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  • BAUAW NEWSLETTER
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    Friday, June 16, 2006
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER-THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

    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/ .

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

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

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

    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/

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

    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

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

    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

    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
    THIS JUST IN
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------

    "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

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

    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

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

    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

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

    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

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

    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

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

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

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

    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

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

    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

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

    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.

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

    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."

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

    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.

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

    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?''

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

    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."

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

    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 contractors
    are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled
    areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.

    It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than
    a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like
    Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper
    in San Diego, the federal government has repeatedly failed
    on its own to gain control of the land borders.

    Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration
    intends to not simply buy an amalgam of high-tech equipment
    to help it patrol the borders — a tactic it has also already tried,
    at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely
    limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise
    and build a whole new border strategy that ties together
    the personnel, technology and physical barriers.

    "This is an unusual invitation," the deputy secretary of homeland
    security, Michael Jackson, told contractors this year at an
    industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new
    contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell
    us how to do our business."

    The effort comes as the Senate voted Wednesday to add
    hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico.
    The measure would also prohibit illegal immigrants convicted
    of a felony or three misdemeanors from any chance at citizenship.

    The high-tech plan being bid now has many skeptics, who
    say they have heard a similar refrain from the government
    before.

    "We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate
    border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective
    and wasteful," Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of
    Kentucky, said at a hearing on the Secure Border Initiative
    program last month. "How is the S.B.I. not just another
    three-letter acronym for failure?"

    President Bush, among others, said he was convinced that
    the government could get it right this time.

    "We are launching the most technologically advanced border
    security initiative in American history," Mr. Bush said in his
    speech from the Oval Office on Monday.

    Under the initiative, the Department of Homeland Security
    and its Customs and Border Protection division will still be
    charged with patrolling the 6,000 miles of land borders.

    The equipment these Border Patrol agents use, how and
    when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where
    the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they
    process them and transport them — all these steps will
    now be scripted by the winning contractor, who could
    earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six
    years on the Secure Border job.

    More Border Patrol agents are part of the answer. The
    Bush administration has committed to increasing the force
    from 11,500 to about 18,500 by the time the president
    leaves office in 2008. But simply spreading this army of
    agents out evenly along the border or extending fences
    in and around urban areas is not sufficient, officials said.

    "Boots on the ground is not really enough," Homeland
    Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday at a news
    conference that followed Mr. Bush's announcement
    to send as many as 6,000 National Guard troops
    to the border.

    The tools of modern warfare must be brought to bear.
    That means devices like the Tethered Aerostat Radar,
    a helium-filled airship made for the Air Force by Lockheed
    Martin that is twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp. Attached
    to the ground by a cable, the airship can hover overhead
    and automatically monitor any movement night or day.
    (One downside: it cannot operate in high winds.)

    Northrop Grumman is considering offering its Global Hawk,
    an unmanned aerial vehicle with a wingspan nearly as wide
    as a Boeing 737, that can snoop on movement along the
    border from heights of up to 65,000 feet, said Bruce Walker,
    a company executive.

    Closer to earth, Northrop might deploy a fleet of much smaller,
    unmanned planes that could be launched from a truck, flying
    perhaps just above a group of already detected immigrants
    so it would be harder for them to scatter into the brush and
    disappear.

    Raytheon has a package of sensor and video equipment used
    to protect troops in Iraq that monitors an area and uses
    software to identify suspicious objects automatically,
    analyzing and highlighting them even before anyone
    is sent to respond.

    These same companies have delivered these technologies
    to the Pentagon, sometimes with uneven results.

    Each of these giant contractors — Lockheed Martin alone
    employs 135,000 people and had $37.2 billion in sales last
    year, including an estimated $6 billion to the federal government
    — is teaming up with dozens of smaller companies that will
    provide everything from the automated cameras to backup
    energy supplies that will to keep this equipment running
    in the desert.

    The companies have studied every mile of border, drafting
    detection and apprehension strategies that vary depending
    on the terrain. In a city, for example, an immigrant can
    disappear into a crowd in seconds, while agents might have
    hours to apprehend a group walking through the desert,
    as long as they can track their movement.

    If the system works, Border Patrol agents will know before
    they encounter a group of intruders approximately how many
    people have crossed, how fast they are moving and even
    if they might be armed.

    Without such information, said Kevin Stevens, a Border Patrol
    official, "we send more people than we need to deal with
    a situation that wasn't a significant threat," or, in a worst case,
    "we send fewer people than we need to deal with a significant
    threat, and we find ourselves outnumbered and outgunned."

    The government's track record in the last decade in trying
    to buy cutting-edge technology to monitor the border —
    devices like video cameras, sensors and other tools that
    came at a cost of at least $425 million — is dismal.

    Because of poor contract oversight, nearly half of video
    cameras ordered in the late 1990's did not work or were
    not installed. The ground sensors installed along the border
    frequently sounded alarms. But in 92 percent of the cases,
    they were sending out agents to respond to what turned out
    to be a passing wild animal, a train or other nuisances,
    according to a report late last year by the homeland security
    inspector general.

    A more recent test with an unmanned aerial vehicle bought
    by the department got off to a similarly troubling start.
    The $6.8 million device, which has been used in the last
    year to patrol a 300-mile stretch of the Arizona border
    at night, crashed last month.

    With Secure Border, at least five so-called system integrators
    — Lockheed, Raytheon and Northrop, as well as Boeing and
    Ericsson — are expected to submit bids.

    The winner, which is due to be selected before October, will
    not be given a specific dollar commitment. Instead, each
    package of equipment and management solutions the
    contractor offers will be evaluated and bought individually.

    "We're not just going to say, 'Oh, this looks like some neat
    stuff, let's buy it and then put it on the border,' "Mr. Chertoff
    said at a news conference on Tuesday.

    Skepticism persists. A total of $101 million is already available
    for the program. But on Wednesday, when the House
    Appropriations Committee moved to approve the Homeland
    Security Department's proposed $32.1 billion budget for 2007,
    it proposed withholding $25 million of $115 million allocated
    next year for the Secure Border contracting effort until the
    administration better defined its plans.

    "Unless the department can show us exactly what we're buying,
    we won't fund it," Representative Rogers said. "We will not
    fund programs with false expectations."

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

    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

    First Lt. Ehren Watada doesn’t regret publicly announcing that he will not
    deploy to Iraq because he believes the war is illegal and immoral.

    “I know there are a lot of people, especially in the military, who hate me,
    who think I’m a traitor, think I’m a coward, think I should spend the rest of
    my life at Leavenworth and I should be taken out on the street the shot,”
    Watada told Army Times. But “there are a lot of people in the military who are
    supporting me.

    On June 7, the day first went public about refusing to deploy to Iraq, Watada
    said three noncommissioned officers walked up to him and shook his hand. He
    said he has received e-mails from NCOs and field grade officers thanking him
    for speaking up.

    “All of us have convictions, but we need to stand up for our convictions,”
    said Watada, who’s assigned to 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, at Fort
    Lewis, Wash. “If you see something wrong, you have a responsibility to take
    action and act upon it.

    His decision to refuse deployment to Iraq didn’t come easily, Watada said. He
    did his homework, researching international law, the history of war, and the
    history of Iraq, and read articles by governmental and non-governmental
    agencies, journalists and scholars about the situation in Iraq.

    “There was a time when I thought maybe I should just be a conscientious
    objector,” Watada said. “It would be a lot easier than going through all this
    pain and standing up to my commanders . . . but I couldn’t be true to myself
    and do it.

    Watada, 28, whose application to resign his commission was denied by the Army,
    has submitted an application for exception from the stop-loss policy so that
    he can resign. He said he’s been told that legal proceedings against him, if
    any, won’t take place until his unit deploys to Iraq without him. The Stryker
    brigade is set to deploy later this month.

    “I don’t regret it at all,” Watada said about speaking out. “I was giving up
    a lot, I think, when the easier thing and the better thing for my future would
    be to do my year [in Iraq]. I just felt like I couldn’t go on with the rest
    of my life knowing that what we did was wrong but I did it anyway because it
    was the easiest thing to do.

    Soft spoken and articulate, Watada said he hasn’t experienced open hostility
    from his fellow soldiers. “There’s no one waiting to smash my windows in or
    slash my tires, but there’s definitely tension.

    To his critics, Watada has this to say: “Put yourself in my shoes. Go in
    front of the country and do what I did and have to face the consequences of
    those actions. If they call me a coward, I want to see them do that. It’s
    definitely scary and terrifying, but it’s easier to do something when
    everyone’s doing it too. It’s a lot more terrifying doing it alone.

    BACKGROUND: Army Times piece on Lt. Watada's decision to refuse deployment

    [On Wednesday, the *Army Times* carried a short profile by Michelle Tan on Lt.
    Ehren Watada, the army lieutenant refusing to deploy on Iraq on grounds the
    war is illegal.[1] -- To what has already been reported, it adds his
    assertion that he was tempted to be a conscientious objector, that the Army
    has told him that there will be no proceedings against him until the Stryker
    brigade to which he's been assigned ships out to Iraq, and that he says that
    "there are a lot of people in the military who are supporting me." -- "On
    June 7, the day first went public about refusing to deploy to Iraq, Watada
    said three noncommissioned officers walked up to him and shook his hand," Tan
    reports. -- The tone of the article is quite respectful; it fails to
    summarize Lt. Watada's argument, but reports: "He did his homework,
    researching international law, the history of war, and the history of Iraq,
    and read articles by governmental and non-governmental agencies, journalists
    and scholars about the situation in Iraq." -- The *Army Times* has also
    carried an early AP story on Lt. Watada, and an AP piece on the decision of
    First United Methodist Church to offer itself as "sanctuary" for service
    personnel contemplating the alternatives to service in Iraq. -- Thanks to
    Bob Rudolph and Marion Ward for sending this piece. --Mark]

    http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4679/

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

    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

    MINNEAPOLIS — It is 5:30 in the evening as Adriana makes her
    way to work against a flow of people streaming out of the lattice
    of downtown stores and office towers here. She punches a time
    card, dons a uniform and sets out to clean her first bathroom
    of the night.

    A few miles away, Ana arrives at a suburban Target store at
    10 p.m. to clean the in-house restaurant for the next day's
    shoppers. At 5:30 the next morning, Emilio starts his rounds
    at the changing rooms at a suburban department store.
    A half-hour later, Polo rushes to clean the showers and locker
    room at a university here before the early birds in the pool
    finish their morning swim.

    Adriana, 27; Ana, 27; Emilio, 48; and Polo, 52, are all illegal
    immigrants, denizens of one of the most easily overlooked
    corners of the nation's labor force and almost universally
    ignored by the workers, shoppers and students they clean
    up after.

    "It's like you are invisible," Adriana said.

    Invisible, perhaps, but not hidden. In contrast to the typical
    image of an illegal immigrant — paid in cash, working under
    the table for small-scale labor contractors on a California farm
    or a suburban construction site — a majority now work for
    mainstream companies, not fly-by-night operators, and are
    hired and paid like any other American worker.

    Polo — who, like all the workers named in this article, agreed
    to be interviewed only if his full identity was protected — is
    employed by a subsidiary of ABM Industries, a publicly traded
    company based in San Francisco with 73,000 workers across
    the country and annual revenues of $2.6 billion. Emilio works
    for the Kimco Corporation, a large private company with 5,000
    employees in 30 states and sales of about $100 million.

    More than half of the estimated seven million immigrants
    toiling illegally in the United States get a regular paycheck
    every week or two, experts say. At the end of the year they
    receive a W-2 form. Come April 15, many file income tax
    returns using special ID numbers issued by the Internal
    Revenue Service so foreigners can pay taxes. Some even
    get a refund check in the mail.

    And they are now present in low-skilled jobs across the
    country. Illegal immigrants account for 12 percent of workers
    in food preparation occupations, for instance, according to
    an analysis of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center. In total,
    they account for an estimated one in 20 workers in the United
    States.

    The building maintenance industry — a highly competitive
    business where the company with the lowest labor costs tends
    to win the contract — has welcomed them with open arms.
    According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more than a quarter
    of a million illegal immigrants are janitors, 350,000 are maids
    and housekeepers and 300,000 are groundskeepers.

    The janitorial industry has been transformed in recent years
    as a handful of companies have consolidated by taking over
    hundreds of small local operators. That activity has gone
    hand-in-hand with the steady advance of immigrants, legal
    and illegal — almost all of them Hispanic — who have been
    drawn into what was once an overwhelmingly American-
    born work force.

    Adriana works for Harvard Maintenance, a New York contractor
    that has some 3,700 janitors and cleans landmarks like Yankee
    Stadium and Shea Stadium. ABM Industries, Polo's employer,
    is the biggest contractor in Minneapolis and St. Paul, with
    about 35 percent of the market and a portfolio of high-
    profile customers that include the Minneapolis-Saint Paul
    International Airport and some downtown buildings.

    ABM is a coast-to-coast force in the business, responsible
    for cleaning a virtual Who's Who of the nation's best-known
    buildings, at one time even including the World Trade Center
    in New York, where several illegal janitors died on 9/11.

    Despite a murky legal status, ABM hired Polo just as it would
    hire any other worker. His wife and daughter — who already
    worked at the university — recommended him to their supervisor,
    who collected Polo's application and paperwork, gave him an
    ABM uniform and put him on the payroll. He makes $11.75
    an hour, has health insurance and gets two weeks of paid
    vacation every year.

    The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it
    a crime for companies to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
    Employers say they do their utmost to comply.

    "We don't ever knowingly hire undocumented workers,"
    said Amy Polakow, a spokeswoman for Kimco.

    Harvard Maintenance issued a statement: "While we are
    dismayed that an employee allegedly has submitted fraudulent
    documentation," it said, "we screen all new hires and make
    sure they provide proper paperwork."

    Buying the Documents

    A written statement from ABM said that "if an individual were
    found to have presented falsified work authorization documents
    to gain employment, their employment would be terminated."

    Still, in many cities it would be hard to put together
    a cleaning crew without resorting to an illegal work force.

    Adriana used to work for ABM too, she said. But last year Harvard
    Maintenance, a rival contractor that entered the Minneapolis
    market two years ago, won the contract to clean her building.
    Adriana guesses that except for a couple of legal immigrants
    from Ecuador and a couple of Somalis, the rest of the three
    dozen or so janitors on her shift are illegal immigrants.

    And when the contractor changed, the work force in her
    building did not. "All the workers," Adriana said, "are
    the same ones."

    Illegal immigrants operate in a kind of parallel employment
    universe, structured in many ways like the legal job market
    but with its own rules and procedures.

    To begin with, acquiring the necessary documentation to work
    is a routine transaction these days. In Minneapolis, one only
    has to mill about for a few minutes in a Kmart parking lot
    known to immigrants and a young Guatemalan with a Patrón
    tequila hat will approach on his bike and quietly offer to help.

    A set of Polaroid photos can be purchased for $10 at the
    photo outlet- sporting goods store up the street — a quick
    snap against a white backdrop tucked among the soccer
    balls and jerseys of national squads from all over the world.

    The documents themselves cost $110. Within two hours
    of having received the photos, the Guatemalan is cycling
    back into the parking lot to make the drop of the ID package.
    It includes a green card with the customer's photo and
    somebody's fingerprints, along with a Social Security card,
    for which the number was plucked out of thin air.

    Some illegal immigrants do not even need the green card.
    Until the late 1990's, Mexican illegal immigrants typically
    arrived in Minnesota with their birth certificate and Mexican
    voting card, which could be used to obtain a legal
    Minnesota state ID.

    But getting a Social Security number could be a little more
    complicated in the old days. Lily, 38, another janitor cleaning
    a building downtown, knew no one in Minneapolis when
    she arrived illegally from Guatemala 14 years ago. So when
    a neighbor said she needed papers, she called the smuggler
    who brought her across the border at his home in Mexico.

    He asked her to make up a nine-digit number, which she
    did by combining the date she left Guatemala and the date
    she arrived in the United States two months later. She sent
    him some photos and $75 and received her fake papers
    by return mail.

    Documents in hand, getting a job is straightforward.
    A common first step for new immigrants is to apply to
    a temporary work agency for the first job. But as immigrant
    communities have grown, new arrivals have been able
    to tap into networks of friends, relatives and former
    neighbors to help them navigate the United States and
    jump straight into a permanent job.

    When Adriana and her sister arrived in Minneapolis from
    Mexico in 1998, their mother was waiting for them. She
    paid the smuggling fee of $1,700 per person and helped
    Adriana into her first job at the building where she worked
    and where she knew the supervisor well.

    "You know, it's the chain," Adriana said. "I just got a job
    in my building for a cousin."

    In some industries with many illegal immigrants, like
    construction, farming and landscaping, employers often
    turn to labor contractors to assemble crews of workers —
    transferring onto them the responsibility of checking the
    paperwork. That helps establish deniability in case of
    an immigration raid.

    By contrast, the big building maintenance contractors do
    much of the hiring themselves. But some still distance
    themselves from the job market itself by delegating hiring
    to supervisors in individual buildings — often immigrants
    themselves — who will receive the job applications, help
    fill in official documents and copy supporting papers.

    Adriana said she never had to step into ABM's offices, which
    are across the Mississippi River from downtown Minneapolis.
    She said that the supervisor knew she did not have proper
    papers.

    Cheaper Labor

    Starting about 30 years ago, as illegal immigration began
    to swell, building maintenance contractors in big immigrant
    hubs like Los Angeles started hiring the new immigrant workers
    as part of a broader effort to drive down labor costs. Unions
    for janitors fell apart as landlords shifted to cheaper nonunion
    contractors to clean their buildings. Wages fell and many
    American-born workers left the industry.

    Between 1970 and 2000, the share of Hispanic immigrants
    among janitors in Los Angeles jumped from 10 percent to
    more than 60 percent, according to a forthcoming book by
    Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at the University of California,
    Los Angeles, titled "L.A. Story: Work, Immigration and
    Unionism in America's Second City." (Russell Sage Foundation,
    August 2006.)

    The pattern repeated itself as immigrants spread throughout
    the rest of the country. By 2000, Hispanic immigrants made
    up nearly 1 in 5 janitors in the United States, according
    to Ms. Milkman's research, up from fewer than 1 in 20
    in 1980.

    When the Service Employees International Union started
    to reorganize the industry in the late 1990's, it adapted
    its approach in some cities to appeal to illegal workers.
    For instance, union contracts in Los Angeles include clauses
    instructing employers to contact the union if an immigration
    official "appears on or near the premises" and barring the
    employers from revealing a worker's name or address
    to immigration authorities.

    Building maintenance contractors and those who contract
    their services underscore their efforts to keep illegal
    immigrants off the payroll. But beyond that they are
    reluctant to discuss the presence of illegal immigrants
    in the janitorial work force.

    In a statement, Target pointed out that its stores were
    cleaned by outside contractors. "As in the past," it read,
    "if we find any illegal behavior by our vendor, we will
    immediately terminate their contract."

    Mr. Mitchell said ABM had "put in place policies, procedures
    and ongoing managerial training for compliance with
    immigration law." Harvard Maintenance's statement
    added that "we believe our screening programs currently
    in place are among the best in the building services industry."

    For all these efforts, however, it is remarkably easy for
    illegal immigrants to get a regular, above-board job.

    The law requires employers to make workers fill out I-9
    "employment eligibility" forms and provide documents
    to prove they are legally entitled to work.

    But the employers benefit from one large loophole: they
    are not expected to distinguish between a fake ID and the
    real thing. To work, illegal immigrants do not need to come
    up with masterpieces of ID fraud, only something that looks
    plausible. "To bring a criminal prosecution we need to show
    an employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant," said
    Dean Boyd, a spokesman at Immigration and Customs
    Enforcement, the branch of the Department of Homeland
    Security that enforces immigration rules. " 'Knowingly'
    is the key word."Yet the standard of plausibility is not
    particularly tight. "Some of these documents are so visibly
    wrong that you don't need to be an expert on what a Social
    Security card looks like," said Michael Mahdesian, chairman
    of the board of Servicon Systems, a private contractor that
    cleans aerospace and defense facilities as well as office
    buildings in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

    Mr. Mahdesian said Servicon was more careful than other
    contractors — forced by the nature of its clients in the
    military industry to make more rigorous checks to keep
    illegal immigrants out. But he said that each time Servicon
    took over a cleaning contract in a new office building,
    it found that 25 percent to 30 percent of the workers
    it inherited from the previous contractor were working
    illegally, and had to let them go.

    "Most companies in this industry doing commercial office
    buildings take the view that it is not their job to be the
    immigration service," Mr. Mahdesian said.

    Companies have little to fear. The penalty for knowingly
    hiring illegal immigrants includes up to six months in jail
    — or up to five years in particularly egregious cases —
    and fines that range from $275 to $11,000 for each worker.
    Yet fines are typically negotiated down, and employers
    are almost always let off the hook. Only 46 people were
    convicted in 2004 for hiring illegal immigrants; the
    annual number has been roughly the same for the
    last decade.

    In a rare raid, about 50 illegal workers — including
    a handful of ABM janitors — were arrested at the Minneapolis-St.
    Paul airport in 2002, according to Tim Counts, a spokesman
    for the Minnesota office of immigration and customs enforcement.
    With one exception — the Wok & Roll Chinese restaurant
    in the airport terminal — no charges were brought against
    the companies that hired them, Mr. Counts said.

    Pushing for Unionization

    Despite becoming a fixture of the labor market, illegal
    immigrants remain vulnerable at work. Wages declined
    as illegal immigrants entered the janitorial labor pool.
    Janitors' median earnings fell by 3 percent in real terms
    between 1983 and 2002, when the Labor Department
    changed the definitions of building maintenance jobs
    and other occupations.

    Meanwhile, earnings across all occupations rose by 8 percent,
    after accounting for inflation. Though unionization has helped
    push janitors wages back up in many cities, they remain
    lower in markets with many illegal immigrants in the labor force.

    In New York City, janitors cleaning commercial buildings
    make $19 an hour. Mike Fishman, president of the Service
    Employees International Union's local in New York, points
    out that the union never lost ground in the city, and
    it is still unusual to find illegal immigrants cleaning
    office buildings there.

    In Southern California, by contrast, unions were decimated
    in the 1980's, and only started recovering in the late 1990's.
    According to Mike Garcia, president of the union's main local
    in the state, Southern California's unionized janitors earn
    between $8.50 and $11 an hour.

    Unscrupulous employers still victimize illegal workers
    frequently. Veronica, a 39-year old illegal immigrant from
    Mexico, had been working for a temporary employment
    agency for about a year, crating boxes of beauty products
    for Aveda, when the agency fired her, then rehired her under
    a different Social Security number to avoid paying her for
    the vacation time she had earned.

    "They don't want you to gain seniority," she said.

    When Adriana started her cleaning job downtown, she said,
    the supervisor recorded her on the payroll under a different
    name. But rather than change the entry on ABM's payroll, he
    asked her to buy a set of documents with the new name —
    forcing her to live for years with two identities, one for work
    and one for everything else.

    Adriana only managed to recover her real name by tagging
    it on as a middle name when Harvard took over the contract
    at her building and she reapplied for her job. Now, the name
    on her state ID is similar to the one on her Social Security
    card and paycheck.

    Many get caught using bad Social Security numbers and lose
    their jobs. The Social Security Administration sends "no
    match" letters every year to about eight million workers
    and about 130,000 employers. Though the letter warns
    employers not to fire workers because of the mismatch,
    many do.

    Lily, the Guatemalan immigrant, used to clean the offices
    of General Mills in suburban Minneapolis for a building
    contractor named Aramark. Earlier this year, she said, the
    company fired her and other workers, stating that it had
    received a letter from the government claiming the workers'
    Social Security numbers were wrong.

    "They wanted to get rid of the people the supervisor
    didn't like," Lily said.

    In a statement, Aramark said it "fully complies with federal
    laws and guidelines regarding employment eligibility, and
    has procedures in place to confirm employment eligibility
    of our employees. Should we discover that an employee
    does not have proper documentation, their employment
    with Aramark is terminated."

    It added that it did not fire workers simply on receipt of
    a "no match" letter, but gave workers up to 90 days
    to fix the problem.

    The one thing that illegal immigrants did not have to worry
    about, at least until recently, was the immigration police.

    But life has been getting tougher. Minnesota, for instance,
    tightened its requirements to award state ID's or driver's
    licenses.

    And, lately, immigration authorities have been pursuing
    illegal immigrants more aggressively. Since April, there have
    been high-profile raids at several work sites across the
    country, including IFCO Systems, a pallet and shipping
    container maker, where agents apprehended nearly
    1,200 illegal workers and some managers.

    Since Oct. 1, 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
    has arrested more than 2,100 people in "work site enforcement
    investigations," compared with 1,145 for the entire previous
    fiscal year and 845 in fiscal 2004. It is also bringing more serious
    charges — such as harboring illegal immigrants and money-
    laundering of illicit profits — against employers who hire them.

    Agents have also been sweeping through Minneapolis and
    other cities, seizing immigrants who had been served with
    deportation orders and expelling them from the country.

    But immigrants adapt. Pablo Tapia, the leader of a church-
    based community group, has been holding tutorials for
    immigrants on how to avoid being deported. One rule is
    "don't open the door" if immigration authorities come
    knocking. Another is "stay calm and do not run" if agents
    raid the workplace.

    "Just keep working," Mr. Tapia recommends. "If you run,
    it can be used against you in court."

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

    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

    *RAMADI, Jun 19 (IPS) - As the threat of a giant U.S. military operation
    in Ramadi lingers and sporadic clashes plague the city daily, residents
    struggle to cope, both inside and outside the sealed city.*

    A week spent in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad,
    reveals that residents are suffering from lack of water, electricity,
    cooking gas and medical supplies for the hospitals. The streets are
    eerily empty, and it appears that many people have now left the city,
    although possibly as many as 150,000 still remain in their homes, either
    because they are too afraid to leave or they have nowhere to go.

    "We will survive anyway," Um Qassim, a middle-aged housewife with six
    children, told IPS. "It is Allah who gives life and he is the only one
    able to take it away."

    Despite the horrible conditions here, with armed resistance groups
    controlling vast swathes of the city, and other areas subject to
    frequent shooting from U.S. snipers on the rooftops of houses, she said
    that people should be grateful to their god whatever happens to them,
    adding, "Those Americans will leave."

    The operation is part of a renewed crackdown on what the Pentagon says
    is a stronghold of the Sunni Arab resistance. As the threat of an
    all-out U.S. attack on the city looms, Imad Al-Muhammadi with the Iraqi
    Red Crescent in Ramadi told IPS, "Ramadi is a lot more difficult than
    the Fallujah crisis because people cannot flee to Baghdad and many other
    cities due to the threat of sectarian death squads, so it is very
    difficult to provide them with safe shelter at a reasonable distance
    from the military operations."

    Muhammadi said that many of the families who had left are facing
    "horrible living conditions in tents, abandoned schools and are staying
    under any roof that protects them from the burning summer sun."

    "There is no positive sign on the American side that shows a different
    solution from those of Fallujah and other cities which have been
    'deleted' in order to be 'liberated'," he added. "Civilians, as usual,
    are the ones living the hardships of occupation and definitely the ones
    dying in vain."

    According to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian
    Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman,
    Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq, minor clashes were
    reported on Monday, mainly in Al-Qadisiya, Al-Mala'ab, Al-Andalus,
    Al-Aramel, Al-Aziziya, Al-Qattana, Al-Soufiya, the city centre (close to
    Abd Al-Jaleel mosque) and 30th of July.

    Additionally, U.S. and Iraqi forces are reported to be attacking the
    eastern side of the city in an effort to push into Ramadi.

    ICS reports that the number of checkpoints and the frequency of
    Multi-National Forces (MNF) patrols have increased since the beginning
    of the crisis, making it likely that both the MNF/Iraqi forces and
    insurgents are preparing themselves for a heightened battle.

    "The population is still leaving the city and the number of families in
    displacement traced in Anbar by ICS monitors is close to 3,200 now,"
    Mascia told IPS by telephone. "The new IDPs [internally displaced
    persons] are mainly approaching Rutba and Al-Baghdadi, while Heet
    remains the main destination of Ramadi IDPs." He said about 1,000 IDP
    families are present now in Fallujah and surrounding areas.

    However, he added that "Most of the families are avoiding approaching
    Fallujah due to the complicated procedure enforced by MNF to enter the
    city." Mascia said that the number of families recorded by ICS is almost
    certainly low, since his group only logs families who get direct relief
    aid from their workers.

    "The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've
    done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im,
    are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time
    in Ramadi," Mascia told IPS from his office in Amman.

    "Access to Ramadi is extremely difficult," he continued. "The
    checkpoints are set up at the two bridges and make it extremely
    difficult to access the city by vehicle. The only available option to
    avoid the checkpoints is the desert way heading to Al-Ta'meem district."

    "The main dangers for the population are the MNF at the checkpoints and
    the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider
    dangerous -- causing many victims among civilians."

    According to Mascia, services at the main hospital, as well as health
    clinics, is down to a "low standard due to the security situation and
    lack of medical supplies".

    And similar to the tactics used during the U.S. assault on Fallujah in
    November 2004, the U.S. military continues to use loudspeakers to ask
    people to either hand over "insurgents" who are present in their
    neighbourhoods, or to evacuate their homes and flee the city. ICS
    reports that some of the messages have specifically made reference to
    what happened in Fallujah.

    Correspondents with the London-based Institute for War and Peace
    Reporting (IWPR) in Baghdad recently reported on the use of snipers by
    the U.S. military in Ramadi: "People in Ramadi... estimate that about 70
    percent of the city's population have fled in the last week, many of
    them holding white flags for fear of being shot at by Marine snipers."

    The IPS correspondent in Ramadi also witnessed snipers shooting at
    civilians in the city.

    "The ongoing violence between U.S. Marines and the insurgents, air
    strikes, and outages in the water, electricity and phone networks have
    already made life untenable," adds the IWPR report. "Ramadi residents
    say U.S. troops regularly take over houses to fight the insurgents, and
    combatants on both sides have been seen using rooftops as sniper positions."

    The Association of Muslim Scholars, based in Baghdad, has encouraged the
    residents of Heet, which is near Ramadi, to host those fleeing the city.
    Some more vulnerable families are also staying in mosques that are
    offering shelter to refugees.

    An IWPR reporter in Baghdad wrote that a 17-year-old student who fled
    Ramadi with his parents, Ghayath Salim al-Dulaimi, said his relatives
    had been prevented from leaving by U.S. air strikes two days earlier.

    "Our neighbourhood has emptied completely -- there's no one left," he
    told IWPR. "People are leaving in droves and there aren't any services
    at all. You can't get to hospital because movement is restricted."

    Responding to a question about the situation in Ramadi at a Jun. 15 news
    briefing, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham from the Pentagon said, "I think those
    who are looking for perhaps a large-scale offensive may be somewhat off
    the mark. And I think what we will see increasingly is the Iraqis
    finding ways to increasingly establish the presence of Iraqi security
    forces, and we'll help them do that in any way that we can."

    (c)2006 Dahr Jamail

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

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

    Three years ago, on June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court
    struck down all sodomy laws, and adults of all sexual
    orientations were, for the first time in the history
    of our country, totally free to engage in consensual
    sex "per os or per anum." That monumental decision
    freed our collective genitals from one of the most
    repressive laws ever slapped on them.

    The act of sodomy was named after the infamous city in
    the Bible that was destroyed by the Old Testament
    god-patriarch either for inhospitality (the liberal
    interpretation) or propositioning angels for anal sex
    (the fundie read). The term sodomy was first used by
    St. Peter Damian in the 11th century, when antihomo
    sentiment ran rampant in Europe. By 1350, most of the
    continent had sodomy statutes on the books, according
    to gay historian John Boswell.

    The prohibitions against oral and anal sex in America
    were enacted state-by-state and followed English law.
    The first colony to ban the "crime not to be named
    among Christians" was Virginia in 1610. By the 1950s,
    when the first "homophile" groups formed, all the
    states had sodomy laws.

    The post-Stonewall gay liberation movement pushed hard
    for the decriminalization of all sex acts between
    consenting adults. The movement got its first poster
    boy in 1982: A police officer caught Atlanta bartender
    Michael Hardwick in his own bedroom engaging in anal
    sex with another man. The officer, who had come to
    serve a summons at 3 a.m., entered the apartment on
    the invitation of Hardwick's roommate. The district
    attorney declined to prosecute but, at the urging of
    the ACLU, Hardwick decided to fight.

    In 1986, the Supreme Court delivered a blow to
    America's libidos: It upheld the Georgia sodomy laws
    (Bowers v. Hardwick).

    In 1988, two Texas men, John G. Lawrence and Tyron
    Garner, were jailed overnight and fined $200 after
    police found them having sex in Lawrence's apartment.
    The cops had come in response to a weapons disturbance
    falsely reported by a neighbor. The men followed
    Harwick's lead and took the matter to court. In a
    surprising turnaround, the Supreme Court struck down
    the Texas law (Lawrence v. Texas) and killed all the
    sodomy statutes in the 13 states that still had them.
    America had finally entered the modern world —
    except for the US military, which still punishes
    sodomy (Article 125) among straight and queer service
    members.

    In light of Lawrence v. Texas, that law will be struck
    down eventually too.

    Good riddance to it all.

    In an age when many queers are fighting for the more
    mainstream goals of getting married and joining the
    military, let us not forget the fight for sexual
    liberation that our LGBT movement once championed. As
    feminist anarchist Emma Goldman might've said: "If I
    can't fuck, I don't want to be in your revolution."

    Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a longtime radical
    working-class southern Italian sodomite writer,
    performer, and activist.

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

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

    JERUSALEM, June 20 — An Israeli aircraft fired Tuesday on a car
    that officials suspected was carrying armed Palestinian militants
    in Gaza and killed three children nearby, a 7-year-old girl and
    two boys, ages 5 and 16, hospital officials and witnesses said.

    The airstrike was the third this month to kill civilians, infuriating
    Palestinians and raising an impassioned debate in Israel about
    its military response to the firing of homemade rockets from
    Gaza into Israel.

    On June 9, eight civilians — seven from one family — were killed
    on a beach in Gaza during an Israeli bombardment against militants
    suspected of launching the rockets, called Qassams. The Israeli
    military later denied that its munitions caused the deaths,
    a contention disputed by Palestinians and human rights officials.
    Four days later, another strike in Gaza killed at least two militants
    and another eight civilians.

    Tuesday's attack, according to an Israeli military official, was
    aimed at a group affiliated with the Fatah organization
    of President Mahmoud Abbas that had fired a rocket earlier
    in the day and was on its way to carry out another attack.

    A military spokesman said the missile hit the car, but
    apparently the militants escaped.

    "We are dealing with a cell that was very active in these attacks,"
    said the spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal. "While we regret the
    loss of civilian life, the overall responsibility lies with the
    Palestinian Authority."

    Since the beginning of the month, more than 140 Qassams
    have been fired from Gaza, seriously injuring one person.

    The issue of the rockets and the military response has
    strained the government.

    Residents of Sderot, the Israeli town hardest hit by the
    rockets, have complained that the government is not doing
    enough to protect them. Israeli military officials have spoken
    of stepping up operations in Gaza.

    Many other Israelis have said the Qassams do not represent
    a serious enough threat for so strong a military response,
    which has included some 6,000 artillery shells in recent months.
    "Qassams, Shmassams! So what?" the dovish former prime
    minister Shimon Peres was quoted as saying in the Israeli press.

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

    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

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt
    a blow to some longtime illegal residents, upholding the deportation
    of a Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years.

    By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who
    was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject
    to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process
    for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before
    and returned.

    After his last deportation in 1981, Fernandez-Vargas returned
    to the United States, fathered a child, started a trucking company
    in Utah and eventually married his longtime companion, a U.S. citizen.

    But by the time he applied for legal status -- after his marriage
    in 2001 -- Congress had passed the Illegal Immigration and
    Immigrant Responsibility Act, which revoked the right to appeal
    to an immigration judge an order of removal.

    Fernandez-Vargas was sent back to Mexico in 2004, and wanted
    to return to his family in the United States. He argued that the
    1996 law should not be applied to him because he last entered
    America more than a decade before Congress passed the statute.

    "Fernandez-Vargas continued to violate the law by remaining
    in this country day after day and ... the United States was entitled
    to bring that continuing violation to an end," Justice David Souter
    wrote in the decision.

    It was unclear how broad of an impact the ruling would have.

    Souter said that unlawful immigrants like Fernandez-Vargas
    should have known about the 1996 law and taken "advantage
    of a grace period."

    The case is Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales, 04-1376.

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

    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

    NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- City officials are hurrying to resurrect
    a nighttime curfew to keep children off the streets, after five
    teenagers were killed last weekend.

    Curfew enforcement went by the wayside after Hurricane Katrina,
    but officials say the problem is now urgent as summer starts
    and more people return to the city.

    On Wednesday, work was under way to get one piece of the
    curfew program going: A holding center for violators.

    The center -- a partitioned room where violators wait for
    parents or social workers -- was, like so much else, flooded
    by Hurricane Katrina.

    Mayor Ray Nagin's predecessor, Marc Morial, was credited
    with using a curfew in the mid-1990s to fight a rise in crime.

    ''It has not actively been enforced because the juvenile
    justice system has been down and there is nowhere
    to house these juveniles,'' said Sgt. Carlton Lewis,
    a police spokesman.

    The move comes as National Guard troops patrol streets
    and help the depleted New Orleans Police Department
    fight a wave of crime.

    After last weekend's killings, Gov. Kathleen Blanco
    urged the city to keep children off the streets. That
    has become a central piece of the plan to squash crime
    before it spoils the city's recovery.

    The city attorney's office Wednesday was laying out the
    details of the curfew, a city spokesman said.

    The curfew will probably start at 11 p.m. and go until
    dawn, said William Short, a chief sheriff's deputy for
    Orleans Parish.

    David Utter, who heads the Juvenile Justice Project of
    Louisiana, said the move to install a curfew after the
    weekend shootings was misguided.

    ''Rushing to the blame-the-victim mentality seems
    to have little basis in the facts,'' he said, pointing out
    that only one of the five victims was, under the law,
    a juvenile at age 16.

    Instead, the city should channel its resources into
    restoring youth programs, schools and playgrounds
    destroyed by Katrina, he said.

    Latasha Smith, 21, agreed. She is being trained at
    a restaurant that employs at-risk young people in Central
    City, the neighborhood where the weekend shootings occurred.

    ''Right now they don't have any programs, facilities for
    these kids,'' Smith said. A basketball court she used
    to play on now contains trailers housing displaced families.

    Officials say they plan to restore more parks and playgrounds
    this summer.

    At a news conference Monday, Nagin and the City Council
    urged quick action in opening schools after hours, starting
    nighttime basketball programs and doing more to fight poverty.

    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
    LINKS ONLY
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------

    Pink Floyd's Roger Waters urges Israel to 'tear down the wall'
    By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
    Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who inspired the rock band's
    iconic album "The Wall," scrawled "tear down the wall" on the
    concrete panels of Israel's West Bank barrier on Wednesday.
    Last update - 07:39 22/06/2006
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/729817.html

    Study: Nonprofit Healthcare Often Better Quality Care
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-07.htm

    Helen Thomas, Veteran Critic of White House, Turns on 'Gullible' Press Pack
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-02.htm

    Female US Soldier Refuses Return to Iraq, Claiming Sexual Harassment
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-05.htm

    US Military Deems Homosexuality a 'Mental Disorder'
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-06.htm

    Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-03.htm

    Rights Group Says Israel Beach Death Probe Not Credible
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0621-08.htm

    Rich City Poor City: Middle-class Neighborhoods Are
    Disappearing from the Nation's Cities, Leaving Only High-
    and Low-Income Districts, New Study Says
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0622-04.htm

    CEOs Earn 262 Times Pay of Average Worker
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0622-07.htm
    Lawsuit Is Filed Over Banned Children's Book About Cuba
    By TERRY AGUAYO
    The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a federal
    lawsuit challenging a decision by the Miami-Dade School
    Board to remove a children's book about Cuba from its
    elementary school libraries. The board voted last week
    to ban the book, "Vamos a Cuba," and its English version,
    "A Visit to Cuba," after a parent objected to it, saying it
    contained misleading information about the island and
    painted a rosy picture of life there. But civil liberties union
    leaders called the ban a violation of the First Amendment,
    saying schools are responsible for providing students
    information with different viewpoints.
    June 22, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/us/22brfs-004.html

    FEMA Halts Evictions From Trailers in Mississippi
    By SHAILA DEWAN
    ATLANTA, June 21 — In yet another change of housing plans for
    Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the Federal Emergency Management
    Agency has suspended the eviction of 3,000 families who are
    living in government trailers in Mississippi.
    The move is the latest in a series of announcements and reversals
    that have caused confusion and occasionally panic among families
    unable to live in their ruined homes in New Orleans and elsewhere
    along the Gulf Coast. For several months, FEMA has repeatedly
    changed deadlines, sent conflicting letters to applicants, and
    declared people ineligible for housing assistance for the lack
    of signatures or failures to appear in person for property
    inspections.
    June 22, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/us/22trailers.html

    Teacher Strike May Influence Mexican Vote
    By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
    OAXACA, Mexico, June 21 — What started as a teachers' strike
    here five weeks ago has grown into a major movement to oust
    the governor of Oaxaca State that could affect the presidential
    election on July 2.
    Last week began with strikers battling the police and ended
    with failed talks with a federal mediator. Tens of thousands
    of teachers still occupy the central square and the surrounding
    streets of this colonial town of 265,000, a cultural center
    and tourist attraction known for its artists and haunting
    pre-Columbian ruins.
    But the teachers, who number 70,000, have been joined
    by dozens of community groups, Indian rights organizations,
    farmers' cooperatives and revolutionary parties. The teachers'
    initial demand for better pay has been drowned out by the
    general cry for Gov. Ulises Ruiz to resign.
    June 22, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/world/americas/22mexico.html

    Morgan Profit Soars 111% and Revenue Rises 48%
    By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
    June 22, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/business/22wall.html

    Botched Israeli Strike Kills Palestinian in Gaza
    By IAN FISHER and STEVEN ERLANGER
    JERUSALEM, June 21 — A Palestinian woman was killed Wednesday
    in Gaza after a pair of Israeli missiles veered off target, one of them
    slamming into a house. It was the latest in a series of botched
    airstrikes that have killed at least a dozen Palestinian civilians
    in the past eight days.
    June 22, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html

    John Pilger : In Palestine, a War on Children
    ZNet
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=10442§ionID=107

    HAS RACISM INVADED CANADA?
    By Robert Fisk
    The Case of the Toronto 17
    CounterPunch
    June 12, 2006
    http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk06122006.html

    Stress Disorder Seen Soaring Among Returning Troops
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0620-02.htm

    Mental health: Children on the edge
    One in ten youngsters suffers mental problems
    as behavioural disorders double in 30 years
    By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
    More than one million children are suffering from mental
    disorders severe enough to require treatment, doctors say.
    Rising divorce rates, increased drinking among young people
    and competitive pressures are among the factors behind
    the trend, with both sexes and all social classes affected.
    But a shortage of specialists and widespread stigmatisation
    of those with mental problems means many children
    are denied help or face long waits for treatment.
    Published: 21 June 2006
    http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article1093530.ece

    Bush's Visit to Vienna Is Marked by Tension
    By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JOHN O'NEIL
    Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Vienna today
    carrying banners reading "World's No. 1 Terrorist."
    June 21, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/world/europe/21cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=a7c4c6672338cbe9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    A Legacy of the Storm: Depression and Suicide
    By SUSAN SAULNY
    New Orleans is experiencing what appears to be a near epidemic
    of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, one that mental
    health experts say is of an intensity rarely seen in this country.
    It is contributing to a suicide rate that state and local officials
    describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina
    struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.
    June 21, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/us/21depress.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=9f71fcbb003d88f8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Two Killed in Florida Detention Center Shooting
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 11:16 a.m. ET
    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A guard at a federal detention center
    opened fire as investigators came to arrest him and five other
    guards Wednesday, starting a gunfight that killed two people
    and wounded another, the FBI said.
    The six guards were indicted Tuesday on corruption charges
    alleging they brought alcohol and other contraband into the
    part of the prison where female inmates were held and sold
    it or exchanged it for sex with the inmates or the inmates'
    silence.
    June 21, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Prison-Shooting.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=84873af4c66afe51&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    The Debate Over Immigration Reform
    A showdown is looming over the most substantial overhaul
    of immigration law in 20 years. The Senate has passed a bill
    that would toughen border security and put most illegal immigrants
    on a path to citizenship. In contrast, the House has passed
    legislation that offers no provision for citizenship. President
    Bush is also deeply involved in the immigration debate and
    generally favors the provisions present in the Senate bill.
    The next step is for Senate and House leaders to meet in
    conference to try to reconcile their separate bills. The gulf
    between the two versions is so vast, and the politics of immigration
    so heated in this election year, that the prospects for a deal
    remain murky at best.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/washington/25IMMIGRATIONBILLS_GRAPHIC.html?ex=1151035200&en=7fb253a94cf708d6&ei=5070
    There are 4 versions of Bill Number H.R.4437 for the 109th Congress
    1 . Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control
    Act of 2005 (Introduced in House)[H.R.4437.IH]
    2 . Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control
    Act of 2005 (Reported in House)[H.R.4437.RH]
    3 . Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control
    Act of 2005 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)[H.R.4437.EH]
    4 . Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control
    Act of 2005 (Referred to Senate Committee after being Received
    from House)[H.R.4437.RFS]
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.4437:
    S.2611
    Title: A bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform
    and for other purposes.
    Sponsor: Sen Specter, Arlen [PA] (introduced 4/7/2006)
    Cosponsors (6)
    Related Bills: H.R.4437, S.2454, S.2612
    Latest Major Action: 5/25/2006 Passed/agreed to in Senate.
    Status: Passed Senate with amendments by Yea-Nay Vote. 62 - 36.
    Record Vote Number: 157.
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN02611:
    May 15, 2006
    Transcript
    Bush's Speech on Immigration
    The following is the text of a speech by President George W.
    Bush on the subject of illegal immigration, as recorded
    by The New York Times:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/washington/15text-bush.html?ex=1151035200&en=88cab9609094822b&ei=5070

    House Adds Hearings on Immigration
    By CARL HULSE
    WASHINGTON, June 20 — In a decision that puts an overhaul
    of immigration laws in serious doubt, House Republican leaders
    said Tuesday that they would hold summer hearings around the
    nation on the politically volatile subject before trying to compromise
    with the Senate on a chief domestic priority of President Bush.
    June 21, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/washington/21immig.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=63a79e3775cfae97&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    How US Hid the Suicide Secrets of Guantanamo
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0618-03.htm

    Hush-Hush Honors for US Military Top Brass
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0618-04.htm

    Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines0618-06.htm

    US Not Prepared for Catastrophe: Official Report
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0617-05.htm
    Dahr Jamail | "Operation Forward Together": Deeper Into the Quagmire
    "Here we go again," writes Dahr Jamail, "only this time with even
    more troops, raiding even more homes, manning more checkpoints,
    and of course more death squads operating - with backup support
    from American soldiers, and of course their air strikes."
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906J.shtml

    Delta to End Pilots' Pension Plan
    By REUTERS
    Delta Air Lines said yesterday that it was notifying the federal
    pension insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation,
    that it intended to end its pilots' pension plan, a spokesman said.
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/business/20air.html

    Panel Reaches Deal on Drilling Off U.S. Coasts
    By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
    WASHINGTON, June 19 — The chairman of the House resources
    committee said Monday that the committee had reached bipartisan
    agreement on a measure that would open the Outer Continental
    Shelf to oil and gas exploration.
    Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman,
    said the agreement was a compromise that would give states
    the option to drill in waters that the federal government had
    kept off limits to energy exploration for decades. At the same
    time, lawmakers also tried to satisfy lawmakers from Florida
    and other states who have opposed any drilling within
    100 miles of their coastlines.
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/washington/20drill.html

    No. 2 State Department Official Resigns to Join Wall Street Firm
    By HELENE COOPER
    WASHINGTON, June 19 — Deputy Secretary of State Robert B.
    Zoellick said Monday that he would be leaving his post as the
    State Department's second in command, as expected, to join
    the Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
    as a managing director.
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/world/20zoellick.html

    Perfect Vision Is Helping and Hurting Navy
    By DAVID S. CLOUD
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/us/20eye.html?hp&ex=1150862400&en=c0006f419ca9ec63&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Next Victim of Warming: The Beaches
    By CORNELIA DEAN
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/science/earth/20sea.html?8dpc

    Detainees
    Murder Charges for 3 G.I.'s in Iraq
    By THOM SHANKER and SABRINA TAVERNISE
    WASHINGTON, June 19 — Three American soldiers suspected
    of killing three detainees in Iraq and then threatening a soldier
    with death if he reported the shootings have been charged with
    premeditated murder and obstructing justice, Army officials
    said Monday.
    June 20, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html

    FOCUS | National Guard Ordered to New Orleans
    Acting at the mayor's request, Governor Kathleen Blanco said Monday she
    would send National Guard troops and state police to patrol the streets
    of New Orleans after a bloody weekend in which six people were killed.
    "The situation is urgent," Blanco said. "Things like this should never
    happen, and I am going to do all I can to stop it."
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062006Z.shtml

    FOCUS | Carol J. Williams: Kicked Out of Gitmo
    Carol J. Williams: "It is the opportunity to shed light into the dark
    corners of the anti-terrorism campaign that inspires us to surmount the
    obstacles and obfuscations. And it is the thwarting of that mission
    with moves like our expulsion that make us all the more determined to
    question, probe and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in
    the country's name."
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906Z.shtml

    Funds flow on telecom legislation
    State's star lobbyists and PR firms take sides on cable franchise
    bill.
    By Jim Sanders -- Bee Staff Writer
    Published 12:01 am PDT Sunday, June 18, 2006
    ://www.sacbee.com/content/business/tech/story/14269116p-15080277c.html

    Many of the Capitol's most powerful political players are waging a
    multimillion-dollar war over legislation to let telephone companies
    provide cable television service.

    Immigration Math: It's a Long Story
    By DANIEL ALTMAN
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/business/yourmoney/18view.html

    No Retreat, No Surrender (They Hope)
    By MICHELINE MAYNARD
    Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound
    I can feel my heart begin to pound
    You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes
    And follow your dreams down.
    — Bruce Springsteen
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/business/yourmoney/18uaw.html

    Guard Troops Set to Begin Mission on Mexican Border
    By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/18guard.html

    In New Orleans, Money Is Ready but a Plan Isn't
    By ADAM NOSSITER
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/us/nationalspecial/18orleans.html?hp&ex=1150689600&en=9a060633e372299f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    4 Months Into Aid Cutoff, Gazans Barely Scrape By
    By STEVEN ERLANGER
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/world/middleeast/18gaza.html

    Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
    By ERIC LIPTON
    WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush
    administration's domestic security team, assembled after the
    2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks
    in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell
    domestic security products, many directly to the federal
    agencies the officials once helped run.
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/washington/18lobby.html?hp&ex=1150689600&en=2b212143597d60a3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    A Long Road Ahead in Iraq
    New York Times Editorial
    June 18, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/opinion/18sun1.html?hp

    Bill Quigley | HUD to New Orleans Poor: "Go F(ind) Yourself (Housing)!"
    "The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced they
    plan to demolish over five thousand public housing apartments in New
    Orleans. HUD's demolition plans leave thousands of families with no hope
    of returning to New Orleans, where rental housing is scarce and
    costly," writes Bill Quigley. "How can thousands of low-income working
    families come home if HUD has fenced off their apartments, put metal shutters
    over their windows and doors and now plans to demolish their homes?"
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061806Y.shtml

    U.S./COLOMBIA:
    Dead Unionists No Hurdle to Free Trade
    Felipe Seligman and Juliana Lara Resende
    UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 (IPS) - The U.S. government is not only
    a step away from ratifying a new free trade agreement, but also
    from rewarding persistent and severe human rights abuses in
    Colombia, where each year more trade union leaders are
    murdered than in all other nations put together, a new
    report charges.
    http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33658

    FOCUS | A Father Speaks Out Against the Iraq War
    On Father's Day, Fernando Suarez del Solar remembers his son, Jesus
    Suarez del Solar who was one of the first Americans killed during the
    invasion of Iraq. As a representative of Military Families Speak Out, a
    burgeoning organization of 1,500 families who call for an end to the US
    occupation of Iraq, Fernando Suarez tells high school and college
    students: stay in school; don't be deceived by false promises from recruiters
    for Bush.
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061806Z.shtml

    Venezuela bypasses Bush, offers help here
    Poor would get heating-oil discounts, eye operations
    Venezuela's government plans to offer discounted heating oil
    and free eye surgery to Milwaukee's low-income residents,
    Venezuelan officials announced Thursday.
    By LARRY SANDLER
    lsandler@journalsentinel.com
    Posted: June 15, 2006
    http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=436487

    Mexican Border Towns Fear US Crackdown
    As National Guard troops are being deployed to the border this
    month, migrant shelter directors are scrambling for funds and
    considering hiring more staff to keep their doors open 24 hours
    a day in anticipation of a record number of migrants being
    repatriated.
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061606R.shtml

    Delta Takes Steps to Avert Mass Retirement of Pilots
    By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and JEFF BAILEY
    Delta Air Lines said yesterday that it planned to terminate
    the pension plan covering 13,000 active and retired pilots
    and some spouses, a move intended to save billions of dollars
    and also prevent an exodus of pilots that could have brought
    much of the carrier's operations to a halt.
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/business/17delta.html

    Agency Sues Mining Company in Wake of Fire
    WASHINGTON, June 16 — Federal mine safety regulators filed
    a lawsuit on Friday against one of the largest mining companies
    in the country in an effort to force its officials to cooperate with
    the investigation of a deadly fire in January at a West Virginia
    coal mine.
    The civil suit, filed in a Federal District Court in West Virginia,
    describes a "broad refusal" by the company, Massey Energy,
    to turn over documents concerning management authority,
    ventilation, previous fires, construction projects and other
    matters at the Aracoma mine near Melville, W.Va...The fire,
    on Jan. 19, started along a belt line more than two miles inside
    the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Logan County, southwest
    of Charleston. The blaze, which killed two miners, occurred
    less than three weeks after 12 miners died following
    an explosion on Jan. 2 at another West Virginia mine,
    the Sago Mine, about 180 miles away.
    By IAN URBINA
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/washington/17mine.html

    Delegation Seeks Release of Afghans Being Held at Guantánamo
    By CARLOTTA GALL
    KABUL, Afghanistan, June 14 — An Afghan government delegation
    to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said Wednesday that about half of the
    94 Afghans being held there were not guilty of serious crimes
    and should be released.
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/world/asia/15afghan.html

    Mexico's Populist Tilts at a Privileged Elite
    By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/world/americas/17amlo.html

    As Oil Rises in Markets, Rigs Rise in Mississippi
    Five years ago there were some 20 functioning oil wells inside
    the city limits of Laurel; now there are 83.
    By SHAILA DEWAN
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/us/17wells.html?hp&ex=1150603200&en=74566fb2eee9800c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Contradictions Cloud Inquiry Into 24 Iraqi Deaths
    By JOHN M. BRODER
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/world/middleeast/17haditha.html?hp&ex=1150603200&en=d24949f9866653f5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Pentagon Study Describes Abuse by Units in Iraq
    By ERIC SCHMITT
    June 17, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/washington/17formica.html?hp&ex=1150603200&en=5943f444831cfd1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    Time running out to curb effects of deep sea pollution, warns UN
    -Pace of change outstrips conservation efforts
    -Water temperature rises as alkalinity falls
    David Adam, environment correspondent
    Saturday June 17, 2006
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1799872,00.html

    Greg Palast | African-American Voters Scrubbed
    by Secret GOP Hit List
    "The Republican National Committee has a special offer for
    African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote,"
    writes Greg Palast. "A confidential campaign directed by GOP
    party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots
    of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election,
    virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts."
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061606J.shtml

    U.S.-Style Pay Packages Are All the Rage in Europe
    By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
    Along with hip-hop and Hollywood movies, Europeans
    are eagerly importing another American phenomenon:
    soaring pay packages for chief executives.
    For decades, Europeans were far more restrained than
    Americans when it came to rewarding the boss. Now,
    executives overseas are less inhibited about asking
    for American-style compensation. And often they
    are getting their wish.
    June 16, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/business/businessspecial/16pay.html

    Poll: US Seen as a Bigger Threat to Peace Than Iran
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0615-02.htm

    Iraq Conflict Fuels Rise in Global Refugees to 12 Million
    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0615-04.htm

    "The Demons of Greed are Loose"
    Why a Global Economic Deluge Looms
    By GABRIEL KOLKO
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.counterpunch.com/

    FOCUS | Documents May Link Cheney
    to Halliburton No-Bid Iraq Contract
    Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates
    and prosecutes government corruption, announced today
    that the Department of the Army, per order of US District
    Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, has released to Judicial
    Watch approximately 100 pages of documents which
    detail the multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract awarded
    in 2003 by the Army to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR),
    a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. One document uncovered
    by Judicial Watch suggests the United States Army Corp
    of Engineers (USACE) may have publicly lied regarding
    the involvement of the Vice President's office
    in awarding the contract.
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061606Z.shtml

    Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to
    Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely
    By NINA BERNSTEIN
    A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government
    has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens
    on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold
    them indefinitely without explanation.
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/nyregion/15detain.html

    Bear Stearns Profit Jumps 83 Percent
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 1:36 p.m. ET
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Earns-Bear-Stearns.html

    Alito Vote Loosens Limits on Evidence
    By DAVID STOUT
    WASHINGTON, June 15— The Supreme Court today affirmed the
    power of police officers backed by a search warrant to enter
    a home without knocking, and in so doing signaled the more
    conservative tilt of the tribunal in recent months.
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/washington/15cnd-scotus.html?hp&ex=1150430400&en=fa5321eb3b84db97&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    US Military Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 2,500
    The number of US military deaths in the Iraq war has reached
    2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday. In addition, 18,490
    US troops have been wounded in the war.
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061506J.shtml

    Green Fuel's Dirty Secret
    By:Sasha Lilley on:Jun 14 2006 [11:35 am] (44 reads)
    http://www.innworldreport.net/
    http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1003

    US inflation and rate rise worries cause worldwide shares sell-off
    -Oil, gold and industrial metal prices plummet
    -Fears grow of American economic slowdown
    Larry Elliott and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
    Wednesday June 14, 2006
    Guardian
    http://business.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329504144-108725,00.html

    Gaza beach killings highlight need for revolutionary change
    By Yossi Schwartz in Israel   
    Monday, 12 June 2006
    http://www.marxist.com/gaza-beach-killings-change120606.htm

    Greg Palast | Keeping Iraq's Oil in the Ground
    Greg Palast asks, "Did the petroleum industry, which had a direct,
    if hidden, hand in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover
    of Iraq to prevent overproduction?"
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061406J.shtml

    Dogs and Their Fine Noses Find New Career Paths
    By JENNIFER 8. LEE
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13dogs.html?ex=1150430400&en=ea5c693d8f37c5c2&ei=5087%0A

    Global Image of the U.S. Is Worsening, Survey Finds
    By BRIAN KNOWLTON
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/world/14pew.html

    Monday, June 12, 2006
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER-THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 2006

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

    Friends of  Lt. Ehren Watada Bay Area Committee
    Organizing Meeting
    Saturday, June 17th @ Noon
    Veterans War Memorial Building
    401 Van Ness Avenue (opposite SF City Hall)
    Room 223

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

    Demand General and Unconditional Amnesty for All!
    Demand the Freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal!
    Demand Human Rights For All!
    Rally Monday, June 19, 2006, 5:00 P.M.
    Third Street and Palou Ave., San Francisco
    Note: This is a very important community rally. We urge everyone
    to turn out in support of the immigrant struggle and their linkage
    with the struggle for human rights and social justice in the Black
    community. Together and with the support of all those who seek
    human freedom and justice we can build a movement that can win!
    For more information call: 415-431-9925

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

    TAKE ACTION! BART ALERT to Stop the Killing of Palestinian Children
    Israel has already fired 7,000 shells on the people of Gaza this year
    Palestinian families are starving because of US and EU sanctions
    Hospitals face a critical shortage of medicine and supplies
    Join MECA and hundreds of people to say “NO!”
    to killing children by violence and deprivation.
    When: Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 5pm
    Where: Downtown Berkeley BART Station, Center and Shattuck
    What: Rally and March to Protest the Killing of Children in Gaza
    Who: You, your friends and family—Bring your children

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

    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

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

    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

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

    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

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

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

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

    Palestine, Sudan & the Myth of a "Humanitarian" U.S. Foreign Policy
    Tues. June 13, 7pm
    S.F. Women's Building 3543 18th St. (btwn Valencia and Guerrero)
    near 16th St. BART, San Francisco
    A.N.S.W.E.R. Educational Forum

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

    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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    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    People United For a General and Unconditional Amnesty
    Rally Monday, June 19, 2006, 5:00 P.M.
    Palou Avenue and Third Street, S.F.

    No matter what the decisions the lawmakers make to "reform" the
    immigration laws, we know that they will make some immigrant
    workers "legal" and others "illegal."

    We will hold a rally June 19, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. at Palou Avenue
    and Third Street in San Francisco to demand General and
    Unconditional Amnesty for All Immigrants. We hold this rally
    in celebration of the date of June 19th, 141 years ago when
    it was declared the end of slavery by Black people in this country.

    Our Black brothers and sisters continue to be a slave of racism
    and injustice just as we immigrants. And the government
    continues to put on Death Row the great leaders of the Black
    movement such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.

    We make a call for unity at this rally in the Bayview so we can
    honor June 19th by making a commitment to sow the first
    seeds together in order to make a reality the emancipation
    of the Black people and the immigrants and to demand the
    immediate freedom of the great leader of the Black people,
    Mumia Abu-Jamal, innocent on Death Row.

    For More Information:

    People United For a General and Unconditional Amnesty
    Barrio Unido Por una Amnistia General e Incondicional
    474 Valencia Street
    San Francisco, CA 94110
    Contact Persons:
    Cristina Gutierrez: 415-431-9925
    Kati Sanchez: 415-368-2576

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

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    People United For a General and Unconditional Amnesty
    Rally Monday, June 19, 2006, 5:00 P.M.
    Palou Avenue and Third Street, S.F.

    No matter what the decisions the lawmakers make to "reform" the
    immigration laws, we know that they will make some immigrant
    workers "legal" and others "illegal."

    We will hold a rally June 19, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. at Palou Avenue
    and Third Street in San Francisco to demand General and
    Unconditional Amnesty for All Immigrants. We hold this rally
    in celebration of the date of June 19th, 141 years ago when
    it was declared the end of slavery by Black people in this country.

    Our Black brothers and sisters continue to be a slave of racism
    and injustice just as we immigrants. And the government
    continues to put on Death Row the great leaders of the Black
    movement such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.

    We make a call for unity at this rally in the Bayview so we can
    honor June 19th by making a commitment to sow the first
    seeds together in order to make a reality the emancipation
    of the Black people and the immigrants and to demand the
    immediate freedom of the great leader of the Black people,
    Mumia Abu-Jamal, innocent on Death Row.

    For More Information:

    People United For a General and Unconditional Amnesty
    Barrio Unido Por una Amnistia General e Incondicional
    474 Valencia Street
    San Francisco, CA 94110
    Contact Persons:
    Cristina Gutierrez: 415-431-9925
    Kati Sanchez: 415-368-2576

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    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!

    Bay Area Tour of Daniel and Shanti
    Saturday, June 17th, 1 p.m.
    Unitarian Universalist Church
    1187 Franklin Street at Geary
    San Francisco

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

    Co-sponsored by: La Raza Centro Legal, SF Living Wage
    Coalition, No More Deaths, Socialist Organizer, San Francisco
    Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Ministry and Bay Area
    Labor Committee for Peace & Justice, East Bay Jobs
    With Justice, San Francisco Labor Council.

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

    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!

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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) Israeli Airstrike Kills Militant and 9 Others
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 10:58 a.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?hp&ex=1150257600&en=2c1c06ca11a88c5b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    2) How Not to Get Out Of Iraq:Why “Redeployment” is the Wrong
    Answer to the Iraq Question
    by Pat Gerber
    Published on Monday, June 12 2006
    by CommonDreams.org
    http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0612-23.htm

    3) Representative Kennedy Reaches Deal
    "Police did not conduct field sobriety tests on Kennedy. A police
    union official has said the officers involved in the accident were
    instructed by a superior to take the congressman home."
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 12:20 p.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Patrick-Kennedy.html?hp&ex=1150257600&en=bfded5242e0efdc2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    4) Somber Tone and Protest as U.A.W. Convenes
    By MICHELINE MAYNARD
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/business/13union.html

    5) House Passes $94.5 Billion for Iraq War and Katrina Aid
    "$66 billion for the two wars...20 billion in funds to further deal
    with the remaining hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast...
    and $1.9 billion for a border security initiative featuring the
    deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico
    border..."
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Iraq-Katrina.html

    6) UAW Highlights Special Bulletin
    by Gregg Shotwell/The UnCommonSense
    June 12, 2006
    http://futureoftheunion.com/?p=2849

    7) G.M. — Again
    "The loophole works this way: A dual-fuel vehicle that can run
    on either gasoline or 85 percent ethanol, or E85, is credited with
    a much higher mileage rating than it really gets. That keeps the
    overall mileage of the cars and trucks that a company like Ford
    or General Motors makes in any given year within the government's
    mileage limits."
    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    June 14, 2006
    http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/opinion/14friedman.html?hp

    8) The Road Back
    Lives Suspended on Gulf Coast, Crammed Into 240 Square Feet
    By DAN BARRY
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/us/14road.html?hp&ex=1150344000&en=27602b6dedfa0f03&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    9) U.A.W. Will Use Part of Strike Fund
    to Aid Recruitment of New Members
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/business/14union.html

    10) Profits Fall, Stores Close
    Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society
    By SETH SANDRONSKY
    June 10 / 11, 2006
    http://www.counterpunch.org/sandronsky06102006.html

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

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

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

    1) Israeli Airstrike Kills Militant and 9 Others
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 10:58 a.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?hp&ex=1150257600&en=2c1c06ca11a88c5b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- An Israeli airstrike targeting a key
    figure in Palestinian rocket attacks killed 10 people Tuesday,
    including the militant, two children and three medical workers
    who rushed to the scene of an initial blast.

    The deaths of at least eight civilians in the Gaza City attack was
    sure to heighten anti-Israel passions already inflamed by a weekend
    blast at a Gaza shore that killed eight beachgoers. It was also likely
    to further complicate efforts by the moderate Palestinian president,
    Mahmoud Abbas, to persuade the balking Hamas government
    to endorse a proposal implicitly recognizing Israel.

    Abbas condemned the airstrike, calling it ''state terrorism.''

    The deadly airstrike came just hours after hundreds of Palestinian
    police loyal to Abbas went on a rampage against the Hamas
    government, riddling the parliament building and Cabinet offices
    with bullets before setting them ablaze in retaliation for an attack
    by Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip. The rampage raised new
    fears the Palestinians were headed toward civil war.

    The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted militants on a mission
    to launch Katyusha rockets at southern Israel. Palestinian witnesses
    said the first missile missed the vehicle, which then hit a curb
    and was struck by two other missiles.

    The last two missiles killed the civilians and wounded 32 others,
    three of them seriously. Also killed was Hamoud Wadiya, Islamic
    Jihad's top rocket launcher, and an unidentified person in his van,
    whom the Israeli military identified as another Palestinian militant.

    Islamic Jihad swiftly vowed revenge.

    ''The Zionist enemy insists on shedding Palestinian blood and
    we insist on going ahead with our holy war and resistance,'' said
    Khader Abib, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza. ''God willing,
    the resistance groups ... will deliver a harsh response.
    All options are open.''

    Hekmat Mughrabi, tears streaming down her face and her veil
    soaked with blood, said her 30-year-old son, Ashraf, and
    a 13-year-old family member died when one of the missiles
    hit the curb outside her home. She and her son were chatting
    on her bed when they heard the boom of the first missile.
    The young man ran to the door of the house after the initial
    explosion, seeking to calm the children, who had been on the
    roof making paper kites during their summer vacation.

    ''He was shouting to the kids, 'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid,'''
    and hadn't even finished his sentence when the second missile
    hit, she said. ''My son died in my arms.''

    Shrapnel from the blast injured several other family members
    in the house, she said.

    Outside, dozens of people surrounded Wadiya's mangled yellow
    van, whose interior was a jumble of twisted metal and shredded
    upholstery. A man wailed beside the van as people propped him
    up by the arms. A white slipper lay in a pool of blood on the ground.

    If the van was carrying Katyusha rockets as Israel said, that could
    explain why the army was so determined to stop it. Katyushas
    have a longer range than the homemade rockets usually fired
    by Gaza militants and have only recently appeared in the
    coastal strip.

    A Cabinet minister from Hamas, Yousef Rizka, condemned
    what he called ''the continuous series of Israeli massacres
    of our Palestinian people.''

    ''I call on the international community to immediately intervene
    to protect the Palestinian people from the increasing aggression
    of the Israeli occupation army, which will definitely provoke
    a response that will engage the entire region,'' Rizka said.

    Hamas recently resumed open involvement in rocket attacks
    against Israel, and after the beach explosion Friday, officially
    called off a 16-month truce.

    Ambulances raced toward Shifa Hospital, carrying dead and
    wounded. At the hospital, three blood-covered bodies lay
    on the floor, and rescue workers carried a dead boy inside.

    A father and son also were killed, as were three medical workers
    on their way to tend to people wounded by an earlier missile.

    Doctors had a hard time handling all the casualties, and
    some were treated on the bloodied floor.

    At the hospital's morgue, where the bodies were brought,
    angry women shouted, ''Death to Israel, death to the occupation!''

    Just outside, an Islamic Jihad militant fired his rifle in a show
    of anger. Other gunmen vowed revenge. One went inside the
    morgue, put his hands on one of the dead bodies, then smeared
    their blood on his rifle. Angry crowds burned tires near the house
    one Israeli missile hit.

    ''What happened today is a brutal massacre committed against
    innocent civilians and fighters from our group,'' said Abib, the
    Islamic Jihad leader, outside the morgue. ''This massacre is similar
    to the one that took place on Friday.''

    Palestinians have blamed the Gaza beach deaths on an Israeli
    artillery round. Israeli military officials said Tuesday that the
    military's investigation, whose results are to be released later
    in the day, shows the deaths likely were caused by a mine
    planted by Hamas militants.

    Abbas accused Israel of trying to ''wipe out the Palestinian people.''

    ''Every day there are martyrs, there are wounded people,
    all of them innocents, all of them bystanders,'' he said.
    ''They want to eliminate the Palestinian people, but we are
    going to sit tight. We are sitting tight on our land.

    ''We want to establish our state and live in peace,'' he added.
    ''What Israel is committing is state terrorism.''

    Abbas, a moderate elected separately last year, is being
    squeezed by violence with Israel and violence pitting his
    Fatah faction against Hamas gunmen, which has killed
    20 Palestinians, some of them civilians, over the past month.

    He is trying to persuade Israel to restart long-stalled peace
    talks with him, rather than the Hamas government, but
    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, visiting European
    capitals this week, says Israel won't negotiate with Abbas
    unless Hamas abandons violence.

    Olmert plans to unilaterally pull Israeli settlers out of about
    90 percent of the West Bank, with or without negotiations.

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

    2) How Not to Get Out Of Iraq:Why “Redeployment” is the Wrong
    Answer to the Iraq Question
    by Pat Gerber
    Published on Monday, June 12 2006
    by CommonDreams.org
    http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0612-23.htm

    “Redeployment.” Even if you can define it correctly, you may not
    know what its implications are. For starters, it is not a formula
    for ending the war.

    Rep. John Murtha introduced America to the word “redeployment”
    during his press conference last November, when he spoke about
    a bill he authored that was designed to prevent the military
    he loves from becoming “a broken force,” to use General
    Helmly’s words. Rep. Murtha has never claimed that his
    redeployment bill was peace-oriented, and if you examine
    it closely, you can see that its purpose is to change the arc
    of the war rather than end it.

    Now Senator Boxer has introduced a Senate companion to
    Murtha’s House of Representatives resolution. Both of these
    call for American troops to be “redeployed at the earliest
    practicable date.” The phrase “earliest practicable date” is
    so vague that it allows things to be done whenever the good
    old boys in Washington decide that they are in the mood.
    The word “redeployment” means moving troops from point
    A to point B and/or giving them a new set of tasks. In this
    instance, it means that some of the forces who are currently
    on Iraqi soil will be moved to other bases in the region and
    become part of two new entities specified in the legislation,
    “a quick-reaction U.S. force” that can be put back into Iraq
    on a few hours notice and “an over-the-horizon presence
    of U.S Marines.”

    A number of analysts have pointed out that this proposed
    redeployment is no more than a vehicle for moving the
    focus of the war from the ground to the air:

    -... if the troops are pulled back from the front and brought
    home, the Pentagon plans to replace their combat capability
    with air power … [This] would probably decrease the number
    of US casualties and (they hope) ensure the re-election of
    most of those congressmen and women who will hear the
    wrath of their constituents … [It is] a strategy that replaces
    ground combat with death from the air (1)

    - When troops are cut, we'll still be bombing the hell out of
    the place … the plans call for the air war to be beefed up and
    kept that way for years to come. (2)

    -...the departing American troops will be replaced by American
    airpower ... while the number of American casualties would
    decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level
    of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase
    unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what. (3)

    -...a pullout won't end the war … we're going to leave and
    increase the bombing (4)

    - The added air power is meant to compensate for any lost
    punch on the ground (5)

    -… the Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain’s method of
    ruling oil-rich Iraq … A powerful British RAF contingent, based
    at Habbibanyah, was tasked with bombing serious revolts
    and rebellious tribes ... The USAF has developed an extremely
    effective new technique of wide area control. Small numbers
    of strike aircraft are kept in the air around the clock. When
    US ground forces come under attack or foes are sighted,
    these aircraft are vectored to the site in minutes and deliver
    precision-guided bombs on enemy forces. The effectiveness
    of this tactic has led Iraqi resistance fighters to favor roadside
    bombs over ambushes against US convoys. (6)

    The Murtha and Boxer resolutions are steps toward repositioning
    U.S. planes, the troops who fly and service them, and everything
    else the military needs to bases in nearby Kuwait, Qatar, and
    Oman, as well as on ships that patrol the Gulf. These aircraft
    would then patrol Iraq’s skies 24/7, looking for “signs of trouble”
    and dropping bombs whenever any are found. Since the number
    of troops needed to control Iraq by use of air power is smaller
    than the number we currently have on the ground, some of them
    – perhaps as many as 25% -- will be able to come home. However,
    this is not a formula for bringing peace to the region but
    for continuing to exercise American control without having
    our boots on their soil.

    Instead of advancing the cause of ending the war and ushering
    in an era of peace, it allows the U.S. to continue managing Iraq’s
    affairs by using a new technique.

    This is not a substitute for ending the carnage.

    But there is more bad news. One of the things this resolution
    does accomplish is to provide a convenient way for politicians
    to continue to play politics with the war. Because its provisions
    entail a lowering of troop levels, congressmembers who sign
    on as co-sponsors can make themselves appear to be in favor
    of peace, though actually all they are supporting is a change
    in the war’s strategy. (Troop levels will have to be reduced
    regardless of any action congress may take because,
    as Murtha and others have pointed out, the only way to
    sustain the current number of troops would be to have
    a draft, which no one wants to advocate at this time.) In
    addition, the chatter about redeployment has taken the
    spotlight off of other, better proposals pending in congress
    as well as off of any serious discussion of what the end game
    will look like and when it will start. Most insidiously, if this
    passes, it will become harder -- not easier -- for congress
    to pass true peace-oriented legislation in the future. For
    example, they will have a more difficult time mandating
    a timetable in any future bill, as they will already be on the
    record on that topic as a result of having passed the Murtha
    and Boxer resolutions. It may also become more difficult
    for them to direct that steps be taken toward ending the
    conflict, call for peace talks with combatants, or direct the
    future course of the war because it is difficult to be certain
    whether the redeployment bills cede decision-making
    power about these issues to the Pentagon.

    Last year, a few peace groups endorsed the Murtha bill
    before they understood what it actually entailed. Let’s not
    make that mistake again. This year, let’s tell congress that
    the only redeployment we want is the one that brings the
    troops home.

    Pat Gerber (ppaattgg@yahoo.com) is a San Francisco editor,
    cartoonist, and peace activist.

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

    3) Representative Kennedy Reaches Deal
    Police did not conduct field sobriety tests on Kennedy. A police
    union official has said the officers involved in the accident were
    instructed by a superior to take the congressman home.
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 12:20 p.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Patrick-Kennedy.html?hp&ex=1150257600&en=bfded5242e0efdc2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy has reached a deal
    with prosecutors to plead guilty to a charge of driving under the
    influence of prescription drugs in connection with his middle-
    of-the-night car crash last month near the U.S. Capitol.

    Two additional charges of reckless driving and failure to exhibit
    a driving permit will be dismissed under the plea agreement.

    Announcing this, Kennedy's chief of staff, Sean Richardson,
    said the Rhode Island Democrat would appear in District of
    Columbia Superior Court Tuesday afternoon ''to accept the
    consequences of his actions.''

    ''He is looking forward to closing this chapter,'' Richardson
    said. ''He's feeling great and is expected to be back to work.''

    Kennedy agreed to the guilty plea in exchange for having
    two additional charges of reckless driving and failure to
    exhibit a driving permit dismissed.

    Kennedy returned to Congress last week after nearly
    a month of treatment for addiction to prescription pain
    drugs at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

    The six-term congressman, who has struggled with
    addiction since high school, had entered the clinic one
    day after the May 4 crash on Capitol Hill that he said
    he could not remember.

    The accident has raised questions about whether Kennedy,
    38, was drinking and had received special treatment by
    police, who did not conduct field sobriety tests. Kennedy
    has denied consuming alcohol before the crash.

    In the hours before the crash, Kennedy said he returned
    home from work and took a sleeping pill, Ambien, and
    Phenergan, a prescription anti-nauseau drug that can
    cause drowsiness. He said he did not consume alcohol.

    Kennedy crashed his green 1997 Ford Mustang convertible
    into a security barrier near the Capitol about 3 a.m. The
    officer listed alcohol influence as a contributing factor
    in the crash and noted that Kennedy was ''ability impaired,''
    with red, watery eyes, slurred speech and unsteady balance,
    according to the accident report.

    Police did not conduct field sobriety tests on Kennedy.
    A police union official has said the officers involved
    in the accident were instructed by a superior to take
    the congressman home. Kennedy has denied asking
    for special treatment.

    Police had observed Kennedy's car, with no headlights
    on, swerve into the wrong lane and strike a curb. Kennedy
    nearly hit a police car, the report said, and did not respond
    to the officer's efforts to pull him over. He continued at
    a slower speed before hitting a security barrier head-on,
    the report said.

    Kennedy told the police officer he was ''headed to the Capitol
    to make a vote,'' the report said. He was cited for failure
    to keep in the proper lane, traveling at ''unreasonable speed''
    and failing to ''give full time and attention'' to operating
    his vehicle.

    Kennedy's office has said that it has not received those
    initial citations.

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

    4) Somber Tone and Protest as U.A.W. Convenes
    By MICHELINE MAYNARD
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/business/13union.html

    LAS VEGAS, June 12 — The United Automobile Workers' convention
    opened here Monday with leaders and members in a familiar
    fighting mood, but with a new battle plan aimed at protecting
    what they have rather than gaining new ground.

    The change reflected the falling fortunes of Detroit's automakers,
    a new reality that the union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, laid
    out for members both in his speech and in a written report
    that the U.A.W. issued on Sunday.

    "This isn't a cyclical downturn," Mr. Gettelfinger told the
    convention. "The kind of challenges we face aren't the kind
    that can be ridden out. They're structural challenges,
    and they require new and farsighted solutions."

    That statement, part of an hourlong speech, drew silence
    from the audience.

    What brought the delegates to their feet was Mr. Gettelfinger's
    dismissal of comments by pundits who try to argue that
    the U.A.W. has lost its influence.

    "They think we've run out of gas intellectually and emotionally,
    that we've lost our will, our creativity and our nerve,"
    said Mr. Gettelfinger, who is expected to win re-election
    to a second four-year term later this week.

    "We've got news for them," he went on, pounding the lectern.
    "We're not going to surrender. We're not going to lower our
    sights, give up our dreams or give up our fight for a better
    world for our children and grandchildren."

    In the short term, though, many union members at the
    convention said the most urgent fight was to protect the
    current lot of the members, to draw a line in the sand.

    A Ford worker, Gary Walkowicz, said he could not support
    any further concessions by the U.A.W., despite Ford's
    financial problems.

    "If we start giving concessions, the companies will only
    want more," said Mr. Walkowicz, who works at Ford's
    truck plant in Dearborn, Mich.

    He was among a small group of workers who passed out
    bright yellow leaflets to convention delegates Monday,
    urging them to fight further concessions.

    The leaflets, titled "Draw the Line at Delphi," asked union
    officials to allow open debate at the convention over resisting
    givebacks. "These are life and death issues for our union,"
    said the leaflet, which was signed by more than 30 local
    union officials and other delegates.

    Delphi, a former G.M. division that is now a stand-alone
    parts supplier, is operating under bankruptcy protection
    and seeking steep concessions from workers to lower its
    operating costs.

    Mr. Gettelfinger has shown a willingness to negotiate when
    the circumstances demand it. In his speech, he gravely took
    responsibility for a landmark agreement, reached last year
    with General Motors and Ford, that required workers to pay
    more for health care coverage.

    The deal, meant to alleviate an enormous burden that the
    automakers face in providing retiree health care, was "the
    most painful decision" he had made as union president.

    Further, Mr. Gettelfinger told delegates, broader economic
    pressures had forced all labor groups to reset their expectations.

    "In the not-too-distant past," he said, "when the U.S. economy
    grew and productivity increased, we could expect wages
    to rise as well. That's no longer true."

    Mr. Gettelfinger vowed to fight for changes in bankruptcy
    laws, aiming his criticism at Delphi and other bankrupt parts
    suppliers that have demanded steep concessions from workers.

    "These reforms are needed to stop unscrupulous employers
    and their battery of bankruptcy vultures," he said.

    His voice barely audible over the delegates' cheers,
    Mr. Gettelfinger added, "We need to stop dead in their
    tracks those who would seek to void contracts with their
    workers while lining their pockets with everything of value
    and uncaringly destroying lives, hopes, dreams and
    communities in the process."

    The mood of defiance extended to several workers
    interviewed near Detroit.

    Tom Dean, a forklift driver with 29 years' experience at
    G.M.'s truck assembly plant in Pontiac, Mich., said Monday
    that he did not intend to accept a buyout under the programs
    that had been offered to workers at G.M. and Delphi.

    He said he hoped his job would remain secure until he was
    ready to leave in a few years. As for concessions, Mr. Dean
    said, "We want the company to prosper, but we don't want
    to be taken advantage of."

    Some 113,000 workers at G.M. and 23,000 at Delphi have
    until June 23 to decide whether to stay or go and a week
    more in which to change their minds.

    Barbara Farrell Brown, a convention delegate who has spent
    22 years at G.M.'s plant at Lake Orion, Mich., said she had
    already rejected a $140,000 buyout that would have allowed
    her to keep her pension but required that she give
    up retirement health care coverage.

    "I'm not taking a buyout. I would not cut my ties," said
    Ms. Brown, who was accompanied to Las Vegas by her
    daughter, Stephanie, 21, a U.A.W. member at a G.M.
    parts supplier.

    Ms. Brown said she was concerned that a number of her
    factory's younger workers were planning to accept the
    deals and leave. She said she hoped to persuade them
    to stay and help carry on the U.A.W.'s fight.

    "A lot of our young seniority workers need to be taught
    how to stick together," Ms. Brown added.

    The call for creative new solutions to revive the union's
    fortunes in a struggling industry was made by others
    at the convention, as well.

    "We can help the auto industry win again," Senator
    Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, told the delegates
    via satellite. "We need to start thinking big again.

    "I need for all of you to fight for the future," Senator
    Obama continued. "I need all of you to be open to creative
    ways of doing business. None of us can afford to watch the
    American auto industry fail. If we've got the courage
    to succeed, labor will rise again."

    Labor experts viewed the sobering notes of the convention
    as a sign that the U.A.W. was facing the reality that has
    resulted in a drop in its membership to the lowest level
    since 1942. Mr. Gettelfinger noted Monday that the U.A.W.
    had lost more than 78,000 members in the four years since
    its last convention, although it managed to add 66,000 new
    members through organizing drives and affiliations with
    other unions.

    For all its troubles, the union remains a force with significant
    power to affect the future of the auto industry, said
    Harry Katz, director of the Institute of Collective Bargaining
    at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

    "They're still the U.A.W.," he said.

    Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Pontiac, Mich.,
    for this article.

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

    5) House Passes $94.5 Billion for Iraq War and Katrina Aid
    "$66 billion for the two wars...20 billion in funds to further deal
    with the remaining hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast...
    and $1.9 billion for a border security initiative featuring the
    deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico
    border..."
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Iraq-Katrina.html

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House passed a $94.5 billion bill Tuesday
    to pay for continuing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,
    hurricane relief, bird flu preparations and border security at home.

    The House-Senate compromise bill contains $66 billion for the two
    wars, bringing the cost of the three-year-old war in Iraq to about
    $320 billion. Operations in Afghanistan have now tallied about
    $89 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

    The bill, which passed by a 351-67 vote, had only minimal
    debate Monday night.

    It contains almost $20 billion in funds to further deal with the
    remaining hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. Much
    of the money would go to Louisiana for housing aid, flood
    control projects and a new veterans hospital in New Orleans.

    It also provides funding for small-business disaster loans,
    rebuilding federal facilities and replenishing Federal Emergency
    Management Agency disaster-relief coffers.

    The Senate is to clear the measure for President Bush's signature
    later this week. The big margin in the House reflected lawmakers'
    support for U.S. troops overseas despite whatever reservations
    they may have about the war.

    Separately, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday
    approved a $427 billion defense spending bill that includes
    another $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan for the
    budget year beginning Oct. 1. The panel attached
    a provision to a measure to block the U.S. from operating
    permanent military bases in Iraq.

    Both House and Senate gave overwhelming votes to such
    language in the Iraq war funding bill, but Republicans
    stripped it out in House-Senate talks on the bill that
    passed the chamber Tuesday.

    The Iraq and hurricane relief measure's long legislative
    odyssey began in February as a $92.2 billion request
    by President Bush. He subsequently added another
    $2.2 billion in Louisiana levee projects and $1.9 billion
    for a border security initiative featuring the deployment
    of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The House largely stuck to Bush's demands when passing
    its version back in March. But the Senate, led by
    Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran,
    R-Miss., responded with a $109 billion measure that
    drew a veto threat from Bush for add-ons such as
    $4 billion in farm disaster aid, $648 million for port
    security and $1.1 billion in aid to the Gulf Coast seafood
    industry.

    But House negotiators killed a controversial Senate
    project to pay CSX Transportation $700 million for
    a recently rebuilt freight rail line along the Mississippi
    coast so the state could use its path for a new East-West
    highway. The project had earned scornful media coverage
    and protests from the White House and conservative activists.

    Although the measure sticks with Bush's demand of
    $94.5 billion -- including $2.3 billion to combat the
    avian flu -- lawmakers reduced funding for the Federal
    Emergency Management's main disaster fund for
    additional grants for Mississippi, Texas and Alabama
    and a new Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss.

    The FEMA disaster relief fund would still receive $6 billion,
    which includes $400 million for temporary housing sturdier
    than FEMA trailers. The funds also go toward debris removal,
    reimbursing state and local governments for infrastructure
    repairs and direct aid to individuals.

    There is lingering concern that if the hurricane season is
    a destructive one another infusion of disaster aid will be
    needed before Election Day. But a senior White House official
    said last week that the funding would be sufficient to last
    until next year.

    The compromise bill includes Bush's plan to provide 1,000
    more Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border, deploy
    about 6,000 National Guard troops and build detention
    space for 4,000 illegal immigrants.

    The bill also contains $4 billion in military and foreign aid
    for Iraq and other allies, and to combat famine in Africa and
    Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sudan.

    The bill also contains funding for controversial, accident-
    prone V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for deployment to Iraq,
    as well as more popular C-130 cargo planes.

    During Monday's brief debate, Democrats said the huge cost
    of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions being done on the
    installment plan, hiding their cost from the public.

    ''In 18 separate actions, we will now have spent $450 billion
    on this adventure,'' said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top
    Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. ''This
    is a huge expenditure for a misguided war.''

    ''Enough blood is enough blood!'' said Rep. Dennis Kucinich,
    D-Ohio. ''You can stop it! Bring our troops home!''

    GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma countered that the bill
    ''provides critical funds that will be used to conduct ongoing
    operations in the war on terror.''

    Meanwhile, in a symbolic statement, the Senate on Tuesday
    voted 97-0 to commend U.S. troops and intelligence agents
    for actions that resulted in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
    who led al-Qaida in Iraq until he was killed last Wednesday
    in an American airstrike.

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

    6) UAW Highlights Special Bulletin
    by Gregg Shotwell/The UnCommonSense
    June 12, 2006
    http://futureoftheunion.com/?p=2849

    Historic Gains!
    Lifetime Job Security! Pension Enhancements!
    Record Salary Increases!
    Free Cradle to Grave Health Care!
    No Co-Pays! No Premiums!
    For ALL International Appointees! Forever!

    “This is unbelievable!” exclaimed UAW spokesperson, Pauline Paul.
    “Ron Gettelfinger is king!” she gushed. Pauline punctuated her
    comments with finger puppets. “Words! Just! Aren’t! Enough!”
    she enunciated breathlessly.

    In 2003 UAW President Ron Gettelfinger completed negotiations
    on five contracts in two weeks. Everyone was stupefied. But his
    latest achievement exceeded the corporations’ wildest expectations.
    Ron Gettelfinger has officially announced the end of collective
    bargaining forever.

    “We took an entirely different tact,” Bob King, UAW VP of
    Organizing, said. “We organized the employers.”

    “The advantage of organizing employers is that we see eye
    to eye on everything,” explained Dick Shoemaker who will sit
    on the GM Board of Directors after his retirement from the UAW
    this June. “Now we don’t have to go through the motions
    of making workers vote until they get it right.”

    “Democracy is too inefficient,” said Gerard Bantom. Another
    UAW VP jockeying for a seat on Ford’s revolving circle of perks.
    “Now that we have organized the employers we can fast track
    concessions.”

    “Since we agree on everything,” said Cal Rapson, another
    UAW VP angling for a corner window in the Pyramid, “We can
    do away with the tedium of contract negotiations and
    grievances.”

    “Never mind elections,” Nate Gooden laughed. “The new
    agreement guarantees job security for all UAW International
    appointees and their children forever.”

    “This Non Expiring Living Agreement tranquilizes anxiety,
    relieves all doubt, and allows our negotiators to wheel and
    deal concessions more freely,” murmured Pauline Paul as she
    wiggled her finger puppets languidly in the air to demonstrate
    how relaxed International appointees feel.

    “Our appointees literally mesmerize the members into voting
    for which concessions they like best. Everyone is happy!”
    Pauline’s puppets hugged each other.

    “Even though the UAW has functioned like a one party state
    for years,” Frank Joyce, UAW Public Relations consultant,
    interjected. “The appointees feared they might be challenged
    by opposition groups, but now that we’ve organized the
    employers, who cares what workers think?” The new UAW INC.
    will enjoy a host of privileges including profit sharing, stock
    options, unrestricted use of company vehicles, extended
    vacations in luxury hotels, lucrative salaries, and free
    massages.

    “In a genuine spirit of solidarity, all the International
    appointees will share in the rewards gained from concessions.
    It’s really a win-win for all,” said William Clay Ford as he
    announced another plant closing. Ron Gettelfinger has
    always enjoyed a lot of support from those closest to the
    top. The buzz around the country club is that Ronnie G is
    Dr. Love Supreme, the go to guy with the hole-in-one drive.

    “When it comes to ‘Holding the Line on Health Care’
    [Gettelfinger’s slogan at the 2002 UAW Convention], I must
    say, the reins couldn’t be in better hands,” said Rick Wagoner,
    head honcho at GM. “When Ron suggested that GM pony up
    for UAW attorney fees in their lawsuit against GM [the UAW
    sued GM for taking accrued vested benefits away from retirees],
    I knew it was time to put him on the payroll.”

    Outsiders are surprised by recent developments, but insiders
    can trace the trajectory of appointee ascendance up the
    corporate ladder and into Solidarity Heaven back to the
    golf course at Black Lake.

    “When the UAW built a golf course we knew right then and
    there that organizing had entered the twenty-first century,”
    said a greenskeeper who preferred not to have his name
    used because he can’t afford to live on his pension and
    doesn’t want to get fired for speaking out of turn.

    Ron Gettelfinger was not available for comment but sources
    close to the corporation’s beloved say Ronnie has been
    planning this feat since his days as a summer ranch hand.
    The work gave him saddle sores but long hot days on horse
    back instilled in him an appreciation for desk jobs. It was
    at the Rollover Ranch that Ron met the man who would
    influence him for the rest of his life, Steve “Bob” Miller,
    a turnaround specialist with a stunning pirouette and
    a graceful side saddle style that charmed the shit out
    of a lot of bulls.

    The two men were both studying accounting and working
    summers on the ranch when they rubbed their match heads
    together. Sparks flew and the rest is fodder for the long
    barrel. So it comes as no surprise that years later the two
    should meet again — this time riding herd on the rank and file.

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

    7) G.M. — Again
    "The loophole works this way: A dual-fuel vehicle that can run
    on either gasoline or 85 percent ethanol, or E85, is credited with
    a much higher mileage rating than it really gets. That keeps the
    overall mileage of the cars and trucks that a company like Ford
    or General Motors makes in any given year within the government's
    mileage limits."
    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    June 14, 2006
    http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/opinion/14friedman.html?hp

    On May 31 I wrote a column accusing General Motors of acting
    irresponsibly by offering unlimited gasoline at $1.99 a gallon for
    one year to anyone who buys certain of its midsize sedans, big
    S.U.V.'s or gas-guzzling Hummers in California or Florida. At a time
    when we are at war in the Middle East, with an enemy who is indirectly
    financed by our energy purchases, it seems to me that every American,
    and every American company, has an obligation to reduce oil
    consumption. No one should be making a huge gas-guzzling
    Hummer, and no one should be driving one, and no one —
    certainly not G.M. — should be subsidizing people to drive them.

    After the May 31 column appeared, G.M.'s vice president for global
    communications, Steven J. Harris, and his colleagues denounced my
    argument in a formal statement and on G.M.'s corporate blog. This
    is an important issue, so let me respond to their response.

    To begin with, I would much prefer to see G.M. thriving and growing
    American jobs — not selling itself off, limb by limb. But as long
    as G.M. is giving away $1.99 gasoline for its gas guzzlers, I will
    be a harsh critic. Pardon me if — at a time when China is imposing
    higher mileage standards than America — I don't want to join the
    many congressmen and senators in drinking G.M.'s Kool-Aid and
    not demanding that it become the most fuel-efficient automaker
    in the world. If more people in Washington insisted that G.M. focus
    on building cars that could compete in a world of $3.99 gasoline,
    rather than creating an artificial universe of $1.99 gasoline, G.M.
    would not be worrying about bankruptcy today.

    G.M. says that the cars chosen for its $1.99 gas giveaway were
    chosen because of "their outstanding fuel economy and great
    consumer appeal." It also says that G.M. makes more cars that
    get an E.P.A.-estimated 30 miles per gallon on the highway than
    any other company.

    Fact: G.M. also sells more cars that get 9 to 11 m.p.g. — the Hummer
    — than any other company. And even though G.M. justified the
    $1.99 program as giving consumers a chance to drive some
    of its most fuel-efficient cars, it did not include its best-selling,
    most fuel-efficient model, the Chevy Aveo (35 m.p.g. highway),
    in the program, but did include seven gas-guzzling trucks.
    G.M. still does not have a family-friendly hybrid on the market
    (one is due this summer) — nine years after Toyota introduced
    the 45-m.p.g. Prius hybrid, which G.M. scoffed at at the time.

    Stephanie Salter, a columnist writing in the Terre Haute Tribune-
    Star, did a spoof about G.M.'s $1.99 gas giveaway by imagining
    what other less-than-healthy consumer companies might now
    do: "Today R.J. Reynolds Corp. announced a new 'smoke more/
    pay less' instant rebate program for most of its cigarette brands.
    Time-dated coupons will be included in every pack of RJR cigarettes.
    Tobacco consumers who collect 10 same-brand coupons in five
    days can redeem them for a pack costing $1. The only brands
    not covered by the coupon program are the company's cigarettes
    with very low tar and nicotine content."

    Next, G.M.'s Harris asked: "How is offering a gas card that may
    be worth $1,000 any different or more sinister than the $2,000
    cash rebate that Toyota's offering right now nationwide on its
    full-size S.U.V., the Sequoia?"

    Fact: Reading that question you'd think that G.M. was giving
    away cheap gas instead of big S.U.V. rebates. The truth: We called
    G.M. dealers in California who said that under the new program
    they were authorized to offer $5,000 discounts on the 2006
    Suburban and Tahoe S.U.V.'s — which are like the Sequoia —
    in addition to G.M.'s unlimited $1.99 gas for a year. I guess
    Mr. Harris just forgot that.

    Yes, Toyota makes trucks and S.U.V.'s, just like G.M. I am not
    against either. Some people need them, others enjoy them.
    But I don't think we should be subsidizing gasoline so people
    who don't need them will buy them or buy the most gas-
    guzzling versions. G.M. says its full-size S.U.V.'s get better
    mileage than Toyota's. All I know is that Consumer Reports
    rates all size S.U.V.'s for fuel efficiency, reliability and performance.
    Toyota and Honda S.U.V.'s are its top picks in every size category.

    Ah, says Mr. Harris, but we offer nine vehicles that can run on
    E85 ethanol-gas blends, and have made 1.9 million such cars
    and trucks. Toyota makes none. The truth: The Big Three U.S.
    automakers started making flex-fuel cars in the mid-1990's
    after they were given a shameful federal loophole.

    As the Des Moines Register explained in an article on May 26:
    "The loophole works this way: A dual-fuel vehicle that can run
    on either gasoline or 85 percent ethanol, or E85, is credited with
    a much higher mileage rating than it really gets. That keeps the
    overall mileage of the cars and trucks that a company like Ford
    or General Motors makes in any given year within the government's
    mileage limits."

    By agreeing to build flex-fuel vehicles credited with phony
    mileage, Detroit gets to make many more bigger, heavier gas
    guzzlers, the paper explained, "without having to pay fines
    for exceeding the federal mileage standards." For instance,
    the 2006 G.M.C. two-wheel-drive Yukon 1500 actually gets
    15 m.p.g. city and 20 m.p.g. highway. But under this loophole
    it is rated as getting 33 miles per gallon for purposes of
    meeting the government's fleet fuel economy standards.
    "The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that the
    loophole increased U.S. oil consumption by 80,000 barrels
    per day in 2005 alone," the paper said.

    If G.M., Ford and Chrysler really care about saving oil and
    the environment, why exploit this loophole? And by the way,
    even though G.M. has made 1.9 million flex-fuel vehicles,
    it and the other automakers for a long time did little to inform
    customers that their cars could run on ethanol — because
    their real interest was the mileage loophole to make more
    big cars. Most people didn't know they were driving a flex-
    fuel car. "Until recently, the only way to tell was by checking
    the vehicle identification number," the paper noted. Recently,
    General Motors has put yellow gas caps on its dual-fuel
    vehicles to alert customers.

    I'm not a car expert, so let me leave the last word to
    Automotive News, the industry's top trade magazine. Its
    June 5 editorial said: "General Motors' promotion that
    reimburses some buyers for gasoline purchases is ill-
    advised for an automaker that is trying to burnish its green
    image. The program should be dropped, not expanded. ...
    It's simply a subsidy for vehicles that burn a lot of gasoline.
    And it's one more example of G.M.'s tone deafness on
    environmental issues. ... Yes, G.M. can make vehicles that
    are as fuel efficient as anybody else's. But it acts as though
    its future depends on gas guzzlers."

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

    8) The Road Back
    Lives Suspended on Gulf Coast, Crammed Into 240 Square Feet
    By DAN BARRY
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/us/14road.html?hp&ex=1150344000&en=27602b6dedfa0f03&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    LAKESHORE, Miss., June 12 — If you were to fly over rural Hancock
    County here, you would see more than 9,000 of them, white
    rectangles clumped in sun-bleached parks and scattered in
    piney woods like pieces of a trashed picket fence. Pick any one,
    and contained within that FEMA trailer are lives in claustrophobic
    suspension.

    Paulette Shiyou invites you into her family's trailer with a natural
    hospitality that has remained intact. Her husband, Hugh, offers
    a can of beer, and her son, Cody, itching to show you his card
    collection, his rock collection, his pocketknife, kicks off his
    sneakers.

    And suddenly, in this tight trailer of 240 square feet, an
    11-year-old boy's shoes loom like ottomans.

    "I'm constantly yelling at him because you're always tripping
    over him," Ms. Shiyou says, scolding but smiling. "And he yells
    at me to turn the lights out."

    Cody defends himself by nodding toward the droning television
    set that sits near the only door, about five feet from his
    cubbyhole bunk bed. "I'll be going to bed," he says, "and
    she'll be watching TV and have all these lights on."

    As the television set gabs and a boy complains and a mother
    justifies her liberal use of lights by saying she just cannot
    tolerate darkness, not since the storm, it seems that in
    a FEMA trailer even words take up space.

    FEMA trailer. The phrase has nearly lost meaning,
    so embedded is it in the national memory of last year's
    crushing hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. The Federal Emergency
    Management Agency provided trailers to people whose
    homes were damaged or destroyed; got it.

    But tens of thousands of people continue to live crammed
    in FEMA trailers, greeting this year's hurricane season the
    same way they said goodbye to the last one: in light-metal
    boxes that even a tropical storm could flip like playing cards
    and which seem so vulnerable alongside the brush fires
    crackling through some stretches of the Gulf Coast.

    Ms. Shiyou hurries through her family's FEMA trailer back
    story, which is extraordinary, but here, mundane: Returning
    to a home that was miles from shore but destroyed, then
    moving like nomads, from a gymnasium to a warehouse
    to a tent to a FEMA trailer encampment for five months.
    Then, finally, back to their property, into this FEMA trailer
    on their former front lawn, where they have lived since March.

    She takes you on a tour.

    To keep from tracking mud into the trailer, the Shiyous have
    placed a recovered piece of their old deck on the ground.
    "This was the color of my house," Ms. Shiyou says, walking
    on it. "A country blue."

    She takes one step into the trailer, and the initial urge is
    to hunch. Mr. Shiyou, a gangly 6-foot-2, stretches out his
    arms to demonstrate how he can simultaneously touch the
    ceiling with one hand and the floor with the other.

    His wife slides open a door to her immediate right, revealing
    a room taken up almost entirely by the master bed. "You just
    crawl in from the foot and pull the blankets up as you go,"
    she says.

    The hangers in the small closet have to be tilted sideways
    to fit, and the space-eating fan is necessary because you
    lose the air-conditioning if you slide the door shut for privacy.
    Mr. Shiyou says he sleeps less than five hours a night because
    that is all he can take of this confinement.

    Moving left, the kitchen, with the bread and cookies stored
    in the microwave, paper plates and plastic cups from Wal-Mart
    in the cabinet and a couple of Reed & Barton silver coffeepots
    the family found in the woods after the waters receded.

    "I'm going to put them in my china closet when I get one,"
    Ms. Shiyou says, talking over the television set, which is
    blaring MTV beside her. "He usually always watches cartoons,"
    she says of Cody. "And it drives me crazy."

    Take one step off the small stretch of tan linoleum, which
    she keeps clean with the mop at the door, and onto the patch
    of worn dun-colored carpet, which she keeps clean with the
    carpet sweeper beside the mop, and you are now in the dining
    room, living room, and practically into Cody's bed.

    A small, hard couch. A small booth with a small table, under
    which are stored a blue suitcase, Cody's book bag, Cody's
    suddenly massive sneakers and shoes and his father's even
    larger shoes. Cody's bed, where he stashes Doritos, and the
    bed above, used for storing blankets and winter clothes.

    Finally, the bathroom, whose door, when opened, blocks
    Cody's bed. You have to lean over the toilet to see yourself
    in the mirror. Mr. Shiyou practically kneels to fit into the
    shower.

    This, then, is the home where the Shiyous had family
    over for an Easter barbecue.

    "There was Vanessa and Joe, Jessica, Tim, Raegan and Kiley,"
    Ms. Shiyou says. "And then Heather and Jasper, and then
    my niece Mindy her boyfriend, Josh, and their two kids,
    John and Jared. And wasn't David and Regina here? Yes,
    they were."

    Mr. Shiyou, 43, is a welder, and Ms. Shiyou, 40, runs a check-
    cashing store. When they look out from their FEMA trailer,
    they see two other FEMA trailers, occupied by two of her
    daughters and their families. They can also see the raised
    dirt foundation where they plan to build a home at a higher
    level, even though the land is well beyond the flood zone.

    Insurance paid off the note on their old home, and nothing
    more. They have secured another loan, but have yet to hear
    whether they will receive any federal grant to ease their
    financial burden. Either way, they plan to start building next
    month, and with luck will be out of the trailer by Christmas.

    Dusk has descended; a full moon is rising over the gulf.
    Mr. Shiyou returns to working on the all-but-destroyed
    house of a beloved 89-year-old neighbor. Ms. Shiyou,
    meanwhile, recreates in her mind the home they shared for
    10 years and lost nine months ago.

    The Kia Sephia and the Dodge pickup in the driveway. The
    curio cabinet, with all those angels collected by her late mother.
    The framed family photographs. The children's encyclopedias.
    Her set of dishes, whose pattern was, was —

    "God, what color was my kitchen set?" Ms. Shiyou asks, her
    voice breaking. She says it will come to her, but it doesn't.

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

    9) U.A.W. Will Use Part of Strike Fund
    to Aid Recruitment of New Members
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/business/14union.html

    LAS VEGAS, June 13 (AP) — The United Automobile Workers union
    voted Tuesday to use part of its $914 million strike fund to pay
    for the recruitment of new members.

    The amendment to the union's constitution, approved
    overwhelmingly by voice vote at the U.A.W.'s convention here,
    allows the international leadership to spend up to $60 million
    from the strike fund, mainly for organizing efforts during the
    four years between conventions.

    The union's membership peaked at 1.5 million in 1979. It dropped
    to 676,000 in 2002 and now stands at just less than 599,000.

    "It makes sense in terms of what it's going to take to build the
    future strength of the U.A.W.," said Scott Bailey, president of
    Local 2865, a relatively new local that represents 12,000 academic
    student employees of the University of California.

    Mr. Bailey told fellow members that organizing could often take
    a long time, saying that it took nearly two decades to change
    California law to allow academic student workers to organize.

    "We all know that the industrial sector is flying away to right-to-
    work states, where it's going to take time and big-time financial
    resources to win campaigns," he said, referring to states with
    laws that do not favor unions.

    The U.A.W. said it had had success recently in organizing workers
    in health care, on college campuses, at auto dealerships and
    in the technical, office and professional sectors.

    Officials say the union has recruited about 66,000 new members
    since its last convention in 2002, with 42,000 coming from the
    traditional manufacturing sector and 24,000 from other areas.

    But the growth has not been enough to counter the loss of
    members because of restructuring, plant closings, outsourcing
    and privatization, the union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, said
    in his opening-day speech on Monday.

    The union is about to lose thousands more members in
    manufacturing. Ford Motor and General Motors want to reduce
    their hourly work forces by 60,000, and suppliers represented
    by the U.A.W. also are cutting jobs. Delphi, G.M.'s largest
    supplier, plans to close 21 of its 29 United States plants
    by 2008 and cut its hourly work force by thousands.

    The change approved Tuesday by the union allows the U.A.W.
    to use the $60 million for initiatives to bolster membership,
    strengthen its bargaining ability or promote the interests
    of members and working people.

    The membership also authorized the union to transfer
    $50 million from the strike fund to the union's general
    operating fund.

    And it voted to increase the dues rebates that locals get
    when the strike fund exceeds $550 million, giving them
    more money for operating costs.

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

    10) Profits Fall, Stores Close
    Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society
    By SETH SANDRONSKY
    June 10 / 11, 2006
    http://www.counterpunch.org/sandronsky06102006.html

    There are too many U.S. grocery chain stores, said George Whalin, head
    of Retail Management Consultants, in The Sacramento Bee of June 7. Call
    it overcapacity in the grocery industry.

    A few new owners of the Albertsons grocery chain are responding
    accordingly. In early June, three companies purchased Albertsons Inc.
    for the tidy sum of $17 billion.

    One of the trio, Cerberus Partners, an investment firm based in New
    York, partnered with the commercial real estate firm of Kimco Realty
    Corp. To halt a fall in profits for Albertsons during the past four
    years, 100 of its stores nationwide will be closing, 37 of which are
    located in Northern California.

    These "under-performing stores" did not bring an acceptable return on
    investment to owners, according to Albertsons spokeswoman Quyen Ha. And
    the consequences for Albertsons employees?

    How many of them will become jobless is not yet known. Contrast their
    bitter fate with that of Larry Johnston, CEO of Albertsons.

    Mr. Johnston earned about $60 million as Albertsons shareholders lost
    around $900 million between 2000 and 2003, said Graef Crystal, a
    business professor at UC Berkeley, in a report on KTVB NewsChannel 7,
    the NBC station in Boise, Idaho on July 8, 2003. Nice work if you can
    get it.

    Albertsons competes for profits and market share in the grocery industry
    with discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc., owned by the Walton family of
    multi-billionaires. Their wealth is built on the backs of Wal-Mart's
    hourly work force, which earns lower wages than unionized Albertsons
    workers.

    As the good Marxists in corporate America know, low wages plus high
    productivity boost profit rates. Driven thusly, grocery companies
    compete to undersell their rivals and put them out of business.

    Wal-Mart is pursuing this strategy with a vengeance in California. In
    early 2006, Kroger-owned Ralphs fell to the Wal-Mart discount rout,
    departing the Sacramento area, having shut down eight of its stores in
    the capital region.

    Two years earlier, unionized Southern California grocery workers endured
    a five-month strike and lockout, trying to prevent Safeway-owned Vons,
    Ralphs and Albertsons from making deep cuts to employees' health
    benefits and hourly wages. On one hand, the employers did not get all of
    the cuts they wanted at the end of the five months.

    On the other hand, new-hire grocery workers in the south state were
    forced to labor for lower wages and fork out higher co-pays for their
    health benefits. The grocery chains had sought such cuts due to
    competition from Wal-Mart.

    It is unclear how many Albertsons workers will be fired as a result of
    the upcoming store closures. What is clear is that overcapacity runs a
    red line through the U.S. economy, from airlines to cars, and more.

    Currently, the shake-out underway in the marketplace of U.S. grocery
    chains is falling hard on wage earners. They are living the lives of pay
    cuts and layoffs under President George W. Bush's "Ownership Society."

    National health care would provide a cushion for the human harm created
    by overcapacity in the U.S. economy. It is time to think and act outside
    the box of the usual labor union-company agreements fueled by market
    share and profits.

    Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a
    co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper. He
    can be reached at ssandron@hotmail.com

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

    11) "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.]

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

    12) 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.

    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
    LINKS ONLY
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------

    Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to
    Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely
    By NINA BERNSTEIN
    A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government
    has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens
    on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold
    them indefinitely without explanation.
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/nyregion/15detain.html

    Bear Stearns Profit Jumps 83 Percent
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 1:36 p.m. ET
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Earns-Bear-Stearns.html

    Alito Vote Loosens Limits on Evidence
    By DAVID STOUT
    WASHINGTON, June 15— The Supreme Court today affirmed the
    power of police officers backed by a search warrant to enter
    a home without knocking, and in so doing signaled the more
    conservative tilt of the tribunal in recent months.
    June 15, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/washington/15cnd-scotus.html?hp&ex=1150430400&en=fa5321eb3b84db97&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    US Military Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 2,500
    The number of US military deaths in the Iraq war has reached
    2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday. In addition, 18,490
    US troops have been wounded in the war.
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061506J.shtml

    Green Fuel's Dirty Secret
    By:Sasha Lilley on:Jun 14 2006 [11:35 am] (44 reads)
    http://www.innworldreport.net/
    http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=1003

    US inflation and rate rise worries cause worldwide shares sell-off
    -Oil, gold and industrial metal prices plummet
    -Fears grow of American economic slowdown
    Larry Elliott and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
    Wednesday June 14, 2006
    Guardian
    http://business.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329504144-108725,00.html

    Gaza beach killings highlight need for revolutionary change
    By Yossi Schwartz in Israel   
    Monday, 12 June 2006
    http://www.marxist.com/gaza-beach-killings-change120606.htm

    Greg Palast | Keeping Iraq's Oil in the Ground
    Greg Palast asks, "Did the petroleum industry, which had a direct,
    if hidden, hand in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover
    of Iraq to prevent overproduction?"
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061406J.shtml

    Dogs and Their Fine Noses Find New Career Paths
    By JENNIFER 8. LEE
    June 13, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13dogs.html?ex=1150430400&en=ea5c693d8f37c5c2&ei=5087%0A

    Global Image of the U.S. Is Worsening, Survey Finds
    By BRIAN KNOWLTON
    June 14, 2006
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/world/14pew.html

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