiral Harry Harris described
the suicides "an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
He then said about the dead inmates, they "have no regard
for life, neither ours or their own." 

The three men who killed themselves had previously been
hunger strikers subjected to force-feeding by prison guards.  

Held for years without ever being charged with wrongdoing,
without being able to see their families, subject to constant
interrogation and torture by the U.S. government and
no end in sight, Guantanamo detainees have increasingly
attempted suicide and others have gone on hunger strikes. 

The Pentagon made public its approval of the use of force
feeding, which is another form of torture. According to
detainees, those who refuse to eat are strapped down twice
a day in specially designed chairs, and tubes are violently
inserted through their noses and into their stomachs. The
U.S. military personnel force liquids through the tubes.
Detainees, many of whom are left vomiting blood, have
also reported that U.S. military personnel reuse the unclean
tubes on different captives. As a result of the application
of this torture regime, the U.S. military has bragged
of a significant reduction in hunger strikers in recent days.

The Associated Press today published a story about three
British youths who were detained at Guantanamo for more
than two years without charge before they were released.
The AP story reports, "At the camp, the men say they were
beaten and saw troops throw Qurans in the toilet. They also
say they were forced to watch videotapes of prisoners who
had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other and
were chained to a hook in the floor while strobe lights
flashed and heavy metal music blared."

The New York Times lead editorial from today (Monday June 12)
condemned the Guantanamo prison and said that it was no
surprise that detainees are committing suicide, "It is a place
where secret tribunals sat in judgment of men whose
identities they barely knew and who were not permitted
to see the evidence against them. Inmates were abused,
humiliated, tormented and sometimes tortured." 

Click here to send a letter to Congress and the White House:
Shut Down Guantanamo and all torture centers and prisons.

UN Panel says: Shut Down Guantanamo Now! 

The United Nations panel investigating conditions at
Guantanamo insisted in a report released on May 19, 2006
that the prison must be shut down. The UN panel declared
the prison to be a torture facility. Unless they are charged
and given a fair trial, the report also called for the release
of the hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo who are being
held indefinitely. Without criminal charges, these prisoners
are held in savage conditions and subjected to physical
and psychological abuse, including the much vaunted
innovations of "cultural" and sexual humiliation.  

The UN report did not limit itself to demanding the closing
of Guantanamo. It also called for the closure of secret CIA
prisons, and the end of the "extraordinary renditions" which
is the policy of the US government shipping people to other
countries so that they can be more effectively tortured.  

This torture center must be closed. The people of the United
States should join the people of Cuba and the people
of the world in demanding that the entire U.S. Naval Base
in Guantanamo Cuba be closed down. The U.S. invaded
Cuba in 1898 and forced the colonial government of that
time to sign a treaty giving the U.S. military control over
this part of the island of Cuba in perpetuity. The continued
maintenance of a U.S. Naval Base inside of Cuba against
the wishes of the Cuban people is a modern day expression
of the vilest colonialism.  How ironic it is that the Bush
Administration accuses the Cuban government of violating
"human rights" when the only place in Cuba where the
authorities engage in systematic torture of prisoners held
without Due Process rights is the portion under the control
of the U.S. government. 

Say No to Torture -- Say No to Bush' s Imperial Government 

The establishment of a torture facility at a US naval base
located in a foreign country is not an isolated criminal act
by this administration. It is part of a pattern whose methods
and goals are now obvious. The Bush White House, in both
its domestic and foreign policy, wants to establish that all
existing international and domestic law that in any way
inhibits the assumption of near-dictatorial power by the
President of the United States must be declared null and
void.  

The so-called war on terrorism is revealed as nothing more
than a slogan masking a quest for unfettered empire.
The war of aggression against Iraq; the assassination
of targeted individuals; the establishment of torture
facilities and secret prisons around the world; the secret
phone record collection, warrantless wiretapping and
monitoring of the email of millions of Americans --
all of this constitutes a brazen effort to assume
unfettered authority and power.  

This is the challenge of our time. Will the people
intervene and act decisively? The people of the United
States, in partnership with the peoples of all continents,
are a power far greater than the Bush White House.
But we must act. Each one of us must act to inform our
neighbors, family members and co-workers.  

Go to:

http://www.shutitdown.org/

to send a letter to Congress and the White House:
Shut Down Guantanamo and all torture centers and prisons.

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545

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ABOLISHING JROTC in SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOLS
There will be a special meeting in July when
the School Board will vote on this resolution.
The meeting date is to be announced.
School District Office
555 Franklin St
San Francisco
415/241-6427

Report and Open letter to the Board of Education regarding JROTC:

At the first reading of the resolution to rid the schools
of JROTC on the basis of the policy of "Don't ask, don't
tell" that discriminates against gay's in the military, which
was presented to the Board of Education meeting on May 23, the
JROTC teachers (all retired military officers) mobilized students
to speak on behalf of JROTC. Carole Seligman and I spoke to many
students in the lobby before the meeting began. Repeatedly they
expressed that they loved the program. It gives them confidence
in themselves, provides a supportive environment, encourages good
scholarship in school, and encourages comradeship among the members.

So much so, that a young girl had a silver-colored chain with a tiny
silver-colored and diamond studded bullet. I really couldn't believe
it was a bullet so I asked her if it was. She said, "oh! this? Yes,
it's a bullet. You know, it's between me and my friend, you know,
like, 'I'll take a bullet for you!'"

Need I say more about the virtues of JROTC?

Unfortunately, the resolution that follows says nothing of this
aspect of JROTC. Nothing about the war. Nothing about young people
being taught to "take a bullet for each other". Nothing about the
realities of war. Nothing about asking students, gay or not, to
risk their lives and take the lives of Iraqis for this inhuman
and illegal war brought about by an inhuman and illegal
government.

It was announced by gay supporters of JROTC at the meeting
that they expected the military to lift the prohibition on gays
in the military this year. If this is true this will make this
resolution obsolete before it can ever take effect. Are we to cheer
that our gay brothers and sisters will be able to fight in this war?
What is our plan to convince young gay and straight students that they can't
"be all they can be" if they are dead; or legless and armless; or with the
blood of too many dead in their hearts and head; or permanently
brain-damaged; burnt or blinded by exploding eyeballs and deafened by
exploding eardrums? Who will tell them of depleted uranium illness?
Who will tell them that although there is a very high survival rate for
our injured soldiers there is also a very high rate of survival with such
catastrophic injury and illness? Who will tell them that they are more
likely to be homeless after serving than in college? Who will tell
them about the logic of "following orders" and a "chain of command"
Instead of thinking and reasoning and making decisions for themselves
leads to disaster?

If you haven't seen it, I suggest you watch the HBO special,
"Baghdad ER". In fact it should be shown to all of our students
in middle and high school. (It's far too explicit for very young children.)

We and the majority of the voters in San Francisco want
the military out of our schools immediately!

Here are my comments for the meeting. I was cut off midway
through my timed one-minute delivery. The resolution
follows my comments. Please look at it again and see that a
vital antiwar message is missing from it and correct and
amend the resolution immediately to reflect opposition
to the militarization of our schools and the offering up of our
students as cannon fodder for this bloodthirsty and greedy
government and it's military might.

We want a world without war! How can we teach children
that violence is not the answer when the most powerful
and influential adults in the world--our government--
uses it as their ultimate tool to gain wealth and power
for themselves.

You must take a stronger antiwar stand! I don't care how many
antiwar resolutions you have passed. The proof of the pudding
is in the military presence in our schools!

Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein

Addressed to the President, Vice President and the
Commissioners of the San Francisco Board of Education:

I commend the board members who are bringing the motion
to rid our schools of JROTC forward. This is in line with the
wishes of the majority of the voters in San Francisco who
voted to get the military out of our schools this past November.
The military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unacceptable.
Our obligation is to educate our children against prejudice
of all kinds—not turn a blind eye—and turn a bigoted military
loose on them. But that is not the only reason we want the
military and JROTC out.

We want our children to engage in physical education, in fact,
to find joy in it; and to study history—to learn how to avoid
the mistakes of the past; to gain satisfaction and experience
joy in learning so they can contribute to human knowledge
themselves as well as help fashion a better world!

We want our children to feel responsible to her or his
community. We want students to gain a sense of
responsibility and pride in a job well done by
contributing to the life and well being of their school,
their home and their community.

We don’t want to teach our children to blindly obey
a chain of command or to glorify war. In fact, it is our
duty to teach our children that blind obedience, violence,
greed, bigotry, prejudice, human inequality, torture, pre-
emptive war, profiting off of war and injustice, inequality
in the application of the law, and poverty in the face of
fantastic wealth is wrong, inhuman and intolerable and
we can do better!

We must rid our schools of the military and JROTC, hire
enough Physical Education teachers immediately, and
re-dedicate our schools to education and human
development—and reject the road to war and militarism.

Just one more thing, I want to correct the notion that the
new school policy regarding military recruiters has resulted
in less military presence in our schools. In fact, it has resulted
in more. Many schools did not invite the military on Career Day
and now they must, and that is a shame, because we want the
military out! We don’t want our children to study war or bigotry
any more! Not for one more second!

Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War,
www.bauaw.org, 415-824-8730

The resolution:

Introduction of Replacement Program for JROTC
--Commissioners Mark Sanchez and Dan Kelly

WHEREAS: It is the official policy of the San Francisco Unified School
District to oppose discrimination of any kind against any group
of people; and

WHEREAS: The District’s opposition to discrimination is articulated
in Board Policy 5163, which provides that the San Francisco Unified
School District shall not discriminate on the basis of race, religion,
creed, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or handicapping
condition in the provision of educational programs, services, and
activities, in the admission of students to school programs and
activities; and in the recruitment and employment of personnel; and

WHEREAS: The San Francisco Unified School District deplores the
"Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" policy of the U.S. Department of Defense,
which requires the discharge of any member of the armed forces
if such service member has engaged in "homosexual acts," has
revealed that s/he is a homosexual or bisexual, or the member
has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the
same biological sex; and

WHEREAS: The District believes that the "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell"
policy is an unjust, indefensible, unintelligent, state-sanctioned
act of homophobia; and

WHEREAS: The San Francisco Unified School District cannot justify
committing any funding to a JROTC program because its connection
to the U.S. Department of Defense suggests that discrimination
against some groups is tolerable.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the Board of Education of the
San Francisco Unified School District calls for the phasing –out
of the JROTC program of the United States Department of Defense
on San Francisco Unified School District campuses; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board of Education instructs
District staff to provide all JROTC units at SFUSD campuses with
one year notice that the programs will be terminated at all SFUSD
campuses after the 2006-2007 school year; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Board of Education calls for the
creation of a special task force to develop alternative, creative,
career-driven programs which provide students with a greater
sense of purpose and respect for self and humankind.

Board has plan to oust ROTC from S.F. schools
Members want to cut program over 'Don't ask, Don't tell'
The students engage in physical training such as running, push-ups
and jumping jacks; and discipline training such as marching,
drill-practice and using a mock chain of command. They also
study military history and perform community service.
- Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/23/MNGIOJ0G7P1.DTL

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Free the Land!
Support Indigenous Sovereignty!
Support the courageous stand of the Onkwehonweh people! 

Dear supporters,
 
As you know, one of our comrades made a solidarity trip up to the Six
Nations a few weeks ago bringing up much needed supplies. He is
planning a return trip  and needs more support (see prior email). If
you can give anything please get in touch (muayxthai@yahoo.co.uk).
 
The following is a report from Six Nations regarding the current
confrontation between indigenous people standing up for their rights,
their land and their families and the Canadian and U.S. governments.
 
As the Chicano activist Juan Santos wrote in Mexica Tlahtolli, last
April, "The original Europeans in what is now the U.S. were not
immigrants, but colonists. And the U.S. is not a nation of immigrants -
it is a white colonial settler state, like South Africa under
Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia and Israel.” And, of course,
like Canada.

Jericho Boston
  
UPDATE FROM GRAND RIVER

June 9, 2006.  Today has been a day of unrest at the
land reclamation site.  While we won't go into great
detail on what has happened today as a press release
is being prepared, let us say that the intimidation
tactics and pressure from the outside has been worked
up to the point that 1000 OPP [Ontario Provincial
Police] officers are being dispatched to the area
surrounding the reclamation site. Caledonia residents
are up in arms, demanding the removal of our people
from the site.  They are even going so far as to set
up a barricade on the recently opened Plank Road
(Argyle Street) leading into Caledonia. 

The intimidation tactics leading up to today were
constant..... including army helicopters and others
flying overhead all hours of the day and night.  They
hovered overhead between 2 and  4 in the morning with
their lights off and their nigh vision on ,
and then on occasion, shining high powered lights
down onto the people on the site.  [this is all the
same as their tactics in Oka in 1990].

We are being faced daily with people driving by,
hollering racial remarks including "go home you f'n
Indians", "get a job", "your gonna die" etc.  Garbage
is being thrown at us.  Besides the "flipping of the
bird", there have been times where firecrackers are
being thrown out the car windows toward us.  These
incidents, however, are not investigated by the OPP
because “they are not breaking any laws”.  [See ‘Rocks
at Whisky Trench, National Film Board].  [what about
hate laws, human rights and racial discrimination?]

Today a United States Border Patrol vehicle was
retrieved with high powered surveillance equipment in
it.   The first story from the OPP was that the
"A.T.F. Officer" was just visiting friends in the
neighborhood and taking pictures "kinda like
a tourist".  [Right!  With a high tech surveillance van?
He left the family car at home?]  He was spotted just
down from the  front line barricade.  We followed them
to the back door of the reclamation site.   Later we
questioned what the United States ATF was doing
snooping around taking pictures of us with the OPP
riding in the back with them.  They changed the story
saying that they had been invited in by the OPP.
[Why?  Was the OPP getting lonely looking at each
other?  Did they need more maniacs to make themselves
feel more comfortable?] What were they doing here?
What is their mandate?  The OPP refused to tell us why
these people have gotten high government official
clearance to be so far out of their jurisdiction.   An
OPP officer was hospitalized as a result of this
incident.  A CHTV Newsperson/cameraman had to get
stitches as a result of a previous run-in with our
people.  [CHTV 11 not only reports the news,
they “create” the news]. 

This situation is not good.  [All reports from CHTV 11
are anti-Indigenous].

The incidents of today are a direct result of the
constant intimidation tactics of the OPP, the military
and the continued racist acts instigated against us by
the Caledonia people [with their professionally made
“Bring in the Army” signs always in their car trunks,
just in case the cameras are there].  Other strategies
are the recent blocking of our children from using the
arena for lacrosse games and the back tracking by the
Ontario government at the “talks”.  This is supposed
to push everything up to the ultimate goal of Canada
and Ontario.  They want to justify stopping the talks
about returning our lands to us. 

At our fire tonight, we realized that Canada does not
want to deal with the Onkwehonweh people because
they know we are absolutely right in our position on the
land, our sovereignty and upholding our Law. 

This violence today occurred as a result of the
underhanded and direct attempts at inciting an action
from us to justify another attack against us.   They
want to make it look like we are uncontrollable.  Why
else have they been playing the "terrorists in Canada
in court in Brampton" back to back with the "Six
Nations land reclamation in Caledonia" on all the news
stations?  Canada, with the help of corporate media,
is making sure the mental brainwashing of its citizens
against the Onkwehonweh continues.   [Across Canada
people are not buying this corporate brainwashing].

How convenient that CHTV 11 was there even before this
all started!  How coincidently that the couple who
sparked the violence with their racial attacks and
their attempt to run over our people, drove straight
to the Canadian Tire parking lot!  How convenient that
a "by-stander" happened to have a video camera across
the road at the Tim Horton’s coffee shop video taping
the whole scene [with a Boston Cream donut in the
other hand].  He directly reported to CHML radio which
happens to be co-owned by CHTV 11.  Was it a
co-incidence!  Or were they already on standby knowing
that a story was about to break.  [Another high-priced
promotion failed!]

It is unfortunate that our people fell for it.  [Our
guys are the only ones legally here].  The reality is,
we are dealing with the constant mental, emotional and
physical intimidation of the corrupt bureaucrats.
Also, we face racial violence constantly.  Does anyone
know for sure how they would react in the same
situation? 

The potential for violence against us here in the next
while is tremendous.  [Expect this to happen.  This is
their “bad act” and no one’s buying any tickets for
it!]  The Caledonia people want to take us off
our land.  The OPP are maintaining a line between the
Caledonia residents and the reclamation site.  [Just
like the people in Chateauguay in 1990.  See “Act of
Defiance” by the National Film Board].  We don’t know
how long this is going to last.  Our people are on
alert.  We are on the site unarmed.  We are trying to
maintain the peace.  We are keeping the people within
the inner perimeter.  We will continue to forward
updates.  Please forward to others.  Stay Strong and
keep the Peace.  Hazel

You support is crucial now.  Do whatever you can.  Use
your good mind and heart.  Stand by us in solidarity
and support.   

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

Great Counter-Recruitment Website
http://notyoursoldier.org/article.php?list=type&type=14

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

SCROLL DOWN TO READ:
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
ARTICLES IN FULL
LINKS ONLY

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------

DEFEND IMMIGRANT RIGHTS AND
CIVIL RIGHTS!

Last summer the U.S. Border Patrol arrested Shanti Sellz and
Daniel Strauss, both 23-year-old volunteers assisting immigrants
on the border, for medically evacuating 3 people in critical
condition from the Arizona desert.

Criminalization for aiding undocumented immigrants already
exists on the books in the state of Arizona. Daniel and Shanti
are targeted to be its first victims. Their arrest and subsequent
prosecution for providing humanitarian aid could result in
a 15-year prison sentence. Any Congressional compromise
with the Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437) may include these
harmful criminalization provisions. Fight back NOW!

Help stop the criminalization of undocumented immigrants
and those who support them!

For more information call 415-821- 9683.
For information on the Daniel and Shanti Defense Campaign,
visit www.nomoredeaths.org.

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

Saving The Idriss Stelley Foundation
Host: Idriss Stelley Foundation, Rap4Rights
Location: Studio Z
314 11th Street, San Francisco, CA View Map
When: Sunday, June 25, 1:00pm
Phone: 415.252.7100

KEEP IDRISS STELLEY FOUNDATION OPEN!

ISF is a nonprofit organization created through the settlement
of Idriss Stelley's vs. City & County and SFPD case and its
allocation to his mother Mesha Monge-Irizarry.

Her only child, a 23 year old African American honor student
was killed by SFPD at the SF Sony Metreon on June 13, 2001.
48 shots! 9 officers! He stood alone in an empty theater.

Mesha now operates the Idriss Stelley Foundation, a 24 HR
bilingual crisis line (415) 595-8251 that has broadened
its services to all people negatively impacted by law
enforcement.

Idriss Stelley's case is at the root of the 40-HR mandatory
SFPD Mental Health Training. ISF provides free, confidential
services to victims, biological and extended families who are
negatively impacted by law enforcement

ISF office is located at 4921 3rd St., in the heart of Bayview District,
between Palou and Quesada in San Francisco and is open Sunday,
Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 8 pm.

Please come out Sunday June 25, 2006 at 1pm to enjoy food,
drinks and live entertainment in support of ISF. (21+ Please)

$5-500 DONATION ACCEPTED AT THE DOOR. NO PERSON
TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS BUT PLEASE COME
AND SUPPORT!

***IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO ATTEND BUT WOULD STILL LIKE
TO DONATE TO THE IDRISS STELLEY FOUNDATION PLEASE
CONTACT US VIA EMAIL AT RAP4RIGHTS@AOL.COM***

ISF IS DEPENDING ON THE COMMUNITY TO KEEP ITS DOORS OPEN!

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

LaborFest 2006 Schedule
July 1 (Saturday) 12-4:00 PM ($15-50)
(sliding scale donation to CounterPULSE requested. Bring a bag lunch!)
Labor Bike Tour with Chris Carlson of San Francisco©ˆs labor history
For more info: call Chris Carlsson carlsson.chris@gmail.com
Meet at 1310 Mission (at 9th), San Francisco
http://www.laborfest.net/2006schedule.htm

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

Fourth Annual International Al-Awda Convention
San Francisco - July 14-16, 2006
To register: http://al-awda.org/sf-conv_reserve.html
To flyer, the writing is on the wall: http://al-awda.org/pdf/flyer.pdf
For all other info: http://al-awda.org

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------

REMINDER TO ALL GROUPS: BE SURE AND POST ALL ACTIONS AND
EVENTS TO WWW.INDYBAY.ORG TO REACH THE MOST PEOPLE
AGAINST THE WAR IN THE BAY AREA!
http://www.indybay.org

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

Join the call by reproductive rights activists to send
a letter to

Defend Oglala Sioux President Cecilia Fire Thunder

After taking a courageous stance against the ban on
abortion in South Dakota, Cecilia Fire Thunder, first
female president of the Oglala Sioux tribe, has been
attacked by members of the Tribal Council, who are
attempting to remove her from office.

Background:
After abortion was banned in South Dakota, Fire
Thunder, a healthcare provider, announced that she
would personally help set-up Sacred Choices Women's
Clinic on her own land, within the boundaries of the
Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota
has no jurisdiction. The clinic would provide
reproductive health care to all women. In an interview
she said, "Ultimately, this is a much bigger issue
than just abortion. It's time for women to reclaim
their bodies." and "As Indian women, we fight many
battles. This is just another battle we have to
fight." Read an interview, "The Power of Thunder" on
Altnet at http://www.alternet.org/story/34314

The Complaint:
On May 30 the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council banned
abortions on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and
suspended President Fire Thunder for 20 days until an
impeachment hearing can take place. The complaint is
that Fire Thunder improperly used her title to solicit
donations for the clinic. Fire Thunder has said that
donations for the proposed private clinic have been
unsolicited, though she has welcomed nationwide
support. The surprise vote was called when Fire
Thunder was out of town getting an annual checkup of
the cochlear implants that restored her hearing. Read
more at http://indianz.com/News/2006/014231.asp

Fire Thunder said the people who brought this
complaint are the same people who have opposed her
since she was elected in November 2004. Fire Thunder
ran on a platform of fiscal accountability, the Oglala
Sioux Tribe was in financial trouble and listed as a
financial high risk. Since Fire Thunder became
president there have been audits that go back into
1997 (see
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412970
) And she took tribal employees off the roles for jobs
that had been defunded by the federal government. (see
analysis by Elizabeth Castle at the end of this
message.). For her brave stance, Fire Thunder has been
suspended and cleared before, see
http://indianz.com/News/2005/010954.asp

Support Fire Thunder:
President Fire Thunder's supporters are organizing on
the reservation. They would like letters, especially
from indigenous people, to the tribal council in
support of President Fire Thunder and opposing the
tribe's ban on abortions. Message should reach the
council before Monday, June 19.

Oglala Sioux Tribal Council
PO Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770-2070
fax: 605-867-1449
phone 605-867-5821

and send a copy to
President Cecelia Fire Thunder
PO Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770-2070


If you have any questions about this issue, please
contact Radical Women at 415-864-1278 or
rwbayarea@yahoo.com Thank you for your support!

In solidarity,

Toni Mendicino
Bay Area Radical Women and
Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights

Below is an excerpt from an email from Elizabeth
Castle, UC Berkeley History Professor and personal
historian to Madonna Thunder Hawk.

...there are many complicated political factors behind
this action. This is the third time it has happened
and the danger is that this time the Tribal Council is
using the abortion issues as leverage.

When she was elected she cleaned up house. This meant
taking tribal employees off the roles for jobs that
had been defunded by the federal government. In
addition to federal cuts, often the grants were lost
for these tribal programs because the employees had
not taken the necessary action to see their reports
were in and the grants were properly renewed. Fire
Thunder notified these individuals that they were
welcome back if they were able to get the program
funded again.

The ending of this "gravy train," created significant
enemies. These actions must be understood in the ever
relevant context of the continuing effects of
colonization. They are very real as in the welfare
mentality that reigns on the reservation makes
progressive change difficult. The federal government
not only knows this but encourages it as it makes the
pathway to terminating treaty obligations to tribes.

Though the full details are as of yet unknown, it is
easy to see that the Fire Thunder's bold leadership
makes her vulnerable not only to those right wing
individuals off the reservation in the racist state of
South Dakota but even more so at home in Pine Ridge.
With generations of boarding school christianity
drummed into the minds of many Native people, there is
little awareness of the Lakota's traditional practices
of reproductive control.

It would be easy to see "Abortion is not traditional"
signs popping up as a very patriarchal and inaccurate
reinvigoration of traditional practice. Also, in a
community where illegal sterilization was commonly
practiced, the link to organizing behind the right to
abortion will not be as easily made.

Please take a look at the links below to see how often
Fire Thunder has been attacked. It is dead clear that
she needs serious support. Website:
http://indianz.com/News/2005/010954.asp

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

FYI
According to "Minimum Wage History" at
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html "

"Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the
highest at $9.12. "The 8 dollar per hour Whole Foods employees
are being paid $1.12 less than the 1968 minimum wage.

"A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The graph shows
both nominal (red) and real (blue) minimum wage values. Nominal
values range from 25 cents per hour in 1938 to the current $5.15/hr.
The greatest percentage jump in the minimum wage was in 1950,
when it nearly doubled. The graph adjusts these wages to 2005
dollars (blue line) to show the real value of the minimum wage.
Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the
highest at $9.12. Note how the real dollar minimum wage rises and
falls. This is because it gets periodically adjusted by Congress.
The period 1997-2006, is the longest period during which the
minimum wage has not been adjusted. States have departed from
the federal minimum wage. Washington has the highest minimum
wage in the country at $7.63 as of January 1, 2006. Oregon is next
at $7.50. Cities, too, have set minimum wages. Santa Fe, New
Mexico has a minimum wage of $9.50, which is more than double
the state minimum wage at $4.35."

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

PRESERVE INTERNET NETWORK NEUTRALITY

Hi,
I can't imagine that you haven't seen this, but if you
haven't, please sign the petition to keep our access.
Everything we do online will be hurt if Congress
passes a radical law next week that gives giant
corporations more control over what we do and see on
the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T are lobbying Congress
hard to gut Network Neutrality--the Internet's First
Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Right now,
Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which
websites open most easily for you based on which site
pays AT&T more. BarnesandNoble.com doesn't have to
outbid Amazon for the right to work properly on your
computer.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, many sites--including
Google, eBay, and iTunes--must either pay protection
money to companies like AT&T or risk having their
websites process slowly. That why these high-tech
pioneers, plus diverse groups ranging from MoveOn to
Gun Owners of America, are opposing Congress' effort
to gut Internet freedom.

So please! sign this petition telling your member of
Congress to preserve Internet freedom? Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet?track_referer=706%7C1152463-5QFocRE05wmGUuh8yAMSzg

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

Flash Film: Ides of March
http://isahaqi.chris-floyd.com/

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

NO BORDERS! NO WALLS! NO FENCES! GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL!
OUR HOMELAND IS WHERE WE LIVE!

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

REPEAL THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IN 2007!
Check out: 10 EXCELLENT REASONS NOT TO JOIN THE MILITARY
http://www.10reasonsbook.com/
Public Law print of PL 107-110, the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 [1.8 MB]
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
Also, the law is up before Congress again in 2007.
See this article from USA Today:
Bipartisan panel to study No Child Left Behind
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
February 13, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-02-13-education-panel_x.htm

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

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/decind.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/declar.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805195.php

Bill of Rights
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805182.php

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

1) "Just in the Name of 'Democracy' "
June 3, 2006
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

2) Where the Hogs Come First
By BOB HERBERT
June 15, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/opinion/15herbert.html?hp

3) The Don't-Bother-to-Knock Rule
New York Times Editorial
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/opinion/16fri1.html?hp

4) The New Face of Solidarity
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/16union.html

5) U.A.W. Says Applications for Buyouts Soar at G.M.
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/16uaw.html

6) Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Flag-Burning Measure
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16brfs-008.html

7) In Oil-Rich Angola, Cholera Preys Upon Poorest
"A crisis committee began work only
two and a half months after the epidemic began, and
the government has set aside a mere $5 million in
emergency money to fight the disease....Economists
say the government simply has more
money than it can spend."
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/world/africa/16cholera.html

8) Venezuela: Chávez Orders Russian Warplanes
(AP)
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/world/americas/16briefs-001.html

9) Ranchers Add Ladders to Border Fences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:27 a.m. ET
June 17, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Border-Fence-Ladders.html

10) Bienvenido
A Fence With More Beauty, Fewer Barbs
By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
June 18, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/weekinreview/18hamilton.html

11) Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control
By ERIC LIPTON
Correction Appended
Correction: May 20, 2006
A front-page article on Thursday about a federal plan to use
contractors to help secure the borders of the United States
misstated the amount that Lockheed Martin made in federal
government sales in 2005. Of $37.2 billion in sales, more
than $31 billion, not $6 billion, was in sales to the government.
May 18, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/washington/18border.html?ex=1150776000&en=b8293eb7e22efbf1&ei=5070

12) DEPLOYMENT REFUSER HAS NO REGRETS
By Michelle Tan
Army Times
June 14, 2006
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1870677.php

13) Here Illegally, Working Hard and Paying Taxes
By EDUARDO PORTER
June 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/business/19illegals.html?hp&ex=1150776000&en=a94929a93349f54f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

14) Residents Struggle to Survive, In and Out of Ramadi
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali Fadhil
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website http://dahrjamailiraq.com

15) The right to fuck and suck
OPINION
by Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Bay Guardian, June 21, 2006

16) Israeli Attack Kills 3 Gaza Children
By IAN FISHER
June 21, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/world/middleeast/21mideast.html

17) Supreme Court Rules Against Illegal Immigrant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22wire-scotus.html?hp&ex=1151035200&en=94c687d336f46592&ei=5094&partner=homepage

18) Army to Raise Maximum Age
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Army said that it was raising the maximum age for enlistment
to 42 from 40 to expand its pool of potential recruits. The move
comes just six months after the Army raised the maximum age
to 40 from 35; more than 1,000 people in that age bracket have
enlisted since then. Recruits between the ages of 40 to 42 must
meet the same physical standards as younger ones but will be
subjected to additional medical screening, the Army said. Men
and women in that age bracket can enlist and are eligible for
the same signing bonuses and other incentives as younger
recruits.
June 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22brfs-007.html

19) Senate Rejects Minimum Wage Increase
[The Republicans refuse to vote for an increase and the Democrats
want to vote for a paltry increase in effect tying working people to
a maximum of $7.25 an hour for the next two years! What
choice is this? Let's see if the politicians can live on $7.25 an
hour for the next two years!...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Senate rejected a proposed increase in the minimum wage
by a vote of 52 to 46. Democrats had said it was past time to
increase the rate of $5.15 an hour, in effect for nearly a decade.
This was the ninth time since 1997 that Senate Democrats have
proposed and Republicans have blocked a stand-alone increase
in the minimum wage. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat
of Massachusetts, proposed the bill, which would have increased
the rate to $5.85 beginning 60 days after enactment,
to $6.55 a year later and to $7.25 a year after that.
June 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22brfs-009.html

20) New Orleans Plans Juvenile Curfew
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:39 p.m. ET
June 21, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-New-Orleans-Curfew.html

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

1) "Just in the Name of 'Democracy' "
June 3, 2006
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The word 'democracy' is a kind of verbal narcotic.

To mention it is to daze us; to dull us; to lull us into peaceful slumber.

That's why the Bush Regime, perhaps the least democratic of
governments in generations, calls the invasion and occupation
a 'war for democracy.' It is ironic that a government that is profoundly
autocratic, that relies on elite authoritarianism, secrecy, wireless
wiretaps, secret prisons and torture, can claim to be fighting for
something that is becoming so rare in the U.S. (ahem -- democracy).

But, don't trip; this ain't a Bush thing. Writer and historian,
Michael Parenti in his book, Super Patriotism (San Francisco:
City Light Books, 2004), tells us that democracy has been wiped
out in a host of countries -- by the ! Parenti writes:

"US leaders have long professed a dedication to democracy, yet
over the last half century they have devoted themselves to overthrowing
democratic governments in Guatemala, Guyana, the Dominican
Republic,Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno),
Greece (twice), Argentina (twice), Haiti (twice), Bolivia, Jamaica,
Yugoslavia,and other countries. These governments were all
guilty of pursuing policies that occasionally favored the poorer
elements and infringed upon the affluent. In most instances,
the US-sponsored coups were accompanied by widespread
killings of democratic activists.

"US leaders have supported covert actions, sanctions, or proxy
mercenary wars against revolutionary governments in Cuba,
Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Iraq (with the CIA ushering in
Saddam Hussein's reign of repression), Portugal, South Yemen,
Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timor, Western Sahara, and elsewhere.

"US interventions and destabilization campaigns have been
directed against other populist nationalistic governments,
including Egypt, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Syria, Zaire, Venezuela,
the Fiji Islands, and Afghanistan (before the Soviets ever
went into the country).

"And since World War II, direct US military invasions or aerial
attacks or both have been perpetrated against Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, North Korea,
Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Somalia,
and Iraq (twice). There is no 'rogue state,' 'axis of evil,'
or communist country that has a comparable record of
such criminal aggression against other nations." [pp. 133-34)

The point? The next time you hear about a 'war to bring
democracy' -- question it.

Decades ago, a Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, gave
the quintessential recipe for American military adventures
abroad. Speaking during the Eisenhower years, Dulles said,
"In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining
great military establishments, it is necessary to create an
emotional state akin to war psychology." Dulles added,
"*There must be the portrayal of external menace*."
To do this, Dulles explained, one must depict one's own
country as the shining hero, while portraying the adversary
as the embodiment of all evil.

We have, all of us, seen this recipe cooked all of our lives,
all around the world, and on every continent. It works,
because people allow it to work. Yet, while Dulles
explains how such a thing happens, he doesn't explain why.

Years ago, an American president was explaining why
the Vietnam War was necessary. This man said:

"Now let us assume that we lost Indochina , the tin and
tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would
cease coming. So when the votes $400 million to help
that war, we are not voting a give-away program. We are
voting for the cheapest way that we can prevent the
occurrence of something that would be of a most terrible
significance to the , our security, our power
and ability to get certain things we need from the
riches of the Indo-Chinese territory and from
Southeast Asia ." [p. 67]**

These words were spoken by Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Now, why is that remarkable? Isn't it merely the case
of an American president talking turkey? These words
were spoken in 1953 -- *eleven years before the
entered the Vietnam War!*

Why are wars fought? For 'democracy' -- or for profit?
Think about this the next time you hear
a plea for your patriotism.

Just say, "No."

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

**["Source: Carmichael, Stokely. Stokely Speaks: Black Power
Back to Pan-Africanism. (New York: Vintage, 1971), p. 67.
The author was giving an anti-war speech to students at
Morgan State College, Baltimore, Md. , Jan. 28, 1967.
He cited as his source a book entitled , by Felix Green.]

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

2) Where the Hogs Come First
By BOB HERBERT
June 15, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/opinion/15herbert.html?hp

Tar Heel, N.C.

Think pork. Sizzling bacon and breakfast sausage. Juicy chops
and ribs and robust holiday hams.

The pork capital of the planet is this tiny town in the Cape Fear
River basin, not far from the South Carolina border. Spending
a few days in Tar Heel and the surrounding area — dotted with
hog farms, cornfields and the occasional Confederate flag —
is like stepping back in time. This is a place where progress
has slowed to a crawl.

Tar Heel's raison d'être (and the employment anchor for much
of the region) is the mammoth plant of the Smithfield Packing
Company, a million-square-foot colossus that is the largest
pork processing facility in the world.

You can learn a lot at Smithfield. It's a case study in both
the butchering of hogs (some 32,000 are slaughtered there
each day) and the systematic exploitation of vulnerable
workers. More than 5,500 men and women work at Smithfield,
most of them Latino or black, and nearly all of them
undereducated and poor.

The big issue at Smithfield is not necessarily money. Workers
are drawn there from all over the region, sometimes traveling
in crowded vans for two hours or more each day, because
the starting pay — until recently, $8 and change an hour —
is higher than the pay at most other jobs available to them.

But the work is often brutal beyond imagining. Company
officials will tell you everything is fine, but serious injuries
abound, and the company has used illegal and, at times,
violent tactics over the course of a dozen years to keep the
workers from joining a union that would give them
a modicum of protection and dignity.

"It was depressing inside there," said Edward Morrison, who
spent hour after hour flipping bloody hog carcasses on the
kill floor, until he was injured last fall after just a few months
on the job. "You have to work fast because that machine
is shooting those hogs out at you constantly. You can end
up with all this blood dripping down on you, all these feces
and stuff just hanging off of you. It's a terrible environment.

"We've had guys walk off after the first break and never return."

Mr. Morrison's comments were echoed by a young man who
was with a group of Smithfield workers waiting for a van
to pick them up at a gas station in Dillon, S.C., nearly 50
miles from Tar Heel. "The line do move fast," the young
man said, "and people do get hurt. You can hear 'em
hollering when they're on their way to the clinic."

Workers are cut by the flashing, slashing knives that slice
the meat from the bones. They are hurt sliding and falling
on floors and stairs that are slick with blood, guts and
a variety of fluids. They suffer repetitive motion injuries.

The processing line on the kill floor moves hogs past the
workers at the dizzying rate of one every three or four seconds.

Union representation would make a big difference for
Smithfield workers. The United Food and Commercial
Workers Union has been trying to organize the plant since
the mid-1990's. Smithfield has responded with tactics
that have ranged from the sleazy to the reprehensible.

After an exhaustive investigation, a judge found that the
company had threatened to shut down the entire plant
if the workers dared to organize, and had warned Latino
workers that immigration authorities would be alerted
if they voted for a union.

The union lost votes to organize the plant in 1994 and 1997,
but the results of those elections were thrown out by the
National Labor Relations Board after the judge found that
Smithfield had prevented the union from holding fair elections.
The judge said the company had engaged in myriad "egregious"
violations of federal labor law, including threatening, intimidating
and firing workers involved in the organizing effort, and beating
up a worker "for engaging in union activities."

Rather than obey the directives of the board and subsequent
court decisions, the company has tied the matter up on appeals
that have lasted for years. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling just
last month referred to "the intense and widespread coercion
prevalent at the Tar Heel facility."

Workers at Smithfield and their families are suffering while
the government dithers, refusing to require a mighty corporation
like Smithfield to obey the nation's labor laws in a timely manner.

The defiance, greed and misplaced humanity of the merchants
of misery at the apex of the Smithfield power structure are
matters consumers might keep in mind as they bite into that
next sizzling, succulent morsel of Smithfield pork.

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3) The Don't-Bother-to-Knock Rule
New York Times Editorial
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/opinion/16fri1.html?hp

The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans'
right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers
must "knock and announce" themselves before entering a private
home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth
Amendment law. But President Bush's two recent Supreme Court
appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision
eviscerating this rule.

This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who
worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.

The case arose out of the search of Booker T. Hudson's home
in Detroit in 1998. The police announced themselves but did
not knock, and after waiting a few seconds, entered his home
and seized drugs and a gun. There is no dispute that the search
violated the knock-and-announce rule.

The question in the case was what to do about it. Mr. Hudson
wanted the evidence excluded at his trial. That is precisely
what should have happened. Since 1914, the Supreme Court
has held that, except in rare circumstances, evidence seized
in violation of the Constitution cannot be used. The exclusionary
rule has sometimes been criticized for allowing criminals
to go free just because of police error. But as the court itself
recognized in that 1914 case, if this type of evidence were
admissible, the Fourth Amendment "might as well be stricken."

The court ruled yesterday that the evidence could be used
against Mr. Hudson. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the
majority, argued that even if police officers did not have
to fear losing a case if they disobeyed the knock-and-announce
rule, the subjects of improper searches could still bring civil
lawsuits to challenge them. But as the dissenters rightly
pointed out, there is little chance that such suits would keep
the police in line. Justice Scalia was also far too dismissive
of the important privacy rights at stake, which he essentially
reduced to "the right not to be intruded upon in one's
nightclothes." Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent that
even a century ago the court recognized that when the police
barge into a house unannounced, it is an assault on
"the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."

If Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had stayed on the court, this
case might well have come out the other way. For those who
worry that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito
will take the court in a radically conservative direction, it is
sobering how easily the majority tossed aside a principle
that traces back to 13th-century Britain, and a legal doctrine
that dates to 1914, to let the government invade people's homes.

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

4) The New Face of Solidarity
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
"...unions represent just 7.8 percent of the nation's
private-sector work force, down from 35 percent in the 1950's."
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/16union.html

Manuel Alvarez is the type of worker that service-sector unions
are eager to attract. After 11 years as a houseman at the Hilton
Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport, he earns $9.95
an hour, about $20,000 a year.

"It's not enough to live on," said Mr. Alvarez, an immigrant
from Mexico who vacuums halls and flips mattresses. "I go
to two churches each week to pick up donated food." On his
days off, he collects bottles and cans for the deposit, adding
$200 a month to his income. His hope is to join a union,
and soon.

This week, judging by the somber mood at the United
Automobile Workers convention, the state of organized
labor would seem dire. Not so long ago, the U.A.W. was
the nation's largest and most swaggering union, leading
the way in building America's middle class by winning
impressive wages, health coverage and pensions. But
the U.A.W. is now in full retreat, ready to make concessions
to help save the American auto industry.

Its plight points to a little-understood development:
the nation's private sector is divided into two very different
labor movements. The first comprises manufacturing unions,
like the auto workers and machinists, which are on the
defensive and on the decline. The second is made up of
unions for the expanding service sector, which are upbeat
and on the prowl for hundreds of thousands of nursing
home aides, janitors, supermarket cashiers and workers
like Mr. Alvarez.

Unite Here, the union that represents hotel, restaurant
and apparel workers, is seeking to organize thousands
of nonunion Hilton workers in a battle that could culminate
in a strike at many Hiltons this summer.

In a way, said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here, the
service-sector unions hope to imitate the manufacturing
unions of old. "Our goal is to move service-sector workers
into the middle class," he said. "The manufacturing unions
did that for factory workers. It took them 20 years to do
that, and we hope to do the same thing."

The manufacturing unions have been devastated by
globalization, with many companies insisting that America's
unionized factory workers are overpaid and their benefit
packages too rich compared with overseas workers. Delphi,
the beleaguered auto parts company, has repeatedly
trumpeted this assertion as it called for cutting its
workers' $27-an-hour wages in half.

In contrast, the service-sector unions are largely immune
to globalization — just try to outsource the job of
a hamburger-flipper, hotel housekeeper or bedpan-
emptier to China. Helping to make service-sector unions
optimistic about attracting more members is the perception
that workers like hotel housekeepers and janitors are
underpaid and have skimpy benefits. Moreover, many
of these workers are immigrants, who are often more
enthusiastic about unions than native-born workers.

To help his union rebound, Ron Gettelfinger, the president
of the auto workers, announced plans this week to spend
$60 million more on recruiting nonunion workers. But this
could prove an uphill battle.

"The U.A.W. and the steelworkers once defined the labor
movement, but now they're associated with declining
membership and declining influence," said Richard W. Hurd,
a labor relations professor at Cornell University. "It's tough
for the manufacturing unions to overcome what has happened
the last 20 years, and it will make it harder for them to reach
out to areas of manufacturing that are still vibrant."

Today, just 2 million manufacturing workers belong to
unions, down from 3.5 million a decade ago. That compares
with more than 3 million workers in service and retail unions,
and more than 7 million in public sector unions.

"The service sector presents a tremendous opportunity
for the labor movement," said Paul F. Clark, a professor of
labor studies at Pennsylvania State University. "There are
lots of low-paid workers, lots of immigrant workers, a lot
of workers who can benefit from a union. But there are
a lot of hurdles they need to navigate if they are going
to form unions."

Some labor experts say the effort to help workers like
Mr. Alvarez join a union may not be easy. Companies have
grown more aggressive and sophisticated in combating unions,
often hiring consultants who lecture workers and show videos,
hammering the point that unions do not help workers and
only want their dues. Even many workers who favor unions
are scared to speak out in favor of them, frightened that
their employers will retaliate against them, perhaps
by firing them, perhaps by cutting back their hours.

"There's great hostility to unions in general," said Nancy
B. Johnson, a professor of management at the University
of Kentucky.

"In the old days," she said, "you'd see co-workers dying
and you'd see raw exploitation, so you wanted a union
to protect you. Now if you work at nice retailers like
Target or Kmart, you don't see people dying on the job.
Yeah, you suffer some minor injustices, but a lot of
workers today have learned to settle with what they have."

Nonetheless, many labor leaders voice confidence that
unions will grow again. They point to some polls showing
that more than half of nonunion workers say they would
vote to join a union if given the chance. Despite such
sentiments, unions represent just 7.8 percent of the nation's
private-sector work force, down from 35 percent in the 1950's.

"I think the labor movement has a bright future," said
Mr. Raynor of Unite Here. "The objective conditions —
income inequality, employers using their power over workers
to shift the burden of health care and retirement, workers
being paid below middle-class wage levels — make it clear
that many workers need unions. Unions are the only institution
in society that can force employers to change the way they
distribute their income."

He said it was outrageous that some luxury hotels paid
their workers $7 or $8 an hour.

Mr. Alvarez, 59, says that out of his $20,000 pay, he
spends $1,600 a year on health insurance premiums and
another $2,500 on prescription drugs for his wife's asthma
and for his high blood pressure and a thyroid ailment.

"I want a union because it would give us more pay and
far better health insurance," he said, noting that unionized
workers at the Hilton in Beverly Hills pay no premiums
for their health insurance.

The unions that broke off from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., including
Unite Here and the Service Employees International Union,
largely represent service sector workers and have ambitious
plans to unionize far more of them.

Daniel J. B. Mitchell, a professor of public policy at the
University of California, Los Angeles, said many service-
sector workers held jobs that were every bit as blue-collar
as factory jobs. "It's not surprising that unions are targeting
workers in industrial laundries," where the temperature
is soaring and the pace intense, he said. "It's not classified
as manufacturing, but it's like blue-collar work."

Manufacturing unions — their membership and their image
— have been devastated by the constant stream of plant
closings in recent years. General Motors, Ford and Delphi
have announced widespread closings, which will reduce
their union work force by more than 60,000, while a Maytag
factory will soon close in Newton, Iowa, the town where
the company was founded. Since 2000, the nation has
lost three million manufacturing jobs, one-sixth of the total.

Nowadays many unionized factory workers seem on their
heels, worried about imports, plant closings and demands
for concessions.

Bob Perdue, a locomotive operator at AK Steel's mill in
Middletown, Ohio, is in a surly mood because his company
locked him out along with its 2,700 unionized workers on
March 1, when their union rejected the company's demands
for concessions. The company has called for a pension freeze,
having the workers start contributing toward health insurance
premiums and having retirees pay far more each year for
their health insurance.

AK says those proposals are needed to help it control costs
and remain competitive against low-cost rivals.

"Things are bad," Mr. Perdue said. "We never expected to be
out this long. We want to protect ourselves and protect our retirees.

Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America,
said American manufacturers were at a huge disadvantage because
companies rather than the government shouldered the cost
of health coverage. If the United States adopted a national health
care plan like Canada's, he said, that would go far to revive
American manufacturing.

"We need an economic policy in which the nation decides
to have a manufacturing base," he said.

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

5) U.A.W. Says Applications for Buyouts Soar at G.M.
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/16uaw.html

LAS VEGAS, June 15 — With a week to go before the deadline,
it looks like at least 30,000 United Automobile Workers union
members at General Motors will opt for incentives to leave
or retire — equal to the number of jobs G.M. plans to cut.

The union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, said Thursday that
25,000 G.M. workers — or roughly 22 percent of its work
force represented by the U.A.W. — had signed up thus far.
Company and union officials had always expected applications
to accelerate as the deadline approached and workers made
final decisions about the deals.

Another 8,500 workers at the parts supplier Delphi, or a little
more than a third of its U.A.W. membership, had accepted
the plans, said Richard Shoemaker, an outgoing union vice
president. The comments came as the U.A.W. wrapped
up its leadership convention here.

Next Friday marks the deadline for workers to make up their
minds about the packages, which are available to all 113,000
U.A.W. members at G.M. and all 23,000 union members
at Delphi. The auto parts supplier was part of G.M. until
it was spun off in 1999.

The workers have a week after the deadline to change their
minds, meaning the total will not be known until June 30,
at the earliest.

Workers who have 30 years on the job and are eligible
to retire would receive $35,000 as well as full health care
benefits and a pension. Workers with less experience can
receive up to $140,000 to give up their jobs. They would
keep their pension benefits but forfeit retirement health
care coverage.

G.M. will pay for buyouts for 13,000 of the Delphi workers
who were offered the deals when G.M. made them available
to all its hourly workers in March. It will share the cost with
Delphi for another 10,000 packages, which it offered last week.

Delphi filed for bankruptcy protection in October, and has
been seeking steep wage and benefit cuts from the U.A.W.,
which thus far has resisted. It also plans to shut 21 of its
29 American plants, and eliminate 14,000 U.A.W. jobs.

G.M. is playing a role because it is liable for pensions and
retirement health care for workers who were at Delphi before
it became an independent parts supplier.

G.M. plans to cut 30,000 jobs through 2008 under
a restructuring plan that calls for it to close all or part
of a dozen plants. Unless they accept the packages, workers
who lose their jobs go into a program called the Jobs Bank,
where they are paid their full salary and benefits until the
U.A.W. contract expires in late 2007.

Toni Simonetti, a G.M. spokeswoman, declined to comment
on specific figures on the packages because "people are
still signing up for it." But she said the acceptance rate
had surpassed G.M.'s expectations.

Lindsay Williams, a spokesman for Delphi, said the company
would not discuss numbers until after next Friday's deadline.
He added, "We've been pleased with the rate so far."

As the union's convention closed, Mr. Gettelfinger named
new lead negotiators for each of the Detroit auto companies.
Cal Rapson, a union vice president, will be in charge of the
union's G.M. and Delphi departments, replacing Mr. Shoemaker.

Bob King, who had been in charge of organizing for the union,
will lead the Ford department, while General Holiefield, who
has served as an administrative assistant to Mr. Gettelfinger,
will lead negotiations at DaimlerChrysler.

The appointments build on the vice presidents' backgrounds.
Mr. Rapson ran the union's regional that includes Flint, Mich.,
long dominated by G.M. plants, while Mr. King was once the
youngest president of a local union in the U.A.W., heading
the unit representing workers at Ford's sprawling Rouge
complex.

Another union vice president, Terry Thurman, will succeed
Mr. King as the head of organizing, while Jimmy Settles takes
on a variety of duties including the union's agriculture
department.

Mr. Gettelfinger, who closed the convention by linking hands
with his officers and singing the union's anthem, "Solidarity
Forever," urged union delegates not to leave their enthusiasm
behind in Las Vegas.

"We have to roll up our sleeves and go to work,"
Mr. Gettelfinger said.

Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit for this article.

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

6) Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Flag-Burning Measure
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16brfs-008.html

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a constitutional
amendment that would empower Congress to outlaw flag
burning. The measure has already been approved by a two-
thirds majority in the House. To become part of the Constitution,
it must be passed by the same margin in the Senate and ratified
by 38 state legislatures. In 1989, the Supreme Court voted
5 to 4 to strike a Texas law that barred flag burning, ruling
that the law restricted freedom of expression guaranteed by
the Constitution. Supporters argued yesterday that the proposed
amendment would restore the power of Congress — rather
than unelected judges — to decide the flag-burning issue.

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

7) In Oil-Rich Angola, Cholera Preys Upon Poorest
"A crisis committee began work only
two and a half months after the epidemic began, and
the government has set aside a mere $5 million in
emergency money to fight the disease....Economists
say the government simply has more
money than it can spend."
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/world/africa/16cholera.html

LUANDA, Angola, June 10 — In a nation whose multibillion-dollar
oil boom should arguably make its people rich enough to drink
Evian, the water that many in this capital depend on goes by
a less fancy name: Bengo.

The Bengo River passes north of here, its waters dark with
grit, its banks strewn with garbage.

Two dozen roaring pumping stations suck in 1.3 million
gallons from the river each day, filling 450 tanker trucks
that in turn supply 10,000 vendors across Luanda's endless
slums. The vendors then fill the jerry cans and washtubs
of the city's slum dwellers, who buy the water to drink
and bathe in.

This is one reason, health experts here say, that Luanda's
slums are now the center of one of the worst cholera
epidemics to strike Africa in nearly a decade, an outbreak
that has sickened 43,000 Angolans and killed more than
1,600 since it began in February.

But it is only one reason. Cholera typically spreads through
contact with contaminated water or sewage, and in Luanda's
slums, both are everywhere. Neighborhoods here are ringed
by mountains of garbage, often soaked by rivulets of human
waste. Only about half of slum dwellers have even
an outdoor latrine.

Children stripped to their underwear dance through
sewage-clogged creeks and slide down garbage dumps
on sleds made of sheet metal into excrement-fouled puddles.

Much of the city has no drainage system; in heavy rains,
the filthy water rises hip-high in some of the poorest
dwellings.

One development group estimated that it would take
22,000 dump trucks to clear away the trash. That was
in 1994, when Luanda had half the population of
4.5 million it has now.

"I have never seen anything like it," said David Weatherill,
a water and sanitation expert for Doctors Without Borders,
which is leading the response to the epidemic. "You see
conditions like this on a smaller scale. But I have never
seen it on such a huge scale. It is quite shocking."

Angola is in the midst of a gusher in oil revenue, its hotels
crammed with oil executives and its harbor filled with
tankers carrying away the 1.4 million barrels of crude
pumped here each day. The economy grew by 18 percent
last year. The government racked up a budget surplus
of more than $2 billion.

This year it is expected to take in $16.8 billion in revenue,
well over twice the $7.5 billion it received in 2004. Next
year, revenue is expected to rise by a third again,
almost all because of oil.

Economists say the government simply has more
money than it can spend.

Yet it seems powerless to address even the basic issues
of clean water and sewers that would make such epidemics
entirely preventable — a paradox that critics attribute
to corruption, incompetence or the hangover of
a 27-year civil war that flooded the capital with
refugees, or all three.

"We are talking about a government that has the means,"
said Stephan Goetghebuer, East Africa coordinator for
Doctors Without Borders. "There are a lot of things they
could be doing. The living conditions are really terrible,
and they are terrible even if you compare them to other
places in Africa."

Sebastião Veloso, Angola's health minister, said the
scope of the problem defied a quick fix. "We just do
our best," he said. "The lack of infrastructure is a very
complicated administrative problem. We are doing our
part at the Ministry of Health, and the rest of government
must do its part. We are pressuring the government,
because otherwise these epidemics will continue."

Only one in six Luandan households is lucky enough
to have running water, and for many of them, it comes
from a community standpipe, according to Development
Workshop, a nonprofit group in Angola. The often-
contaminated river water from trucks that roam the
slums costs up to 12 cents a gallon — a hefty sum in
a nation where two-thirds of the people live on less
than $2 a day, and up to 160 times the price paid in
better-off neighborhoods with piped water.

So the poor ration their water use, limiting themselves
to about two gallons a day per person for drinking,
bathing, washing clothes and cleaning. That is far
below the five-gallon daily minimum recommended
by the United Nations — and one twenty-sixth the
average use in Western countries, according to
Doctors Without Borders.

In an attempt to beat back the epidemic, the
government, with the help of the United Nations,
is distributing a limited amount of free clean water.
The few distribution points are easy to spot. Hundreds
of people rise before dawn to set their plastic buckets
in lines that stretch for blocks. The crowds remain
long after the water is gone.

One afternoon last week, dozens of people crowded
around one empty plastic water tank about eight miles
from downtown. "They are waiting for the last drop,"
said José Mateus, a neighborhood coordinator.

No one knows precisely why cholera arose out of the
slums this year after a cholera-free decade in Angola.
Epidemiologists say the long absence of the disease
worsened the outbreak because the population had
no built-up immunity.

Once it began, not even the tidiest slum household
could halt it.

It first hit Boa Vista, a shantytown minutes from downtown.
Ombrina Cabanga, a 20-year-old mother of a 2-year-old
girl, did everything to protect herself, said her sister-in-law,
Oriana Gabriel. She washed vegetables, rinsed plates and
cleaned the latrine the family shares with three others.
As the Health Ministry recommended, she used bleach
to disinfect the drinking water she bought from the
neighborhood vendor.

But her house is a few feet from a giant trash-filled gulley.
Her latrine, like everyone else's, drains directly into it. And
she sold soap every day in the city's famously squalid
outdoor market, a job she hoped to escape by taking
adult literacy classes.

One Tuesday in late March, she came home and vomited
into a bucket. Two nights later, she was dead.

"I am just a working man, I don't know why the government
doesn't help us," said her husband, Vieira Muieba, 27,
a construction worker. "I don't know where the money goes.
We become angry but we don't know what to do."

From Boa Vista, the epidemic moved along the major
highways to all but 4 of the nation's 18 provinces. Maria
André lost her 15-year-old daughter, 13-year-old niece
and 4-year-old nephew in the span of two days. Five
other children in the household were also taken ill but
recovered.

Ms. André is racked with guilt nearly three weeks after
the deaths. "I don't know what happened," she said.
"I heard about the disease on the radio, and all of
a sudden, it was here. They were all healthy and now,
they are dead.

"It is not easy to lose three children all at once."

Angolan government officials say there is no overnight
solution to the lack of basic water and sanitation. In late
May, President José Eduardo dos Santos promised new
measures to improve conditions, including moving
Luandans out of the most appalling slums.

But the government's plans are in their infancy and,
despite the gusher of oil revenues, short on financing.

Consider the government's plan to take over some
of the provision of water to Luanda's slums. Four months
into Angola's cholera epidemic, 20 trucks have been
ordered — minuscule compared to the fleet of more
than 300 private trucks now supplying the poor.
As of early June, Mr. Veloso, the health minister,
was still waiting for the first delivery.

The government's harshest critics blame corruption
for the abysmal living conditions. Transparency International,
which promotes good governance worldwide, ranks Angola
as the world's seventh most corrupt nation. The State
Department said in a 2002 report that Angola's wealth
was concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, in part
made up of government officials who had enriched
themselves on an enormous scale.

Other diplomats and analysts say Angola's ruling party
is still trying to get on its feet after a civil war that raged
almost nonstop from 1975, when Angola gained
independence from Portugal, until mid-2002.

Dauda Wurie, a project officer for the United Nations
Children's Fund, said the war had eviscerated the
government's corps of competent managers,
leaving disarray.

"I am not defending them," he said of the government
officials. "They buy big cars. They live in big houses.
But it would be wrong to expect that everything will
turn around just because war stopped."

Doctors Without Borders officials say the government
response to the outbreak has been woefully slow and
underfinanced. A crisis committee began work only
two and a half months after the epidemic began, and
the government has set aside a mere $5 million in
emergency money to fight the disease.

Assessing the water taken by private truckers from the
Bengo fell to Doctors Without Borders. Last month
it issued its report: laboratory tests in April showed
the raw river water was unsafe to drink.

But only one in 10 truckers chlorinated water tanks;
the others simply delivered untreated water to the city.

Presented with those findings, the government did
nothing, the report states. So Doctors Without Borders
organized the distribution of free chlorine. It now plans
to insist that the truckers pour chlorine crystals into
their tanks while inspectors watch, lest they sell them
instead.

How much those truckers — and the neighborhood
vendors they supply — earn in profits is unclear.
But Janetta Jamela's bedroom in eastern Luanda is one
hint. Fifteen bags of concrete are stacked against the
wall — to add three new bedrooms and a new kitchen
and bathroom.

Since she and her husband scraped up $200 to build
an underground water tank three years ago, she estimated,
she has earned about $235 a month selling water —
$75 a month more than her husband earns as
a government security officer.

"But you have to have the $200 to start with," she said.

The cholera epidemic is now waning, having run what
epidemiologists call its natural, devastating course.
But without an improvement in slum conditions, said
Mr. Weatherill, the group's water and sanitation expert,
the respite may last only until the next rainy season.

"Unless things change, we probably will be back the
next year," he said in a telephone interview,
"and the year after that."

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8) Venezuela: Chávez Orders Russian Warplanes
(AP)
June 16, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/world/americas/16briefs-001.html

President Hugo Chávez said Venezuela would buy 24 Russian-made
Sukhoi fighter jets this year and build a factory to produce Kalashnikov
assault rifles. The SU-30 jets will replace a fleet of American F-16's
because the United States has refused to sell Venezuela upgrades.
Mr. Chávez has been using surging oil revenues to modernize
Venezuela's military.

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9) Ranchers Add Ladders to Border Fences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:27 a.m. ET
June 17, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Border-Fence-Ladders.html

FALFURRIAS, Texas (AP) -- A few Texas ranchers tired of costly
repairs to cattle fences damaged by illegal immigrants have installed
an easier route over the U.S.-Mexican border -- ladders.

''It's an attempt to get them to use the ladders instead of tearing
the fences,'' said Scott Pattinson, who owns one of a group
of ranches known as La Copa.

La Copa is just south of a U.S. Border Patrol highway checkpoint
that went up 75 miles from the border several years ago, sending
migrants through the brambly scrub of nearby ranches instead.

Some immigrants walk for hours or days to skirt the checkpoints
in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees. Their feet have
worn visible paths through a forest of cactus and mesquite
otherwise thick enough to conceal them from Border Patrol
helicopters overhead and agents only a few hundred yards away.

The paths lead from one ripped-down section of fencing to
another. Texas ranches can be so large it could be days before
owners notice the hole in the fence, long after the livestock
possibly escapes.

Paul Johnson protects his 2,700-acre exotic game ranch of
zebras, scimitar-horned oryx and wildebeests with about
10 miles of high wire fence, and joined his neighbors in
placing ladders along the way.

But apparently some immigrants think the ladders are
too good to be true.

''They ignore it a lot,'' Johnson said. ''They're afraid that
they're monitored by the Border Patrol.''

Johnson plans to take the ladders down, worried about
the message he's sending.

''I think what it does is give a signal that we are wanting
them to cross there, don't mind the crossing, and that
kind of magnifies the problem,'' he said.

Rancher Michael Vickers never liked the ladder idea and
instead has ringed his fence with 220 volts of electricity.

''I've had a dose of it myself, it's not fun,'' he said.
''That's just my attitude, why make it easier for them to trespass?''

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10) Bienvenido
A Fence With More Beauty, Fewer Barbs
By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
June 18, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/weekinreview/18hamilton.html

HAVING trouble with the neighbors? Put up a fence. If things go well, you hang out at the fence and talk.

That's not generally the thinking for fences between nations; such
barriers can't easily mask their harsh purpose. Now a fence is
proposed for the 2,000-mile border between the United States
and Mexico in an effort to improve national security and stem
illegal immigration. The Senate wants 370 miles of it; the House,
698. And President Bush has invited military contractors to devise
a "virtual" fence that would seal the existing stopgap fencing with
high-technology tools like motion sensors, drones and satellites.

But maybe some form of backyard diplomacy is in order — Mexico
is no enemy — and there are obvious suspects for the job:
professional designers, whose duty it is to come up with
welcome solutions that defy ugly problems; to create appeal
where there might be none.

As a classic design challenge, The New York Times asked
13 architects and urban planners to devise the "fence." Several
declined because they felt it was purely a political issue. "It's a
silly thing to design, a conundrum," said Ricardo Scofidio of
Diller Scofidio & Renfro in New York. "You might as well leave
it to security and engineers."

Four of the five who submitted designs proposed making
the boundary a point of innovative integration, not traditional
division — something that could be seen, from both sides,
as a horizon of opportunity, not as a barrier.

James Corner of Field Operations, a New York urban planning
and landscape architecture firm, suggested that any monumental
fortifications have a second purpose, like a solar energy-collecting
strip that would produce what he described as a "productive,
sustainable enterprise zone" that attracted industry from the
north and created employment for the south — in the same
no-man's median that people now cross in search of work.
Mr. Corner called his partnership of 20th-century territorial
power and 21st-century green, global interconnectedness
"a kind of Bush meets Gore hybrid."

Calvin Tsao, director of the Architectural League of New York
and a partner in Tsao & McKown, also proposed an enterprise
zone that, in re-creating the border as a series of small,
developing cities, would become a border of light that could
be seen from space at night. Eric Owen Moss, an architect in
Los Angeles, was more specific with his border as beacon of
light. In his design, a strolling, landscaped arcade of lighted
glass columns would invite a social exchange in the evening,
much like the "paseo," popular in Hispanic culture.

"Make something between cultures, which leads to a third,"
Mr. Moss said. "Celebrate the amalgamation of the two."

Enrique Norten, an architect born in Mexico who has offices
now in Mexico City and New York with his firm TEN Arquitectos,
proposed using the fence budget to build infrastructures like
highways instead.

"The future is about embracing the economy of Mexico," he
said, of a long-term plan for the area, not a literal stopgap
measure like a fence. Mr. Norten was speaking from Germany,
where he was attending the World Cup. "Look at Europe,
where this is happening. Spain was a border country 10 years
ago. Now it's part of a greater community."

Antoine Predock, based in Albuquerque, "dematerialized" the
fence, he explained, with a physical wall designed as a mirage.
An earthwork of rammed, tilted dirt would be pushed into
place by Mexican day laborers. Crushed rock scattered before
it, and heated from below, would appear to lift it off the
ground, in the way that heat in the desert appears to make
objects hover, like mirages.

"There would be confusion about the materiality of the wall,"
Mr. Predock explained. "It would discourage you from crossing,
but the message from both sides would be one of good will."

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11) Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control
By ERIC LIPTON
Correction Appended
Correction: May 20, 2006
A front-page article on Thursday about a federal plan to use
contractors to help secure the borders of the United States
misstated the amount that Lockheed Martin made in federal
government sales in 2005. Of $37.2 billion in sales, more
than $31 billion, not $6 billion, was in sales to the government.
May 18, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/washington/18border.html?ex=1150776000&en=b8293eb7e22efbf1&ei=5070

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The quick fix may involve sending in the
National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President
Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the
nation's giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the
largest, are among the companies that said they would submit
bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract
to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along
the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these
companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan —
like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites
and motion-detection video equipment — the military