OCTOBER 28 LOCALLY COORDINATED
ANTIWAR ACTIVITIES: A CALL TO ACTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police ICE looks for the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pedro Olivares

Related:

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

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PLEASE FORWARD ** PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY ** PLEASE FORWARD

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

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

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

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

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

SAVE THE DATE

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

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

We look forward to seeing you in two weeks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,

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

Related:

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

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

CONTACT ARMY TO DEMAND:

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

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

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

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

PLEASE WRITE AND CALL:

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

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

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

For background information:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join the Campaign to
Shut Down the Guantanamo Torture Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suicides and Torture in Guantanamo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UN Panel says: Shut Down Guantanamo Now! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go to:

http://www.shutitdown.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

Need I say more about the virtues of JROTC?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The resolution:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jericho Boston
  
UPDATE FROM GRAND RIVER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEFEND IMMIGRANT RIGHTS AND
CIVIL RIGHTS!

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

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

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

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

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

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

KEEP IDRISS STELLEY FOUNDATION OPEN!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defend Oglala Sioux President Cecilia Fire Thunder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In solidarity,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRESERVE INTERNET NETWORK NEUTRALITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just say, "No."

Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

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

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

Tar Heel, N.C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit for this article.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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/

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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."

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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LINKS ONLY
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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

posted 11:14 AM  0 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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!

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

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) 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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LINKS ONLY
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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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