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    Saturday, April 07, 2007
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER - SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2007

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    THIS JUST IN: SEE "ARTICLES IN FULL" BELOW

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

    Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn,
    Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
    U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 01-9014, 02-9001 (death penalty)

    Dear Friends:

    Oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
    will be on May 17 before a three-judge panel in the U.S.
    Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia.

    The issues concern the right to a fair trial, the death
    penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken
    journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have
    run through this case since the beginning. We are
    engaged in extensive work in preparation for this
    complex hearing.

    Many people have called my office and sent e-mail asking
    how they can make contributions to the defense of Mumia.

    Concern has been expressed as to how to ensure that
    donations go to the right organization so that they
    are actually applied to the legal effort rather than
    for some other purpose.

    To contribute directly to the legal defense of Mumia,
    please make your check payable to the "National Lawyers
    Guild Foundation." All such donations are tax deductible
    to the full extent provided by law. The NLG Foundation
    is a tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organization under
    Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).

    Donations should be mailed to:

    Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
    P.O. Box 2012
    New York, NY 10159

    Your interest in this struggle for human rights
    and against the death penalty is appreciated.

    With best wishes,

    Robert

    Robert R. Bryan
    Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
    2088 Union Street, Suite 4
    San Francisco, California 94123

    Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal

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    CINE DEL BARRIO and New College Media Studies Program present:
    The Red Dance (El Baile Rojo) directed by Yezid Campos
    a film about Colombia, video, in color, 57 minutes, 2004
    sub-titles in English plus, an up to the minute report on the
    continuing struggle in Colombia by Cristina Gutierrez.
    Saturday, April 7, 11:30 a.m.
    at the Roxie New College Film Center
    3117 - 16th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero)
    San Francisco
    No admission charge

    This is part of "Nuestra America, Muestra de Cine y Video
    Documental" series of film showings on Saturdays of March,
    April, and May. All films are at 11:30am and 1:30pm on
    Saturdays at the Roxie. Films on Nicaragua, Venezuela,
    Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and the U.S. (Immigrantes
    Nuevo Orleans). Films are in Spanish with English sub-titles.
    For more information: 415-863-1087
    www.roxie.com

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    {SANCTUARYnational} ELVIRA ARELLANO BEGINS HUNGER STRIKE
    For immediate release

    TO: ALL MEDIA
    FROM: CENTRO SIN FRONTERAS/LA FAMILIA LATINA UNIDA
    Contact: Emma Lozano (773) 671-1798
    Or Rev Walter L Coleman (773) 671-1755

    PRESS CONFERENCE
    THURSDAY, APRIL 5TH,
    4:30 P.M.
    Adalberto united Methodist Church
    2716 W Division St, Chicago, Illinois

    ELVIRA ARELLANO BEGINS HUNGER STRIKE:
    “The Raids and Deportations and
    Separations of Families
    Must Stop Now !
    “The Congress and the President must
    fix the Broken Law
    and End the Crucifixion of Innocent
    Children and their Families.”

    “As I have stayed here in Sanctuary with my U.S.
    citizen son Saulito for seven months, the Congress
    and the President have taken no action to fix the
    broken law. Meanwhile, millions of people live
    in the shadows and millions of children live
    in fear of being abandoned. While nothing is done
    to fix the broken law, the raids and deportations
    continue to escalate every week..

    “I am starting this hunger strike, on the eve
    of Good Friday, as a prayer that our people will
    mobilize, that the hearts of the people of this
    nation will open and that the elected officials
    will act to preserve our families and the Holy
    Bond between the children and their mothers and
    fathers. I pray that not one more family will
    be separated, not one more child left behind.”

    Elvira Arellano

    The Press Conference will follow a brief celebration
    of the Last Supper with families and children facing
    separation. Elvira Arellano will call on others
    around the country to join her in the hunger strike
    and her pastor, Rev. Walter Coleman, who will join
    her in the hunger strike, will call on religious
    leaders across the country to stand with her.

    Hunger Strike Day 1

    On Friday, April 6th, at 10 A.M. Elvira will participate
    in a brief Good Friday ceremony at the church and send
    off a delegation who will hold a “Viacrucis” in front
    of ICE Headquarters at Clark and Congress.

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    Anti-War Rally at Port of Oakland
    Saturday, April 7, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
    An anti-war rally will mark the fourth anniversary of the
    Oakland police attack on anti-war protesters at the Port.
    Port of Oakland Headquarters
    530 Water Street, foot of Washington St. in Jack London Square.
    For more information, call
    415-863-6637 or email portaction@riseup.net

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    SOLIDARITY WITH KATRINA SURVIVORS

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., S.F.

    Featured Speaker: KALI AKUNO
    Executive Director, People's Hurricane Relief Fund - O.C.

    Also: "Down But Not Out" —A Film on the Gulf Coast Resistance

    Music by Leith Kahl, Biko, & Spoken Word Artists

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    (@ 16th Street; near 16th St. Mission BART)
    Donation requested at door; No one turned away for lack of funds.

    Sponsored by PHRF-OC, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,
    Bay Area Katrina Solidarity Committee,
    Revolution Youth, The Organizer Newspaper,
    Colectivo Media Insurgente, CRUCS,
    Mission High Black Student Union

    For more information, call 415-646-6469 or 504-301-0215.

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    DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

    The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
    release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Dr. Al-Arian is currently
    under his 60th day of a water-only hunger strike in protest of his
    maltreatment by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
    plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
    he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
    a grand jury in Virginia.

    Dr. Al-Arian is currently being held at a medical facility in North Carolina.
    He is in critical condition, having lost 53 pounds, over 25% of his
    body weight.

    According to family members who recently visited him he is no longer
    able to walk or stand on his own.

    More information on Dr. Al-Arian's ordeal can be found in the transcript
    of a recent interview with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian on Democracy Now.

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

    ACTION:

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

    Call, Email and Write:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Contact:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Illustration: TOM BACHTELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    carol.williams@latimes.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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    Matt Renner | Pentagon Office Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040607A.shtml

    Number of US Uninsured Soars, Along with Big Pharma Profits
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/06/343/

    Wolfowitz Accused of Nepotism at World Bank
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/06/341/

    Leading article: The world's biggest polluters
    can no longer ignore the evidence
    Climate change presents one of the most serious
    threats ever faced by human life on the planet
    Published: 07 April 2007
    http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2430107.ece

    Colombian Conflict Spills Across its Venezuelan Border
    By: Humberto Márquez - IPS
    Wednesday, Apr 04, 2007
    www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2007

    FOCUS | Scientific Panel Issues Devastating Climate Change Report
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040707Z.shtml

    What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
    Putting the Iran Crisis in Context
    By Noam Chomsky
    "The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds
    without ridicule on the assumption that the United States
    owns the world. We did not, for example, engage
    in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether
    the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan."
    04/06/07
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17491.htm

    A civil rights revolution with 'netroots' origins
    "A14-year-old black girl from tiny Paris, Texas, was sent
    to a youth prison for up to seven years for shoving
    a hall monitor at her high school.
    The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl
    to probation for burning down her family's house."
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_5599216

    Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI Bank
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/326/

    Canadian Seal Hunt Opens Again Amidst Outcry
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/332/

    World Health Day: How Much Can Iraq Survive
    Inter Press Service
    Ali al-Fadhily
    http://dahrjamailiraq.com
    http://uruknet.info/?p=m31918&s1=h1
    http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37236

    Federal Official in Student Loans Held Loan Stock
    By JONATHAN D. GLATER and KAREN W. ARENSON
    April 6, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/education/06loans.html?hp

    Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery
    · Benedict hails Marx's analysis of modern man
    · Publication planned for 80th birthday
    John Hooper in Rome
    Guardian
    "Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation
    movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having
    "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions
    of the world.
    An extract published from his first book since being elected
    pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and
    anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly,
    the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis
    of contemporary man as a victim of alienation."
    April 5, 2007
    http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2050255,00.html

    None of the Democratic Contenders Has Called for the
    Closure of the Guantanamo Prison Of Confessions and Torture
    By MARGARET KIMBERLY
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/kimberly04042007.html

    Quota Quickly Filled on Visas for High-Tech Guest Workers
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The federal Citizenship and Immigration Services reached
    its 2008 limit for skilled-worker visa petitions in a single
    day and says it will not accept any more, to the dismay
    of technology companies that rely on the visas to hire
    foreign employees.
    The agency began accepting petitions Monday for the fiscal
    year starting Oct. 1 and said it received about 150,000
    applications by midafternoon.
    The temporary H-1B visas are for foreign workers with
    high-technology skills or in specialty occupations.
    Congress has mandated that the immigration agency
    limit the visas granted to 65,000, although the cap
    does not apply to petitions made on behalf of current
    H-1B holders, and an additional 20,000 visas can be
    granted to applicants who hold advanced degrees from
    American academic institutions.
    The agency said it would use computers to pick visa
    recipients randomly from the applications received
    Monday and Tuesday. It will reject the rest of the
    applications and return the filing fees.
    Employers seek H-1B visas on behalf of scientists,
    engineers, computer programmers and other workers
    with theoretical or technical expertise. About one-
    third of Microsoft’s 46,000 employees in the United
    States have work visas or are legal permanent residents
    with green cards, said Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman
    for the company.
    “We are trying to work with Congress to get the cap
    increased,” Ms. Terzano said. “Our real preference
    here is that there not be a cap at all.”
    Compete America, a coalition that includes Microsoft,
    the chip maker Intel, the business software company
    Oracle and others, voiced its opposition to the
    visa cap in a statement Tuesday.
    “Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign
    professionals are not only counterproductive, they
    are anticompetitive and detrimental to America’s
    long-term economic competitiveness,” said Robert
    E. Hoffman, an Oracle vice president and co-chairman
    of Compete America.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/business/05visa.html

    California: Plea for a Shorter Sentence
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The lawyer and parents of John Walker Lindh, the American-
    born Taliban soldier serving 20 years in prison after his
    capture in Afghanistan, called on President Bush to commute
    his sentence and set him free. The renewed call to shorten
    the sentence was based on a nine-month term that David Hicks,
    an Australian, received Saturday after pleading guilty to
    supporting terrorism. “In the atmosphere of the time, the
    best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year
    sentence,” said Mr. Lindh’s father, Frank Lindh. The White
    House did not return a call seeking comment.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05brfs-PLEAFORASHOR_BRF.html

    Castro Again Chides U.S. on Ethanol Plan
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    HAVANA, April 4 (AP) — The ailing Cuban leader Fidel
    Castro returned to the public debate — if not view —
    for the second time in less than a week on Wednesday
    with a column in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
    Mr. Castro, 80, chided the Bush administration for its
    support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move
    that he said would leave the world’s poor hungry.
    It was his second article on the issue in less than
    a week, indicating that he is increasingly eager to
    have his voice heard on international matters, eight
    months after stepping down as Cuba’s president because
    of illness.
    Cuba has experimented with using sugar cane for ethanol
    production, but now that the United States has embraced
    the idea, Mr. Castro and his ally Hugo Chávez, the
    president of Venezuela, have expressed concern that
    rich countries will buy up the food crops of poor nations
    to meet their energy needs, threatening millions with
    starvation.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/americas/05cuba.html

    Havana rights
    Calvin Tucker
    March 28, 2007 8:30 PM
    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/calvin_tucker/2007/03/the_street_sce
    ne_was_entertain.html

    Marking Time, Making Do
    By JOHN FREEMAN GILL
    NY Times, April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/nyregion/thecity/01subw.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Happy Holidays!

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

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

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

    posted 11:43 AM  0 comments

    Friday, April 06, 2007
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2007

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    Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn,
    Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
    U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 01-9014, 02-9001 (death penalty)

    Dear Friends:

    Oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
    will be on May 17 before a three-judge panel in the U.S.
    Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia.

    The issues concern the right to a fair trial, the death
    penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken
    journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have
    run through this case since the beginning. We are
    engaged in extensive work in preparation for this
    complex hearing.

    Many people have called my office and sent e-mail asking
    how they can make contributions to the defense of Mumia.

    Concern has been expressed as to how to ensure that
    donations go to the right organization so that they
    are actually applied to the legal effort rather than
    for some other purpose.

    To contribute directly to the legal defense of Mumia,
    please make your check payable to the "National Lawyers
    Guild Foundation." All such donations are tax deductible
    to the full extent provided by law. The NLG Foundation
    is a tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organization under
    Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).

    Donations should be mailed to:

    Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
    P.O. Box 2012
    New York, NY 10159

    Your interest in this struggle for human rights
    and against the death penalty is appreciated.

    With best wishes,

    Robert

    Robert R. Bryan
    Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
    2088 Union Street, Suite 4
    San Francisco, California 94123

    Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal

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    CINE DEL BARRIO and New College Media Studies Program present:
    The Red Dance (El Baile Rojo) directed by Yezid Campos
    a film about Colombia, video, in color, 57 minutes, 2004
    sub-titles in English plus, an up to the minute report on the
    continuing struggle in Colombia by Cristina Gutierrez.
    Saturday, April 7, 11:30 a.m.
    at the Roxie New College Film Center
    3117 - 16th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero)
    San Francisco
    No admission charge

    This is part of "Nuestra America, Muestra de Cine y Video
    Documental" series of film showings on Saturdays of March,
    April, and May. All films are at 11:30am and 1:30pm on
    Saturdays at the Roxie. Films on Nicaragua, Venezuela,
    Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and the U.S. (Immigrantes
    Nuevo Orleans). Films are in Spanish with English sub-titles.
    For more information: 415-863-1087
    www.roxie.com

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    {SANCTUARYnational} ELVIRA ARELLANO BEGINS HUNGER STRIKE
    For immediate release

    TO: ALL MEDIA
    FROM: CENTRO SIN FRONTERAS/LA FAMILIA LATINA UNIDA
    Contact: Emma Lozano (773) 671-1798
    Or Rev Walter L Coleman (773) 671-1755

    PRESS CONFERENCE
    THURSDAY, APRIL 5TH,
    4:30 P.M.
    Adalberto united Methodist Church
    2716 W Division St, Chicago, Illinois

    ELVIRA ARELLANO BEGINS HUNGER STRIKE:
    “The Raids and Deportations and
    Separations of Families
    Must Stop Now !
    “The Congress and the President must
    fix the Broken Law
    and End the Crucifixion of Innocent
    Children and their Families.”

    “As I have stayed here in Sanctuary with my U.S.
    citizen son Saulito for seven months, the Congress
    and the President have taken no action to fix the
    broken law. Meanwhile, millions of people live
    in the shadows and millions of children live
    in fear of being abandoned. While nothing is done
    to fix the broken law, the raids and deportations
    continue to escalate every week..

    “I am starting this hunger strike, on the eve
    of Good Friday, as a prayer that our people will
    mobilize, that the hearts of the people of this
    nation will open and that the elected officials
    will act to preserve our families and the Holy
    Bond between the children and their mothers and
    fathers. I pray that not one more family will
    be separated, not one more child left behind.”

    Elvira Arellano

    The Press Conference will follow a brief celebration
    of the Last Supper with families and children facing
    separation. Elvira Arellano will call on others
    around the country to join her in the hunger strike
    and her pastor, Rev. Walter Coleman, who will join
    her in the hunger strike, will call on religious
    leaders across the country to stand with her.

    Hunger Strike Day 1

    On Friday, April 6th, at 10 A.M. Elvira will participate
    in a brief Good Friday ceremony at the church and send
    off a delegation who will hold a “Viacrucis” in front
    of ICE Headquarters at Clark and Congress.

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    Anti-War Rally at Port of Oakland
    Saturday, April 7, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
    An anti-war rally will mark the fourth anniversary of the
    Oakland police attack on anti-war protesters at the Port.
    Port of Oakland Headquarters
    530 Water Street, foot of Washington St. in Jack London Square.
    For more information, call
    415-863-6637 or email portaction@riseup.net

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    SOLIDARITY WITH KATRINA SURVIVORS

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., S.F.

    Featured Speaker: KALI AKUNO
    Executive Director, People's Hurricane Relief Fund - O.C.

    Also: "Down But Not Out" —A Film on the Gulf Coast Resistance

    Music by Leith Kahl, Biko, & Spoken Word Artists

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    (@ 16th Street; near 16th St. Mission BART)
    Donation requested at door; No one turned away for lack of funds.

    Sponsored by PHRF-OC, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,
    Bay Area Katrina Solidarity Committee,
    Revolution Youth, The Organizer Newspaper,
    Colectivo Media Insurgente, CRUCS,
    Mission High Black Student Union

    For more information, call 415-646-6469 or 504-301-0215.

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    DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

    The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
    release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Dr. Al-Arian is currently
    under his 60th day of a water-only hunger strike in protest of his
    maltreatment by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
    plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
    he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
    a grand jury in Virginia.

    Dr. Al-Arian is currently being held at a medical facility in North Carolina.
    He is in critical condition, having lost 53 pounds, over 25% of his
    body weight.

    According to family members who recently visited him he is no longer
    able to walk or stand on his own.

    More information on Dr. Al-Arian's ordeal can be found in the transcript
    of a recent interview with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian on Democracy Now.

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

    ACTION:

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

    Call, Email and Write:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Contact:

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

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

    1) Let America Be America Again
    by Langston Hughes
    http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609

    2) The End of the Line as They Know It
    By LOUIS UCHITELLE
    Detroit
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/business/yourmoney/01jobs.html?ref=business

    3) Patents Over Patients
    By RALPH W. MOSS
    Op-Ed Contributor
    State College, Pa.
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html

    4) Distract and Disenfranchise
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    April 2, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login

    5) Taxing Private Equity
    Editorial
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02mon1.html?hp

    6)PROTECT OUR PENSIONS
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/

    7) "The Language Isn't Strong Enough"
    A Report on the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention
    Tueday April 3, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

    8) HOW IRAN TREATS PRISONERS
    HOW THE US TREATS PRISONERS
    "Call that humiliation? No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings.
    These Iranians are clearly a very uncivilised bunch."
    Terry Jones
    Saturday March 31, 2007
    The Guardian
    http://www.guardian .co.uk/

    9) More Than a Feeling
    Editorial
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds1.html?hp

    10) Daimler Considers Selling Off Chrysler Division
    By MARK LANDLER
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04cnd-daimler.html?hp

    11) Jungle Law
    "In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco's
    wells in the area around Lago Agrio ("sour
    lake"), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same
    year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in
    an epic lawsuit˜among the largest environmental
    suits in history˜against Chevron, which acquired
    Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle
    in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author
    investigates how many hundreds of square miles of
    surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump."
    by William Langewiesche
    May 2007
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705

    12) Our Crumbling Foundation
    By BOB HERBERT
    April 5, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp

    13) Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home
    By DEBORAH SONTAG
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

    14) Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois
    By LIBBY SANDER
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05raid.html

    15) Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
    Democratic Blood Money
    By JOSHUA FRANK
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/frank04042007.html

    16) Reflections of the Commander in Chief
    THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF GENOCIDE
    April 3, 2007
    By Fidel Castro Ruz
    GRANMA
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art84.html

    17) Guantánamo Follies
    Editorial
    April 6, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/opinion/06fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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

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

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

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

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

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

    1) Let America Be America Again
    by Langston Hughes
    http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609

    Let America be America again.

    Let it be the dream it used to be.

    Let it be the pioneer on the plain

    Seeking a home where he himself is free.


    (America never was America to me.)


    Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

    Let it be that great strong land of love

    Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

    That any man be crushed by one above.


    (It never was America to me.)


    O, let my land be a land where Liberty

    Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

    But opportunity is real, and life is free,

    Equality is in the air we breathe.


    (There's never been equality for me,

    Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")


    Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

    And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?


    I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

    I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

    I am the red man driven from the land,

    I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

    And finding only the same old stupid plan

    Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.


    I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

    Tangled in that ancient endless chain

    Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

    Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

    Of work the men! Of take the pay!

    Of owning everything for one's own greed!


    I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

    I am the worker sold to the machine.

    I am the Negro, servant to you all.

    I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

    Hungry yet today despite the dream.

    Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

    I am the man who never got ahead,

    The poorest worker bartered through the years.


    Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

    In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

    Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

    That even yet its mighty daring sings

    In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

    That's made America the land it has become.

    O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

    In search of what I meant to be my home--

    For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

    And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

    And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

    To build a "homeland of the free."


    The free?


    Who said the free? Not me?

    Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

    The millions shot down when we strike?

    The millions who have nothing for our pay?

    For all the dreams we've dreamed

    And all the songs we've sung

    And all the hopes we've held

    And all the flags we've hung,

    The millions who have nothing for our pay--

    Except the dream that's almost dead today.


    O, let America be America again--

    The land that never has been yet--

    And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

    The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

    Who made America,

    Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

    Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

    Must bring back our mighty dream again.


    Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

    The steel of freedom does not stain.

    From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

    We must take back our land again,

    America!


    O, yes,

    I say it plain,

    America never was America to me,

    And yet I swear this oath--

    America will be!


    Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

    The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

    We, the people, must redeem

    The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

    The mountains and the endless plain--

    All, all the stretch of these great green states--

    And make America again!

    From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published
    by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

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    2) The End of the Line as They Know It
    By LOUIS UCHITELLE
    Detroit
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/business/yourmoney/01jobs.html?ref=business

    TALK to Kenneth Doolittle about General Motors, where he once
    supervised a team of assembly line workers, and he readily speaks
    with pride about his job and the self-esteem it provided. “I loved
    all of it — the people, the work,” he says. “I was in a position
    finally where people listened to me when I spoke. I wasn’t just
    a Joe-Nobody. I contributed.”

    Talk to Mr. Doolittle a little longer and he gradually describes
    why he decided to take a buyout from G.M. — joining more than
    80,000 Big Three employees in the largest exodus of workers
    from a single American industry in decades.

    After G.M. shuttered the plant where Mr. Doolittle worked,
    it offered him a job back on the assembly line at another
    factory, an offer he pondered in silent humiliation. At 54,
    he considers himself “mentally not ready to retire,” but his
    union contract, and G.M.’s woes, required him to return
    to the assembly line and forfeit the higher rank he had
    worked years to secure.

    So he decided to leave. “I did not want to start over,” he
    said, “not after 33 ½ years.”

    The exodus that Mr. Doolittle is joining is voluntary. Some
    have changed their minds. More than 3,000 workers who
    signed up over the last year to leave Ford and G.M.
    subsequently decided to stay. These are, after all, the
    highest-paying blue-collar jobs left in America. Even so,
    workers are departing from the auto industry en masse,
    escaping — as they put it in interviews — increasingly
    difficult working conditions at companies they fear will
    desert them.

    As the workers depart in greater numbers than either their
    union or their employers anticipated, the exodus becomes
    more than a long ledger of altered lives. It is an accounting,
    of course, but an accounting of the most personal and
    poignant sort. Communities are fragmenting, families are
    relocating, and years of individual choices tethered to the
    notion of a certain kind of job in a certain kind of place are
    giving way to uncertainty, regret and loss of control.

    “The question is, Are we seeing a final end to what we have
    called blue-collar aristocracy?” asks Sheldon H. Danziger,
    a public policy researcher at the University of Michigan
    in Ann Arbor. “Big Steel is gone, coal is gone, shipbuilding
    is gone — all the big industrial unions are gone or going,
    except the auto workers. These are the people who had
    the strongest ability to fight, and now they seem to be
    giving up the struggle.”

    The reasons auto workers give for embracing buyouts are
    almost as numerous as the 18 workers interviewed for this
    article. Some have already departed from G.M., the first
    of the Big Three to offer the buyouts, and others are soon
    to depart from the Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler.
    Many who left or are leaving were eligible for retirement,
    having already worked the necessary 30 years. Others have
    accepted lump-sum payments, often in the six figures,
    to start over again. Indeed, the voluntary nature of this
    exodus has made it seem softer or less apparent than the
    upheavals that have greeted mass layoffs in other industries.

    But the common thread running through all of the interviews
    is that working conditions and benefits, which had become
    steadily better through the 1970s and even in the 1990s,
    were unmistakably in decline — and the future unpredictable.

    Mr. Doolittle, a stocky man with a narrow mustache, joined
    G.M. on the assembly line in Lansing in 1973 and rose to become
    a leader of one of the Japanese-style work teams that first
    became fashionable in the American auto industry in the
    1980s. By 2005, he was a “team build coordinator” with
    authority over several groups whose job it was to transfer
    engines from a conveyor into cars, bolt them into place and
    attach skeins of wires as the cars moved down an assembly line.

    When G.M. decided to close his plant in 2005, Mr. Doolittle’s
    seniority gave him every right to transfer to a much newer
    factory right next door, where G.M. is building a popular
    Cadillac sedan and is likely to do so for as long as Mr. Doolittle
    might have wanted a job. But he balked because of the change
    in stature that would accompany the switch.

    Since his departure last year, he has struggled to occupy
    his time. Divorced, with four grown children, he divides his
    days between an apartment in Lansing and a trailer parked
    on a small lakefront plot that he owns north of the city.
    He has typed out on a laptop three novels “about my life
    experience.” And to make up some of his lost income —
    his $36,000 pension is 60 percent of his old pay — he
    works 20 hours a week, at $10 an hour, doing maintenance
    at Sears stores.

    “That is just enough to keep me from watching Jerry Springer
    every day,” he said. “I don’t want to sit in front of a TV;
    I’m too young for that.”

    STARTING two years ago, the Big Three announced their
    intention to shed tens of thousands of workers by 2008.
    The buyouts, negotiated with the United Automobile Workers,
    are an attempt to orchestrate a huge downsizing in a kindlier,
    more orderly manner. The offers hold out a variety of subsidies,
    with the announced goal to tide people over as they make
    the transition to other jobs and lives.

    Ford Motor in particular has told its younger employees, through
    a series of job fairs, that good incomes await them in other
    industries, especially if they avail themselves of one of the
    tuition subsidies that Ford offers as a buyout option. Ford
    also offers departing employees a six-figure lump-sum
    payment, which experts at the job fairs suggest could be
    used to start a small business or to buy into a franchise.

    Joe W. Laymon, Ford’s vice president for corporate human
    resources and labor affairs, says his company has successfully
    used the job fairs to inform workers about opportunities and
    good pay elsewhere. On a more ominous note, however,
    he is quick to add that Ford has no other choice but to lay
    off or buy out workers if the company hopes to remain
    competitive.

    “We believe that the Ford Motor Company will be a viable,
    profitable entity going forward,” Mr. Laymon says. “To get
    from where we are today to that viable, profitable entity, we
    will reduce the number of employees working at Ford. Now,
    we can do it with an involuntary action or we can do it with
    a combination of voluntary actions and involuntary actions.”

    Across America, more than 30 million people have been forced
    out of jobs since the early 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
    reports, and regaining lost incomes has not been easy. Nearly
    50 million new jobs have been created over that same period,
    according to the bureau, so there are always new opportunities
    but more often than not at lower pay. Among those who have
    lost work, only a third held new jobs two years later that paid
    as well as those that were lost, according to the bureau’s surveys
    of displaced workers. Another third of those displaced were
    in jobs that paid, on average, 15 to 20 percent less than their
    previous employment — while the final third had dropped out
    of the labor force entirely.

    The Census Bureau reported a jump in net migration out of
    Michigan last year: some 42,300 people left, up from 29,700
    in 2005. That was far and away the largest outflow from the
    state since 1984, during the Rust Belt crisis, census data show.
    In some Michigan neighborhoods that have been home to auto
    workers, houses are now selling for less than the prices of
    some of the vehicles rolling off of assembly lines in Detroit,
    Dearborn, Lansing and elsewhere in the state. While no statistical
    evidence currently links the buyouts and the migration, Michigan
    state officials are responding as if that were the case. Gov. Jennifer
    M. Granholm is promising publicly financed college scholarships
    for all high school graduates, and she is expanding retraining
    programs for idled workers. “People who had auto manufacturing
    in the DNA of their families for several generations,” she says,
    “are all of a sudden finding the rug pulled out from under them.”

    The exodus is reminiscent of the Dust Bowl migration from
    the prairie states in the 1930s, when unemployed farmers gave
    up and trekked west to California. The Dust Bowl migration, on
    its face, was much more brutal — the number of displaced Okies,
    as they were called, was far greater than the current number
    of departing auto workers, and there were not corporate and
    public subsidies at the time to soften the hardship.

    “The Okies did not know whether they would get to their destination
    before they starved to death,” said Daniel Luria, an economist
    at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center. “The labor
    market prospects for the auto workers are not good, but they
    have assets. They are not in danger of immediately falling
    into poverty.”

    Still, for all their greater means, the auto workers talk of a similar
    jarring sense of dislocation. The World War II economy eventually
    lifted the Okies to prosperity, and the buyouts may be the first
    step in achieving the same result for auto workers, though their
    fate will not be known for quite a while.

    Unionized auto workers can boast of annual wages of $60,000,
    built on a 40-hour work week that pays $28 or more an hour.
    Overtime pay helps swell wages to $80,000 or more, but overtime
    is steadily disappearing as the Big Three’s market share declines
    in the post-S.U.V. era. At the same time, getting off the assembly
    line, with its grueling pace and mental and emotional fatigue, has
    become more difficult. Rising seniority once meant transfers after
    10 or 15 years to easier tasks such as building seats or moving
    materials as a forklift driver. Many of these off-the-line jobs
    have been outsourced.

    Skilled auto workers — electricians, millwrights, tool makers —
    are similarly disheartened. Their skills have been hollowed out,
    they say. Instead of taking apart and repairing a machine’s
    gearbox, for example, they are limited to swapping out the
    damaged box for a spare. The damaged box goes for repair
    to an outside contractor employing less expensive labor.

    Beyond all of these specific complaints, auto workers say they
    fear the future. Plant closings have sown uncertainty. Some auto
    workers who accepted buyouts explained that they did so to lock
    in pensions and retiree health benefits. But they worry that these
    benefits may be bargained away for future retirees in contract
    negotiations that begin this summer.

    Younger workers, as a result, often say they see themselves
    as having no choice but to bail out. They have grabbed
    at generous college tuition payments or lump-sum payments
    as a bridge to what they hope will be, if not better lives, then
    incomes that someday will at least equal those they earned
    as auto workers.

    JEFFREY VITALE, 39, is in this camp. He is considering a $100,000
    buyout from DaimlerChrysler as part of a package that the automaker
    is just now putting on the table; it was the last of the Big Three
    to make such an offer.

    “Don’t get me wrong,” Mr. Vitale says. “It is going to be hard
    financially to leave.”

    Like many younger auto workers, he has gone to college. He was
    on his way to becoming a public school teacher when he dropped
    out in the late 1980s, against his father’s wishes, to become
    a carpenter. “It was hard to tell a 21-year-old making $75,000
    a year that you needed a college education to get a job,”
    Mr. Vitale recalls.

    A decade ago, he left carpentry and went to work for Chrysler at
    the Jefferson North assembly plant in Detroit. As a skilled millwright,
    his $31 an hour often brought in $80,000 a year or more, with
    overtime. “I was content,” he says. “I was bringing home a steady,
    good paycheck.” He married six years ago and he and his wife,
    a dance instructor, have a 3-year-old son.

    Then disillusionment crept in. Mr. Vitale found himself stuck on
    the second shift, working afternoon and evening hours, unable
    to spend much time with his family. Periodic layoffs of less-senior
    workers have kept him close to the bottom of the seniority ladder,
    which means that he has not been able to qualify for the more
    desirable day shift.

    The outsourcing of skilled work — in his case, maintenance
    of conveyors and machinery — also grates. “I think they will
    build cars in this plant for a long time,” he says, “but they won’t
    utilize in-house skills as they have in the past.”

    Two years ago, he was injured. A Jeep he was helping to push
    back onto a conveyor slipped off and pinned him. He spent 10
    months at home convalescing from shoulder injuries that required
    two operations.

    “That is when I realized I did not want to come back to the factory,”
    Mr. Vitale says. “I checked out my college transcript; I needed seven
    more courses, 21 credits, for a bachelor’s degree, and I’ve been
    doing the course work online.”

    He expects to graduate in December, qualified to work as a physical
    therapist, a profession not likely to pay as much as he now earns,
    and certainly not with the same benefits. For that reason, he
    hesitates to leave, but the Chrysler buyout proposals include,
    in his case, six months of health insurance on top of a $100,000
    payment.

    “I’m halfway decided to take the money and go,” he says. “I’ll be
    40 in November. Do I wait until they cut my pay in half and there
    is no buyout? Or they decide they don’t need so many millwrights
    in the plant, and they let me go? They have 136 now, down from
    280 ten years ago.”

    FOR her part, Leann Bies, 48, an electrician at the Ford truck
    plant in Dearborn, says that accepting a buyout means she will
    finally have a summer off. “There comes a point in time when
    you want to leave,” she says.

    With 29 years of service, one shy of the 30 needed to retire,
    she qualifies for a buyout that allows her to stay home that last
    year while collecting 85 percent of her pay, which is $31 an
    hour or $65,000 annually. She then segues into a normal
    $36,000 pension as well as retiree health insurance, both
    nominally insulated from any chipping away that might take
    place in pending contract negotiations.

    In a future job, if she takes one, she won’t even try to match
    her Ford salary, she says. She does not need to. Her husband
    continues to work at a G.M. plant. Their mortgage is paid off.
    The last two of her three children are in their final college years.
    And as an electrician with a state license, Ms. Bies says she can
    get work in her trade if need be.

    Or she could take an office job. While at Ford, she earned
    a bachelor’s degree in business leadership during her spare
    time. Ford paid her tuition under a program the U.A.W. negotiated.
    “I am young enough to pursue another career if I choose
    to do so,” she says.

    But for all of her creature comforts, Ms. Bies is angry about
    what she calls shoddy treatment in recent years. “The management
    of this plant is very disrespectful,” she says.

    The truck plant, a state-of-the-art operation, produces the still-
    popular F150 pickup, and there is constant pressure to keep the
    line moving. “I came into this plant in 2003 and for two years they
    treated me as if I were dumber than a box of rocks,” she says.
    “You get an attitude if you are treated that way. It is an important
    part of my decision to leave.”

    Yet it is only after departing that some auto workers realize what
    they have lost. Andrew J. Vigliano, 63, is one. He worked 44 years
    for G.M. in Lansing, mostly on the assembly line, and he still has
    the wiry body of a younger man. His factory closed last year, and
    rather than transfer to another plant, he took a $35,000 incentive
    to retire.

    “I was kind of tired of working,” he says. “But if you want my true
    opinion, if I had it to do over again, I would have stayed. I miss the
    people I worked with every day. Suddenly you cut that right off.”
    As the buyouts continue, some auto workers have turned to jobs
    that were once hobbies or sidelines to replace lost income: repairing
    gutters, landscaping, serving as full-time pastors or working as real
    estate brokers, plumbers and electricians.

    Mark Strong, 48, a stocky six-footer, his long graying hair pulled
    back in a ponytail, went on such a route. A decade ago, he and his
    brother, Tim, started a small machine shop, first in the garages
    of their homes in Mason, just south of Lansing, and then in an
    industrial park, in a small hangar-like building that Mark had
    constructed.

    The venture, Strong Products, has struggled. Tim, 47, a machinist,
    worked at the shop full time while Mark worked there during time
    off from his job at G.M., which he joined in 1976. When his plant
    closed in 2005, he elected to transfer to another plant in Lansing,
    then still under construction. While he waited for the plant to open,
    he furloughed himself from G.M. and focused on his machine shop.
    “I could see then, working full time, that we could grow the business,”
    he said, “and we have.”

    Their operation now includes several computerized cutting machines,
    bought on credit, and several employees. Still, with gross revenue
    of only $200,000 a year, and debts more than double that amount,
    there is little income left for the brothers. Tim, with a wife and children,
    draws a salary. Mark, living alone and childless, draws much less money
    from the business. So when the new G.M. plant finally opened last
    year, he reported for work.

    He didn’t like what he found. He had risen over the years from
    the assembly line to materials handling, in his case delivering
    cylinders of chemicals at a pace that he controlled. “As long as
    there was not a phone call saying some chemical was needed,
    I was on my own,” he said.

    In the new plant, chemical delivery was automated, and Mark
    found himself on a much more demanding schedule. He was
    assigned to deliver parts from the shipping bays to the assembly
    line at a pace set by the line’s speed. He hooked his small tractor
    to a train of wagons, each loaded with parts, and drove them
    to stations along the line.

    “Every 45 minutes to an hour another tractor-trailer would show
    up at the shipping bays with the already-loaded wagons inside,”
    he said. “It took me 45 minutes to get the contents to the line,
    leaving just enough time to get back and hook up the next load.”

    Automation and more rigorous scheduling may have improved
    G.M.’s efficiency, but for Mr. Strong, the change was stressful
    and G.M.’s buyout last year offered an escape. With 30 years
    under his belt, he collected a $35,000 incentive to retire and
    began to draw a $36,000 annual pension, or 60 percent
    of his old wage, along with retiree health insurance.

    “I would have stayed,” he says, “ if the work was similar to
    the old job and if I had a wife and kids in college, which
    I don’t have. And if I did not have this shop. It weighed
    in my decision to leave; I had something to do.”

    UNLIKE Mr. Strong, other displaced workers, including
    Mr. Doolittle, now working part time at Sears, do not have
    occupations that engage them. And they miss the work,
    the income and the way of life that defined their careers
    as auto workers.

    “My children and my grandchildren will never have an opportunity
    to work at G.M.,” Mr. Doolittle says. “My dad made a good living
    there. So did my brother and my brothers-in-law. That is all over
    now. It will be 10 to 15 years before G.M. hires again, if it ever does,
    and at who knows what wages.”

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    3) Patents Over Patients
    By RALPH W. MOSS
    Op-Ed Contributor
    State College, Pa.
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html

    WE could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way
    drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound
    can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market —
    no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development
    of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result.

    The reason for this problem is that bringing a new drug to market
    is extremely expensive. In 2001, the estimated cost was $802 million;
    today it is approximately $1 billion. To ensure a healthy return on
    such staggering investments, drug companies seek to formulate new
    drugs in a way that guarantees watertight patents. In the meantime,
    cancer patients miss out on treatments that may be highly effective
    and less expensive to boot.

    In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf
    compound called 3-bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver
    cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover, the investigators
    estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents
    per day. Yet, three years later, no major drug company has shown
    interest in developing this drug for human use.

    Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical,
    dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University
    of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent.
    However, as a university news release explained, dichloroacetate is
    not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may
    be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical.
    So the university is soliciting public donations to finance a clinical trial.

    The hormone melatonin, sold as an inexpensive food supplement
    in the United States, has repeatedly been shown to slow the growth
    of various cancers when used in conjunction with conventional
    treatments. Paolo Lissoni, an Italian oncologist, helped write more
    than 100 articles about this hormone and conducted numerous
    clinical trials. But when I visited him at his hospital in Monza in
    2003, he was in deep despair over the pharmaceutical industry’s
    total lack of interest in his treatment approach. He has published
    nothing on the topic since then.

    Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific
    merit, not on their patentability. One solution might be for the
    government to enlarge the Food and Drug Administration’s
    “orphan drug” program, which subsidizes the development
    of drugs for rare diseases. The definition of orphan drug could
    be expanded to include unpatentable agents that are scorned
    as unprofitable by pharmaceutical companies.

    We need to foster a research and development environment in
    which anticancer activity is the main criterion for new drug
    development.

    Ralph W. Moss writes a weekly online newsletter about cancer.

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    4) Distract and Disenfranchise
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    April 2, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login

    I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses
    of power that are now, finally, coming to light.
    Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising
    income inequality.

    Let me explain.

    In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House,
    conservative ideas appealed to many, even most,
    Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class
    nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities
    and social injustices of the past, which were what
    originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like
    ancient history. It was easy, in that nation,
    to convince many voters that Big Government was
    their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide
    social programs for other people.

    Since then, however, we have once again become
    a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen
    only 17 percent since 1980, while the income
    of the richest 0.1 percent of the population
    has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and
    the middle class is as wide now as it was in the
    1920s, when the political coalition that would
    eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

    And voters realize that society has changed.
    They may not pore over income distribution tables,
    but they do know that today’s rich are building
    themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber
    barons. They may not read labor statistics,
    but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere:
    according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent
    of workers believe that it’s harder to earn
    a decent living today than it was 20 or
    30 years ago.

    You know that perceptions of rising inequality
    have become a political issue when even President
    Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some
    of our citizens worry about the fact that our
    dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

    But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any
    meaningful way to rising inequality, because
    their activists won’t let them. You could see
    the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday,
    when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls
    traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the
    Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group
    dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

    The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated
    ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t
    offer domestic policies that respond to the
    public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

    The answer, for a while, was a combination of
    distraction and disenfranchisement.

    The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves
    a massive, providential distraction; until
    then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t
    the moderate he played in the 2000 election,
    was growing increasingly unhappy with his
    administration. And they offered many
    opportunities for further distractions.
    Rather than debating Democrats on the issues,
    the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft
    on terror. And do you remember the terror
    alert, based on old and questionable
    information, that was declared right after
    the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

    But distraction can only go so far. So the
    other tool was disenfranchisement: finding
    ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote
    for the party that might actually do something
    about inequality, out of the voting booth.

    Remember that disenfranchisement in the form
    of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which
    struck many legitimate voters from the rolls,
    put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first
    place. And disenfranchisement seems to be
    what much of the politicization of the Justice
    Department was about.

    Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under
    pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud
    — a phrase that has become almost synonymous
    with “voting while black.” Former staff members
    of the Justice Department’s civil rights division
    say that they were repeatedly overruled when
    they objected to Republican actions, ranging
    from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas
    redistricting, that they believed would effectively
    disenfranchise African-American voters.

    The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses
    of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections.
    And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans,
    because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton
    years trying to reassure rich people and corporations
    that they weren’t really populists — seem
    to be realizing that times have changed.

    A week before the Republican candidates trooped
    to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax
    cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment
    to universal health care. And it’s hard to see
    what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

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    5) Taxing Private Equity
    Editorial
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02mon1.html?hp

    In the world of private equity, “2 and 20” is a formula
    for making money. The mavens of the industry — venture
    capitalists and buyout specialists — generally collect
    a management fee of 2 percent of the assets they manage
    and a performance fee equal to 20 percent of any profits.
    With hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through
    the 2-and-20 structure, the megabucks pile up quickly.

    High fees, however, are only one reason that private
    equity lives by “2 and 20.” Another is low taxes.

    Partners in private equity ventures treat their
    performance fees as capital gains — in other words,
    like profits on the sale of a stock — and thus pay
    tax on the fees at a rate of 15 percent, about the
    lowest in the tax code. According to federal
    partnership tax rules, that’s legal. But the rules
    were developed before private equity became the
    force it is today, and mainly with small business
    and real estate partnerships in mind.

    Some lawmakers — notably Senator Max Baucus, the
    Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee, and
    Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s top
    Republican — have begun to question whether those
    rules should apply to private equity.

    Adding grist to lawmakers’ skepticism is a recent
    paper by Victor Fleischer, an associate professor
    at the University of Colorado Law School.
    Mr. Fleischer makes several arguments against
    treating performance pay as capital gain, starting
    with the increasingly huge sums that private equity
    firms raise from tax-exempt investors, like pension
    funds and endowments.

    In general, when corporate executives get performance
    -based pay, like stock options, they don’t have
    to pay tax right away. That’s a big tax benefit,
    but it leaves the government no worse off because
    the corporation also delays taking a deduction for
    the payment. There is no such offset when private
    equity partners are paid by tax-exempt investors.
    The nation in effect waits longer for its tax revenue
    and gets less, as private equity partners get more.

    The deeper question in all this is whether capital
    gains — which are currently taxed at less than half
    the top rate of ordinary income — should continue
    to be so lavishly advantaged. The answer there is
    no. Today’s preferential rate for capital gains
    is excessive, with no mechanism in the tax code
    to ensure that it is not overused. Excessively
    favoring one form of income over another encourages
    wasteful gamesmanship, creates inequity and crowds
    out other ways to foster risk-taking. Tackling the
    too-easy tax terms for private equity is a good way
    for Congress to begin addressing that bigger issue.

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    6)PROTECT OUR PENSIONS
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/

    Norm Goddard transferred back to GM from Delphi in March
    2000. In May 2006 he applied for retirement from GM. After
    30 years of service he wanted out. He was looking forward
    to the $35,000. When he went to the Benefits Office to sign
    his retirement papers the document stated that he hired
    into Delphi in 1976.

    "That's a lie," Norm said. "Delphi wasn't even around in 1976.
    I hired in at GM."

    The Benefits Rep informed him that if he signed the document
    he agreed to everything it said. Norm refused. "I worked
    less than nine months for Delphi." He has 24 years of
    pension credits with Delphi, a bankrupt company that
    never operated independent of GM.

    When Delphi was spun off from GM in 1999 John Goshka
    had 34 years seniority. He chose to keep working. "I had
    children in college," he said. When John retired in 2004
    he had 39 years of credited service with Delphi. At age
    60 John doesn't know what will happen to his pension
    or his health care. His 34 years of GM time were dumped
    into Delphi.

    When Delphi offered two choices, retire or transfer away
    from home and likely give up his trade as a toolmaker,
    Mike Wittek decided to call it quits. He signed up for
    the Special Attrition Program [SAP] and went out with
    only 21 years of credited service. Though he hired
    in at GM, he left with a Delphi pension and a bad
    taste in his mouth.

    At the UAW Constitutional Convention in June 2006
    I asked for a point of information. I explained that
    GM had transferred all my pension credits to Delphi
    at the time of the spin off in 1999. Now Delphi was
    bankrupt. GM's contractual agreement to guarantee the
    Delphi pension expires at the end of this contract
    in October 2007. What happens if Delphi decides to
    stop pension payments in 2008, after the guarantee
    expires?

    The resolution on the floor at the time was "Protecting
    Pensions." Dick Shoemaker, the UAW-VP responsible for
    negotiations at GM and Delphi, declared me "Out of Order."
    But he said that he would speak to me "privately."
    Shoemaker understood that I wanted him to speak publicly
    for the record. He didn't take the bait.

    I immediately approached the stage and Shoemaker came
    down to talk with me. What he had to say concerning
    Delphi retirees was not intended for the official record.
    He explained that if I signed the Special Attrition
    Program [SAP] and "checked the box", it was "understood"
    that GM would guarantee the pension.

    "But it doesn't say that," I replied.

    "It's understood," he said.

    "It states that only what is written is valid and that
    verbal promises contrary to the written document have
    no merit," I replied.

    "Well, it's understood," he said.

    "OK. I'll take your word for it. But what about the
    people who already retired or who will retire five
    years from now and don't have the opportunity
    to check the box"?

    "We still have to negotiate that," Shoemaker said.

    Here are the facts. The SAP states that if you sign
    you agree to the terms, and the SAP stipulated that
    those who signed would get a "Delphi Hourly Pension".
    Shoemaker's verbal assertion that it "was understood"
    doesn’t amount to a tinker's damn. As Shoemaker readily
    admitted to me, the fate of Delphi-UAW members who
    retired before the SAP was available or who transferred
    back to GM and would retire in the future still has
    to be negotiated.

    Demonstrate solidarity with Delphi-UAW members by
    demanding that the Benefit Guarantee be activated
    and GM held accountable for the orchestrated bankruptcy
    at Delphi.

    I am not a delegate at this Bargaining Convention
    because my old plant is now closed. I chose to return
    to a GM plant rather than take the SAP because there
    is no security with a Delphi pension.

    For the record, a commitment to protect the Delphi
    retirees at the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention would
    be in order.

    Gregg Shotwell
    UAW Local 1753

    www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

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    7) "The Language Isn't Strong Enough"
    A Report on the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention
    Tueday April 3, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

    The 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention format was sanitized,
    preshrunk, and bleached. The one-size-fits-all style was
    designed to control the rancor of the rank and file.
    But work to rule is a tool for all trades and a master
    of one — tipping the balance of power.

    Mike Parker, a delegate from Local 1700, busted the seams
    of uniform decorum before Gettelfinger could pound the podium.

    When the chair requested a motion to accept the Rules
    Committee Report at the start of the convention, Parker
    demanded a point of order and made a motion to amend
    the rules.

    The proposed rules restricted delegates from making amendments
    to the resolutions; limited debate with tedious time consuming
    recitations rather than summaries; and relegated precious time
    that should have been allocated to debate to political
    dignitaries. Parker's amendment declared:

    "The agenda for the Wednesday morning session will be Organizing
    to Fight Back. This session will cover how we can mobilize
    our members, build solidarity, resist company whipsawing and
    divisive strategies like two tier, and pitting older workers
    against younger workers. To make time for this session, short
    presentation summaries will be used instead of reading the
    complete resolution book, and guest speakers will be asked
    to keep their comments brief."

    Voices from all over the convention floor yelled, "Support".

    The Chair attempted to dispose of the point of order, but
    Parker stood his ground. Since a motion to accept the rules
    had not been approved, there were no rules governing the
    convention except Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.
    The amendment was in order, it had been seconded, and was
    now open for discussion. Parker proceeded.

    "The key to these negotiations is not whether we have
    a nice wish list of bargaining demands but how we are going
    to fight the companies. The companies have made it clear
    they are not our partners and will take everything they
    can get

    How do we take on their whipsawing?

    How do we take on the cancer of Two Tier, this pitting
    of older workers against younger workers?

    I would point out that I find nothing in this resolution
    against Two Tier and indeed some vague justifications for it.
    We can not afford to be unclear on this question which rots
    the foundation of unionism.

    Even before official bargaining starts the company is
    tearing the union apart in the Big Three. The companies are
    forcing concessionary contracts which undermine our pattern
    bargaining

    This union is in a crisis. The companies have launched
    an ideological attack on unionism at work and in the media.

    Doubtless, as at the last convention, there will be
    delegates who will get up and read the Administration Caucus
    cue cards about and how these rules have always worked for us.

    Well, we had better start addressing the fact that we
    are in crisis and we have to start by figuring out how to
    get the membership in this union re involved and mobilized
    rather than trying to have nicely scripted conventions.
    That means starting with the delegates here.

    We are supposed to be the leaders of this union. I ask
    you to start acting as leaders and let's get this convention
    addressing the real problems."

    The charade was over. The emperor was naked and everyone
    knew it.

    The next delegate, Paul Baxter from Local 659, said,
    "I support the amendment to the rules. The strategy
    of cooperation with management is a failure. We cannot
    go on pretending that the companies are our partners.
    How can you ask us to be partners with liars, cheaters,
    and thieves?

    This resolution book is nothing but a wish list.
    We need a more effective strategy to fight back."

    A sister from Local 7 opposed the amendment. She denied
    knowledge of any "cue cards" but relied on the time worn
    cliché, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." She called
    for the question to end debate which is standard "cue
    card" performance.

    Wendy Thompson, a delegate from Local 235, demanded
    a point of order. She said, "It is broken" and appealed
    to the delegates to continue discussion and not prohibit
    debate.

    The chair ruled her out of order and cut her speech
    short. The delegates turned the amendment down with
    a voice vote but Parker's challenge set the tone of
    the convention. Delegates unaccustomed to opposing the
    administration came forward to "oppose the resolution
    because the language isn't strong enough." The phrase
    became a common refrain.

    Fine Print vs. Bold Print

    In regard to contract workers several delegates
    complained about having to work side by side with
    non union workers. "Why are they in our plants?"
    asked Don Dekker from Local 371.

    Jerry Urn, a delegate from Region 4, stated his
    wholehearted support for President Gettelfinger
    and the UAW but opposed the resolution and echoed
    the refrain, "because the language isn't strong
    enough." He reaffirmed his support of the UAW,
    but he repeated twice for clarity and emphasis,
    "My members hate two tier."

    Page 19 of the official resolution book states:
    "We also recognize the need for supplemental labor
    agreements, at different wage and benefit rates,
    in specific business circumstances where competitive
    pressure requires an alternative approach to maintain
    employment opportunities for our members and potential
    members."

    The words "two tier" are carefully evaded but the
    intent is clear. A trade off is in the cards:
    reduced wages and benefits in return for "employment
    opportunities."

    Two tier is not a union agreement, it's a prepaid
    funeral arrangement. In 2003 the UAW pushed through
    a ratification of the national agreement and then
    later negotiated a two tier supplemental agreement
    for Delphi that was never ratified by the members.
    The two tier supplement cut wages almost in half,
    reduced health care benefits, and eliminated the
    pension. It wasn't enough to satisfy the "liars,
    cheaters, and thieves."

    Wendy Thompson rose in opposition to the weak language
    of the resolution. She said we must clearly state,
    "No Two Tier." The tone of her voice underlined each
    word. She further advocated that we organize a campaign
    to "take Chrysler off the market."

    "Make noise," she said. "Mobilize the membership. What
    we are facing is new and more difficult than ever. The
    membership is demoralized. We should not go away from
    this convention without a discussion of how to mobilize
    the membership."

    The Concession Caucus started a campaign in 2005 called
    Mobilizing@Delphi but it never materialized. Their idea
    of mobilization does not include the rank and file. They
    consolidate power in the front office and function more
    like a human resource management team than a union. The
    Concession Caucus prefers to negotiate in the backroom
    and the courtroom but the results have been dismal. The
    compromise and retreat strategy not only erodes our wages,
    benefits, and working conditions, it divides the union,
    degrades new members, and discourages organizing. Who
    needs a union to bargain for concessions?

    No Concessions

    Gary Walkowicz, a delegate from Local 600, stated his
    case bluntly.

    "I speak in opposition to the resolution because
    it does not say what needs to be said; It does not
    say what our members want us to say – "No More
    Concessions"

    That is the message that the members in my plant
    sent me to bring to this Convention.

    This letter to the delegates signed by over 1,000
    members of the Dearborn Truck Plant was also signed
    by more than another thousand members in some of
    your plants, signed by retirees from your locals.

    No More concessions. That is the message that I know
    many of you are hearing from your own members. It's
    time to stop concessions.

    What has concessions gotten us, except more concessions?

    We give up wage increases and promises to retirees
    are broken.

    And then the corporations come right back and threaten
    us, pitting plant against plant, whipsawing us into passing
    C.O.A.s, outsourcing our own jobs. I know the pressure
    that puts on the local leaderships.

    And then the ink is not even dry on the C.O.A.s and the
    corporations are demanding more concessions in the
    national contract.

    Giving up concessions has only made the corporations
    bolder and made them more greedy. Fellow delegates,
    I know there are those of you who see the same thing.
    I say that the business of this Convention should be
    to take a stand against concessions.

    The business of this Convention should be to organize
    a fight against corporate greed, to defend the hard won
    gains of this union. I believe this is what our members
    want us to do."

    Mark Payne, a delegate from Local 1250, also objected
    to COAs. He said the companies keep redefining what
    they term "core business". He insisted, "All our jobs
    are core business."

    Mike Libber, a delegate from Region 3, complained that
    the companies use money saved from concessions to invest
    in non union plants.

    Paul Baxter, a delegate from Local 659, said, "Without
    stronger language we will be invested into oblivion
    because every investment is contingent on a net loss
    of jobs."

    "This is not a CAP Convention, it's a Bargaining
    Convention"

    Justin "Double Barrel" West, a four time delegate from
    Local 2488, eliminated any doubt that this was a business
    as usual convention.

    "I rise in opposition regarding "income security
    issues." TWO TIERS is KILLING this union. This resolution
    hardly mentions tiered wage scales amongst other concessions.

    Delphi executives continue to extract bonuses as rewards
    for their heinous attack on workers across the globe. Ford
    rewards its' executives with bonuses for extracting wage
    and benefit concessions from workers and retirees. Now,
    Daimler-Chrysler, in the midst of their continued profitable
    corporate record, seeks to cover it all up so they too can
    join the concessions bandwagon.

    We, the membership, as elected reps from across the nation
    and Canada and Puerto Rico…from varying industries and job
    classifications, need to share with the leadership of the
    International…and with each other…our ideas on how to combat
    the corporate economic terrorism being foisted upon all working
    people across the globe. How do we fight back? When will it end?

    Let there be no doubt that the UAW is in a fight for
    survival: the media calls it a "fight for relevance."
    Meanwhile, the UAW International's approach has been to espouse
    "Good things come from competitive corporations." Or that
    partnerships fostering cooperation with the corps is the way
    to go. Brother Gettelfinger gave a tremendous opening speech
    but even within his oration, he stated that we should not
    confuse cooperation with capitulation.

    Brother Gettelfinger…I am from Peoria, Illinois and I was
    at the convention in 1998 when our late President Steve Yokich
    called the concessionary filled settlement at Caterpillar Tractor
    a "victory." Caterpillar is hiring…2nd tier wages, no benefits,
    no seniority, and full-time temps! Concessions, be they at GM,
    Ford, Chrysler, American Axle, Delphi, Visteon, Mitsubishi, NUMMI,
    and or elsewhere, will not be a victory!

    Brother Gettelfinger: we gave Delphi the GM PLANTS; we
    gave Delphi two-tier wages; we gave Delphi the GM workers'
    pensions! These concessions have not sated that corporation's
    thirst for more blood in this race to the bottom. Delphi has
    declared a bankruptcy organized to destroy every last shred
    of dignity and security that generations of union members
    fought and sacrificed to achieve. My point is, Brother
    Gettelfinger, concessions do NOT save jobs! To you, the
    International leadership, I urge you not to confuse "victory"
    with "concessions."

    Brother Gettelfinger: you say much of these problems
    need to be addressed through government legislation…but
    this is not a CAP Convention, this is a BARGAINING Convention…
    what can WE as workers do, DIRECTLY, NOW, to help fight
    this onslaught of corporate greed before the Big Three
    talks…on our jobs, at our Locals, amongst our brothers and
    sisters? To this body, I urge you to vote this resolution
    down until we address strategies to mobilize and fight
    back at the grassroots level.

    Lastly, Thank you, Brother Gettelfinger, for mentioning
    the struggle at Conn-Selmer, the Vincent Bach plant. Those
    locked-out members are on the front lines, suffering but
    hanging in there to defend the American Dream."

    The delegates burst into applause and Gettelfinger added
    another name to a list that was growing longer.

    Vicky Varaclay, a delegate from an American Axle plant
    related how the lack of a pattern agreement was undermining
    collective bargaining. "We need stronger language
    on whipsawing."

    Several delegates objected to takeaways from retirees who
    "can't afford copays" on a fixed income. "Retirees are
    worried sick" about medical expenses. "When you go in and
    change a plan [in the middle of a contract] you make people
    afraid," a retired delegate said.

    The strategy of containing rebellion against the corporate
    agenda by channeling anger toward politics instead
    of employers is on its last legs. Too many delegates
    said, "The language isn't strong enough."

    The Rank & File is the Backbone

    The next morning at a Concession Caucus breakfast for
    delegates Gettelfinger ridiculed the small group of union
    members who carried picket signs in front of the convention
    center the day before. Their signs said things like: Equal
    Pay for Equal Work, No Two Tier, Equal Rights for New Hires,
    Protect Our Pensions, Hold GM Accountable for Delphi Pensions,
    Hands Off My Pension, Put the Backbone Back into the UAW,
    Stop Whipsawing.

    What exactly did Gettelfinger disagree with? How do those
    ideas conflict with the UAW agenda for bargaining?

    On the first day of the convention soldiers of solidarity
    distributed the No Concession leaflet to delegates. On the
    second morning they distributed the leaflet about Delphi
    pensions which reiterated my conversation with UAW-VP
    Dick Shoemaker at the Constitutional Convention. Shoemaker
    declined to speak publicly for the record but admitted privately
    that the issue was unresolved and still had to be negotiated.
    The flip side of that flier was titled "Put the Backbone Back
    in the UAW". Gettelfinger took one from a soldier and went
    into the hall.

    One Question: The Delphi Pension

    Before the convention started I saw Gettelfinger in the
    lobby glad handing delegates. I waited my turn, shook his
    hand, and asked, "What will happen to the Delphi pension
    when the Benefit Guarantee expires at the end of this contract?"

    "Gregg, we know you're not supposed to be here,"
    Gettelfinger said. "We know you're not a delegate anymore."
    He looked at my Press Pass. "And we know you're not a reporter
    either. But that's all right. We don't mind that you're here."

    I repeated the question. "What will happen to the Delphi
    pension when the Benefit Guarantee expires at the end of this
    contract?"

    "I saw what you wrote about Dick Shoemaker," Gettelfinger
    said. "Gregg, you don't hurt us, and you don't help us,
    either way."

    I hesitate to interpret the motivations of superior
    beings but I think he wanted to make me feel insignificant.
    It didn't seem important to me, so I repeated the question.
    "What will happen to the Delphi pension when the Benefit
    Guarantee expires at the end of this contract?"

    "You should ask the UAW-GM department," he said.

    "I have asked them several times but I can't get an answer.
    It's important to UAW members from Delphi. I know people who
    worked more than 30 years for GM and have a Delphi pension
    today. They want an answer."

    "We know you're not supposed to be here, Gregg. But that's
    all right with us. We don't mind that you're here. See?
    I'm not such a bad guy."

    I don't know what his guyness had to do with it, but to
    his credit about an hour later here comes Mike Grimes and
    David Shoemaker from the UAW-GM department to talk with me.
    My cohort, Bob Mabbit from the UnCommonSense started rolling
    the video camera but they refused to speak on record.
    We walked down a hall way and talked privately.

    They explained that "Ron Gettelfinger told us to come out
    and talk with you and answer your questions."

    I repeated the one question.

    They assured me that Delphi was a top priority. "We
    have told GM It is our position that the Benefit Guarantee
    will be triggered before the Delphi situation is settled."

    I told them I was glad to hear that the UAW was committed
    to holding GM accountable for our pensions, but the UAW can't
    trigger the Benefit Guarantee. Events trigger the Benefit
    Guarantee. If Delphi doesn't stop paying the pension before
    the Benefit Guarantee expires, there is no triggering event.

    "We can cause them financial distress," Shoemaker said.

    "Do you mean a strike?" I asked.

    "As far as we are concerned they are already in financial
    distress," Grimes said.

    In other words it still has to be negotiated and no one,
    neither GM, Delphi, nor the UAW has stated publicly for
    the record that GM is accountable for the Delphi pensions.

    The Fight for Dignity

    Back in the convention delegates were debating a resolution
    on Health and Safety. Vanessa Williams from Local 155 said,
    "IPS [Independent Parts Suppliers] feel lost and left out."
    She reported that workers "injured daily" in her plant were
    harassed by management and they had to call MIOSHA despite
    the fact they have union representation.

    Mike Parker from Local 1700 said the resolution failed
    to address "the fundamental problem — the right to refuse
    an unsafe job." He explained that too often workers were
    forced to work in conditions they felt were unsafe while
    managers took their sweet time making up their minds.
    He called on delegates to "empower workers" with the
    right to refuse unsafe work.

    Paul Baxter from Local 659 in Flint said, "Unionism is about
    the fight for dignity." He said that assembly work cycles
    were "so tight you can't get a drink or put a stick of gum
    in your mouth." He cited a passage from the Bible on the
    treatment of farm animals. "We should at least hold
    management to the same standard."

    At the end of the convention Wendy Thompson talked about
    the massive rally organized against Delphi's threat to
    close one plant in Spain. She said, "We should organize
    a rally for the opening day of negotiations."
    The convention burst into applause.

    Where Do We Go from Here?

    On the first day of the convention Gettelfinger waved his
    fist in the air and threatened to strike Delphi if they
    voided the contract. It was a strange act considering how
    much ground he has surrendered. However, the message from
    the floor was consistent and clear, "The language isn't
    strong enough."

    Workers don't want more concessions, cooperation with
    corporate restructuring, or competitive agreements.
    If we wait for the Concession Caucus to mobilize
    resistance, we'll all get Delphied.

    Continue to collect signatures on the No Concession
    Petition; whether you collect one or one thousand
    signatures mail the copies to:

    No Concessions Petition
    P.O. Box 202
    Montrose, MI 48457

    A soldier of solidarity will see they are delivered
    to negotiators on or before the opening day
    of negotiations. We are the backbone of the UAW.
    Let's show them what we're made of.

    SOS, Gregg Shotwell
    UAW Local 1753
    Bargaining Convention Report

    Sisters and Brothers,
    April 2, 2007

    I would like to thank those 2nd Shift workers and
    retirees who came to a rally on Tues., Mar. 27th
    organized in front of Cobo at the convention opening
    by UAW Soldiers of Solidarity which was formed out
    of the Delphi bankruptcy crisis. We looked good with
    our signs out in front of the Convention entrance and
    delegates came over to talk to us. It was small, but
    the rank and file made itself heard.

    Once again, I am sorry to report the convention
    was "business as usual", everything decided in advance
    with delegates having no real say. It's puzzling because
    many delegates don't like it this way, but they feel
    if they speak up or "vote the wrong way", a "ton of bricks
    will fall on them".

    Motion to Change to More Democratic Rules Fails

    A motion was made to change the rules so that discussion
    could occur on "Organizing to Fight Back". This session
    would have covered how we can mobilize the membership,
    build solidarity, resist company whipsawing and divisive
    strategies like two tier, and pitting older worker against
    younger ones.

    Unfortunately this motion did not pass. Instead we
    had read to us one long resolution that you could not
    amend but rather had to vote up or down in its entirety.
    It was a wish list of all things good without talking
    about what our plan is for upcoming negotiations. We know
    these negotiations are going to be more difficult for the
    Big Three than anything we have seen before.

    There were some brave individuals who did speak out
    on issues of concern, like two tier wages. Some delegates
    said that 2 tier wages were tremendously unpopular where
    they had been implemented. But, people felt they had
    to bend over backwards being respectful to avoid reproach.
    An open and democratic union wouldn't be like that.

    I had the opportunity to speak twice during the
    proceedings. I told the delegates we needed a strategy
    for negotiations that would mobilize our members to show
    the strength of our numbers, working and retired. It's
    outrageous that management is still raking in bonuses while
    we are told that we must pay more for health care and receive
    lower wages "in order to be competitive". They justify
    their salaries and bonuses even when they fail to do their
    jobs. Management made the decision about what to build
    and where to spend research money, not the workforce.
    Yet we are expected to bail them out with more concessions.
    This is nothing but insane! If you read some business
    publications, you will see that business is publicly
    worrying about how long workers are going to allow this
    tremendous wealth growing at the top without revolting
    against it!

    In negotiations this year we face a dilemma. Unlike
    GM and Ford, the UAW Chrysler Dept. did not open up the
    contract midterm for concessions. This helped us at AAM
    avoid opening up our contract midterm. Chrysler workers
    have held onto the Pattern Contract. We need to move GM,
    Ford, and ourselves up to it. (If you remember, we did
    not get the wages increases the Big Three did and we were
    forced to accept 2 tier).

    Strike GM and Chrysler

    However, Chrysler is now on the auction block like
    Gear and Axle was in 1994. I suggested they organize the
    membership demanding to be taken off the block, like we
    did here at the Gear before '94. Since GM is looking
    like it will be in the strongest economic position this
    summer, I said we should threaten to strike GM and Chrysler
    at the same time in order to be in the best possible
    bargaining position.

    The business community tries to convince us that
    strikes cannot be effective, but we should not fall
    for that. With the just-in-time system and with the
    Big Three needing to run efficiently right now, we have
    a strong advantage. No one wants to strike, but the way
    business is trying to take us into a third world life
    style is completely out of control!

    It has made me angry to see how the press presents
    management's case for us to take more concessions.
    Yet, the UAW has not been presenting our case to the
    public with any kind of vigor. This made the membership
    think that no one is in their corner. Polls are stating
    that autoworkers expect we will have to take more
    concessions. This is absolutely the wrong position
    to be in for a pre-negotiations period!

    President Gettelfinger in his speech said:
    "cooperation should not be equated with capitulation."
    But here's the problem: the companies say: "we want
    more concessions", the union says: "we believe in
    cooperating with the companies". What are rank and
    file workers supposed to think ? The UAW leadership
    has seemed to be giving up before negotiations have
    even started.

    The same problem of a mixed message exists concerning
    pattern bargaining. The resolution correctly states that:
    "labor compensation should not be based on which employers
    compete" and we should be "removing wages and benefits
    from the competitive equation". Yet, the UAW says
    it believes in being competitive even when that means
    pitting us against workers in low wage countries and
    non-union plants in this country. This causes the
    membership to fear they have no protection from
    a free fall.

    We Need a Massive Rally the First Day of Big Three
    Negotiations

    I suggested a massive rally organized for the
    1st day of negotiations. We must reach out to the
    public with a strong message: We did not cause the
    problems of the Big Three and should not have to
    suffer for Management's bad decisions. We must hold
    the line on the slide downwards.

    Meanwhile, when market share goes down for one
    company it goes up for another. If all autoworkers
    in this country were UAW members we would better be
    able to protect our members when companies mess up.
    Last year at the Constitutional Convention it was
    decided to allocate $60 million for organizing out
    of the $874 million in the strike fund. However,
    it was placed in the general fund and not into the
    organizing budget. Nothing has been done with it
    and now the UAW says it won't do anything until
    after negotiations. This is a mistake. We need
    to start now training and hiring an "army" of UAW
    organizers. With the loss of many experienced members
    lately, this could be a way to put talented union members
    to work.

    Near the end of the one long resolution presented
    by the International to the Convention, it spoke to the
    importance of building international unionism and this
    is key. In Spain, where they want to close a Delphi plant
    in Puerto Real, Cadiz, the labor movement is planning
    to organize a general strike for April 18th! When all
    workers join together like this, it makes it difficult
    to ride roughshod over one isolated plant. Are we as
    powerless as we feel? Only if we remain separate and
    uninvolved.

    This newsletter is what I spoke for at the Convention.
    Join me in circulating a "No Concessions" petition.
    I will have them available at the plant gates. AAM is
    profitable. We are in a strong position to eliminate
    2 tier by negotiating a wage bridge between the 1st and
    2nd tier so everyone will reach the higher wage.
    We need to win back the 3% raises we lost and in no
    way take more health care concessions for working or
    retired.

    Through the distribution of the newsletter Shifting
    Gears at Colfor and MSP as well as the five pattern AAM
    plants, I came into contact with the elected leaders and
    helped Colfor and MSP developed new lines of communication
    at the Convention with the pattern plant delegates. This
    contact should improve more in the future and will help keep
    AAM from whipsawing us like they have in the past.

    Wendy Thompson, Convention Delegate,
    Wthomp4490@aol.com, h. 313-892-7974, c. 313-215-7672

    Please attend Local 235/Local 262 Workers' Memorial
    Day Rally, Fri., April 27th.

    Let's honor all those injured or killed in the workplace.

    1:00 pm . Afternoon Shift workers meet at Local 262 south
    of Holbrook on St. Aubin.

    We will march up St. Aubin to Holbrook

    2:30 pm Day Shift workers join in front of Motown
    Credit Union and we march to Pl. 3

    3:00 pm We will arrive in front of Plant 3 for
    the Rally. Join us!

    Labor donated

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    8) HOW IRAN TREATS PRISONERS
    HOW THE US TREATS PRISONERS
    "Call that humiliation? No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings.
    These Iranians are clearly a very uncivilised bunch."
    Terry Jones
    Saturday March 31, 2007
    The Guardian
    http://www.guardian .co.uk/

    I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment
    of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters.
    It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this --
    allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has
    been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor
    servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then
    allowing the picture to be posted around the world -- have the Iranians
    no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with
    putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with Muslims
    we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe.
    Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and
    circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised
    and humiliated as these unfortunate British service people have been.

    It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk
    on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put
    duct tape over their mouths, as we do to our captives, they wouldn't
    be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder
    to breathe -- especially with a bag over their head -- but at least
    they wouldn't be humiliated.

    And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home
    saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with
    the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives
    the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many
    privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

    The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into
    charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places
    it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example,
    have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years,
    and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to
    the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

    What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British
    prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure
    that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting
    "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours
    on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common
    exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet
    and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground.
    This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good
    healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything
    to get out of it.

    And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance
    that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers
    have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and
    they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

    What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have
    got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution
    or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This
    is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by
    forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric
    shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as in Abu Ghraib.
    The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world
    so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.
    As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be
    right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen,
    but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer -- whether by
    intensified sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by urging
    [P]resident Bush to hurry an invasion, as he intends one anyway,
    to bring democracy and western values to Iran, as he has done in Iraq.

    Terry Jones is a film director, actor, and Python
    www.terry-jones. net

    Update:

    Captives Freed by Iran Arrive in Britain
    By DAVID RAMPE, JON ELSEN and SARAH LYALL
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/middleeast/05cnd-iran.html?hp

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    9) More Than a Feeling
    Editorial
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds1.html?hp

    President Bush and his advisers have made a lot of ridiculous
    charges about critics of the war in Iraq: they’re unpatriotic,
    they want the terrorists to win, they don’t support the troops,
    to cite just a few. But none of these seem quite as absurd
    as President Bush’s latest suggestion, that critics of the
    war whose children are at risk are too “emotional” to see
    things clearly.

    The direct target was Matthew Dowd, one of the chief
    strategists of Mr. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign,
    who has grown disillusioned with the president and the
    war, which he made clear in an interview with Jim Rutenberg
    published in The Times last Sunday. But by extension,
    Mr. Bush’s comments were insulting to the hundreds of
    thousands of Americans whose sons, daughters, sisters,
    brothers and spouses have served or will serve in Iraq.

    They are perfectly capable of forming judgments about
    the war, pro or con, on the merits. But when Mr. Bush
    was asked about Mr. Dowd during a Rose Garden news
    conference yesterday, he said, “This is an emotional
    issue for Matthew, as it is for a lot of other people
    in our country.”

    Mr. Dowd’s case, Mr. Bush said, “as I understand it,
    is obviously intensified because his son is deployable.”

    Over the weekend, two of Mr. Bush’s chief spokesmen,
    Dan Bartlett and Dana Perino, claimed that Mr. Dowd’s
    change of heart about the war was rooted in “personal”
    issues and “emotions,” and talked of his “personal
    journey.” In recent years, Mr. Dowd suffered the death
    of a premature twin daughter, and was divorced.
    His son is scheduled to serve in Iraq soon.

    Mr. Dowd said his experiences were a backdrop to his
    reconsideration of his support of the war and Mr. Bush.
    There is nothing wrong with that, but there is something
    deeply wrong with the White House’s dismissing his criticism
    as emotional, as if it has no reasoned connection
    to Mr. Bush’s policies.

    This form of attack is especially galling from a president
    who from the start tried to paint this war as virtually
    sacrifice-free: the Iraqis would welcome America with
    open arms, the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil
    revenues — and the all-volunteer military would
    concentrate the sacrifice on only a portion of the
    nation’s families.

    Mr. Bush’s comments about Mr. Dowd are a reflection
    of the otherworldliness that permeates his public
    appearances these days. Mr. Bush seems increasingly
    isolated, clinging to a fantasy version of Iraq that
    is more and more disconnected from reality. He gives
    a frightening impression that he has never heard any
    voice from any quarter that gave him pause, much less
    led him to rethink a position.

    Mr. Bush’s former campaign aide showed an open-mindedness
    and willingness to adapt to reality that is sorely
    lacking in the commander in chief.

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    10) Daimler Considers Selling Off Chrysler Division
    By MARK LANDLER
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04cnd-daimler.html?hp

    BERLIN, April 4 — DaimlerChrysler confirmed for the first
    time today that it is in negotiations with a number
    of parties about the sale of its money-losing Chrysler
    division.

    Speaking at DaimlerChrysler’s annual meeting here, Dieter
    Zetsche, the chief executive, said, “I can confirm that
    we are talking with some of the potential partners who
    have shown a clear interest.”

    Mr. Zetsche did not identify the automaker’s suitors,
    nor did he guarantee that the talks would end in a sale
    of Chrysler. “We need to keep all options open,” he
    said. “We need to keep maximum scope for maneuver.”

    DaimlerChrysler’s confirmation was not a surprise.
    The auto industry has crackled with rumors about
    would-be bidders for Chrysler since mid-February,
    when Mr. Zetsche disclosed the company was considering
    all options for the unit, which lost $1.5 billion
    last year.

    But it added to the momentum that is building behind
    a sale. DaimlerChrysler’s shares rose nearly 1 percent
    this morning, on top of a roughly 25 percent rise
    in the stock since the company put Chrysler into play.

    The mood among the 8,000 or so shareholders assembled
    here for the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting
    was unmistakable: they expect DaimlerChrysler to cut
    loose Chrysler, unwinding a trans-Atlantic merger that
    was hailed at the time of its announcement in 1998
    as a blueprint for the future of the global auto
    industry.

    A steady stream of investors stood up during the
    meeting to condemn the merger and demand a speedy
    sale.

    “Should there be a divorce in court, we would be very
    happy,” said Henning Gebhardt, a spokesman for DWS,
    a major German asset management firm. His fear, he said,
    was that DaimlerChrysler would not find a buyer willing
    to take Chrysler off its hands on acceptable terms.

    With some $20 billion in health-care obligations for
    retired workers, Chrysler will not be easy to sell,
    according to analysts. Some estimate it may fetch as
    little as $5 billion to $7 billion — or even nothing.

    “What will happen if you do not find a new bridegroom
    for Chrysler, or if the dowry is too high?”
    Mr. Gebhardt said.

    Hans-Richard Schmitz, a spokesman for the German
    Association for the Protection of Shareholders, said,
    “This marriage made in heaven turned out to be
    a complete failure.”

    Mr. Schmitz criticized DaimlerChrysler’s management
    for even reserving the option of not selling the unit.
    “What’s missing now is a swift resolution of the issue
    by the management of the group,” he said. “I don’t
    understand why you’re so hesitant, Dr. Zetsche.”

    Among the shareholder proposals scheduled to be put
    to a vote here later today is one that would require
    DaimlerChrysler to change its name back to Daimler-Benz
    if it does not unload Chrysler by March 31, 2008.

    “Maintaining a corporate name that evokes associations
    with the failure of the business combination with Chrysler
    is detrimental to the image of the corporation and its
    products,” said the proposal, submitted by two shareholders,
    Ekkehard Wenger and Leonhard Knoll.

    The company said the DaimlerChrysler name was well
    established, and urged shareholders to reject the proposal.

    Some shareholders expressed frustration that Mr. Zetsche
    did not disclose more details about the potential sale.

    So far, three parties have submitted expressions of interest
    in Chrysler, according to people involved in the negotiations:
    two private-equity firms — Blackstone Group and Cerberus
    and the Canadian auto-parts supplier, Magna International,
    which is working with another private equity investor,
    Ripplewood.

    The talks are expected to be lengthy and arduous, and
    a deal is not likely for a few months, these executives said.

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    11) Jungle Law
    "In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco's
    wells in the area around Lago Agrio ("sour
    lake"), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same
    year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in
    an epic lawsuit˜among the largest environmental
    suits in history˜against Chevron, which acquired
    Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle
    in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author
    investigates how many hundreds of square miles of
    surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump."
    by William Langewiesche
    May 2007
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705


    In a forsaken little town in the Ecuadorean
    Amazon, an overgrown oil camp called Lago Agrio,
    the giant Chevron Corporation has been maneuvered
    into a makeshift courtroom and is being sued to
    answer for conditions in 1,700 square miles of
    rain forest said by environmentalists to be one
    of the world's most contaminated industrial
    sites. The pollution consists of huge quantities
    of crude oil and associated wastes, mixed in with
    the toxic compounds used for drilling
    operations˜a noxious soup that for decades was
    dumped into leaky pits, or directly into the
    Amazonian watershed. The company that did much of
    this work was Texaco˜an outfit with a
    swashbuckling reputation worldwide. It signed a
    contract with Ecuador in 1964, began full-scale
    production in 1972, and pulled out 20 years
    later. In 2001, Texaco was swallowed whole by
    Chevron, which by integrating its operations
    nearly doubled in size. The lawsuit against it in
    Lago Agrio was filed in 2003, though the legal
    antecedents go back much further. Having dragged
    on for four years, the suit may continue for half
    again as long. Chevron is represented by
    high-priced firms of experienced lawyers in Quito
    and Washington, D.C., whose collective fees run
    to millions of dollars annually. Its antagonists
    are 30,000 Amazonian settlers and indigenous
    people, who call themselves Los Afectados˜the
    Affected Ones. These plaintiffs are represented
    by a low-budget but serious team of North
    American and Ecuadorean attorneys, who are backed
    by a Philadelphia law firm that is known for
    class-action securities litigation and has
    gambled that this case, though risky, can actually be won.

    Chevron objects vociferously, and presents itself
    as the victim here. Its attorneys have repeatedly
    claimed that the company is being extorted for
    "two juicy checks," one to be divided among the
    plaintiffs and the other to enrich their North
    American lawyers. The North American lawyers are
    indeed working on a contingency basis, but
    unapologetically so, and for a percentage
    significantly lower than the norm in high-risk
    cases; they would like to be well compensated for
    their efforts, but as much, they say, to
    encourage other lawyers to bring similar suits
    elsewhere in the world as to pad their personal
    bank accounts. The most active among them is a
    New Yorkˆbased Harvard Law School graduate named
    Steven Donziger, who has invested 14 years in the
    case and would certainly be more secure had he
    pursued a conventional career involving the
    preservation of wealth. He counterclaims that
    Chevron's lawyers are the real mercenaries here.
    It is a philosophical quarrel that will never be resolved.

    As for the plaintiffs themselves, under
    Ecuadorean law they are not suing individually,
    and personally may never see a dime. They have
    sued to seek compensation for past damages and to
    force Chevron to clean up the residual mess that
    continues, they believe, to taint the soil and
    water today. It is unclear how a cleanup would
    proceed and to what extent it could succeed, but
    over decades the cost might run to $6 billion or
    more˜making this potentially the largest
    environmental lawsuit ever to be fought. And
    fight is the word. The case has become emotional
    for both sides, with few signs of willingness to
    compromise. Worldwide the oil industry is
    watching. Lago Agrio is a forsaken little town
    where something rather large is going down.

    This is not, however, a U.S.-style legal drama.
    The Lago Agrio court follows Ecuadorean
    procedures, which minimize oral arguments and
    rely heavily on submitted documents to get at the
    truth. So far the proceedings have generated
    close to 200,000 pages. There is no jury to sway.
    There is a single presiding judge, drawn from a
    pool of three on a rotating basis for a two-year
    term of unusual pressure. Currently the judge is
    a rotund middle-aged man, a reader of Dostoyevsky
    and a convert to Islam. He must be the only
    Muslim in town. He told me it is not easy to be a
    judge there. Five years ago he was ambushed and
    machine-gunned while driving his car. His
    companion was killed, but he himself escaped. The
    attackers were hired killers, of whom Lago Agrio
    has an ample supply. Colombia's largest
    cocaine-production area lies just over the border
    a few miles to the north, and is peopled not only
    by narco-traffickers but also by leftist
    guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups.
    The police in Lago Agrio make a show sometimes of
    directing traffic. They did not investigate the
    attack, the judge believes, because they feared
    retribution. The judge accepted this without
    complaint, as if he had learned to believe in
    fate. Lago Agrio means "sour lake." He told me
    that the only safe choice there is to run away.
    Chevron would probably agree. It denies that the
    judge is fair, denies that the plaintiffs have
    legitimate complaints, denies that their soil and
    water samples are meaningful, denies that the
    methods the company used to extract oil in the
    past were substandard, denies that it
    contaminated the forest, denies that the forest
    is contaminated, denies that there is a link
    between the drinking water and high rates of
    cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and skin
    disease, denies that unusual health problems have
    been demonstrated˜and, for added measure, denies
    that it bears responsibility for any
    environmental damage that might after all be
    found to exist. If Chevron can convince the court
    of the validity of even a few of those points, it
    will win the case and leave town.

    (clip)

    --

    www.marxmail.org

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    12) Our Crumbling Foundation
    By BOB HERBERT
    April 5, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp

    Fifty-nine years ago this week — on April 3, 1948 —
    President Truman signed the legislation establishing
    the Marshall Plan, which contributed so much to the
    rebuilding of postwar Europe. Now, more than half
    a century later, the U.S. can’t even rebuild New
    Orleans.

    It doesn’t seem able to build much of anything, really.
    According to the American Society of Civil Engineers,
    the U.S. infrastructure is in sad shape, and it would
    take more than a trillion and a half dollars over
    a five-year period to bring it back to a reasonably
    adequate condition.

    If there’s a less sexy story floating around, I can’t
    find it. It certainly can’t compete with the Sanjaya
    Malakar saga, or with the claim by Keith Richards that
    he snorted his dad’s ashes with “a little bit of blow.”

    But, as we learned with New Orleans, there are
    consequences to neglecting the infrastructure.
    Just a little over a year ago, a dam in Hawaii
    gave way, unleashing a wave 70 feet high and 200
    yards wide. It swept away virtually everything
    in its path, including cars, houses and trees.
    Seven people drowned.

    On the day after Christmas in Portland, Ore.,
    a sinkhole opened up like something from a science
    fiction movie and swallowed a 25-ton sewer- repair
    truck. Authorities blamed the sinkhole on the
    collapse of aging underground pipes.

    Blackouts, school buildings in advanced states
    of disrepair, decrepit highway and railroad bridges
    — the American infrastructure is growing increasingly
    old and obsolete. In addition to being an invitation
    to tragedy, this is a problem that is putting Americans
    at a disadvantage in the ever more competitive
    global economy.

    Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who helped
    save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s,
    has been prominent among those trying to sound the
    infrastructure alarm. Along with former Senator
    Warren Rudman, he has been criticizing the government’s
    unwillingness to invest adequately in public
    transportation systems, water projects, dams,
    schools, the electrical grid, and so on.

    He recently told a House committee that Congress
    should begin a major effort to rebuild the American
    infrastructure “before it is too late.”

    “Since the beginning of the republic,” he said,
    “transportation, infrastructure and education have
    played a central role in advancing the American
    economy, whether it was the canals in upstate New
    York, or the railroads that linked our heartland
    to our industrial centers; whether it was the opening
    of education to average Americans by land grant
    colleges and the G.I. bill, making education basic
    to American life; or whether it was the interstate
    highway system that ultimately connected all regions
    of the nation.

    “This did not happen by chance, but was the result
    of major investments financed by the federal and
    state governments over the last century and a half.
    ... We need to make similar investments now.”

    Politics and ideology are the main reasons that
    government has turned away from public investment
    over the past several years. Zealots marching under
    the banner of small government have been remarkably
    effective in thwarting efforts to raise taxes or
    borrow substantial sums for the kind of public
    investment that has always been essential to
    a dynamic economy.

    That this is counterproductive in a post-20th-
    century world should be as obvious as the sun
    rising in the morning. There is a reason why
    countries like China and India are racing like
    mad to develop their infrastructure and educational
    capacity.

    “A modern economy needs a modern platform, and
    that’s the infrastructure,” Mr. Rohatyn said in
    an interview. “It has been shown that the productivity
    of an economy is related to the quality of its
    infrastructure. For example, if you don’t have
    enough schools to teach your kids, or your kids
    are taught in schools that have holes in the ceilings,
    that are dilapidated, they’re not going to be as
    educated and as competitive in a world economy
    as they need to be.”

    Mr. Rohatyn and Mr. Rudman are co-chairmen of the
    Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center
    for Strategic and International Studies. They believe
    that failing to move quickly to address the nation’s
    infrastructure needs — through the establishment of
    a national trust fund, for example, or a federal
    capital budget — could lead to long-term disaster.

    But words like trust fund and long-term and
    infrastructure find it very difficult to elbow
    their way into the nation’s consciousness. We may
    have to wait for another New Orleans before beginning
    to take this seriously.

    David Brooks is on vacation.

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    13) Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home
    By DEBORAH SONTAG
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

    DUNBAR, Pa. — Blinded and disabled on the 54th day
    of the war in Iraq, Sam Ross returned home to a rousing
    parade that outdid anything this small, depressed
    Appalachian town had ever seen. “Sam’s parade put
    Dunbar on the map,” his grandfather said.

    That was then.

    Now Mr. Ross, 24, faces charges of attempted homicide,
    assault and arson in the burning of a family trailer
    in February. Nobody in the trailer was hurt, but
    Mr. Ross fought the assistant fire chief who reported
    to the scene, and later threatened a state trooper with
    his prosthetic leg, which was taken away from him,
    according to the police.

    The police locked up Mr. Ross in the Fayette County
    prison. In his cell, he tried to hang himself with
    a sheet. After he was cut down, Mr. Ross was committed
    to a state psychiatric hospital, where, he said in
    a recent interview there, he is finally getting —
    and accepting — the help he needs, having spiraled
    downward in the years since the welcoming fanfare
    faded.

    “I came home a hero, and now I’m a bum,” Mr. Ross,
    whose full name is Salvatore Ross Jr., said.

    The story of Sam Ross has the makings of a ballad,
    with its heart-rending arc from hardscrabble childhood
    to decorated war hero to hardscrabble adulthood.
    His effort to create a future for himself by enlisting
    in the Army exploded in the desert during a munitions
    disposal operation in Baghdad. He was 20.

    He was also on his own. Mr. Ross, who is estranged
    from his mother and whose father is serving a life
    sentence for murdering his stepmother, does not have
    the family support that many other severely wounded
    veterans depend on. Various relatives have stepped
    in at various times, but Mr. Ross, embittered by
    a difficult childhood and by what the war cost him,
    has had a push-pull relationship with those who sought
    to assist him.

    Several people have taken a keen interest in Mr. Ross,
    among them Representative John P. Murtha, the once-
    hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Murtha
    publicly turned against the war in Iraq in 2005,
    he cited the shattered life of Mr. Ross, one of his
    first constituents to be seriously wounded,
    as a pivotal influence.

    Mr. Murtha’s office assisted Mr. Ross in negotiating
    the military health care bureaucracy. Homes for Our
    Troops, a nonprofit group based in Massachusetts, built
    him a beautiful log cabin. Military doctors carefully
    tended Mr. Ross’s physical wounds: the loss of his eyesight,
    of his left leg below the knee and of his hearing in one
    ear, among other problems.

    But that help was not enough to save Mr. Ross from
    the loneliness and despair that engulfed him. Overwhelmed
    by severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,
    including routine nightmares of floating over Iraq that
    ended with a blinding boom, he “self-medicated” with
    alcohol and illegal drugs. He finally hit rock bottom
    when he landed in the state psychiatric hospital,
    where he is, sadly, thrilled to be.

    “Seventeen times of trying to commit suicide, I think
    it’s time to give up,” Mr. Ross said, speaking in the
    forensic unit of the Mayview State Hospital in Bridgeville.
    “Lots of them were screaming out cries for help, and nobody
    paid attention. But finally somebody has.”

    Finding a Way Out

    Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, once
    a prosperous coal mining center, is now one of the
    poorest counties in the state. The bucolic but
    ramshackle town of Dunbar sits off State Route
    119 near the intersection marked by the Butchko
    Brothers junkyard.

    Past the railroad tracks and not far up Hardy Hill
    Road, the blackened remains of Mr. Ross’s hillside
    trailer are testament to his disintegration. The
    Support our Troops ribbon is charred, the No
    Trespassing sign unfazed.

    Mr. Ross lived in that trailer, where his father
    shot his stepmother, at several points in his life,
    including alone after he returned from Iraq.
    Its most recent tenant, his younger brother, Thomas,
    was in jail when the fire occurred.

    Many in Mr. Ross’s large, quarreling family are on
    one side of the law or the other, prison guards
    or prisoners, police officers or probationers.
    Their internal feuds are so commonplace that family
    reunions have to be carefully plotted with an eye to
    who has a protective order out against whom, Mr. Ross’s
    25-year-old cousin, Joseph Lee Ross, joked.

    Sam Ross’s childhood was not easy. “Sam’s had
    a rough life from the time he was born,” his
    grandfather, Joseph Frank Ross, said. His parents
    fought, sometimes with guns, until they separated
    and his mother moved out of state. Mr. Ross bore
    some of the brunt of the turmoil.

    “When that kid was little, the way he got beat around,
    it was awful,” his uncle, Joseph Frank Ross Jr.,
    a prison guard, said.

    When he was just shy of 12, Mr. Ross moved in with
    his father’s father, who for a time was married
    to his mother’s mother. The grandfather-grandson
    relationship was and continues to be tumultuous.

    “I idolized my grandpaps, but he’s an alcoholic
    and he mentally abuses people,” Mr. Ross said.

    His grandfather, 72, a former coal miner who sells
    used cars, said, “I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit.
    I just love the taste of it.”

    The grandfather, who still keeps an A-plus English
    test by Mr. Ross on his refrigerator, said his
    grandson did well in school, even though he cared
    most about his wrestling team, baseball, hunting
    and fishing. Mr. Ross graduated in June 2001.

    “Sammy wanted me to pay his way to college, but
    I’m not financially fixed to do that,” his
    grandfather said.

    Feeling that Fayette County was a dead end,
    Mr. Ross said he had wanted to find a way out
    after he graduated. One night in late 2001,
    he said, he saw “one of those ‘Be all you can
    be’ ads” on television. The next day, he went
    to the mall and enlisted, getting a $3,000 bonus
    for signing up to be a combat engineer.

    From his first days of basic training, Mr. Ross
    embraced the military as his salvation. “It was like,
    ‘Wow, man, I was born for the Army,’ ” he said.
    “I was an adrenaline junkie. I was super, super fit.
    I craved discipline. I wanted adventure. I was
    patriotic. I loved the bonding. And there was
    nothing that I was feared of. I mean, man, I was
    made for war.”

    In early 2003, Private Ross, who earned his jump
    wings as a parachutist, shipped off to Kuwait with
    the 82nd Airborne Division, which pushed into Iraq
    with the invasion in March. The early days of the
    war were heady for many soldiers like Private Ross,
    who reveled in the appreciation of Iraqis. He was
    assigned to an engineer squad given the task of
    rounding up munitions.

    On May 18, Private Ross and his squad set out to
    de-mine an area in south Baghdad. Moving quickly,
    as they did on such operations, he collected about
    15 UXO’s, or unexploded ordnances, in a pit. Somehow,
    something — he never learned what — caused them
    to detonate.

    “The initial blast hit me and I went numb and
    everything went totally silent,” he said. “Then
    I hear people start hollering, ‘Ross! Ross! Ross!’
    It started getting louder, louder, louder. My whole
    body was mangled. I was spitting up blood. I faded
    in and out. I was bawling my eyes out, saying, ‘Please
    don’t let me go; don’t let me go.’ ”

    A Casualty of War

    When his relatives first saw Mr. Ross at Walter Reed
    Army Hospital in Washington, he was in a coma.
    “That boy was dead,” his grandfather said. “We was
    looking at a corpse lying in that bed.”

    As he lay unconscious, the Army discharged him —
    one year, four months and 18 days after he enlisted,
    by his calculation. After 31 days, Mr. Ross came
    off the respirator. Groggily but insistently, he pointed
    to his eyes and then to his leg. An aunt gingerly
    told him he was blind and an amputee. He cried
    for days, he said.

    It was during Mr. Ross’s stay at Walter Reed that
    Representative Murtha, a former Marine colonel, first
    met his young constituent and presented him with
    a Purple Heart.

    From the start of the war, Mr. Murtha said in an
    interview, he made regular, painful excursions to
    visit wounded soldiers. Gradually, those visits,
    combined with his disillusionment about the Bush
    administration’s management of the war, led him
    to call in late 2005 for the troops to be brought
    home in six months.

    “Sam Ross had an impact on me,” Mr. Murtha said.
    “Eventually, I just felt that we had gotten to
    a point where we were talking so much about winning
    the war itself — and it couldn’t be won militarily —
    that we were forgetting about the results of the war
    on individuals like Sam.”

    Over the next three years, Mr. Ross underwent more
    than 20 surgical procedures, including: “Five on my
    right eye, one on my left eye, two or three when they
    cut my left leg off, three or four on my right leg,
    a couple on my throat, skin grafts, chest tubes and,
    you know, one where they gutted me from belly button
    to groin” to remove metal fragments from his intestines.

    But, although he was prescribed psychiatric medication,
    he never received in-patient treatment for the post-
    traumatic stress disorder that was diagnosed
    at Walter Reed. And, in retrospect he, like his
    relatives, said he believes he should have been put
    in an intensive program soon after his urgent physical
    injuries were addressed.

    “They should have given him treatment before they
    let him come back into civilization,” his grandfather
    said.

    A Hero’s Welcome

    The parade, on a sunny day in late summer 2003,
    was spectacular. Hundreds of flag-waving locals
    lined the streets. Mr. Ross had just turned 21.
    Wearing his green uniform and burgundy beret, he
    rode in a Jeep, accompanied by other veterans and
    the Connellsville Area Senior High School Marching
    Band. The festivities included bagpipers, Civil
    War re-enactors and a dunking pool.

    “It wasn’t the medals on former Army Pfc. Sam Ross’s
    uniform that reflected his courage yesterday,” The
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote. “It was the Dunbar
    native’s poise as he greeted well-wishers and insisted
    on sharing attention with other soldiers that proved
    the grit he’ll need to recover from extensive injuries
    he suffered in Iraq.”

    For a little while, “it was joy joy, happiness
    happiness,” Mr. Ross said. He felt the glimmerings
    of a new kind of potential within himself, and saw
    no reason why he could not go on to college, even law
    school. Then the black moods, the panic attacks,
    the irritability set in. He was dogged by chronic
    pain; fragments of metal littered his body.

    Mr. Ross said he was “stuck in denial” about his
    disabilities. The day he tried to resume a favorite
    pastime, fishing, hit him hard. Off-balance on the water,
    it came as a revelation that, without eyesight, he did
    not know where to cast his rod. He threw his equipment
    in the water and sold his boat.

    “I just gave up,” he said. “I give up on everything.”

    About a year after he was injured, Mr. Ross enrolled
    in an in-patient program for blind veterans in Chicago.
    He learned the Braille alphabet, but his fingers were
    too numb from embedded shrapnel to read, he said. He
    figured that he did not have much else to learn since
    he had been functioning blind for a year. He left the
    program early.

    Similarly, Mr. Ross repeatedly declined outpatient
    psychiatric treatment at the veterans hospital in
    Pittsburgh, according to the Department of Veterans
    Affairs. He said he felt that people at the hospital
    had disrespected him.

    After living with relatives, Mr. Ross withdrew from
    the world into the trailer on the hill in 2004.
    That year, he got into a dispute with his grandfather
    over old vehicles on the property, resolving it
    by setting them on fire. His run-ins with local
    law enforcement, which did not occur before he
    went to Iraq, the Fayette County sheriff said,
    had begun.

    But his image locally had not yet been tarnished.
    In early 2005, Mr. Murtha held a second Purple Heart
    ceremony for Mr. Ross at a Fayette County hospital
    “to try to show him how much affection we had for
    him and his sacrifice,” Mr. Murtha said.

    A local newspaper article about Mr. Ross’s desire
    to build himself a house came to the attention
    of Homes for Our Troops.

    “He’s a great kid; he really is,” said Kirt Rebello,
    the group’s director of projects and veterans affairs.
    “Early on, even before he was injured, the kid had
    this humongous deck stacked against him in life.
    That’s one of the reasons we wanted to help him.”

    Mr. Ross, who had received a $100,000 government payment
    for his catastrophic injury, bought land adjacent to
    his grandfather’s. Mr. Rebello asked Mr. Ross whether
    he might prefer to move to somewhere with more services
    and opportunities. But Mr. Ross said that Dunbar’s
    winding roads were implanted in his psyche, “that he
    could see the place in his mind,” Mr. Rebello said.

    A Life Falls Apart

    In May 2005, Mr. Ross broke up with a girlfriend
    and grew increasingly depressed. He felt oppressively
    idle, he said. One day, he tacked a suicide note
    to the door of his trailer and hitched a ride to
    a trail head, disappearing into the woods. A day
    long manhunt ensued.

    Mr. Ross fell asleep in the woods that night, waking
    up with the sun on his face, which he took to be
    a sign that God wanted him to live. When he was found,
    he was taken to a psychiatric ward and released
    after a few weeks.

    The construction of his house proved a distraction
    from his misery. Mr. Ross enjoyed the camaraderie
    of the volunteers who fashioned him a cabin from
    white pine logs. But when the house, which he
    named Second Heaven, was finished in early 2006,
    “they all left, I moved in and I was all alone,”
    he said. “That’s when the drugs really started.”

    At first, Mr. Ross said, he used drugs — pills,
    heroin, crack and methadone — “basically to mellow
    myself out and to have people around.” Local ne’er-
    do-wells enjoyed themselves on Mr. Ross’s tab for
    quite some time, his relatives said.

    “These kids were loading him into a car, taking
    him to strip clubs, letting him foot the bills,”
    his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., said. “They were
    dopies and druggies.”

    Mr. Ross’s girlfriend, Barbara Hall, moved in with him.
    But relationships with many of his relatives had
    deteriorated.

    “If that boy would have come home and accepted
    what happened to him, that boy never would have
    wanted for anything in Dunbar,” his grandfather
    said. “If he had accepted that he’s wounded and
    he’s blinded, you know? He’s not the only one that
    happened to. There’s hundreds of boys like him.”

    Some sympathy began to erode in the town, too.
    “There’s pro and con on him,” a local official said.
    “Some people don’t even believe he’s totally blind.”

    After overdosing first on heroin and then on
    methadone last fall, Mr. Ross said, he quit
    consuming illegal drugs, replacing them with drinking
    until he blacked out.

    Mr. Ross relied on his brother, Thomas, when he
    suffered panic attacks. When Thomas was jailed
    earlier this year, Mr. Ross reached out to older
    members of his family. In early February, his uncle,
    Joseph Ross Jr., persuaded him to be driven several
    hours to the veterans’ hospital in Coatesville to
    apply for its in-patient program for post-traumatic
    stress disorder.

    “Due to the severity of his case, they accepted him
    on the spot and gave him a bed date for right after
    Valentine’s Day,” his uncle said. “Then he wigged
    out five days before he was supposed to go there.”

    It started when his brother’s girlfriend, Monica
    Kuhns, overheard a phone call in which he was arranging
    to buy antidepressants. She thought it was a transaction
    to buy cocaine, he said, and he feared that she would
    tell his sister and brother.

    After downing several beers, Mr. Ross, in a deranged
    rage, went to his old trailer, where Ms. Kuhns was
    living with her young son, he said.

    “He started pounding on the door,” said Ms. Hall, who
    accompanied him. “He went in and threatened to burn
    the place down. Me and Monica didn’t actually think
    he was going to do it. But then he pulled out the
    lighter.”

    Having convinced himself that the trailer — a source
    of so much family misery — needed to be destroyed,
    Mr. Ross set a pile of clothing on fire. The women
    and the child fled. When a volunteer firefighter
    showed up, Mr. Ross attacked and choked him, according
    to a police complaint.

    A judge set bail at $250,000. In the Fayette County
    prison, Mr. Ross got “totally out of hand,” the sheriff,
    Gary Brownfield, said. Mr. Ross’s lawyer, James Geibig,
    said the situation was a chaotic mess.

    “It was just a nightmare,” Mr. Geibig said. “First
    the underlying charges — attempted homicide, come
    on — were blown out of proportion. Then bail is set
    sky high, straight cash. They put him in a little
    cell, in isolation, and barely let him shower.
    Things went from bad to worse until they found
    him hanging.”

    Now Mr. Geibig’s goal is to get Mr. Ross sentenced
    into the post-traumatic stress disorder program
    he was supposed to attend.

    “He does not need to be in jail,” Mr. Geibig said.
    “He has suffered enough. I’m not a bleeding heart,
    but his is a pretty gut-wrenching tale. And at the
    end, right before this incident, he sought out help.
    It didn’t arrive in time. But it’s not too late,
    I hope, for Sam Ross to have some kind of future.”

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    14) Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois
    By LIBBY SANDER
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05raid.html

    CHICAGO, April 4 — Immigration agents arrested two managers
    and 60 other employees of an industrial cleaning company
    Wednesday on immigration violations and charges of identity
    theft in an early morning raid at a meatpacking plant
    in central Illinois.

    The operation was the latest in a string of raids by agents
    from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on companies accused
    of employing illegal immigrants who, in some cases, are
    alleged to have stolen the identities of American citizens
    to create false identification documents.

    The raid occurred at 1:30 a.m. at Cargill Meat Solutions
    in Beardstown, a town of 6,000 people northwest of
    Springfield, where the cleaning company, Quality Service
    Integrity Inc., was under contract to clean Cargill’s
    pork processing plant.

    The two managers, who officials said are Mexicans in the
    United States illegally, and 11 of the workers arrested
    Wednesday were charged with aggravated identity theft.
    Identity theft charges were brought against 14 additional
    employees of the cleaning service, but they have not yet
    been arrested, said Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for
    the immigration agency.

    Forty-nine employees were taken into custody for alleged
    immigration violations. In all, 54 of the 62 people arrested
    are from Mexico; 5 are from Guatemala; 2 from El Salvador
    and 1 from Argentina, Ms. Montenegro said.

    Eleven of the workers taken into custody were released
    on humanitarian grounds, officials said.

    Neither Cargill nor any of the 2,200 employees at its
    Beardstown facility were objects of the investigation,
    officials said.

    The two managers are Gerardo DominGuez-Chacon, who manages
    the cleaning company’s Beardstown operation, and Maria del
    Pilar Marroquin de Ramirez, the company’s personnel administrator.
    Both are charged in a criminal complaint with aggravated
    identity theft and with “aiding and abetting aggravated identity
    theft in connection with the alleged hiring of illegal
    immigrants.” If convicted, they face at least two years
    in prison.

    Prosecutors said that the two managers knowingly hired
    illegal immigrants and that Mr. DominGuez-Chacon provided
    new employees with stolen identities and gave illegal
    immigrants information on how to obtain false
    identification documents.

    The cleaning service is described on a company Web
    site as a member of the Vincit Group, which is based
    in Chattanooga, Tenn. A woman answering the telephone
    at Vincit said no one was available to comment.

    The investigation into the cleaning company’s hiring
    practices began in January, officials said, and revealed
    that most of the company’s work force was illegal
    immigrants.

    In December, immigration agents raided six meat-processing
    plants operated by Swift and Company in six states,
    detaining 1,282 immigrants believed to be in the country
    illegally and charging 219 so far, mostly with identity
    theft.

    Since the Swift raids, smaller raids have occurred
    in many states. Immigration authorities say they are
    stepping up efforts to go after companies that engage
    in the trafficking of false and stolen documents used
    by illegal immigrants to obtain employment.

    Last week, agents arrested 69 immigrants placed by
    a temporary job agency, Jones Industrial Network, at
    work sites in the Baltimore area. In early March, more
    than 360 people, including the owner and three managers,
    were arrested at Michael Bianco Inc., a leather goods
    manufacturer in New Bedford, Mass.

    Three days after the Massachusetts raid, charges were
    brought against the president of Sun Drywall and Stucco,
    an Arizona construction company, and seven managers
    accused of hiring illegal immigrants.

    And in Michigan, federal prosecutors brought charges
    in February against three executives of Rosenbaum-
    Cunningham International, a cleaning and maintenance
    company, alleging that the three defrauded the federal
    government of more than $18 million in employment taxes
    owed on behalf of hundreds of illegal immigrant workers.
    Nearly 200 immigrant workers in 17 states and the District
    of Columbia were arrested as part of the investigation.

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    15) Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
    Democratic Blood Money
    By JOSHUA FRANK
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/frank04042007.html

    Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently
    resigned from her post on the Military Construction
    Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) late last week
    as her ethical limbo with war contracts began to surface
    in the media, including an excellent investigative report
    written by Peter Byrne for Metro in January. MILCON has
    supervised the appropriations of billions of dollars
    in reconstruction contracts since the Bush wars began.

    Feinstein, who served as chairperson and ranking member
    for the committee from 2001-2005, came under fire early
    last year in these pages for profiting by way of her
    husband Richard Blum who, until 2005, held large stakes
    in two defense contracting companies. Both businesses,
    URS and Perini, have scored lucrative contracts in Iraq
    and Afghanistan in the last four years, and Blum has
    personally pocketed tens of millions of dollars off the
    deals his wife, along with her colleagues, so graciously
    approved.

    Here's a brief rundown of the Feinstein family's blatant
    war profiteering. In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps
    of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide
    services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier
    in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design
    and construct a facility to support the Afghan National
    Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded
    a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical
    power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.

    But it is not just Perini that has made Feinstein and
    Blum wealthy. Blum also held over 111,000 shares of stock
    in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense
    contractors in the United States. Blum was an acting
    director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider
    of technical services and management to the U.S. military,
    from the neocon packed Carlyle Group back in 2002.

    "As part of EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco
    Chronicle, "Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in
    URS -- second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled
    by Blum Capital."

    URS and Blum have since banked on the war in Iraq,
    attaining a $600 million contract through EG&G, which
    Sen. Feinstein permitted. As a result, URS has seen its
    stock price more than triple since the war began in March
    of 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this
    venture alone and another $100 million for his
    investment firm.

    And it is not just the Feinstein family that has
    benefited from the war -- so too has the Democratic
    Party. Since 2000, the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks has
    donated over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial
    Committee including leading Democrats including John
    Kerry, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and even Barbara Boxer.

    Feinstein's resignation from MILCON was the least the
    senator could do to atone for profiting off the spoils
    of war. But Feinstein wasn't trying to atone, she seems
    to have been trying to cover her tracks instead by
    distancing herself from her post. If the Democratic
    Party had any foresight whatsoever it would return
    all the Blood Money donated by Blum. From there the
    Senate ought to hold hearings and examine Feinstein's
    tenure as the chair and ranking member of MILCON and
    analyze every single contract she approved which
    benefited her husband's respective companies.

    There is absolutely no question -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein
    has a plethora of ethics violations she needs to account
    for at once.

    Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals
    Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits www.BrickBurner.org

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    16) Reflections of the Commander in Chief
    THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF GENOCIDE
    April 3, 2007
    By Fidel Castro Ruz
    GRANMA
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art84.html

    The Camp David meeting has just come to
    an end. All of us followed the press
    conference offered by the presidents
    of the United States and Brazil
    attentively, as we did the news surrounding
    the meeting and the opinions
    voiced in this connection.

    Faced with demands related to customs
    duties and subsidies which protect and
    support US ethanol production, Bush
    did not make the slightest concession to
    his Brazilian guest at Camp David.

    President Lula attributed to this the
    rise in corn prices, which, according
    to his own statements, had gone up more
    than 85 percent.

    Before these statements were made,
    the Washington Post had published an
    article by the Brazilian leader which
    expounded on the idea of transforming
    food into fuel.

    It is not my intention to hurt Brazil
    or to meddle in the internal affairs
    of this great country. It was in effect
    in Rio de Janeiro, host of the
    United Nations Conference on Environment
    and Development, exactly 15 years
    ago, where I delivered a 7-minute
    speech vehemently denouncing the
    environmental dangers that menaced
    our species' survival. Bush Sr., then
    President of the United States, was
    present at that meeting and applauded my
    words out of courtesy; all other
    presidents there applauded, too.

    No one at Camp David answered the
    fundamental question. Where are the more
    than 500 million tons of corn and
    other cereals which the United States,
    Europe and wealthy nations require
    to produce the gallons of ethanol that
    big companies in the United States and
    other countries demand in exchange
    for their voluminous investments going
    to be produced and who is going to
    supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower
    and rape seeds, whose essential
    oils these same, wealthy nations are to
    turn into fuel, going to be produced
    and who will produce them?

    Some countries are food producers which
    export their surpluses. The balance
    of exporters and consumers had already
    become precarious before this and
    food prices had skyrocketed. In the
    interests of brevity, I shall limit
    myself to pointing out the following:

    According to recent data, the five
    chief producers of corn, barley, sorghum,
    rye, millet and oats which Bush wants
    to transform into the raw material of
    ethanol production, supply the world
    market with 679 million tons of these
    products. Similarly, the five chief
    consumers, some of which also produce
    these grains, currently require 604 million
    annual tons of these products.
    The available surplus is less than
    80 million tons of grain.

    This colossal squandering of cereals
    destined to fuel production -and these
    estimates do not include data on oily
    seeds-shall serve to save rich
    countries less than 15 percent of the
    total annual consumption of their
    voracious automobiles.

    At Camp David, Bush declared his intention
    of applying this formula around
    the world. This spells nothing other
    than the internationalization of
    genocide.

    In his statements, published by the
    Washington Post on the eve of the Camp
    David meeting, the Brazilian president
    affirmed that less than one percent
    of Brazil's arable land was used to
    grow cane destined to ethanol
    production. This is nearly three times
    the land surface Cuba used when it
    produced nearly 10 million tons of
    sugar a year, before the crisis that
    befell the Soviet Union and the advent
    of climate changes.

    Our country has been producing and
    exporting sugar for a longer time. First,
    on the basis of the work of slaves,
    whose numbers swelled to over 300
    thousand in the first years of the 19th
    century and who turned the Spanish
    colony into the world's number one
    exporter. Nearly one hundred years later,
    at the beginning of the 20th century,
    when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which
    had been denied full independence by
    US interventionism; it was immigrants
    from the West Indies and illiterate
    Cubans alone who bore the burden of
    growing and harvesting sugarcane on the
    island. The scourge of our people
    was the off-season, inherent to the
    cyclical nature of the harvest.
    Sugarcane plantations were the
    property of US companies or powerful
    Cuban-born landowners. Cuba, thus,
    has more experience than anyone as
    regards the social impact of this crop.

    This past Sunday, April 1, the CNN
    televised the opinions of Brazilian
    experts who affirm that many lands
    destined to sugarcane have been purchased
    by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

    As part of my reflections on the subject,
    published on March 29, I expounded
    on the impact climate change has
    had on Cuba and on other basic
    characteristics of our country's
    climate which contribute to this.

    On our poor and anything but consumerist
    island, one would be unable to find
    enough workers to endure the rigors
    of the harvest and to care for the
    sugarcane plantations in the ever more
    intense heat, rains or droughts. When
    hurricanes lash the island, not even
    the best machines can harvest the
    bent-over and twisted canes. For centuries,
    the practice of burning
    sugarcane was unknown and no soil was
    compacted under the weight of complex
    machines and enormous trucks. Nitrogen,
    potassium and phosphate fertilizers,
    today extremely expensive, did not yet
    even exist, and the dry and wet
    months succeeded each other regularly.
    In modern agriculture, no high yields
    are possible without crop rotation methods.

    On Sunday, April 1, the French Press
    Agency (AFP) published disquieting
    reports on the subject of climate
    change, which experts gathered by the
    United Nations already consider an
    inevitable phenomenon that will spell
    serious repercussions for the world
    in the coming decades.

    According to a UN report to be approved
    next week in Brussels, climate
    change will have a significant impact
    on the American continent, generating
    more violent storms and heat waves and
    causing droughts, the extinction of
    some species and even hunger in Latin
    America.

    The AFP report indicates that the
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    (IPCC) forewarned that at the end of
    this century, every hemisphere will
    endure water-related problems and,
    if governments take no measures in this
    connection, rising temperatures could
    increase the risks of mortality,
    contamination, natural catastrophes
    and infectious diseases.

    In Latin America, global warming is
    already melting glaciers in the Andes
    and threatening the Amazon forest, whose
    perimeter may slowly be turned into
    a savannah, the cable goes on to report.

    Because a great part of its population
    lives near the coast, the United
    States is also vulnerable to extreme natural
    phenomena, as hurricane Katrina
    demonstrated in 2005.

    According to AFP, this is the second
    of three IPCC reports which began to be
    published last February, following
    an initial scientific forecast which
    established the certainty of climate
    change.

    This second 1400-page report which
    analyzes climate change in different
    sectors and regions, of which AFP has
    obtained a copy, considers that, even
    if radical measures to reduce carbon
    dioxide emissions that pollute the
    atmosphere are taken, the rise in
    temperatures around the planet in the
    coming decades is already unavoidable,
    concludes the French Press Agency.

    As was to be expected, at the Camp
    David meeting, Dan Fisk, National
    Security advisor for the region,
    declared that "in the discussion on
    regional issues, [I expect] Cuba to
    come up (.) if there's anyone that knows
    how to create starvation, it's Fidel
    Castro. He also knows how not to do
    ethanol".

    As I find myself obliged to respond
    to this gentleman, it is my duty to
    remind him that Cuba's infant mortality
    rate is lower than the United
    States'. All citizens -this is beyond
    question-enjoy free medical services.
    Everyone has access to education and
    no one is denied employment, in spite
    of nearly half a century of economic
    blockade and the attempts of US
    governments to starve and economically
    asphyxiate the people of Cuba.

    China would never devote a single ton
    of cereals or leguminous plants to the
    production of ethanol, and it is an
    economically prosperous nation which is
    breaking growth records, where all
    citizens earn the income they need to
    purchase essential consumer items, despite
    the fact that 48 percent of its
    population, which exceeds 1.3 billion,
    works in agriculture. On the
    contrary, it has set out to reduce
    energy consumption considerably by
    shutting down thousands of factories
    which consume unacceptable amounts of
    electricity and hydrocarbons. It imports
    many of the food products mentioned
    above from far-off corners of the world,
    transporting these over thousands
    of miles.

    Scores of countries do not produce
    hydrocarbons and are unable to produce
    corn and other grains or oily seeds,
    for they do not even have enough water
    to meet their most basic needs.

    At a meeting on ethanol production held
    in Buenos Aires by the Argentine Oil
    Industry Chamber and Cereals Exporters
    Association, Loek Boonekamp, the
    Dutch head of the Organization for
    Economic Cooperation and Development
    (OECD)'s commercial and marketing division,
    told the press that governments
    are very much enthused about this process
    but that they should objectively
    consider whether ethanol ought to be
    given such resolute support.

    According to Boonekamp, the United States
    is the only country where ethanol
    can be profitable and, without subsidies,
    no other country can make it viable.

    According to the report, Boonekamp
    insists that ethanol is not manna from
    Heaven and that we should not blindly
    commit to developing this process.

    Today, developed countries are pushing
    to have fossil fuels mixed with
    biofuels at around five percent and
    this is already affecting agricultural
    prices. If this figure went up to
    10 percent, 30 percent of the United
    States' cultivated surface and 50
    percent of Europe's would be required.
    That is the reason Boonekamp asks
    himself whether the process is
    sustainable, as an increase in the
    demand for crops destined to ethanol
    production would generate higher
    and less stable prices.

    Protectionist measures are today at
    54 cents per gallon and real subsidies
    reach far higher figures.

    Applying the simple arithmetic we learned
    in high school, we could show how,
    by simply replacing incandescent bulbs
    with fluorescent ones, as I explained
    in my previous reflections, millions
    and millions of dollars in investment
    and energy could be saved, without the
    need to use a single acre of farming
    land.

    In the meantime, we are receiving news
    from Washington, through the AP,
    reporting that the mysterious disappearance
    of millions of bees throughout
    the United States has edged beekeepers
    to the brink of a nervous breakdown
    and is even cause for concern in Congress,
    which will discuss this Thursday
    the critical situation facing this insect,
    essential to the agricultural
    sector. According to the report, the
    first disquieting signs of this enigma
    became evident shortly after Christmas
    in the state of Florida, when
    beekeepers discovered that their bees
    had vanished without a trace. Since
    then, the syndrome which experts have
    christened as Colony Collapse Disorder
    (CCD) has reduced the country's swarms
    by 25 percent.

    Daniel Weaver, president of the US Beekeepers
    Association, stated that more
    than half a million colonies, each with
    a population of nearly 50 thousand
    bees, had been lost. He added that the
    syndrome has struck 30 of the
    country's 50 states. What is curious
    about the phenomenon is that, in many
    cases, the mortal remains of the bees
    are not found.

    According to a study conducted by Cornell
    University, these industrious
    insects pollinate crops valued at anywhere
    from 12 to 14 billion dollars.

    Scientists are entertaining all kinds
    of hypotheses, including the theory
    that a pesticide may have caused the
    bees' neurological damage and altered
    their sense of orientation. Others lay
    the blame on the drought and even
    mobile phone waves, but, what's certain
    is that no one knows exactly what
    has unleashed this syndrome.

    The worst may be yet to come: a new
    war aimed at securing gas and oil
    supplies that can take humanity to
    the brink of total annihilation.

    Invoking intelligence sources, Russian
    newspapers have reported that a war
    on Iran has been in the works for
    over three years now, since the day the
    government of the United States
    resolved to occupy Iraq completely,
    unleashing a seemingly endless and
    despicable civil war.

    All the while, the government of
    the United States devotes hundreds of
    billions to the development of highly
    sophisticated technologies, as those
    which employ micro-electronic systems
    or new nuclear weapons which can
    strike their targets an hour following
    the order to attack.

    The United States brazenly turns a deaf
    ear to world public opinion, which
    is against all kinds of nuclear weapons.

    Razing all of Iran's factories to the
    ground is a relatively easy task, from
    the technical point of view, for a powerful
    country like the United States.
    The difficult task may come later,
    if a new war were to be unleashed against
    another Muslim faith which deserves
    our utmost respect, as do all other
    religions of the Near, Middle or Far
    East, predating or postdating
    Christianity.

    The arrest of English soldiers at
    Iran's territorial waters recalls the
    nearly identical act of provocation
    of the so-called "Brothers to the
    Rescue" who, ignoring President Clinton's
    orders advanced over our country's
    territorial waters. Cuba's absolutely
    legitimate and defensive action gave
    the United States a pretext to promulgate
    the well-known Helms-Burton Act,
    which encroaches upon the sovereignty
    of other nations besides Cuba. The
    powerful media have consigned that
    episode to oblivion. No few people
    attribute the price of oil, at nearly
    70 dollars a gallon as of Monday, to
    fears of a possible invasion of Iran.

    Where shall poor Third World countries
    find the basic resources needed to
    survive?

    I am not exaggerating or using overblown
    language. I am confining myself to
    the facts.

    As can be seen, the polyhedron has many dark faces.

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    17) Guantánamo Follies
    Editorial
    April 6, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/opinion/06fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

    There has been much speculation about the Supreme Court’s
    decision not to hear an appeal from a group of Guantánamo
    Bay inmates until they have exhausted their legal options.
    Was the court signaling that the appeal had no merit? Were
    the court’s liberals waiting for a better chance to review
    President Bush’s unconstitutional detention system for
    “illegal enemy combatants”?

    Whatever the justices’ intentions, we saw one clear message
    in their decision, and we hope that Nancy Pelosi, the House
    speaker, and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, saw
    it too. It is past time for Congress to undo the grievous
    damage done by President Bush’s abuse of the Constitution
    when he created his system of secret prisons and public
    internment camps to detain selected foreigners indefinitely
    without any real legal challenge.

    In the months since Congress passed the Military Commissions
    Act of 2006, the administration has pushed ahead with the
    show trials permitted by the law. Each development in that
    courtroom brings fresh evidence of how urgent it is for
    the courts to strike down that law and for Congress to
    rewrite it.

    The plea bargain: Last month, after being held at
    Guantánamo for five years, David Hicks, an Australian
    citizen, pleaded guilty to a single, relatively minor
    charge in exchange for his freedom. This deal should
    infuriate any side of the debate.

    Americans who support Mr. Bush’s policy on prisoners
    accepted its premise: that the people in Guantánamo are
    so dangerous that letting any out will compromise American
    security. If an injustice were committed here or there,
    Americans would just have to grit their teeth. How does
    that square with allowing Mr. Hicks to go home and quickly
    go free? Worse, the plea bargain seemed timed to help
    Prime Minister John Howard, a Bush ally whose inaction
    on the case was becoming a re-election issue in Australia.

    For Americans, like us, who are sickened by the Guantánamo
    prison, the Hicks bargain was emblematic of its lawless
    nature. If there was evidence that Mr. Hicks was a terrorist,
    we have yet to see it. He was declared an illegal combatant
    by a kangaroo court created to confirm that designation,
    which had been applied long before. He was denied a lawyer
    and censored by the court when he tried to pursue abuse
    charges. Under his plea bargain he gave up his right
    to sue, repudiated his own accounts of abuse and was
    even barred from talking to the news media about his
    experience.

    To understand why Mr. Hicks still found that sort of deal
    attractive, remember that once a person is declared an “
    illegal enemy combatant,” he faces a lifetime in detention.
    He might be released by a “combatant status tribunal,” but
    his chances are very slim, and the process mocks civilized
    standards of justice. If the prisoner is one of the very
    few that the Pentagon plans to charge with a crime, he
    will be brought before a military tribunal. That court
    may use evidence obtained through hearsay, coercion or
    even torture. If convicted, there is little likelihood
    that he will be released after serving his time.
    If acquitted, he just goes back to being an illegal
    combatant who can be held for life.

    The censored confession: On March 14, Abd al-Rahim al
    Nashiri, accused of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and
    other crimes, went before a combatant status tribunal.
    According to a transcript, Mr. Nashiri said he was tortured.
    But it is Mr. Bush’s policy that no prisoner may allege
    torture in public, so this is what appeared in the
    transcript:

    PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods
    that were used.

    DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED)
    There were doing so many things. What else did they did?
    (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began.
    (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator
    after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer
    that I knew. And if I didn’t replay what I heard, he used
    to (CENSORED).

    Officials defended this censorship by arguing that
    interrogation methods are so secret that they cannot
    be discussed, even by the prisoner. But they also said
    that Al Qaeda members are trained to claim torture and
    that Mr. Nashiri lied. If so, why censor the transcript?
    His answers can’t help Al Qaeda. Tragically, the most
    likely answer is to spare United States intelligence
    agents and their bosses, who could face charges if
    the Military Commissions Act is ever repealed or
    rewritten. The law gives a retroactive carte blanche
    to American interrogators for any abuse they may
    have committed.

    The lawsuit: The case the Supreme Court turned down
    this week was filed by Guantánamo inmates who contend
    that their detention was illegal and that the Military
    Commissions Act is unconstitutional. We agree. Holding
    people without evidence or charges or trial is barbaric,
    as is denying them the right to challenge their detention
    in a real court, a right generally referred to as habeas
    corpus.

    Both violate the Constitution, and the court should strike
    down the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Detainee
    Treatment Act of 2005, which limits avenues for appeal.
    But Congress approved the military commissions, left in place
    the combatant status review tribunals and suspended habeas
    corpus. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have a moral obligation
    to lead the way to righting these wrongs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Illustration: TOM BACHTELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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    A civil rights revolution with 'netroots' origins
    "A14-year-old black girl from tiny Paris, Texas, was sent
    to a youth prison for up to seven years for shoving
    a hall monitor at her high school.
    The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl
    to probation for burning down her family's house."
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_5599216

    Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI Bank
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/326/

    Canadian Seal Hunt Opens Again Amidst Outcry
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/332/

    World Health Day: How Much Can Iraq Survive
    Inter Press Service
    Ali al-Fadhily
    http://dahrjamailiraq.com
    http://uruknet.info/?p=m31918&s1=h1
    http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37236

    Federal Official in Student Loans Held Loan Stock
    By JONATHAN D. GLATER and KAREN W. ARENSON
    April 6, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/education/06loans.html?hp

    Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery
    · Benedict hails Marx's analysis of modern man
    · Publication planned for 80th birthday
    John Hooper in Rome
    Guardian
    "Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation
    movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having
    "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions
    of the world.
    An extract published from his first book since being elected
    pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and
    anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly,
    the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis
    of contemporary man as a victim of alienation."
    April 5, 2007
    http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2050255,00.html

    None of the Democratic Contenders Has Called for the
    Closure of the Guantanamo Prison Of Confessions and Torture
    By MARGARET KIMBERLY
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/kimberly04042007.html

    Quota Quickly Filled on Visas for High-Tech Guest Workers
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The federal Citizenship and Immigration Services reached
    its 2008 limit for skilled-worker visa petitions in a single
    day and says it will not accept any more, to the dismay
    of technology companies that rely on the visas to hire
    foreign employees.
    The agency began accepting petitions Monday for the fiscal
    year starting Oct. 1 and said it received about 150,000
    applications by midafternoon.
    The temporary H-1B visas are for foreign workers with
    high-technology skills or in specialty occupations.
    Congress has mandated that the immigration agency
    limit the visas granted to 65,000, although the cap
    does not apply to petitions made on behalf of current
    H-1B holders, and an additional 20,000 visas can be
    granted to applicants who hold advanced degrees from
    American academic institutions.
    The agency said it would use computers to pick visa
    recipients randomly from the applications received
    Monday and Tuesday. It will reject the rest of the
    applications and return the filing fees.
    Employers seek H-1B visas on behalf of scientists,
    engineers, computer programmers and other workers
    with theoretical or technical expertise. About one-
    third of Microsoft’s 46,000 employees in the United
    States have work visas or are legal permanent residents
    with green cards, said Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman
    for the company.
    “We are trying to work with Congress to get the cap
    increased,” Ms. Terzano said. “Our real preference
    here is that there not be a cap at all.”
    Compete America, a coalition that includes Microsoft,
    the chip maker Intel, the business software company
    Oracle and others, voiced its opposition to the
    visa cap in a statement Tuesday.
    “Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign
    professionals are not only counterproductive, they
    are anticompetitive and detrimental to America’s
    long-term economic competitiveness,” said Robert
    E. Hoffman, an Oracle vice president and co-chairman
    of Compete America.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/business/05visa.html

    California: Plea for a Shorter Sentence
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The lawyer and parents of John Walker Lindh, the American-
    born Taliban soldier serving 20 years in prison after his
    capture in Afghanistan, called on President Bush to commute
    his sentence and set him free. The renewed call to shorten
    the sentence was based on a nine-month term that David Hicks,
    an Australian, received Saturday after pleading guilty to
    supporting terrorism. “In the atmosphere of the time, the
    best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year
    sentence,” said Mr. Lindh’s father, Frank Lindh. The White
    House did not return a call seeking comment.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05brfs-PLEAFORASHOR_BRF.html

    Castro Again Chides U.S. on Ethanol Plan
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    HAVANA, April 4 (AP) — The ailing Cuban leader Fidel
    Castro returned to the public debate — if not view —
    for the second time in less than a week on Wednesday
    with a column in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
    Mr. Castro, 80, chided the Bush administration for its
    support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move
    that he said would leave the world’s poor hungry.
    It was his second article on the issue in less than
    a week, indicating that he is increasingly eager to
    have his voice heard on international matters, eight
    months after stepping down as Cuba’s president because
    of illness.
    Cuba has experimented with using sugar cane for ethanol
    production, but now that the United States has embraced
    the idea, Mr. Castro and his ally Hugo Chávez, the
    president of Venezuela, have expressed concern that
    rich countries will buy up the food crops of poor nations
    to meet their energy needs, threatening millions with
    starvation.
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/americas/05cuba.html

    Havana rights
    Calvin Tucker
    March 28, 2007 8:30 PM
    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/calvin_tucker/2007/03/the_street_sce
    ne_was_entertain.html

    Marking Time, Making Do
    By JOHN FREEMAN GILL
    NY Times, April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/nyregion/thecity/01subw.html

    What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School
    The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless
    By Chip Ward
    http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=180836

    Freedom Fight Against 'Freedom Champions'
    Inter Press Service
    Dahr Jamail
    "DOHA, Apr 2 (IPS) - The al-Jazeera television network could
    be emerging as a freedom champion against U.S. pressures
    on the channel, leading media figures say."
    http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    One Safety Net Is Disappearing. What Will Follow?
    By DAVID LEONHARDT
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04leonhardt.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1175715826-TzzMluaV9e3apBlAiCHwpQ

    The Latest Trend in Corporate America
    Circuit City's Guinea Pigs
    By SHARON SMITH
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.org/sharon04042007.html

    An Arid West No Longer Waits for Rain
    By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and KIRK JOHNSON
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/us/04drought.html?ref=us

    Three Yale Students Arrested for Flag Burning
    By JOHN HOLUSHA
    Three Yale University students were arrested early Tuesday
    morning for burning an American flag on a pole attached
    to a house in New Haven, the Yale Daily News reported today.
    The three men, all of foreign origin, were charged with
    offenses ranging from reckless endangerment to arson and
    were held in jail Tuesday night after a judge refused to
    release them without bail.
    According to the newspaper, the New Haven police said the
    men — two freshmen and a senior — first attracted police
    attention at about 3 a.m. Tuesday when they asked two offcers
    for directions back to their residence. They were identified
    as Said Hyder Akbar, 23, Nikolaos Angelopoulos, 19, and
    Farhad Anklesaria, also 19.
    The two officers returned to the neighborhood shortly
    afterward and found the flag burning in front of a house.
    One officer pulled down the flag to keep the fire from
    spreading and the other tracked down the three men. The
    police said the men admitted to starting the blaze, the
    newspaper reported.
    Mr. Anklesaria was identified as a British subject and
    Mr. Angelopoulos as a citizen of Greece. Mr. Akbar was
    born in Pakistan and is a naturalized American citizen,
    the newspaper said.
    Mr. Akbar is the author of a published memoir, “Come
    Back to Afghanistan,” describing his experiences over
    three summers spent observing reconstruction efforts
    in Afghanistan and acting as an informal translator
    for American forces there.
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/nyregion/04cnd-yale.html?hp

    Iran to Release 15 Britons Held Since March 23
    By SARAH LYALL and CHRISTINE HAUSER
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/middleeast/04cnd-iran.html?hp

    Documents Show Secret FBI Unit Targeted Antiwar Group
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040307R.shtml

    Hang Up on War
    Posted on Apr 3, 2007
    By Amy Goodman
    http://www.truthdig .com/report/ item/hang_ up_on_war/

    "Beyond Vietnam,"
    Martin Luther King Address
    To the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam
    Riverside Church
    4 April 1967
    New York City
    http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

    Time in the Animal Mind
    By CARL ZIMMER
    April 3, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/science/03time.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

    Robert Fisk: The war of humiliation
    Published: 02 April 2007
    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2412764.ece

    US anti-Zionist synagogue gutted
    "A synagogue of an anti-Zionist Jewish group has been
    destroyed in a fire.
    The blaze tore through a synagogue of Neturei Karta
    near New York and the residence of a senior rabbi.
    Police have established a crime scene and are investigating
    the cause of the fire. The ultra-orthodox group has recently
    been the target of threats.
    In December, five members of the community attended
    a conference for Holocaust deniers in Iran and met
    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
    Arson claims
    Rabbi Moshe Beck, who lives in the building in the town
    of Monsey - about 30 miles (48km) from New York -
    was in London when the fire broke out, said Neturei
    Karta member Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss.
    Mr Weiss said the group believes it was targeted by
    arsonists because it had previously received threats.
    'There's no question that the issue is to stifle the
    opposition to Zionism,' he said to AP news agency.
    Police would not confirm whether they were treating
    the fire as suspicious.
    Neturei Karta opposes the existence of the state
    of Israel on religious grounds.
    Members of the group - whose name means 'Guardians
    of the City' - believe Jews should live under Arab
    Muslim rule until the Messiah comes."
    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6518033.stm

    Justices Rule Against White House on Emissions
    By DAVID STOUT
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/washington/02cnd-scotus.html?hp

    Crime Intensifies Debate Over Taping of Suspects
    By ERIC LIPTON and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/washington/02taping.html?ref=us

    Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms
    By ANDREW C. REVKIN
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/science/earth/01climate.html?hp

    The Fake Fight Over the Iraq War
    That Was an Antiwar Vote?
    By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
    and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
    March 31 / April 1, 2007
    Weekend Edition
    http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn03312007.html

    Judge Allows Private Testing for Mad Cow
    By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers
    Thursday, March 29, 2007
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/29/national/w153913D29.DTL&hw=mad+cow&sn=001&sc=1000

    Residents of Fallujah Fear a US 'Genocidal Strategy'
    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/30/188/

    Gulf Hits Snags in Rebuilding Public Works
    By LESLIE EATON
    March 31, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/us/31fema.html?ref=us

    Bill to Legalize Abortion Set to Pass in Mexico City
    By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
    March 31, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/world/americas/31mexico.html?ref=world

    Olmert Rejects Right of Return for Palestinians
    By STEVEN ERLANGER
    March 31, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html?ref=world

    How did the real hero of the anti-slavery movement
    get airbrushed out of history?
    By ISABEL WOLFF
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444105&in_page_id=1770

    Disuse of System Is Cited in Gaps in Soldiers’ Care
    By IAN URBINA and RON NIXON
    March 30, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/washington/30medical.html?hp

    New York City to Reward Poor for Doing Right Thing
    By DIANE CARDWELL
    March 30, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/nyregion/30poverty.html?ref=nyregion

    White House Proposal Would Move Illegal Immigrants
    Off the Citizenship Path
    By RACHEL L. SWARNS
    White House officials have issued a discussion document
    on immigration that calls for legislation that would grant
    legal status to illegal immigrants and guest workers, but
    would not put them on a path to citizenship. It would allow
    illegal immigrants to remain in the country indefinitely,
    under certain conditions, and would require guest workers
    to leave the country after six years. The document, drafted
    after several meetings with Republican senators, was
    designed to garner broad Republican support for key
    immigration principals. Democratic and Republican
    senators are negotiating in hope of coming to a consensus
    on an immigration bill.
    March 30, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/washington/30brfs-citizen.html

    Cuba: Castro Criticizes U.S. Biofuel Policies
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    The Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, lashed out against American plans
    to increase use of renewable fuels, mainly ethanol, in a front-page
    article in the Communist Party newspaper, Granma, warning that
    food stocks for millions of people would be threatened. The article,
    titled “Condemned to Premature Death by Hunger and Thirst —
    More Than 3 Billion People of the World,” said that if the United
    States and other wealthy nations decided to import huge amounts
    of traditional crops like corn from poorer countries to help meet
    their energy needs, “you will see how many people among the hungry
    masses of our planet will no longer consume corn.” “Or even worse,”
    it continued, “by offering financing to poor countries to produce
    ethanol from corn or any other kind of food, no tree will be left
    to defend humanity from climate change.” They were his first
    comments on international issues since Mr. Castro took ill last July.
    In recent weeks, several senior Cuban officials have indicated that
    he might soon take a more active role and even return
    to the presidency.
    March 30, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/world/americas/30briefs-castro.html

    Opposition to the War Growing Among Troops
    by Sarah Olson
    March 30, 2007
    http://www.antiwar.com/orig/solson.php?articleid=10742

    Two Radical Immigrants, Framed for Murder, Executed by the State
    Sacco and Vanzetti Revisited
    By MARLENE MARTIN
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.org/martin03292007.html

    Havana rights
    Plans to legalise gay marriage and offer sex change
    operations free of charge mean Cuba is set to become
    the most socially liberal country in the Americas.
    March 28, 2007 8:30 PM
    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/calvin_tucker/2007/03/the_street_scene_was_entertain.html

    Eighteen Months After Katrina
    "When it is all said and done, there has been a lot more said than done."
    http://www.justiceforneworleans.org/index.php?module=article&view=83&page_num=1

    Study Says Junk Food Still Dominates Youth TV
    By ELIZABETH OLSON
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/media/29adco.html

    Located in Hospital, DNA Clears Buffalo Man Convicted in ’80s Rapes
    By DAVID STABA
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/nyregion/29bike.html?ref=nyregion

    Texas: Deal on Juvenile Prisons
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Lawmakers and the governor vowed to abolish the Texas Youth
    Commission’s board in favor of a juvenile prison czar. The plan
    puts the agency into a conservatorship for now and allows a single
    executive to take it over later. The commission has been in turmoil
    since a two-year-old sexual abuse investigation surfaced a month
    ago. Lawmakers still must introduce legislation and vote on the plan.
    Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, made Jay Kimbrough the conservator.
    Mr. Kimbrough, left, said that he would fire immediately 111
    commission employees who have felony convictions and that
    superintendents of commission facilities and other top officials
    would have to reapply for their jobs.
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/us/29brfs-DEALONJUVENI_BRF.html

    California: Sentences in Immigrant Hiring
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Two executives at a fence-building company were sentenced
    to six months of home confinement for hiring illegal immigrants.
    The men, Mel Kay, founder, chairman and president of the business,
    Golden State Fence Company of Riverside, and Michael McLaughlin,
    a manager, had pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
    In addition, the two were sentenced to three years’ probation.
    Also, Mr. Kay was fined $200,000; McLaughlin agreed
    to pay $100,000.
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/us/29brfs-SENTENCESINI_BRF.html

    Colleges Hiring Lenders to Field Queries on Aid
    By JONATHAN D. GLATER
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/education/29loans.html?ref=us

    Street Violence by Paris Youths Intrudes Again Into French Politics
    By KATRIN BENNHOLD
    March 29, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/europe/29paris.html

    Inside the secretive plan to gut the Endangered Species Act
    "Proposed regulatory changes, obtained by Salon, would destroy the
    'safety net for animals and plants on the brink of extinction,'
    say environmentalists.'
    By Rebecca Clarren
    http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/27/endangered_species/

    Pennsylvania: Negligence Is Cited in Deadly Mine Explosion
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Federal investigators found “flagrant violations” at a Pennsylvania
    mine where a worker died last year in a methane gas explosion, the
    federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said. The R&D Coal
    Company did not ensure adequate ventilation, safe blasting practices
    or proper preshift safety checks at the mine, Buck Mountain Slope,
    directly contributing to the Oct. 23 death of Dale Reightler, 43,
    a veteran miner, federal officials said. The miners conducting the
    blasting that day were not qualified to handle explosives and set
    them off before other miners could get to a safe area, investigators
    found. State regulators have revoked R&D’s permit to operate the
    Buck Mountain site, in Schuylkill County about 80 miles northwest
    of Philadelphia. R&D officers did not respond to requests for comment.
    March 27, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/us/27brfs-mine.html

    Black Politicians Chicken Out on Reparations
    Black Press International
    http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=44ad0172db35b08198274c68176d54e7

    Failing Schools See a Solution in Longer Day
    By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
    March 26, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/us/26schoolday.html?ref=us

    Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers
    By CHARLES DUHIGG
    March 26, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/26care.html?hp

    Chavez Launches Formation of Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela
    Sunday, Mar 25, 2007
    By: Chris Carlson - Venezuelanalysis.com
    http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2250

    Four Years Later in Iraq
    Where are the Laptop Bombardiers Now?
    By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
    Weekend Edition
    March 24 / 25, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn03242007.html

    The Women’s War
    By SARA CORBETT
    Editors' Note Appended
    March 18, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/magazine/18cover.html

    City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention
    By JIM DWYER
    For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention,
    teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities
    across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations
    of people who planned to protest at the convention, according
    to police records and interviews.
    March 25, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html?hp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Happy Holidays!

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

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

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

    posted 12:32 PM  0 comments

    Thursday, April 05, 2007
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2007

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    Re: Mumia Abu-Jamal v. Martin Horn,
    Pennsylvania Director of Corrections
    U.S. Court of Appeals Nos. 01-9014, 02-9001 (death penalty)

    Dear Friends:

    Oral argument in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
    will be on May 17 before a three-judge panel in the U.S.
    Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia.

    The issues concern the right to a fair trial, the death
    penalty, and the political repression of an outspoken
    journalist. Racism and politics are threads that have
    run through this case since the beginning. We are
    engaged in extensive work in preparation for this
    complex hearing.

    Many people have called my office and sent e-mail asking
    how they can make contributions to the defense of Mumia.

    Concern has been expressed as to how to ensure that
    donations go to the right organization so that they
    are actually applied to the legal effort rather than
    for some other purpose.

    To contribute directly to the legal defense of Mumia,
    please make your check payable to the "National Lawyers
    Guild Foundation." All such donations are tax deductible
    to the full extent provided by law. The NLG Foundation
    is a tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organization under
    Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3).

    Donations should be mailed to:

    Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
    P.O. Box 2012
    New York, NY 10159

    Your interest in this struggle for human rights
    and against the death penalty is appreciated.

    With best wishes,

    Robert

    Robert R. Bryan
    Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
    2088 Union Street, Suite 4
    San Francisco, California 94123

    Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CINE DEL BARRIO and New College Media Studies Program present:
    The Red Dance (El Baile Rojo) directed by Yezid Campos
    a film about Colombia, video, in color, 57 minutes, 2004
    sub-titles in English plus, an up to the minute report on the
    continuing struggle in Colombia by Cristina Gutierrez.
    Saturday, April 7, 11:30 a.m.
    at the Roxie New College Film Center
    3117 - 16th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero)
    San Francisco
    No admission charge

    This is part of "Nuestra America, Muestra de Cine y Video
    Documental" series of film showings on Saturdays of March,
    April, and May. All films are at 11:30am and 1:30pm on
    Saturdays at the Roxie. Films on Nicaragua, Venezuela,
    Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and the U.S. (Immigrantes
    Nuevo Orleans). Films are in Spanish with English sub-titles.
    For more information: 415-863-1087
    www.roxie.com

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    Anti-War Rally at Port of Oakland
    Saturday, April 7, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
    An anti-war rally will mark the fourth anniversary of the
    Oakland police attack on anti-war protesters at the Port.
    Port of Oakland Headquarters
    530 Water Street, foot of Washington St. in Jack London Square.
    For more information, call
    415-863-6637 or email portaction@riseup.net

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    SOLIDARITY WITH KATRINA SURVIVORS

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St., S.F.

    Featured Speaker: KALI AKUNO
    Executive Director, People's Hurricane Relief Fund - O.C.

    Also: "Down But Not Out" —A Film on the Gulf Coast Resistance

    Music by Leith Kahl, Biko, & Spoken Word Artists

    SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ 7 p.m.
    (@ 16th Street; near 16th St. Mission BART)
    Donation requested at door; No one turned away for lack of funds.

    Sponsored by PHRF-OC, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,
    Bay Area Katrina Solidarity Committee,
    Revolution Youth, The Organizer Newspaper,
    Colectivo Media Insurgente, CRUCS,
    Mission High Black Student Union

    For more information, call 415-646-6469 or 504-301-0215.

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    DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

    The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
    release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Dr. Al-Arian is currently
    under his 60th day of a water-only hunger strike in protest of his
    maltreatment by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
    plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
    he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
    a grand jury in Virginia.

    Dr. Al-Arian is currently being held at a medical facility in North Carolina.
    He is in critical condition, having lost 53 pounds, over 25% of his
    body weight.

    According to family members who recently visited him he is no longer
    able to walk or stand on his own.

    More information on Dr. Al-Arian's ordeal can be found in the transcript
    of a recent interview with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian on Democracy Now.

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

    ACTION:

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

    Call, Email and Write:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Contact:

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

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    ARTICLES IN FULL:
    *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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    1) Let America Be America Again
    by Langston Hughes
    http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609

    2) The End of the Line as They Know It
    By LOUIS UCHITELLE
    Detroit
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/business/yourmoney/01jobs.html?ref=business

    3) Patents Over Patients
    By RALPH W. MOSS
    Op-Ed Contributor
    State College, Pa.
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html

    4) Distract and Disenfranchise
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    April 2, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login

    5) Taxing Private Equity
    Editorial
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02mon1.html?hp

    6)PROTECT OUR PENSIONS
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/

    7) "The Language Isn't Strong Enough"
    A Report on the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention
    Tueday April 3, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

    8) HOW IRAN TREATS PRISONERS
    HOW THE US TREATS PRISONERS
    "Call that humiliation? No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings.
    These Iranians are clearly a very uncivilised bunch."
    Terry Jones
    Saturday March 31, 2007
    The Guardian
    http://www.guardian .co.uk/

    9) More Than a Feeling
    Editorial
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds1.html?hp

    10) Daimler Considers Selling Off Chrysler Division
    By MARK LANDLER
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04cnd-daimler.html?hp

    11) Jungle Law
    "In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco's
    wells in the area around Lago Agrio ("sour
    lake"), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same
    year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in
    an epic lawsuit˜among the largest environmental
    suits in history˜against Chevron, which acquired
    Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle
    in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author
    investigates how many hundreds of square miles of
    surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump."
    by William Langewiesche
    May 2007
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705

    12) Our Crumbling Foundation
    By BOB HERBERT
    April 5, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp

    13) Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home
    By DEBORAH SONTAG
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

    14) Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois
    By LIBBY SANDER
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05raid.html

    15) Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
    Democratic Blood Money
    By JOSHUA FRANK
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/frank04042007.html

    16) Reflections of the Commander in Chief
    THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF GENOCIDE
    April 3, 2007
    By Fidel Castro Ruz
    GRANMA
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art84.html

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    1) Let America Be America Again
    by Langston Hughes
    http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609

    Let America be America again.

    Let it be the dream it used to be.

    Let it be the pioneer on the plain

    Seeking a home where he himself is free.


    (America never was America to me.)


    Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

    Let it be that great strong land of love

    Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

    That any man be crushed by one above.


    (It never was America to me.)


    O, let my land be a land where Liberty

    Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

    But opportunity is real, and life is free,

    Equality is in the air we breathe.


    (There's never been equality for me,

    Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")


    Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

    And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?


    I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

    I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

    I am the red man driven from the land,

    I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

    And finding only the same old stupid plan

    Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.


    I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

    Tangled in that ancient endless chain

    Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

    Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

    Of work the men! Of take the pay!

    Of owning everything for one's own greed!


    I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

    I am the worker sold to the machine.

    I am the Negro, servant to you all.

    I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

    Hungry yet today despite the dream.

    Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

    I am the man who never got ahead,

    The poorest worker bartered through the years.


    Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

    In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

    Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

    That even yet its mighty daring sings

    In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

    That's made America the land it has become.

    O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

    In search of what I meant to be my home--

    For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

    And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

    And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

    To build a "homeland of the free."


    The free?


    Who said the free? Not me?

    Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

    The millions shot down when we strike?

    The millions who have nothing for our pay?

    For all the dreams we've dreamed

    And all the songs we've sung

    And all the hopes we've held

    And all the flags we've hung,

    The millions who have nothing for our pay--

    Except the dream that's almost dead today.


    O, let America be America again--

    The land that never has been yet--

    And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

    The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

    Who made America,

    Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

    Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

    Must bring back our mighty dream again.


    Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

    The steel of freedom does not stain.

    From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

    We must take back our land again,

    America!


    O, yes,

    I say it plain,

    America never was America to me,

    And yet I swear this oath--

    America will be!


    Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

    The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

    We, the people, must redeem

    The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

    The mountains and the endless plain--

    All, all the stretch of these great green states--

    And make America again!

    From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published
    by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

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    2) The End of the Line as They Know It
    By LOUIS UCHITELLE
    Detroit
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/business/yourmoney/01jobs.html?ref=business

    TALK to Kenneth Doolittle about General Motors, where he once
    supervised a team of assembly line workers, and he readily speaks
    with pride about his job and the self-esteem it provided. “I loved
    all of it — the people, the work,” he says. “I was in a position
    finally where people listened to me when I spoke. I wasn’t just
    a Joe-Nobody. I contributed.”

    Talk to Mr. Doolittle a little longer and he gradually describes
    why he decided to take a buyout from G.M. — joining more than
    80,000 Big Three employees in the largest exodus of workers
    from a single American industry in decades.

    After G.M. shuttered the plant where Mr. Doolittle worked,
    it offered him a job back on the assembly line at another
    factory, an offer he pondered in silent humiliation. At 54,
    he considers himself “mentally not ready to retire,” but his
    union contract, and G.M.’s woes, required him to return
    to the assembly line and forfeit the higher rank he had
    worked years to secure.

    So he decided to leave. “I did not want to start over,” he
    said, “not after 33 ½ years.”

    The exodus that Mr. Doolittle is joining is voluntary. Some
    have changed their minds. More than 3,000 workers who
    signed up over the last year to leave Ford and G.M.
    subsequently decided to stay. These are, after all, the
    highest-paying blue-collar jobs left in America. Even so,
    workers are departing from the auto industry en masse,
    escaping — as they put it in interviews — increasingly
    difficult working conditions at companies they fear will
    desert them.

    As the workers depart in greater numbers than either their
    union or their employers anticipated, the exodus becomes
    more than a long ledger of altered lives. It is an accounting,
    of course, but an accounting of the most personal and
    poignant sort. Communities are fragmenting, families are
    relocating, and years of individual choices tethered to the
    notion of a certain kind of job in a certain kind of place are
    giving way to uncertainty, regret and loss of control.

    “The question is, Are we seeing a final end to what we have
    called blue-collar aristocracy?” asks Sheldon H. Danziger,
    a public policy researcher at the University of Michigan
    in Ann Arbor. “Big Steel is gone, coal is gone, shipbuilding
    is gone — all the big industrial unions are gone or going,
    except the auto workers. These are the people who had
    the strongest ability to fight, and now they seem to be
    giving up the struggle.”

    The reasons auto workers give for embracing buyouts are
    almost as numerous as the 18 workers interviewed for this
    article. Some have already departed from G.M., the first
    of the Big Three to offer the buyouts, and others are soon
    to depart from the Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler.
    Many who left or are leaving were eligible for retirement,
    having already worked the necessary 30 years. Others have
    accepted lump-sum payments, often in the six figures,
    to start over again. Indeed, the voluntary nature of this
    exodus has made it seem softer or less apparent than the
    upheavals that have greeted mass layoffs in other industries.

    But the common thread running through all of the interviews
    is that working conditions and benefits, which had become
    steadily better through the 1970s and even in the 1990s,
    were unmistakably in decline — and the future unpredictable.

    Mr. Doolittle, a stocky man with a narrow mustache, joined
    G.M. on the assembly line in Lansing in 1973 and rose to become
    a leader of one of the Japanese-style work teams that first
    became fashionable in the American auto industry in the
    1980s. By 2005, he was a “team build coordinator” with
    authority over several groups whose job it was to transfer
    engines from a conveyor into cars, bolt them into place and
    attach skeins of wires as the cars moved down an assembly line.

    When G.M. decided to close his plant in 2005, Mr. Doolittle’s
    seniority gave him every right to transfer to a much newer
    factory right next door, where G.M. is building a popular
    Cadillac sedan and is likely to do so for as long as Mr. Doolittle
    might have wanted a job. But he balked because of the change
    in stature that would accompany the switch.

    Since his departure last year, he has struggled to occupy
    his time. Divorced, with four grown children, he divides his
    days between an apartment in Lansing and a trailer parked
    on a small lakefront plot that he owns north of the city.
    He has typed out on a laptop three novels “about my life
    experience.” And to make up some of his lost income —
    his $36,000 pension is 60 percent of his old pay — he
    works 20 hours a week, at $10 an hour, doing maintenance
    at Sears stores.

    “That is just enough to keep me from watching Jerry Springer
    every day,” he said. “I don’t want to sit in front of a TV;
    I’m too young for that.”

    STARTING two years ago, the Big Three announced their
    intention to shed tens of thousands of workers by 2008.
    The buyouts, negotiated with the United Automobile Workers,
    are an attempt to orchestrate a huge downsizing in a kindlier,
    more orderly manner. The offers hold out a variety of subsidies,
    with the announced goal to tide people over as they make
    the transition to other jobs and lives.

    Ford Motor in particular has told its younger employees, through
    a series of job fairs, that good incomes await them in other
    industries, especially if they avail themselves of one of the
    tuition subsidies that Ford offers as a buyout option. Ford
    also offers departing employees a six-figure lump-sum
    payment, which experts at the job fairs suggest could be
    used to start a small business or to buy into a franchise.

    Joe W. Laymon, Ford’s vice president for corporate human
    resources and labor affairs, says his company has successfully
    used the job fairs to inform workers about opportunities and
    good pay elsewhere. On a more ominous note, however,
    he is quick to add that Ford has no other choice but to lay
    off or buy out workers if the company hopes to remain
    competitive.

    “We believe that the Ford Motor Company will be a viable,
    profitable entity going forward,” Mr. Laymon says. “To get
    from where we are today to that viable, profitable entity, we
    will reduce the number of employees working at Ford. Now,
    we can do it with an involuntary action or we can do it with
    a combination of voluntary actions and involuntary actions.”

    Across America, more than 30 million people have been forced
    out of jobs since the early 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
    reports, and regaining lost incomes has not been easy. Nearly
    50 million new jobs have been created over that same period,
    according to the bureau, so there are always new opportunities
    but more often than not at lower pay. Among those who have
    lost work, only a third held new jobs two years later that paid
    as well as those that were lost, according to the bureau’s surveys
    of displaced workers. Another third of those displaced were
    in jobs that paid, on average, 15 to 20 percent less than their
    previous employment — while the final third had dropped out
    of the labor force entirely.

    The Census Bureau reported a jump in net migration out of
    Michigan last year: some 42,300 people left, up from 29,700
    in 2005. That was far and away the largest outflow from the
    state since 1984, during the Rust Belt crisis, census data show.
    In some Michigan neighborhoods that have been home to auto
    workers, houses are now selling for less than the prices of
    some of the vehicles rolling off of assembly lines in Detroit,
    Dearborn, Lansing and elsewhere in the state. While no statistical
    evidence currently links the buyouts and the migration, Michigan
    state officials are responding as if that were the case. Gov. Jennifer
    M. Granholm is promising publicly financed college scholarships
    for all high school graduates, and she is expanding retraining
    programs for idled workers. “People who had auto manufacturing
    in the DNA of their families for several generations,” she says,
    “are all of a sudden finding the rug pulled out from under them.”

    The exodus is reminiscent of the Dust Bowl migration from
    the prairie states in the 1930s, when unemployed farmers gave
    up and trekked west to California. The Dust Bowl migration, on
    its face, was much more brutal — the number of displaced Okies,
    as they were called, was far greater than the current number
    of departing auto workers, and there were not corporate and
    public subsidies at the time to soften the hardship.

    “The Okies did not know whether they would get to their destination
    before they starved to death,” said Daniel Luria, an economist
    at the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center. “The labor
    market prospects for the auto workers are not good, but they
    have assets. They are not in danger of immediately falling
    into poverty.”

    Still, for all their greater means, the auto workers talk of a similar
    jarring sense of dislocation. The World War II economy eventually
    lifted the Okies to prosperity, and the buyouts may be the first
    step in achieving the same result for auto workers, though their
    fate will not be known for quite a while.

    Unionized auto workers can boast of annual wages of $60,000,
    built on a 40-hour work week that pays $28 or more an hour.
    Overtime pay helps swell wages to $80,000 or more, but overtime
    is steadily disappearing as the Big Three’s market share declines
    in the post-S.U.V. era. At the same time, getting off the assembly
    line, with its grueling pace and mental and emotional fatigue, has
    become more difficult. Rising seniority once meant transfers after
    10 or 15 years to easier tasks such as building seats or moving
    materials as a forklift driver. Many of these off-the-line jobs
    have been outsourced.

    Skilled auto workers — electricians, millwrights, tool makers —
    are similarly disheartened. Their skills have been hollowed out,
    they say. Instead of taking apart and repairing a machine’s
    gearbox, for example, they are limited to swapping out the
    damaged box for a spare. The damaged box goes for repair
    to an outside contractor employing less expensive labor.

    Beyond all of these specific complaints, auto workers say they
    fear the future. Plant closings have sown uncertainty. Some auto
    workers who accepted buyouts explained that they did so to lock
    in pensions and retiree health benefits. But they worry that these
    benefits may be bargained away for future retirees in contract
    negotiations that begin this summer.

    Younger workers, as a result, often say they see themselves
    as having no choice but to bail out. They have grabbed
    at generous college tuition payments or lump-sum payments
    as a bridge to what they hope will be, if not better lives, then
    incomes that someday will at least equal those they earned
    as auto workers.

    JEFFREY VITALE, 39, is in this camp. He is considering a $100,000
    buyout from DaimlerChrysler as part of a package that the automaker
    is just now putting on the table; it was the last of the Big Three
    to make such an offer.

    “Don’t get me wrong,” Mr. Vitale says. “It is going to be hard
    financially to leave.”

    Like many younger auto workers, he has gone to college. He was
    on his way to becoming a public school teacher when he dropped
    out in the late 1980s, against his father’s wishes, to become
    a carpenter. “It was hard to tell a 21-year-old making $75,000
    a year that you needed a college education to get a job,”
    Mr. Vitale recalls.

    A decade ago, he left carpentry and went to work for Chrysler at
    the Jefferson North assembly plant in Detroit. As a skilled millwright,
    his $31 an hour often brought in $80,000 a year or more, with
    overtime. “I was content,” he says. “I was bringing home a steady,
    good paycheck.” He married six years ago and he and his wife,
    a dance instructor, have a 3-year-old son.

    Then disillusionment crept in. Mr. Vitale found himself stuck on
    the second shift, working afternoon and evening hours, unable
    to spend much time with his family. Periodic layoffs of less-senior
    workers have kept him close to the bottom of the seniority ladder,
    which means that he has not been able to qualify for the more
    desirable day shift.

    The outsourcing of skilled work — in his case, maintenance
    of conveyors and machinery — also grates. “I think they will
    build cars in this plant for a long time,” he says, “but they won’t
    utilize in-house skills as they have in the past.”

    Two years ago, he was injured. A Jeep he was helping to push
    back onto a conveyor slipped off and pinned him. He spent 10
    months at home convalescing from shoulder injuries that required
    two operations.

    “That is when I realized I did not want to come back to the factory,”
    Mr. Vitale says. “I checked out my college transcript; I needed seven
    more courses, 21 credits, for a bachelor’s degree, and I’ve been
    doing the course work online.”

    He expects to graduate in December, qualified to work as a physical
    therapist, a profession not likely to pay as much as he now earns,
    and certainly not with the same benefits. For that reason, he
    hesitates to leave, but the Chrysler buyout proposals include,
    in his case, six months of health insurance on top of a $100,000
    payment.

    “I’m halfway decided to take the money and go,” he says. “I’ll be
    40 in November. Do I wait until they cut my pay in half and there
    is no buyout? Or they decide they don’t need so many millwrights
    in the plant, and they let me go? They have 136 now, down from
    280 ten years ago.”

    FOR her part, Leann Bies, 48, an electrician at the Ford truck
    plant in Dearborn, says that accepting a buyout means she will
    finally have a summer off. “There comes a point in time when
    you want to leave,” she says.

    With 29 years of service, one shy of the 30 needed to retire,
    she qualifies for a buyout that allows her to stay home that last
    year while collecting 85 percent of her pay, which is $31 an
    hour or $65,000 annually. She then segues into a normal
    $36,000 pension as well as retiree health insurance, both
    nominally insulated from any chipping away that might take
    place in pending contract negotiations.

    In a future job, if she takes one, she won’t even try to match
    her Ford salary, she says. She does not need to. Her husband
    continues to work at a G.M. plant. Their mortgage is paid off.
    The last two of her three children are in their final college years.
    And as an electrician with a state license, Ms. Bies says she can
    get work in her trade if need be.

    Or she could take an office job. While at Ford, she earned
    a bachelor’s degree in business leadership during her spare
    time. Ford paid her tuition under a program the U.A.W. negotiated.
    “I am young enough to pursue another career if I choose
    to do so,” she says.

    But for all of her creature comforts, Ms. Bies is angry about
    what she calls shoddy treatment in recent years. “The management
    of this plant is very disrespectful,” she says.

    The truck plant, a state-of-the-art operation, produces the still-
    popular F150 pickup, and there is constant pressure to keep the
    line moving. “I came into this plant in 2003 and for two years they
    treated me as if I were dumber than a box of rocks,” she says.
    “You get an attitude if you are treated that way. It is an important
    part of my decision to leave.”

    Yet it is only after departing that some auto workers realize what
    they have lost. Andrew J. Vigliano, 63, is one. He worked 44 years
    for G.M. in Lansing, mostly on the assembly line, and he still has
    the wiry body of a younger man. His factory closed last year, and
    rather than transfer to another plant, he took a $35,000 incentive
    to retire.

    “I was kind of tired of working,” he says. “But if you want my true
    opinion, if I had it to do over again, I would have stayed. I miss the
    people I worked with every day. Suddenly you cut that right off.”
    As the buyouts continue, some auto workers have turned to jobs
    that were once hobbies or sidelines to replace lost income: repairing
    gutters, landscaping, serving as full-time pastors or working as real
    estate brokers, plumbers and electricians.

    Mark Strong, 48, a stocky six-footer, his long graying hair pulled
    back in a ponytail, went on such a route. A decade ago, he and his
    brother, Tim, started a small machine shop, first in the garages
    of their homes in Mason, just south of Lansing, and then in an
    industrial park, in a small hangar-like building that Mark had
    constructed.

    The venture, Strong Products, has struggled. Tim, 47, a machinist,
    worked at the shop full time while Mark worked there during time
    off from his job at G.M., which he joined in 1976. When his plant
    closed in 2005, he elected to transfer to another plant in Lansing,
    then still under construction. While he waited for the plant to open,
    he furloughed himself from G.M. and focused on his machine shop.
    “I could see then, working full time, that we could grow the business,”
    he said, “and we have.”

    Their operation now includes several computerized cutting machines,
    bought on credit, and several employees. Still, with gross revenue
    of only $200,000 a year, and debts more than double that amount,
    there is little income left for the brothers. Tim, with a wife and children,
    draws a salary. Mark, living alone and childless, draws much less money
    from the business. So when the new G.M. plant finally opened last
    year, he reported for work.

    He didn’t like what he found. He had risen over the years from
    the assembly line to materials handling, in his case delivering
    cylinders of chemicals at a pace that he controlled. “As long as
    there was not a phone call saying some chemical was needed,
    I was on my own,” he said.

    In the new plant, chemical delivery was automated, and Mark
    found himself on a much more demanding schedule. He was
    assigned to deliver parts from the shipping bays to the assembly
    line at a pace set by the line’s speed. He hooked his small tractor
    to a train of wagons, each loaded with parts, and drove them
    to stations along the line.

    “Every 45 minutes to an hour another tractor-trailer would show
    up at the shipping bays with the already-loaded wagons inside,”
    he said. “It took me 45 minutes to get the contents to the line,
    leaving just enough time to get back and hook up the next load.”

    Automation and more rigorous scheduling may have improved
    G.M.’s efficiency, but for Mr. Strong, the change was stressful
    and G.M.’s buyout last year offered an escape. With 30 years
    under his belt, he collected a $35,000 incentive to retire and
    began to draw a $36,000 annual pension, or 60 percent
    of his old wage, along with retiree health insurance.

    “I would have stayed,” he says, “ if the work was similar to
    the old job and if I had a wife and kids in college, which
    I don’t have. And if I did not have this shop. It weighed
    in my decision to leave; I had something to do.”

    UNLIKE Mr. Strong, other displaced workers, including
    Mr. Doolittle, now working part time at Sears, do not have
    occupations that engage them. And they miss the work,
    the income and the way of life that defined their careers
    as auto workers.

    “My children and my grandchildren will never have an opportunity
    to work at G.M.,” Mr. Doolittle says. “My dad made a good living
    there. So did my brother and my brothers-in-law. That is all over
    now. It will be 10 to 15 years before G.M. hires again, if it ever does,
    and at who knows what wages.”

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    3) Patents Over Patients
    By RALPH W. MOSS
    Op-Ed Contributor
    State College, Pa.
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html

    WE could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way
    drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound
    can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market —
    no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development
    of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result.

    The reason for this problem is that bringing a new drug to market
    is extremely expensive. In 2001, the estimated cost was $802 million;
    today it is approximately $1 billion. To ensure a healthy return on
    such staggering investments, drug companies seek to formulate new
    drugs in a way that guarantees watertight patents. In the meantime,
    cancer patients miss out on treatments that may be highly effective
    and less expensive to boot.

    In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf
    compound called 3-bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver
    cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover, the investigators
    estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents
    per day. Yet, three years later, no major drug company has shown
    interest in developing this drug for human use.

    Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical,
    dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University
    of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent.
    However, as a university news release explained, dichloroacetate is
    not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may
    be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical.
    So the university is soliciting public donations to finance a clinical trial.

    The hormone melatonin, sold as an inexpensive food supplement
    in the United States, has repeatedly been shown to slow the growth
    of various cancers when used in conjunction with conventional
    treatments. Paolo Lissoni, an Italian oncologist, helped write more
    than 100 articles about this hormone and conducted numerous
    clinical trials. But when I visited him at his hospital in Monza in
    2003, he was in deep despair over the pharmaceutical industry’s
    total lack of interest in his treatment approach. He has published
    nothing on the topic since then.

    Potential anticancer drugs should be judged on their scientific
    merit, not on their patentability. One solution might be for the
    government to enlarge the Food and Drug Administration’s
    “orphan drug” program, which subsidizes the development
    of drugs for rare diseases. The definition of orphan drug could
    be expanded to include unpatentable agents that are scorned
    as unprofitable by pharmaceutical companies.

    We need to foster a research and development environment in
    which anticancer activity is the main criterion for new drug
    development.

    Ralph W. Moss writes a weekly online newsletter about cancer.

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    4) Distract and Disenfranchise
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    April 2, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login

    I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses
    of power that are now, finally, coming to light.
    Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising
    income inequality.

    Let me explain.

    In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House,
    conservative ideas appealed to many, even most,
    Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class
    nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities
    and social injustices of the past, which were what
    originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like
    ancient history. It was easy, in that nation,
    to convince many voters that Big Government was
    their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide
    social programs for other people.

    Since then, however, we have once again become
    a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen
    only 17 percent since 1980, while the income
    of the richest 0.1 percent of the population
    has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and
    the middle class is as wide now as it was in the
    1920s, when the political coalition that would
    eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

    And voters realize that society has changed.
    They may not pore over income distribution tables,
    but they do know that today’s rich are building
    themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber
    barons. They may not read labor statistics,
    but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere:
    according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent
    of workers believe that it’s harder to earn
    a decent living today than it was 20 or
    30 years ago.

    You know that perceptions of rising inequality
    have become a political issue when even President
    Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some
    of our citizens worry about the fact that our
    dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

    But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any
    meaningful way to rising inequality, because
    their activists won’t let them. You could see
    the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday,
    when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls
    traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the
    Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group
    dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

    The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated
    ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t
    offer domestic policies that respond to the
    public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

    The answer, for a while, was a combination of
    distraction and disenfranchisement.

    The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves
    a massive, providential distraction; until
    then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t
    the moderate he played in the 2000 election,
    was growing increasingly unhappy with his
    administration. And they offered many
    opportunities for further distractions.
    Rather than debating Democrats on the issues,
    the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft
    on terror. And do you remember the terror
    alert, based on old and questionable
    information, that was declared right after
    the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

    But distraction can only go so far. So the
    other tool was disenfranchisement: finding
    ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote
    for the party that might actually do something
    about inequality, out of the voting booth.

    Remember that disenfranchisement in the form
    of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which
    struck many legitimate voters from the rolls,
    put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first
    place. And disenfranchisement seems to be
    what much of the politicization of the Justice
    Department was about.

    Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under
    pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud
    — a phrase that has become almost synonymous
    with “voting while black.” Former staff members
    of the Justice Department’s civil rights division
    say that they were repeatedly overruled when
    they objected to Republican actions, ranging
    from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas
    redistricting, that they believed would effectively
    disenfranchise African-American voters.

    The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses
    of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections.
    And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans,
    because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton
    years trying to reassure rich people and corporations
    that they weren’t really populists — seem
    to be realizing that times have changed.

    A week before the Republican candidates trooped
    to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax
    cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment
    to universal health care. And it’s hard to see
    what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

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    5) Taxing Private Equity
    Editorial
    April 2, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02mon1.html?hp

    In the world of private equity, “2 and 20” is a formula
    for making money. The mavens of the industry — venture
    capitalists and buyout specialists — generally collect
    a management fee of 2 percent of the assets they manage
    and a performance fee equal to 20 percent of any profits.
    With hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through
    the 2-and-20 structure, the megabucks pile up quickly.

    High fees, however, are only one reason that private
    equity lives by “2 and 20.” Another is low taxes.

    Partners in private equity ventures treat their
    performance fees as capital gains — in other words,
    like profits on the sale of a stock — and thus pay
    tax on the fees at a rate of 15 percent, about the
    lowest in the tax code. According to federal
    partnership tax rules, that’s legal. But the rules
    were developed before private equity became the
    force it is today, and mainly with small business
    and real estate partnerships in mind.

    Some lawmakers — notably Senator Max Baucus, the
    Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee, and
    Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s top
    Republican — have begun to question whether those
    rules should apply to private equity.

    Adding grist to lawmakers’ skepticism is a recent
    paper by Victor Fleischer, an associate professor
    at the University of Colorado Law School.
    Mr. Fleischer makes several arguments against
    treating performance pay as capital gain, starting
    with the increasingly huge sums that private equity
    firms raise from tax-exempt investors, like pension
    funds and endowments.

    In general, when corporate executives get performance
    -based pay, like stock options, they don’t have
    to pay tax right away. That’s a big tax benefit,
    but it leaves the government no worse off because
    the corporation also delays taking a deduction for
    the payment. There is no such offset when private
    equity partners are paid by tax-exempt investors.
    The nation in effect waits longer for its tax revenue
    and gets less, as private equity partners get more.

    The deeper question in all this is whether capital
    gains — which are currently taxed at less than half
    the top rate of ordinary income — should continue
    to be so lavishly advantaged. The answer there is
    no. Today’s preferential rate for capital gains
    is excessive, with no mechanism in the tax code
    to ensure that it is not overused. Excessively
    favoring one form of income over another encourages
    wasteful gamesmanship, creates inequity and crowds
    out other ways to foster risk-taking. Tackling the
    too-easy tax terms for private equity is a good way
    for Congress to begin addressing that bigger issue.

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    6)PROTECT OUR PENSIONS
    April 1, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/

    Norm Goddard transferred back to GM from Delphi in March
    2000. In May 2006 he applied for retirement from GM. After
    30 years of service he wanted out. He was looking forward
    to the $35,000. When he went to the Benefits Office to sign
    his retirement papers the document stated that he hired
    into Delphi in 1976.

    "That's a lie," Norm said. "Delphi wasn't even around in 1976.
    I hired in at GM."

    The Benefits Rep informed him that if he signed the document
    he agreed to everything it said. Norm refused. "I worked
    less than nine months for Delphi." He has 24 years of
    pension credits with Delphi, a bankrupt company that
    never operated independent of GM.

    When Delphi was spun off from GM in 1999 John Goshka
    had 34 years seniority. He chose to keep working. "I had
    children in college," he said. When John retired in 2004
    he had 39 years of credited service with Delphi. At age
    60 John doesn't know what will happen to his pension
    or his health care. His 34 years of GM time were dumped
    into Delphi.

    When Delphi offered two choices, retire or transfer away
    from home and likely give up his trade as a toolmaker,
    Mike Wittek decided to call it quits. He signed up for
    the Special Attrition Program [SAP] and went out with
    only 21 years of credited service. Though he hired
    in at GM, he left with a Delphi pension and a bad
    taste in his mouth.

    At the UAW Constitutional Convention in June 2006
    I asked for a point of information. I explained that
    GM had transferred all my pension credits to Delphi
    at the time of the spin off in 1999. Now Delphi was
    bankrupt. GM's contractual agreement to guarantee the
    Delphi pension expires at the end of this contract
    in October 2007. What happens if Delphi decides to
    stop pension payments in 2008, after the guarantee
    expires?

    The resolution on the floor at the time was "Protecting
    Pensions." Dick Shoemaker, the UAW-VP responsible for
    negotiations at GM and Delphi, declared me "Out of Order."
    But he said that he would speak to me "privately."
    Shoemaker understood that I wanted him to speak publicly
    for the record. He didn't take the bait.

    I immediately approached the stage and Shoemaker came
    down to talk with me. What he had to say concerning
    Delphi retirees was not intended for the official record.
    He explained that if I signed the Special Attrition
    Program [SAP] and "checked the box", it was "understood"
    that GM would guarantee the pension.

    "But it doesn't say that," I replied.

    "It's understood," he said.

    "It states that only what is written is valid and that
    verbal promises contrary to the written document have
    no merit," I replied.

    "Well, it's understood," he said.

    "OK. I'll take your word for it. But what about the
    people who already retired or who will retire five
    years from now and don't have the opportunity
    to check the box"?

    "We still have to negotiate that," Shoemaker said.

    Here are the facts. The SAP states that if you sign
    you agree to the terms, and the SAP stipulated that
    those who signed would get a "Delphi Hourly Pension".
    Shoemaker's verbal assertion that it "was understood"
    doesn’t amount to a tinker's damn. As Shoemaker readily
    admitted to me, the fate of Delphi-UAW members who
    retired before the SAP was available or who transferred
    back to GM and would retire in the future still has
    to be negotiated.

    Demonstrate solidarity with Delphi-UAW members by
    demanding that the Benefit Guarantee be activated
    and GM held accountable for the orchestrated bankruptcy
    at Delphi.

    I am not a delegate at this Bargaining Convention
    because my old plant is now closed. I chose to return
    to a GM plant rather than take the SAP because there
    is no security with a Delphi pension.

    For the record, a commitment to protect the Delphi
    retirees at the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention would
    be in order.

    Gregg Shotwell
    UAW Local 1753

    www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

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    7) "The Language Isn't Strong Enough"
    A Report on the 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention
    Tueday April 3, 2007
    http://www.soldiersofsolidarity.com

    The 2007 UAW Bargaining Convention format was sanitized,
    preshrunk, and bleached. The one-size-fits-all style was
    designed to control the rancor of the rank and file.
    But work to rule is a tool for all trades and a master
    of one — tipping the balance of power.

    Mike Parker, a delegate from Local 1700, busted the seams
    of uniform decorum before Gettelfinger could pound the podium.

    When the chair requested a motion to accept the Rules
    Committee Report at the start of the convention, Parker
    demanded a point of order and made a motion to amend
    the rules.

    The proposed rules restricted delegates from making amendments
    to the resolutions; limited debate with tedious time consuming
    recitations rather than summaries; and relegated precious time
    that should have been allocated to debate to political
    dignitaries. Parker's amendment declared:

    "The agenda for the Wednesday morning session will be Organizing
    to Fight Back. This session will cover how we can mobilize
    our members, build solidarity, resist company whipsawing and
    divisive strategies like two tier, and pitting older workers
    against younger workers. To make time for this session, short
    presentation summaries will be used instead of reading the
    complete resolution book, and guest speakers will be asked
    to keep their comments brief."

    Voices from all over the convention floor yelled, "Support".

    The Chair attempted to dispose of the point of order, but
    Parker stood his ground. Since a motion to accept the rules
    had not been approved, there were no rules governing the
    convention except Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.
    The amendment was in order, it had been seconded, and was
    now open for discussion. Parker proceeded.

    "The key to these negotiations is not whether we have
    a nice wish list of bargaining demands but how we are going
    to fight the companies. The companies have made it clear
    they are not our partners and will take everything they
    can get

    How do we take on their whipsawing?

    How do we take on the cancer of Two Tier, this pitting
    of older workers against younger workers?

    I would point out that I find nothing in this resolution
    against Two Tier and indeed some vague justifications for it.
    We can not afford to be unclear on this question which rots
    the foundation of unionism.

    Even before official bargaining starts the company is
    tearing the union apart in the Big Three. The companies are
    forcing concessionary contracts which undermine our pattern
    bargaining

    This union is in a crisis. The companies have launched
    an ideological attack on unionism at work and in the media.

    Doubtless, as at the last convention, there will be
    delegates who will get up and read the Administration Caucus
    cue cards about and how these rules have always worked for us.

    Well, we had better start addressing the fact that we
    are in crisis and we have to start by figuring out how to
    get the membership in this union re involved and mobilized
    rather than trying to have nicely scripted conventions.
    That means starting with the delegates here.

    We are supposed to be the leaders of this union. I ask
    you to start acting as leaders and let's get this convention
    addressing the real problems."

    The charade was over. The emperor was naked and everyone
    knew it.

    The next delegate, Paul Baxter from Local 659, said,
    "I support the amendment to the rules. The strategy
    of cooperation with management is a failure. We cannot
    go on pretending that the companies are our partners.
    How can you ask us to be partners with liars, cheaters,
    and thieves?

    This resolution book is nothing but a wish list.
    We need a more effective strategy to fight back."

    A sister from Local 7 opposed the amendment. She denied
    knowledge of any "cue cards" but relied on the time worn
    cliché, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." She called
    for the question to end debate which is standard "cue
    card" performance.

    Wendy Thompson, a delegate from Local 235, demanded
    a point of order. She said, "It is broken" and appealed
    to the delegates to continue discussion and not prohibit
    debate.

    The chair ruled her out of order and cut her speech
    short. The delegates turned the amendment down with
    a voice vote but Parker's challenge set the tone of
    the convention. Delegates unaccustomed to opposing the
    administration came forward to "oppose the resolution
    because the language isn't strong enough." The phrase
    became a common refrain.

    Fine Print vs. Bold Print

    In regard to contract workers several delegates
    complained about having to work side by side with
    non union workers. "Why are they in our plants?"
    asked Don Dekker from Local 371.

    Jerry Urn, a delegate from Region 4, stated his
    wholehearted support for President Gettelfinger
    and the UAW but opposed the resolution and echoed
    the refrain, "because the language isn't strong
    enough." He reaffirmed his support of the UAW,
    but he repeated twice for clarity and emphasis,
    "My members hate two tier."

    Page 19 of the official resolution book states:
    "We also recognize the need for supplemental labor
    agreements, at different wage and benefit rates,
    in specific business circumstances where competitive
    pressure requires an alternative approach to maintain
    employment opportunities for our members and potential
    members."

    The words "two tier" are carefully evaded but the
    intent is clear. A trade off is in the cards:
    reduced wages and benefits in return for "employment
    opportunities."

    Two tier is not a union agreement, it's a prepaid
    funeral arrangement. In 2003 the UAW pushed through
    a ratification of the national agreement and then
    later negotiated a two tier supplemental agreement
    for Delphi that was never ratified by the members.
    The two tier supplement cut wages almost in half,
    reduced health care benefits, and eliminated the
    pension. It wasn't enough to satisfy the "liars,
    cheaters, and thieves."

    Wendy Thompson rose in opposition to the weak language
    of the resolution. She said we must clearly state,
    "No Two Tier." The tone of her voice underlined each
    word. She further advocated that we organize a campaign
    to "take Chrysler off the market."

    "Make noise," she said. "Mobilize the membership. What
    we are facing is new and more difficult than ever. The
    membership is demoralized. We should not go away from
    this convention without a discussion of how to mobilize
    the membership."

    The Concession Caucus started a campaign in 2005 called
    Mobilizing@Delphi but it never materialized. Their idea
    of mobilization does not include the rank and file. They
    consolidate power in the front office and function more
    like a human resource management team than a union. The
    Concession Caucus prefers to negotiate in the backroom
    and the courtroom but the results have been dismal. The
    compromise and retreat strategy not only erodes our wages,
    benefits, and working conditions, it divides the union,
    degrades new members, and discourages organizing. Who
    needs a union to bargain for concessions?

    No Concessions

    Gary Walkowicz, a delegate from Local 600, stated his
    case bluntly.

    "I speak in opposition to the resolution because
    it does not say what needs to be said; It does not
    say what our members want us to say – "No More
    Concessions"

    That is the message that the members in my plant
    sent me to bring to this Convention.

    This letter to the delegates signed by over 1,000
    members of the Dearborn Truck Plant was also signed
    by more than another thousand members in some of
    your plants, signed by retirees from your locals.

    No More concessions. That is the message that I know
    many of you are hearing from your own members. It's
    time to stop concessions.

    What has concessions gotten us, except more concessions?

    We give up wage increases and promises to retirees
    are broken.

    And then the corporations come right back and threaten
    us, pitting plant against plant, whipsawing us into passing
    C.O.A.s, outsourcing our own jobs. I know the pressure
    that puts on the local leaderships.

    And then the ink is not even dry on the C.O.A.s and the
    corporations are demanding more concessions in the
    national contract.

    Giving up concessions has only made the corporations
    bolder and made them more greedy. Fellow delegates,
    I know there are those of you who see the same thing.
    I say that the business of this Convention should be
    to take a stand against concessions.

    The business of this Convention should be to organize
    a fight against corporate greed, to defend the hard won
    gains of this union. I believe this is what our members
    want us to do."

    Mark Payne, a delegate from Local 1250, also objected
    to COAs. He said the companies keep redefining what
    they term "core business". He insisted, "All our jobs
    are core business."

    Mike Libber, a delegate from Region 3, complained that
    the companies use money saved from concessions to invest
    in non union plants.

    Paul Baxter, a delegate from Local 659, said, "Without
    stronger language we will be invested into oblivion
    because every investment is contingent on a net loss
    of jobs."

    "This is not a CAP Convention, it's a Bargaining
    Convention"

    Justin "Double Barrel" West, a four time delegate from
    Local 2488, eliminated any doubt that this was a business
    as usual convention.

    "I rise in opposition regarding "income security
    issues." TWO TIERS is KILLING this union. This resolution
    hardly mentions tiered wage scales amongst other concessions.

    Delphi executives continue to extract bonuses as rewards
    for their heinous attack on workers across the globe. Ford
    rewards its' executives with bonuses for extracting wage
    and benefit concessions from workers and retirees. Now,
    Daimler-Chrysler, in the midst of their continued profitable
    corporate record, seeks to cover it all up so they too can
    join the concessions bandwagon.

    We, the membership, as elected reps from across the nation
    and Canada and Puerto Rico…from varying industries and job
    classifications, need to share with the leadership of the
    International…and with each other…our ideas on how to combat
    the corporate economic terrorism being foisted upon all working
    people across the globe. How do we fight back? When will it end?

    Let there be no doubt that the UAW is in a fight for
    survival: the media calls it a "fight for relevance."
    Meanwhile, the UAW International's approach has been to espouse
    "Good things come from competitive corporations." Or that
    partnerships fostering cooperation with the corps is the way
    to go. Brother Gettelfinger gave a tremendous opening speech
    but even within his oration, he stated that we should not
    confuse cooperation with capitulation.

    Brother Gettelfinger…I am from Peoria, Illinois and I was
    at the convention in 1998 when our late President Steve Yokich
    called the concessionary filled settlement at Caterpillar Tractor
    a "victory." Caterpillar is hiring…2nd tier wages, no benefits,
    no seniority, and full-time temps! Concessions, be they at GM,
    Ford, Chrysler, American Axle, Delphi, Visteon, Mitsubishi, NUMMI,
    and or elsewhere, will not be a victory!

    Brother Gettelfinger: we gave Delphi the GM PLANTS; we
    gave Delphi two-tier wages; we gave Delphi the GM workers'
    pensions! These concessions have not sated that corporation's
    thirst for more blood in this race to the bottom. Delphi has
    declared a bankruptcy organized to destroy every last shred
    of dignity and security that generations of union members
    fought and sacrificed to achieve. My point is, Brother
    Gettelfinger, concessions do NOT save jobs! To you, the
    International leadership, I urge you not to confuse "victory"
    with "concessions."

    Brother Gettelfinger: you say much of these problems
    need to be addressed through government legislation…but
    this is not a CAP Convention, this is a BARGAINING Convention…
    what can WE as workers do, DIRECTLY, NOW, to help fight
    this onslaught of corporate greed before the Big Three
    talks…on our jobs, at our Locals, amongst our brothers and
    sisters? To this body, I urge you to vote this resolution
    down until we address strategies to mobilize and fight
    back at the grassroots level.

    Lastly, Thank you, Brother Gettelfinger, for mentioning
    the struggle at Conn-Selmer, the Vincent Bach plant. Those
    locked-out members are on the front lines, suffering but
    hanging in there to defend the American Dream."

    The delegates burst into applause and Gettelfinger added
    another name to a list that was growing longer.

    Vicky Varaclay, a delegate from an American Axle plant
    related how the lack of a pattern agreement was undermining
    collective bargaining. "We need stronger language
    on whipsawing."

    Several delegates objected to takeaways from retirees who
    "can't afford copays" on a fixed income. "Retirees are
    worried sick" about medical expenses. "When you go in and
    change a plan [in the middle of a contract] you make people
    afraid," a retired delegate said.

    The strategy of containing rebellion against the corporate
    agenda by channeling anger toward politics instead
    of employers is on its last legs. Too many delegates
    said, "The language isn't strong enough."

    The Rank & File is the Backbone

    The next morning at a Concession Caucus breakfast for
    delegates Gettelfinger ridiculed the small group of union
    members who carried picket signs in front of the convention
    center the day before. Their signs said things like: Equal
    Pay for Equal Work, No Two Tier, Equal Rights for New Hires,
    Protect Our Pensions, Hold GM Accountable for Delphi Pensions,
    Hands Off My Pension, Put the Backbone Back into the UAW,
    Stop Whipsawing.

    What exactly did Gettelfinger disagree with? How do those
    ideas conflict with the UAW agenda for bargaining?

    On the first day of the convention soldiers of solidarity
    distributed the No Concession leaflet to delegates. On the
    second morning they distributed the leaflet about Delphi
    pensions which reiterated my conversation with UAW-VP
    Dick Shoemaker at the Constitutional Convention. Shoemaker
    declined to speak publicly for the record but admitted privately
    that the issue was unresolved and still had to be negotiated.
    The flip side of that flier was titled "Put the Backbone Back
    in the UAW". Gettelfinger took one from a soldier and went
    into the hall.

    One Question: The Delphi Pension

    Before the convention started I saw Gettelfinger in the
    lobby glad handing delegates. I waited my turn, shook his
    hand, and asked, "What will happen to the Delphi pension
    when the Benefit Guarantee expires at the end of this contract?"

    "Gregg, we know you're not supposed to be here,"
    Gettelfinger said. "We know you're not a delegate anymore."
    He looked at my Press Pass. "And we know you're not a reporter
    either. But that's all right. We don't mind that you're here."

    I repeated the question. "What will happen to the Delphi
    pension when the Benefit Guarantee expires at the end of this
    contract?"

    "I saw what you wrote about Dick Shoemaker," Gettelfinger
    said. "Gregg, you don't hurt us, and you don't help us,
    either way."

    I hesitate to interpret the motivations of superior
    beings but I think he wanted to make me feel insignificant.
    It didn't seem important to me, so I repeated the question.
    "What will happen to the Delphi pension when the Benefit
    Guarantee expires at the end of this contract?"

    "You should ask the UAW-GM department," he said.

    "I have asked them several times but I can't get an answer.
    It's important to UAW members from Delphi. I know people who
    worked more than 30 years for GM and have a Delphi pension
    today. They want an answer."

    "We know you're not supposed to be here, Gregg. But that's
    all right with us. We don't mind that you're here. See?
    I'm not such a bad guy."

    I don't know what his guyness had to do with it, but to
    his credit about an hour later here comes Mike Grimes and
    David Shoemaker from the UAW-GM department to talk with me.
    My cohort, Bob Mabbit from the UnCommonSense started rolling
    the video camera but they refused to speak on record.
    We walked down a hall way and talked privately.

    They explained that "Ron Gettelfinger told us to come out
    and talk with you and answer your questions."

    I repeated the one question.

    They assured me that Delphi was a top priority. "We
    have told GM It is our position that the Benefit Guarantee
    will be triggered before the Delphi situation is settled."

    I told them I was glad to hear that the UAW was committed
    to holding GM accountable for our pensions, but the UAW can't
    trigger the Benefit Guarantee. Events trigger the Benefit
    Guarantee. If Delphi doesn't stop paying the pension before
    the Benefit Guarantee expires, there is no triggering event.

    "We can cause them financial distress," Shoemaker said.

    "Do you mean a strike?" I asked.

    "As far as we are concerned they are already in financial
    distress," Grimes said.

    In other words it still has to be negotiated and no one,
    neither GM, Delphi, nor the UAW has stated publicly for
    the record that GM is accountable for the Delphi pensions.

    The Fight for Dignity

    Back in the convention delegates were debating a resolution
    on Health and Safety. Vanessa Williams from Local 155 said,
    "IPS [Independent Parts Suppliers] feel lost and left out."
    She reported that workers "injured daily" in her plant were
    harassed by management and they had to call MIOSHA despite
    the fact they have union representation.

    Mike Parker from Local 1700 said the resolution failed
    to address "the fundamental problem — the right to refuse
    an unsafe job." He explained that too often workers were
    forced to work in conditions they felt were unsafe while
    managers took their sweet time making up their minds.
    He called on delegates to "empower workers" with the
    right to refuse unsafe work.

    Paul Baxter from Local 659 in Flint said, "Unionism is about
    the fight for dignity." He said that assembly work cycles
    were "so tight you can't get a drink or put a stick of gum
    in your mouth." He cited a passage from the Bible on the
    treatment of farm animals. "We should at least hold
    management to the same standard."

    At the end of the convention Wendy Thompson talked about
    the massive rally organized against Delphi's threat to
    close one plant in Spain. She said, "We should organize
    a rally for the opening day of negotiations."
    The convention burst into applause.

    Where Do We Go from Here?

    On the first day of the convention Gettelfinger waved his
    fist in the air and threatened to strike Delphi if they
    voided the contract. It was a strange act considering how
    much ground he has surrendered. However, the message from
    the floor was consistent and clear, "The language isn't
    strong enough."

    Workers don't want more concessions, cooperation with
    corporate restructuring, or competitive agreements.
    If we wait for the Concession Caucus to mobilize
    resistance, we'll all get Delphied.

    Continue to collect signatures on the No Concession
    Petition; whether you collect one or one thousand
    signatures mail the copies to:

    No Concessions Petition
    P.O. Box 202
    Montrose, MI 48457

    A soldier of solidarity will see they are delivered
    to negotiators on or before the opening day
    of negotiations. We are the backbone of the UAW.
    Let's show them what we're made of.

    SOS, Gregg Shotwell
    UAW Local 1753
    Bargaining Convention Report

    Sisters and Brothers,
    April 2, 2007

    I would like to thank those 2nd Shift workers and
    retirees who came to a rally on Tues., Mar. 27th
    organized in front of Cobo at the convention opening
    by UAW Soldiers of Solidarity which was formed out
    of the Delphi bankruptcy crisis. We looked good with
    our signs out in front of the Convention entrance and
    delegates came over to talk to us. It was small, but
    the rank and file made itself heard.

    Once again, I am sorry to report the convention
    was "business as usual", everything decided in advance
    with delegates having no real say. It's puzzling because
    many delegates don't like it this way, but they feel
    if they speak up or "vote the wrong way", a "ton of bricks
    will fall on them".

    Motion to Change to More Democratic Rules Fails

    A motion was made to change the rules so that discussion
    could occur on "Organizing to Fight Back". This session
    would have covered how we can mobilize the membership,
    build solidarity, resist company whipsawing and divisive
    strategies like two tier, and pitting older worker against
    younger ones.

    Unfortunately this motion did not pass. Instead we
    had read to us one long resolution that you could not
    amend but rather had to vote up or down in its entirety.
    It was a wish list of all things good without talking
    about what our plan is for upcoming negotiations. We know
    these negotiations are going to be more difficult for the
    Big Three than anything we have seen before.

    There were some brave individuals who did speak out
    on issues of concern, like two tier wages. Some delegates
    said that 2 tier wages were tremendously unpopular where
    they had been implemented. But, people felt they had
    to bend over backwards being respectful to avoid reproach.
    An open and democratic union wouldn't be like that.

    I had the opportunity to speak twice during the
    proceedings. I told the delegates we needed a strategy
    for negotiations that would mobilize our members to show
    the strength of our numbers, working and retired. It's
    outrageous that management is still raking in bonuses while
    we are told that we must pay more for health care and receive
    lower wages "in order to be competitive". They justify
    their salaries and bonuses even when they fail to do their
    jobs. Management made the decision about what to build
    and where to spend research money, not the workforce.
    Yet we are expected to bail them out with more concessions.
    This is nothing but insane! If you read some business
    publications, you will see that business is publicly
    worrying about how long workers are going to allow this
    tremendous wealth growing at the top without revolting
    against it!

    In negotiations this year we face a dilemma. Unlike
    GM and Ford, the UAW Chrysler Dept. did not open up the
    contract midterm for concessions. This helped us at AAM
    avoid opening up our contract midterm. Chrysler workers
    have held onto the Pattern Contract. We need to move GM,
    Ford, and ourselves up to it. (If you remember, we did
    not get the wages increases the Big Three did and we were
    forced to accept 2 tier).

    Strike GM and Chrysler

    However, Chrysler is now on the auction block like
    Gear and Axle was in 1994. I suggested they organize the
    membership demanding to be taken off the block, like we
    did here at the Gear before '94. Since GM is looking
    like it will be in the strongest economic position this
    summer, I said we should threaten to strike GM and Chrysler
    at the same time in order to be in the best possible
    bargaining position.

    The business community tries to convince us that
    strikes cannot be effective, but we should not fall
    for that. With the just-in-time system and with the
    Big Three needing to run efficiently right now, we have
    a strong advantage. No one wants to strike, but the way
    business is trying to take us into a third world life
    style is completely out of control!

    It has made me angry to see how the press presents
    management's case for us to take more concessions.
    Yet, the UAW has not been presenting our case to the
    public with any kind of vigor. This made the membership
    think that no one is in their corner. Polls are stating
    that autoworkers expect we will have to take more
    concessions. This is absolutely the wrong position
    to be in for a pre-negotiations period!

    President Gettelfinger in his speech said:
    "cooperation should not be equated with capitulation."
    But here's the problem: the companies say: "we want
    more concessions", the union says: "we believe in
    cooperating with the companies". What are rank and
    file workers supposed to think ? The UAW leadership
    has seemed to be giving up before negotiations have
    even started.

    The same problem of a mixed message exists concerning
    pattern bargaining. The resolution correctly states that:
    "labor compensation should not be based on which employers
    compete" and we should be "removing wages and benefits
    from the competitive equation". Yet, the UAW says
    it believes in being competitive even when that means
    pitting us against workers in low wage countries and
    non-union plants in this country. This causes the
    membership to fear they have no protection from
    a free fall.

    We Need a Massive Rally the First Day of Big Three
    Negotiations

    I suggested a massive rally organized for the
    1st day of negotiations. We must reach out to the
    public with a strong message: We did not cause the
    problems of the Big Three and should not have to
    suffer for Management's bad decisions. We must hold
    the line on the slide downwards.

    Meanwhile, when market share goes down for one
    company it goes up for another. If all autoworkers
    in this country were UAW members we would better be
    able to protect our members when companies mess up.
    Last year at the Constitutional Convention it was
    decided to allocate $60 million for organizing out
    of the $874 million in the strike fund. However,
    it was placed in the general fund and not into the
    organizing budget. Nothing has been done with it
    and now the UAW says it won't do anything until
    after negotiations. This is a mistake. We need
    to start now training and hiring an "army" of UAW
    organizers. With the loss of many experienced members
    lately, this could be a way to put talented union members
    to work.

    Near the end of the one long resolution presented
    by the International to the Convention, it spoke to the
    importance of building international unionism and this
    is key. In Spain, where they want to close a Delphi plant
    in Puerto Real, Cadiz, the labor movement is planning
    to organize a general strike for April 18th! When all
    workers join together like this, it makes it difficult
    to ride roughshod over one isolated plant. Are we as
    powerless as we feel? Only if we remain separate and
    uninvolved.

    This newsletter is what I spoke for at the Convention.
    Join me in circulating a "No Concessions" petition.
    I will have them available at the plant gates. AAM is
    profitable. We are in a strong position to eliminate
    2 tier by negotiating a wage bridge between the 1st and
    2nd tier so everyone will reach the higher wage.
    We need to win back the 3% raises we lost and in no
    way take more health care concessions for working or
    retired.

    Through the distribution of the newsletter Shifting
    Gears at Colfor and MSP as well as the five pattern AAM
    plants, I came into contact with the elected leaders and
    helped Colfor and MSP developed new lines of communication
    at the Convention with the pattern plant delegates. This
    contact should improve more in the future and will help keep
    AAM from whipsawing us like they have in the past.

    Wendy Thompson, Convention Delegate,
    Wthomp4490@aol.com, h. 313-892-7974, c. 313-215-7672

    Please attend Local 235/Local 262 Workers' Memorial
    Day Rally, Fri., April 27th.

    Let's honor all those injured or killed in the workplace.

    1:00 pm . Afternoon Shift workers meet at Local 262 south
    of Holbrook on St. Aubin.

    We will march up St. Aubin to Holbrook

    2:30 pm Day Shift workers join in front of Motown
    Credit Union and we march to Pl. 3

    3:00 pm We will arrive in front of Plant 3 for
    the Rally. Join us!

    Labor donated

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    8) HOW IRAN TREATS PRISONERS
    HOW THE US TREATS PRISONERS
    "Call that humiliation? No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings.
    These Iranians are clearly a very uncivilised bunch."
    Terry Jones
    Saturday March 31, 2007
    The Guardian
    http://www.guardian .co.uk/

    I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment
    of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters.
    It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this --
    allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has
    been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor
    servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then
    allowing the picture to be posted around the world -- have the Iranians
    no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with
    putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with Muslims
    we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe.
    Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and
    circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised
    and humiliated as these unfortunate British service people have been.

    It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk
    on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put
    duct tape over their mouths, as we do to our captives, they wouldn't
    be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder
    to breathe -- especially with a bag over their head -- but at least
    they wouldn't be humiliated.

    And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home
    saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with
    the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives
    the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many
    privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

    The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into
    charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places
    it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example,
    have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years,
    and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to
    the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

    What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British
    prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure
    that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting
    "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours
    on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common
    exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet
    and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground.
    This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good
    healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything
    to get out of it.

    And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance
    that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers
    have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and
    they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

    What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have
    got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution
    or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This
    is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by
    forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric
    shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as in Abu Ghraib.
    The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world
    so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.
    As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be
    right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen,
    but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer -- whether by
    intensified sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by urging
    [P]resident Bush to hurry an invasion, as he intends one anyway,
    to bring democracy and western values to Iran, as he has done in Iraq.

    Terry Jones is a film director, actor, and Python
    www.terry-jones. net

    Update:

    Captives Freed by Iran Arrive in Britain
    By DAVID RAMPE, JON ELSEN and SARAH LYALL
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/middleeast/05cnd-iran.html?hp

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    9) More Than a Feeling
    Editorial
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/opinion/04weds1.html?hp

    President Bush and his advisers have made a lot of ridiculous
    charges about critics of the war in Iraq: they’re unpatriotic,
    they want the terrorists to win, they don’t support the troops,
    to cite just a few. But none of these seem quite as absurd
    as President Bush’s latest suggestion, that critics of the
    war whose children are at risk are too “emotional” to see
    things clearly.

    The direct target was Matthew Dowd, one of the chief
    strategists of Mr. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign,
    who has grown disillusioned with the president and the
    war, which he made clear in an interview with Jim Rutenberg
    published in The Times last Sunday. But by extension,
    Mr. Bush’s comments were insulting to the hundreds of
    thousands of Americans whose sons, daughters, sisters,
    brothers and spouses have served or will serve in Iraq.

    They are perfectly capable of forming judgments about
    the war, pro or con, on the merits. But when Mr. Bush
    was asked about Mr. Dowd during a Rose Garden news
    conference yesterday, he said, “This is an emotional
    issue for Matthew, as it is for a lot of other people
    in our country.”

    Mr. Dowd’s case, Mr. Bush said, “as I understand it,
    is obviously intensified because his son is deployable.”

    Over the weekend, two of Mr. Bush’s chief spokesmen,
    Dan Bartlett and Dana Perino, claimed that Mr. Dowd’s
    change of heart about the war was rooted in “personal”
    issues and “emotions,” and talked of his “personal
    journey.” In recent years, Mr. Dowd suffered the death
    of a premature twin daughter, and was divorced.
    His son is scheduled to serve in Iraq soon.

    Mr. Dowd said his experiences were a backdrop to his
    reconsideration of his support of the war and Mr. Bush.
    There is nothing wrong with that, but there is something
    deeply wrong with the White House’s dismissing his criticism
    as emotional, as if it has no reasoned connection
    to Mr. Bush’s policies.

    This form of attack is especially galling from a president
    who from the start tried to paint this war as virtually
    sacrifice-free: the Iraqis would welcome America with
    open arms, the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil
    revenues — and the all-volunteer military would
    concentrate the sacrifice on only a portion of the
    nation’s families.

    Mr. Bush’s comments about Mr. Dowd are a reflection
    of the otherworldliness that permeates his public
    appearances these days. Mr. Bush seems increasingly
    isolated, clinging to a fantasy version of Iraq that
    is more and more disconnected from reality. He gives
    a frightening impression that he has never heard any
    voice from any quarter that gave him pause, much less
    led him to rethink a position.

    Mr. Bush’s former campaign aide showed an open-mindedness
    and willingness to adapt to reality that is sorely
    lacking in the commander in chief.

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    10) Daimler Considers Selling Off Chrysler Division
    By MARK LANDLER
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/business/04cnd-daimler.html?hp

    BERLIN, April 4 — DaimlerChrysler confirmed for the first
    time today that it is in negotiations with a number
    of parties about the sale of its money-losing Chrysler
    division.

    Speaking at DaimlerChrysler’s annual meeting here, Dieter
    Zetsche, the chief executive, said, “I can confirm that
    we are talking with some of the potential partners who
    have shown a clear interest.”

    Mr. Zetsche did not identify the automaker’s suitors,
    nor did he guarantee that the talks would end in a sale
    of Chrysler. “We need to keep all options open,” he
    said. “We need to keep maximum scope for maneuver.”

    DaimlerChrysler’s confirmation was not a surprise.
    The auto industry has crackled with rumors about
    would-be bidders for Chrysler since mid-February,
    when Mr. Zetsche disclosed the company was considering
    all options for the unit, which lost $1.5 billion
    last year.

    But it added to the momentum that is building behind
    a sale. DaimlerChrysler’s shares rose nearly 1 percent
    this morning, on top of a roughly 25 percent rise
    in the stock since the company put Chrysler into play.

    The mood among the 8,000 or so shareholders assembled
    here for the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting
    was unmistakable: they expect DaimlerChrysler to cut
    loose Chrysler, unwinding a trans-Atlantic merger that
    was hailed at the time of its announcement in 1998
    as a blueprint for the future of the global auto
    industry.

    A steady stream of investors stood up during the
    meeting to condemn the merger and demand a speedy
    sale.

    “Should there be a divorce in court, we would be very
    happy,” said Henning Gebhardt, a spokesman for DWS,
    a major German asset management firm. His fear, he said,
    was that DaimlerChrysler would not find a buyer willing
    to take Chrysler off its hands on acceptable terms.

    With some $20 billion in health-care obligations for
    retired workers, Chrysler will not be easy to sell,
    according to analysts. Some estimate it may fetch as
    little as $5 billion to $7 billion — or even nothing.

    “What will happen if you do not find a new bridegroom
    for Chrysler, or if the dowry is too high?”
    Mr. Gebhardt said.

    Hans-Richard Schmitz, a spokesman for the German
    Association for the Protection of Shareholders, said,
    “This marriage made in heaven turned out to be
    a complete failure.”

    Mr. Schmitz criticized DaimlerChrysler’s management
    for even reserving the option of not selling the unit.
    “What’s missing now is a swift resolution of the issue
    by the management of the group,” he said. “I don’t
    understand why you’re so hesitant, Dr. Zetsche.”

    Among the shareholder proposals scheduled to be put
    to a vote here later today is one that would require
    DaimlerChrysler to change its name back to Daimler-Benz
    if it does not unload Chrysler by March 31, 2008.

    “Maintaining a corporate name that evokes associations
    with the failure of the business combination with Chrysler
    is detrimental to the image of the corporation and its
    products,” said the proposal, submitted by two shareholders,
    Ekkehard Wenger and Leonhard Knoll.

    The company said the DaimlerChrysler name was well
    established, and urged shareholders to reject the proposal.

    Some shareholders expressed frustration that Mr. Zetsche
    did not disclose more details about the potential sale.

    So far, three parties have submitted expressions of interest
    in Chrysler, according to people involved in the negotiations:
    two private-equity firms — Blackstone Group and Cerberus
    and the Canadian auto-parts supplier, Magna International,
    which is working with another private equity investor,
    Ripplewood.

    The talks are expected to be lengthy and arduous, and
    a deal is not likely for a few months, these executives said.

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    11) Jungle Law
    "In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco's
    wells in the area around Lago Agrio ("sour
    lake"), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same
    year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in
    an epic lawsuit˜among the largest environmental
    suits in history˜against Chevron, which acquired
    Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle
    in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author
    investigates how many hundreds of square miles of
    surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump."
    by William Langewiesche
    May 2007
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/texaco200705


    In a forsaken little town in the Ecuadorean
    Amazon, an overgrown oil camp called Lago Agrio,
    the giant Chevron Corporation has been maneuvered
    into a makeshift courtroom and is being sued to
    answer for conditions in 1,700 square miles of
    rain forest said by environmentalists to be one
    of the world's most contaminated industrial
    sites. The pollution consists of huge quantities
    of crude oil and associated wastes, mixed in with
    the toxic compounds used for drilling
    operations˜a noxious soup that for decades was
    dumped into leaky pits, or directly into the
    Amazonian watershed. The company that did much of
    this work was Texaco˜an outfit with a
    swashbuckling reputation worldwide. It signed a
    contract with Ecuador in 1964, began full-scale
    production in 1972, and pulled out 20 years
    later. In 2001, Texaco was swallowed whole by
    Chevron, which by integrating its operations
    nearly doubled in size. The lawsuit against it in
    Lago Agrio was filed in 2003, though the legal
    antecedents go back much further. Having dragged
    on for four years, the suit may continue for half
    again as long. Chevron is represented by
    high-priced firms of experienced lawyers in Quito
    and Washington, D.C., whose collective fees run
    to millions of dollars annually. Its antagonists
    are 30,000 Amazonian settlers and indigenous
    people, who call themselves Los Afectados˜the
    Affected Ones. These plaintiffs are represented
    by a low-budget but serious team of North
    American and Ecuadorean attorneys, who are backed
    by a Philadelphia law firm that is known for
    class-action securities litigation and has
    gambled that this case, though risky, can actually be won.

    Chevron objects vociferously, and presents itself
    as the victim here. Its attorneys have repeatedly
    claimed that the company is being extorted for
    "two juicy checks," one to be divided among the
    plaintiffs and the other to enrich their North
    American lawyers. The North American lawyers are
    indeed working on a contingency basis, but
    unapologetically so, and for a percentage
    significantly lower than the norm in high-risk
    cases; they would like to be well compensated for
    their efforts, but as much, they say, to
    encourage other lawyers to bring similar suits
    elsewhere in the world as to pad their personal
    bank accounts. The most active among them is a
    New Yorkˆbased Harvard Law School graduate named
    Steven Donziger, who has invested 14 years in the
    case and would certainly be more secure had he
    pursued a conventional career involving the
    preservation of wealth. He counterclaims that
    Chevron's lawyers are the real mercenaries here.
    It is a philosophical quarrel that will never be resolved.

    As for the plaintiffs themselves, under
    Ecuadorean law they are not suing individually,
    and personally may never see a dime. They have
    sued to seek compensation for past damages and to
    force Chevron to clean up the residual mess that
    continues, they believe, to taint the soil and
    water today. It is unclear how a cleanup would
    proceed and to what extent it could succeed, but
    over decades the cost might run to $6 billion or
    more˜making this potentially the largest
    environmental lawsuit ever to be fought. And
    fight is the word. The case has become emotional
    for both sides, with few signs of willingness to
    compromise. Worldwide the oil industry is
    watching. Lago Agrio is a forsaken little town
    where something rather large is going down.

    This is not, however, a U.S.-style legal drama.
    The Lago Agrio court follows Ecuadorean
    procedures, which minimize oral arguments and
    rely heavily on submitted documents to get at the
    truth. So far the proceedings have generated
    close to 200,000 pages. There is no jury to sway.
    There is a single presiding judge, drawn from a
    pool of three on a rotating basis for a two-year
    term of unusual pressure. Currently the judge is
    a rotund middle-aged man, a reader of Dostoyevsky
    and a convert to Islam. He must be the only
    Muslim in town. He told me it is not easy to be a
    judge there. Five years ago he was ambushed and
    machine-gunned while driving his car. His
    companion was killed, but he himself escaped. The
    attackers were hired killers, of whom Lago Agrio
    has an ample supply. Colombia's largest
    cocaine-production area lies just over the border
    a few miles to the north, and is peopled not only
    by narco-traffickers but also by leftist
    guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups.
    The police in Lago Agrio make a show sometimes of
    directing traffic. They did not investigate the
    attack, the judge believes, because they feared
    retribution. The judge accepted this without
    complaint, as if he had learned to believe in
    fate. Lago Agrio means "sour lake." He told me
    that the only safe choice there is to run away.
    Chevron would probably agree. It denies that the
    judge is fair, denies that the plaintiffs have
    legitimate complaints, denies that their soil and
    water samples are meaningful, denies that the
    methods the company used to extract oil in the
    past were substandard, denies that it
    contaminated the forest, denies that the forest
    is contaminated, denies that there is a link
    between the drinking water and high rates of
    cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and skin
    disease, denies that unusual health problems have
    been demonstrated˜and, for added measure, denies
    that it bears responsibility for any
    environmental damage that might after all be
    found to exist. If Chevron can convince the court
    of the validity of even a few of those points, it
    will win the case and leave town.

    (clip)

    --

    www.marxmail.org

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    12) Our Crumbling Foundation
    By BOB HERBERT
    April 5, 2007
    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp

    Fifty-nine years ago this week — on April 3, 1948 —
    President Truman signed the legislation establishing
    the Marshall Plan, which contributed so much to the
    rebuilding of postwar Europe. Now, more than half
    a century later, the U.S. can’t even rebuild New
    Orleans.

    It doesn’t seem able to build much of anything, really.
    According to the American Society of Civil Engineers,
    the U.S. infrastructure is in sad shape, and it would
    take more than a trillion and a half dollars over
    a five-year period to bring it back to a reasonably
    adequate condition.

    If there’s a less sexy story floating around, I can’t
    find it. It certainly can’t compete with the Sanjaya
    Malakar saga, or with the claim by Keith Richards that
    he snorted his dad’s ashes with “a little bit of blow.”

    But, as we learned with New Orleans, there are
    consequences to neglecting the infrastructure.
    Just a little over a year ago, a dam in Hawaii
    gave way, unleashing a wave 70 feet high and 200
    yards wide. It swept away virtually everything
    in its path, including cars, houses and trees.
    Seven people drowned.

    On the day after Christmas in Portland, Ore.,
    a sinkhole opened up like something from a science
    fiction movie and swallowed a 25-ton sewer- repair
    truck. Authorities blamed the sinkhole on the
    collapse of aging underground pipes.

    Blackouts, school buildings in advanced states
    of disrepair, decrepit highway and railroad bridges
    — the American infrastructure is growing increasingly
    old and obsolete. In addition to being an invitation
    to tragedy, this is a problem that is putting Americans
    at a disadvantage in the ever more competitive
    global economy.

    Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who helped
    save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s,
    has been prominent among those trying to sound the
    infrastructure alarm. Along with former Senator
    Warren Rudman, he has been criticizing the government’s
    unwillingness to invest adequately in public
    transportation systems, water projects, dams,
    schools, the electrical grid, and so on.

    He recently told a House committee that Congress
    should begin a major effort to rebuild the American
    infrastructure “before it is too late.”

    “Since the beginning of the republic,” he said,
    “transportation, infrastructure and education have
    played a central role in advancing the American
    economy, whether it was the canals in upstate New
    York, or the railroads that linked our heartland
    to our industrial centers; whether it was the opening
    of education to average Americans by land grant
    colleges and the G.I. bill, making education basic
    to American life; or whether it was the interstate
    highway system that ultimately connected all regions
    of the nation.

    “This did not happen by chance, but was the result
    of major investments financed by the federal and
    state governments over the last century and a half.
    ... We need to make similar investments now.”

    Politics and ideology are the main reasons that
    government has turned away from public investment
    over the past several years. Zealots marching under
    the banner of small government have been remarkably
    effective in thwarting efforts to raise taxes or
    borrow substantial sums for the kind of public
    investment that has always been essential to
    a dynamic economy.

    That this is counterproductive in a post-20th-
    century world should be as obvious as the sun
    rising in the morning. There is a reason why
    countries like China and India are racing like
    mad to develop their infrastructure and educational
    capacity.

    “A modern economy needs a modern platform, and
    that’s the infrastructure,” Mr. Rohatyn said in
    an interview. “It has been shown that the productivity
    of an economy is related to the quality of its
    infrastructure. For example, if you don’t have
    enough schools to teach your kids, or your kids
    are taught in schools that have holes in the ceilings,
    that are dilapidated, they’re not going to be as
    educated and as competitive in a world economy
    as they need to be.”

    Mr. Rohatyn and Mr. Rudman are co-chairmen of the
    Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center
    for Strategic and International Studies. They believe
    that failing to move quickly to address the nation’s
    infrastructure needs — through the establishment of
    a national trust fund, for example, or a federal
    capital budget — could lead to long-term disaster.

    But words like trust fund and long-term and
    infrastructure find it very difficult to elbow
    their way into the nation’s consciousness. We may
    have to wait for another New Orleans before beginning
    to take this seriously.

    David Brooks is on vacation.

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    13) Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home
    By DEBORAH SONTAG
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

    DUNBAR, Pa. — Blinded and disabled on the 54th day
    of the war in Iraq, Sam Ross returned home to a rousing
    parade that outdid anything this small, depressed
    Appalachian town had ever seen. “Sam’s parade put
    Dunbar on the map,” his grandfather said.

    That was then.

    Now Mr. Ross, 24, faces charges of attempted homicide,
    assault and arson in the burning of a family trailer
    in February. Nobody in the trailer was hurt, but
    Mr. Ross fought the assistant fire chief who reported
    to the scene, and later threatened a state trooper with
    his prosthetic leg, which was taken away from him,
    according to the police.

    The police locked up Mr. Ross in the Fayette County
    prison. In his cell, he tried to hang himself with
    a sheet. After he was cut down, Mr. Ross was committed
    to a state psychiatric hospital, where, he said in
    a recent interview there, he is finally getting —
    and accepting — the help he needs, having spiraled
    downward in the years since the welcoming fanfare
    faded.

    “I came home a hero, and now I’m a bum,” Mr. Ross,
    whose full name is Salvatore Ross Jr., said.

    The story of Sam Ross has the makings of a ballad,
    with its heart-rending arc from hardscrabble childhood
    to decorated war hero to hardscrabble adulthood.
    His effort to create a future for himself by enlisting
    in the Army exploded in the desert during a munitions
    disposal operation in Baghdad. He was 20.

    He was also on his own. Mr. Ross, who is estranged
    from his mother and whose father is serving a life
    sentence for murdering his stepmother, does not have
    the family support that many other severely wounded
    veterans depend on. Various relatives have stepped
    in at various times, but Mr. Ross, embittered by
    a difficult childhood and by what the war cost him,
    has had a push-pull relationship with those who sought
    to assist him.

    Several people have taken a keen interest in Mr. Ross,
    among them Representative John P. Murtha, the once-
    hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Murtha
    publicly turned against the war in Iraq in 2005,
    he cited the shattered life of Mr. Ross, one of his
    first constituents to be seriously wounded,
    as a pivotal influence.

    Mr. Murtha’s office assisted Mr. Ross in negotiating
    the military health care bureaucracy. Homes for Our
    Troops, a nonprofit group based in Massachusetts, built
    him a beautiful log cabin. Military doctors carefully
    tended Mr. Ross’s physical wounds: the loss of his eyesight,
    of his left leg below the knee and of his hearing in one
    ear, among other problems.

    But that help was not enough to save Mr. Ross from
    the loneliness and despair that engulfed him. Overwhelmed
    by severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,
    including routine nightmares of floating over Iraq that
    ended with a blinding boom, he “self-medicated” with
    alcohol and illegal drugs. He finally hit rock bottom
    when he landed in the state psychiatric hospital,
    where he is, sadly, thrilled to be.

    “Seventeen times of trying to commit suicide, I think
    it’s time to give up,” Mr. Ross said, speaking in the
    forensic unit of the Mayview State Hospital in Bridgeville.
    “Lots of them were screaming out cries for help, and nobody
    paid attention. But finally somebody has.”

    Finding a Way Out

    Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, once
    a prosperous coal mining center, is now one of the
    poorest counties in the state. The bucolic but
    ramshackle town of Dunbar sits off State Route
    119 near the intersection marked by the Butchko
    Brothers junkyard.

    Past the railroad tracks and not far up Hardy Hill
    Road, the blackened remains of Mr. Ross’s hillside
    trailer are testament to his disintegration. The
    Support our Troops ribbon is charred, the No
    Trespassing sign unfazed.

    Mr. Ross lived in that trailer, where his father
    shot his stepmother, at several points in his life,
    including alone after he returned from Iraq.
    Its most recent tenant, his younger brother, Thomas,
    was in jail when the fire occurred.

    Many in Mr. Ross’s large, quarreling family are on
    one side of the law or the other, prison guards
    or prisoners, police officers or probationers.
    Their internal feuds are so commonplace that family
    reunions have to be carefully plotted with an eye to
    who has a protective order out against whom, Mr. Ross’s
    25-year-old cousin, Joseph Lee Ross, joked.

    Sam Ross’s childhood was not easy. “Sam’s had
    a rough life from the time he was born,” his
    grandfather, Joseph Frank Ross, said. His parents
    fought, sometimes with guns, until they separated
    and his mother moved out of state. Mr. Ross bore
    some of the brunt of the turmoil.

    “When that kid was little, the way he got beat around,
    it was awful,” his uncle, Joseph Frank Ross Jr.,
    a prison guard, said.

    When he was just shy of 12, Mr. Ross moved in with
    his father’s father, who for a time was married
    to his mother’s mother. The grandfather-grandson
    relationship was and continues to be tumultuous.

    “I idolized my grandpaps, but he’s an alcoholic
    and he mentally abuses people,” Mr. Ross said.

    His grandfather, 72, a former coal miner who sells
    used cars, said, “I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit.
    I just love the taste of it.”

    The grandfather, who still keeps an A-plus English
    test by Mr. Ross on his refrigerator, said his
    grandson did well in school, even though he cared
    most about his wrestling team, baseball, hunting
    and fishing. Mr. Ross graduated in June 2001.

    “Sammy wanted me to pay his way to college, but
    I’m not financially fixed to do that,” his
    grandfather said.

    Feeling that Fayette County was a dead end,
    Mr. Ross said he had wanted to find a way out
    after he graduated. One night in late 2001,
    he said, he saw “one of those ‘Be all you can
    be’ ads” on television. The next day, he went
    to the mall and enlisted, getting a $3,000 bonus
    for signing up to be a combat engineer.

    From his first days of basic training, Mr. Ross
    embraced the military as his salvation. “It was like,
    ‘Wow, man, I was born for the Army,’ ” he said.
    “I was an adrenaline junkie. I was super, super fit.
    I craved discipline. I wanted adventure. I was
    patriotic. I loved the bonding. And there was
    nothing that I was feared of. I mean, man, I was
    made for war.”

    In early 2003, Private Ross, who earned his jump
    wings as a parachutist, shipped off to Kuwait with
    the 82nd Airborne Division, which pushed into Iraq
    with the invasion in March. The early days of the
    war were heady for many soldiers like Private Ross,
    who reveled in the appreciation of Iraqis. He was
    assigned to an engineer squad given the task of
    rounding up munitions.

    On May 18, Private Ross and his squad set out to
    de-mine an area in south Baghdad. Moving quickly,
    as they did on such operations, he collected about
    15 UXO’s, or unexploded ordnances, in a pit. Somehow,
    something — he never learned what — caused them
    to detonate.

    “The initial blast hit me and I went numb and
    everything went totally silent,” he said. “Then
    I hear people start hollering, ‘Ross! Ross! Ross!’
    It started getting louder, louder, louder. My whole
    body was mangled. I was spitting up blood. I faded
    in and out. I was bawling my eyes out, saying, ‘Please
    don’t let me go; don’t let me go.’ ”

    A Casualty of War

    When his relatives first saw Mr. Ross at Walter Reed
    Army Hospital in Washington, he was in a coma.
    “That boy was dead,” his grandfather said. “We was
    looking at a corpse lying in that bed.”

    As he lay unconscious, the Army discharged him —
    one year, four months and 18 days after he enlisted,
    by his calculation. After 31 days, Mr. Ross came
    off the respirator. Groggily but insistently, he pointed
    to his eyes and then to his leg. An aunt gingerly
    told him he was blind and an amputee. He cried
    for days, he said.

    It was during Mr. Ross’s stay at Walter Reed that
    Representative Murtha, a former Marine colonel, first
    met his young constituent and presented him with
    a Purple Heart.

    From the start of the war, Mr. Murtha said in an
    interview, he made regular, painful excursions to
    visit wounded soldiers. Gradually, those visits,
    combined with his disillusionment about the Bush
    administration’s management of the war, led him
    to call in late 2005 for the troops to be brought
    home in six months.

    “Sam Ross had an impact on me,” Mr. Murtha said.
    “Eventually, I just felt that we had gotten to
    a point where we were talking so much about winning
    the war itself — and it couldn’t be won militarily —
    that we were forgetting about the results of the war
    on individuals like Sam.”

    Over the next three years, Mr. Ross underwent more
    than 20 surgical procedures, including: “Five on my
    right eye, one on my left eye, two or three when they
    cut my left leg off, three or four on my right leg,
    a couple on my throat, skin grafts, chest tubes and,
    you know, one where they gutted me from belly button
    to groin” to remove metal fragments from his intestines.

    But, although he was prescribed psychiatric medication,
    he never received in-patient treatment for the post-
    traumatic stress disorder that was diagnosed
    at Walter Reed. And, in retrospect he, like his
    relatives, said he believes he should have been put
    in an intensive program soon after his urgent physical
    injuries were addressed.

    “They should have given him treatment before they
    let him come back into civilization,” his grandfather
    said.

    A Hero’s Welcome

    The parade, on a sunny day in late summer 2003,
    was spectacular. Hundreds of flag-waving locals
    lined the streets. Mr. Ross had just turned 21.
    Wearing his green uniform and burgundy beret, he
    rode in a Jeep, accompanied by other veterans and
    the Connellsville Area Senior High School Marching
    Band. The festivities included bagpipers, Civil
    War re-enactors and a dunking pool.

    “It wasn’t the medals on former Army Pfc. Sam Ross’s
    uniform that reflected his courage yesterday,” The
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote. “It was the Dunbar
    native’s poise as he greeted well-wishers and insisted
    on sharing attention with other soldiers that proved
    the grit he’ll need to recover from extensive injuries
    he suffered in Iraq.”

    For a little while, “it was joy joy, happiness
    happiness,” Mr. Ross said. He felt the glimmerings
    of a new kind of potential within himself, and saw
    no reason why he could not go on to college, even law
    school. Then the black moods, the panic attacks,
    the irritability set in. He was dogged by chronic
    pain; fragments of metal littered his body.

    Mr. Ross said he was “stuck in denial” about his
    disabilities. The day he tried to resume a favorite
    pastime, fishing, hit him hard. Off-balance on the water,
    it came as a revelation that, without eyesight, he did
    not know where to cast his rod. He threw his equipment
    in the water and sold his boat.

    “I just gave up,” he said. “I give up on everything.”

    About a year after he was injured, Mr. Ross enrolled
    in an in-patient program for blind veterans in Chicago.
    He learned the Braille alphabet, but his fingers were
    too numb from embedded shrapnel to read, he said. He
    figured that he did not have much else to learn since
    he had been functioning blind for a year. He left the
    program early.

    Similarly, Mr. Ross repeatedly declined outpatient
    psychiatric treatment at the veterans hospital in
    Pittsburgh, according to the Department of Veterans
    Affairs. He said he felt that people at the hospital
    had disrespected him.

    After living with relatives, Mr. Ross withdrew from
    the world into the trailer on the hill in 2004.
    That year, he got into a dispute with his grandfather
    over old vehicles on the property, resolving it
    by setting them on fire. His run-ins with local
    law enforcement, which did not occur before he
    went to Iraq, the Fayette County sheriff said,
    had begun.

    But his image locally had not yet been tarnished.
    In early 2005, Mr. Murtha held a second Purple Heart
    ceremony for Mr. Ross at a Fayette County hospital
    “to try to show him how much affection we had for
    him and his sacrifice,” Mr. Murtha said.

    A local newspaper article about Mr. Ross’s desire
    to build himself a house came to the attention
    of Homes for Our Troops.

    “He’s a great kid; he really is,” said Kirt Rebello,
    the group’s director of projects and veterans affairs.
    “Early on, even before he was injured, the kid had
    this humongous deck stacked against him in life.
    That’s one of the reasons we wanted to help him.”

    Mr. Ross, who had received a $100,000 government payment
    for his catastrophic injury, bought land adjacent to
    his grandfather’s. Mr. Rebello asked Mr. Ross whether
    he might prefer to move to somewhere with more services
    and opportunities. But Mr. Ross said that Dunbar’s
    winding roads were implanted in his psyche, “that he
    could see the place in his mind,” Mr. Rebello said.

    A Life Falls Apart

    In May 2005, Mr. Ross broke up with a girlfriend
    and grew increasingly depressed. He felt oppressively
    idle, he said. One day, he tacked a suicide note
    to the door of his trailer and hitched a ride to
    a trail head, disappearing into the woods. A day
    long manhunt ensued.

    Mr. Ross fell asleep in the woods that night, waking
    up with the sun on his face, which he took to be
    a sign that God wanted him to live. When he was found,
    he was taken to a psychiatric ward and released
    after a few weeks.

    The construction of his house proved a distraction
    from his misery. Mr. Ross enjoyed the camaraderie
    of the volunteers who fashioned him a cabin from
    white pine logs. But when the house, which he
    named Second Heaven, was finished in early 2006,
    “they all left, I moved in and I was all alone,”
    he said. “That’s when the drugs really started.”

    At first, Mr. Ross said, he used drugs — pills,
    heroin, crack and methadone — “basically to mellow
    myself out and to have people around.” Local ne’er-
    do-wells enjoyed themselves on Mr. Ross’s tab for
    quite some time, his relatives said.

    “These kids were loading him into a car, taking
    him to strip clubs, letting him foot the bills,”
    his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., said. “They were
    dopies and druggies.”

    Mr. Ross’s girlfriend, Barbara Hall, moved in with him.
    But relationships with many of his relatives had
    deteriorated.

    “If that boy would have come home and accepted
    what happened to him, that boy never would have
    wanted for anything in Dunbar,” his grandfather
    said. “If he had accepted that he’s wounded and
    he’s blinded, you know? He’s not the only one that
    happened to. There’s hundreds of boys like him.”

    Some sympathy began to erode in the town, too.
    “There’s pro and con on him,” a local official said.
    “Some people don’t even believe he’s totally blind.”

    After overdosing first on heroin and then on
    methadone last fall, Mr. Ross said, he quit
    consuming illegal drugs, replacing them with drinking
    until he blacked out.

    Mr. Ross relied on his brother, Thomas, when he
    suffered panic attacks. When Thomas was jailed
    earlier this year, Mr. Ross reached out to older
    members of his family. In early February, his uncle,
    Joseph Ross Jr., persuaded him to be driven several
    hours to the veterans’ hospital in Coatesville to
    apply for its in-patient program for post-traumatic
    stress disorder.

    “Due to the severity of his case, they accepted him
    on the spot and gave him a bed date for right after
    Valentine’s Day,” his uncle said. “Then he wigged
    out five days before he was supposed to go there.”

    It started when his brother’s girlfriend, Monica
    Kuhns, overheard a phone call in which he was arranging
    to buy antidepressants. She thought it was a transaction
    to buy cocaine, he said, and he feared that she would
    tell his sister and brother.

    After downing several beers, Mr. Ross, in a deranged
    rage, went to his old trailer, where Ms. Kuhns was
    living with her young son, he said.

    “He started pounding on the door,” said Ms. Hall, who
    accompanied him. “He went in and threatened to burn
    the place down. Me and Monica didn’t actually think
    he was going to do it. But then he pulled out the
    lighter.”

    Having convinced himself that the trailer — a source
    of so much family misery — needed to be destroyed,
    Mr. Ross set a pile of clothing on fire. The women
    and the child fled. When a volunteer firefighter
    showed up, Mr. Ross attacked and choked him, according
    to a police complaint.

    A judge set bail at $250,000. In the Fayette County
    prison, Mr. Ross got “totally out of hand,” the sheriff,
    Gary Brownfield, said. Mr. Ross’s lawyer, James Geibig,
    said the situation was a chaotic mess.

    “It was just a nightmare,” Mr. Geibig said. “First
    the underlying charges — attempted homicide, come
    on — were blown out of proportion. Then bail is set
    sky high, straight cash. They put him in a little
    cell, in isolation, and barely let him shower.
    Things went from bad to worse until they found
    him hanging.”

    Now Mr. Geibig’s goal is to get Mr. Ross sentenced
    into the post-traumatic stress disorder program
    he was supposed to attend.

    “He does not need to be in jail,” Mr. Geibig said.
    “He has suffered enough. I’m not a bleeding heart,
    but his is a pretty gut-wrenching tale. And at the
    end, right before this incident, he sought out help.
    It didn’t arrive in time. But it’s not too late,
    I hope, for Sam Ross to have some kind of future.”

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    14) Immigration Raid Yields 62 Arrests in Illinois
    By LIBBY SANDER
    April 5, 2007
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05raid.html

    CHICAGO, April 4 — Immigration agents arrested two managers
    and 60 other employees of an industrial cleaning company
    Wednesday on immigration violations and charges of identity
    theft in an early morning raid at a meatpacking plant
    in central Illinois.

    The operation was the latest in a string of raids by agents
    from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on companies accused
    of employing illegal immigrants who, in some cases, are
    alleged to have stolen the identities of American citizens
    to create false identification documents.

    The raid occurred at 1:30 a.m. at Cargill Meat Solutions
    in Beardstown, a town of 6,000 people northwest of
    Springfield, where the cleaning company, Quality Service
    Integrity Inc., was under contract to clean Cargill’s
    pork processing plant.

    The two managers, who officials said are Mexicans in the
    United States illegally, and 11 of the workers arrested
    Wednesday were charged with aggravated identity theft.
    Identity theft charges were brought against 14 additional
    employees of the cleaning service, but they have not yet
    been arrested, said Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for
    the immigration agency.

    Forty-nine employees were taken into custody for alleged
    immigration violations. In all, 54 of the 62 people arrested
    are from Mexico; 5 are from Guatemala; 2 from El Salvador
    and 1 from Argentina, Ms. Montenegro said.

    Eleven of the workers taken into custody were released
    on humanitarian grounds, officials said.

    Neither Cargill nor any of the 2,200 employees at its
    Beardstown facility were objects of the investigation,
    officials said.

    The two managers are Gerardo DominGuez-Chacon, who manages
    the cleaning company’s Beardstown operation, and Maria del
    Pilar Marroquin de Ramirez, the company’s personnel administrator.
    Both are charged in a criminal complaint with aggravated
    identity theft and with “aiding and abetting aggravated identity
    theft in connection with the alleged hiring of illegal
    immigrants.” If convicted, they face at least two years
    in prison.

    Prosecutors said that the two managers knowingly hired
    illegal immigrants and that Mr. DominGuez-Chacon provided
    new employees with stolen identities and gave illegal
    immigrants information on how to obtain false
    identification documents.

    The cleaning service is described on a company Web
    site as a member of the Vincit Group, which is based
    in Chattanooga, Tenn. A woman answering the telephone
    at Vincit said no one was available to comment.

    The investigation into the cleaning company’s hiring
    practices began in January, officials said, and revealed
    that most of the company’s work force was illegal
    immigrants.

    In December, immigration agents raided six meat-processing
    plants operated by Swift and Company in six states,
    detaining 1,282 immigrants believed to be in the country
    illegally and charging 219 so far, mostly with identity
    theft.

    Since the Swift raids, smaller raids have occurred
    in many states. Immigration authorities say they are
    stepping up efforts to go after companies that engage
    in the trafficking of false and stolen documents used
    by illegal immigrants to obtain employment.

    Last week, agents arrested 69 immigrants placed by
    a temporary job agency, Jones Industrial Network, at
    work sites in the Baltimore area. In early March, more
    than 360 people, including the owner and three managers,
    were arrested at Michael Bianco Inc., a leather goods
    manufacturer in New Bedford, Mass.

    Three days after the Massachusetts raid, charges were
    brought against the president of Sun Drywall and Stucco,
    an Arizona construction company, and seven managers
    accused of hiring illegal immigrants.

    And in Michigan, federal prosecutors brought charges
    in February against three executives of Rosenbaum-
    Cunningham International, a cleaning and maintenance
    company, alleging that the three defrauded the federal
    government of more than $18 million in employment taxes
    owed on behalf of hundreds of illegal immigrant workers.
    Nearly 200 immigrant workers in 17 states and the District
    of Columbia were arrested as part of the investigation.

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    15) Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
    Democratic Blood Money
    By JOSHUA FRANK
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.counterpunch.com/frank04042007.html

    Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently
    resigned from her post on the Military Construction
    Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) late last week
    as her ethical limbo with war contracts began to surface
    in the media, including an excellent investigative report
    written by Peter Byrne for Metro in January. MILCON has
    supervised the appropriations of billions of dollars
    in reconstruction contracts since the Bush wars began.

    Feinstein, who served as chairperson and ranking member
    for the committee from 2001-2005, came under fire early
    last year in these pages for profiting by way of her
    husband Richard Blum who, until 2005, held large stakes
    in two defense contracting companies. Both businesses,
    URS and Perini, have scored lucrative contracts in Iraq
    and Afghanistan in the last four years, and Blum has
    personally pocketed tens of millions of dollars off the
    deals his wife, along with her colleagues, so graciously
    approved.

    Here's a brief rundown of the Feinstein family's blatant
    war profiteering. In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps
    of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide
    services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier
    in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design
    and construct a facility to support the Afghan National
    Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded
    a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical
    power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.

    But it is not just Perini that has made Feinstein and
    Blum wealthy. Blum also held over 111,000 shares of stock
    in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense
    contractors in the United States. Blum was an acting
    director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider
    of technical services and management to the U.S. military,
    from the neocon packed Carlyle Group back in 2002.

    "As part of EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco
    Chronicle, "Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in
    URS -- second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled
    by Blum Capital."

    URS and Blum have since banked on the war in Iraq,
    attaining a $600 million contract through EG&G, which
    Sen. Feinstein permitted. As a result, URS has seen its
    stock price more than triple since the war began in March
    of 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this
    venture alone and another $100 million for his
    investment firm.

    And it is not just the Feinstein family that has
    benefited from the war -- so too has the Democratic
    Party. Since 2000, the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks has
    donated over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial
    Committee including leading Democrats including John
    Kerry, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and even Barbara Boxer.

    Feinstein's resignation from MILCON was the least the
    senator could do to atone for profiting off the spoils
    of war. But Feinstein wasn't trying to atone, she seems
    to have been trying to cover her tracks instead by
    distancing herself from her post. If the Democratic
    Party had any foresight whatsoever it would return
    all the Blood Money donated by Blum. From there the
    Senate ought to hold hearings and examine Feinstein's
    tenure as the chair and ranking member of MILCON and
    analyze every single contract she approved which
    benefited her husband's respective companies.

    There is absolutely no question -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein
    has a plethora of ethics violations she needs to account
    for at once.

    Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals
    Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits www.BrickBurner.org

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    16) Reflections of the Commander in Chief
    THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF GENOCIDE
    April 3, 2007
    By Fidel Castro Ruz
    GRANMA
    April 4, 2007
    http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art84.html

    The Camp David meeting has just come to
    an end. All of us followed the press
    conference offered by the presidents
    of the United States and Brazil
    attentively, as we did the news surrounding
    the meeting and the opinions
    voiced in this connection.

    Faced with demands related to customs
    duties and subsidies which protect and
    support US ethanol production, Bush
    did not make the slightest concession to
    his Brazilian guest at Camp David.

    President Lula attributed to this the
    rise in corn prices, which, according
    to his own statements, had gone up more
    than 85 percent.

    Before these statements were made,
    the Washington Post had published an
    article by the Brazilian leader which
    expounded on the idea of transforming
    food into fuel.

    It is not my intention to hurt Brazil
    or to meddle in the internal affairs
    of this great country. It was in effect
    in Rio de Janeiro, host of the
    United Nations Conference on Environment
    and Development, exactly 15 years
    ago, where I delivered a 7-minute
    speech vehemently denouncing the
    environmental dangers that menaced
    our species' survival. Bush Sr., then
    President of the United States, was
    present at that meeting and applauded my
    words out of courtesy; all other
    presidents there applauded, too.

    No one at Camp David answered the
    fundamental question. Where are the more
    than 500 million tons of corn and
    other cereals which the United States,
    Europe and wealthy nations require
    to produce the gallons of ethanol that
    big companies in the United States and
    other countries demand in exchange
    for their voluminous investments going
    to be produced and who is going to
    supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower
    and rape seeds, whose essential
    oils these same, wealthy nations are to
    turn into fuel, going to be produced
    and who will produce them?

    Some countries are food producers which
    export their surpluses. The balance
    of exporters and consumers had already
    become precarious before this and
    food prices had skyrocketed. In the
    interests of brevity, I shall limit
    myself to pointing out the following:

    According to recent data, the five
    chief producers of corn, barley, sorghum,
    rye, millet and oats which Bush wants
    to transform into the raw material of
    ethanol production, supply the world
    market with 679 million tons of these
    products. Similarly, the five chief
    consumers, some of which also produce
    these grains, currently require 604 million
    annual tons of these products.
    The available surplus is less than
    80 million tons of grain.

    This colossal squandering of cereals
    destined to fuel production -and these
    estimates do not include data on oily
    seeds-shall serve to save rich
    countries less than 15 percent of the
    total annual consumption of their
    voracious automobiles.

    At Camp David, Bush declared his intention
    of applying this formula around
    the world. This spells nothing other
    than the internationalization of
    genocide.

    In his statements, published by the
    Washington Post on the eve of the Camp
    David meeting, the Brazilian president
    affirmed that less than one percent
    of Brazil's arable land was used to
    grow cane destined to ethanol
    production. This is nearly three times
    the land surface Cuba used when it
    produced nearly 10 million tons of
    sugar a year, before the crisis that
    befell the Soviet Union and the advent
    of climate changes.

    Our country has been producing and
    exporting sugar for a longer time. First,
    on the basis of the work of slaves,
    whose numbers swelled to over 300
    thousand in the first years of the 19th
    century and who turned the Spanish
    colony into the world's number one
    exporter. Nearly one hundred years later,
    at the beginning of the 20th century,
    when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which
    had been denied full independence by
    US interventionism; it was immigrants
    from the West Indies and illiterate
    Cubans alone who bore the burden of
    growing and harvesting sugarcane on the
    island. The scourge of our people
    was the off-season, inherent to the
    cyclical nature of the harvest.
    Sugarcane plantations were the
    property of US companies or powerful
    Cuban-born landowners. Cuba, thus,
    has more experience than anyone as
    regards the social impact of this crop.

    This past Sunday, April 1, the CNN
    televised the opinions of Brazilian
    experts who affirm that many lands
    destined to sugarcane have been purchased
    by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

    As part of my reflections on the subject,
    published on March 29, I expounded
    on the impact climate change has
    had on Cuba and on other basic
    characteristics of our country's
    climate which contribute to this.

    On our poor and anything but consumerist
    island, one would be unable to find
    enough workers to endure the rigors
    of the harvest and to care for the
    sugarcane plantations in the ever more
    intense heat, rains or droughts. When
    hurricanes lash the island, not even
    the best machines can harvest the
    bent-over and twisted canes. For centuries,
    the practice of burning
    sugarcane was unknown and no soil was
    compacted under the weight of complex
    machines and enormous trucks. Nitrogen,
    potassium and phosphate fertilizers,
    today extremely expensive, did not yet
    even exist, and the dry and wet
    months succeeded each other regularly.
    In modern agriculture, no high yields
    are possible without crop rotation methods.

    On Sunday, April 1, the French Press
    Agency (AFP) published disquieting
    reports on the subject of climate
    change, which experts gathered by the
    United Nations already consider an
    inevitable phenomenon that will spell
    serious repercussions for the world
    in the coming decades.

    According to a UN report to be approved
    next week in Brussels, climate
    change will have a significant impact
    on the American continent, generating
    more violent storms and heat waves and
    causing droughts, the extinction of
    some species and even hunger in Latin
    America.

    The AFP report indicates that the
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    (IPCC) forewarned that at the end of
    this century, every hemisphere will
    endure water-related problems and,
    if governments take no measures in this
    connection, rising temperatures could
    increase the risks of mortality,
    contamination, natural catastrophes
    and infectious diseases.

    In Latin America, global warming is
    already melting glaciers in the Andes
    and threatening the Amazon forest, whose
    perimeter may slowly be turned into
    a savannah, the cable goes on to report.

    Because a great part of its population
    lives near the coast, the United
    States is also vulnerable to extreme natural
    phenomena, as hurricane Katrina
    demonstrated in 2005.

    According to AFP, this is the second
    of three IPCC reports which began to be
    published last February, following
    an initial scientific forecast which
    established the certainty of climate
    change.

    This second 1400-page report which
    analyzes climate change in different
    sectors and regions, of which AFP has
    obtained a copy, considers that, even
    if radical measures to reduce carbon
    dioxide emissions that pollute the
    atmosphere are taken, the rise in
    temperatures around the planet in the
    coming decades is already unavoidable,
    concludes the French Press Agency.

    As was to be expected, at the Camp
    David meeting, Dan Fisk, National
    Security advisor for the region,
    declared that "in the discussion on
    regional issues, [I expect] Cuba to
    come up (.) if there's anyone that knows
    how to create starvation, it's Fidel
    Castro. He also knows how not to do
    ethanol".

    As I find myself obliged to respond
    to this gentleman, it is my duty to
    remind him that Cuba's infant mortality
    rate is lower than the United
    States'. All citizens -this is beyond
    question-enjoy free medical services.
    Everyone has access to education and
    no one is denied employment, in spite
    of nearly half a century of economic
    blockade and the attempts of US
    governments to starve and economically
    asphyxiate the people of Cuba.

    China would never devote a single ton
    of cereals or leguminous plants to the
    production of ethanol, and it is an
    economically prosperous nation which is
    breaking growth records, where all
    citizens earn the income they need to
    purchase essential consumer items, despite
    the fact that 48 percent of its
    population, which exceeds 1.3 billion,
    works in agriculture. On the
    contrary, it has set out to reduce
    energy consumption considerably by
    shutting down thousands of factories
    which consume unacceptable amounts of
    electricity and hydrocarbons. It imports
    many of the food products mentioned
    above from far-off corners of the world,
    transporting these over thousands
    of miles.

    Scores of countries do not produce
    hydrocarbons and are unable to produce
    corn and other grains or oily seeds,
    for they do not even have enough water
    to meet their most basic needs.

    At a meeting on ethanol production held
    in Buenos Aires by the Argentine Oil
    Industry Chamber and Cereals Exporters
    Association, Loek Boonekamp, the
    Dutch head of the Organization for
    Economic Cooperation and Development
    (OECD)'s commercial and marketing division,
    told the press that governments
    are very much enthused about this process
    but that they should objectively
    consider whether ethanol ought to be
    given such resolute support.

    According to Boonekamp, the United States
    is the only country where ethanol
    can be profitable and, without subsidies,
    no other country can make it viable.

    According to the report, Boonekamp
    insists that ethanol is not manna from
    Heaven and that we should not blindly
    commit to developing this process.

    Today, developed countries are pushing
    to have fossil fuels mixed with
    biofuels at around five percent and
    this is already affecting agricultural
    prices. If this figure went up to
    10 percent, 30 percent of the United
    States' cultivated surface and 50
    percent of Europe's would be required.
    That is the reason Boonekamp asks
    himself whether the process is
    sustainable, as an increase in the
    demand for crops destined to ethanol
    production would generate higher
    and less stable prices.

    Protectionist measures are today at
    54 cents per gallon and real subsidies
    reach far higher figures.

    Applying the simple arithmetic we learned
    in high school, we could show how,
    by simply replacing incandescent bulbs
    with fluorescent ones, as I explained
    in my previous reflections, millions
    and millions of dollars in investment
    and energy could be saved, without the
    need to use a single acre of farming
    land.

    In the meantime, we are receiving news
    from Washington, through the AP,
    reporting that the mysterious disappearance
    of millions of bees throughout
    the United States has edged beekeepers
    to the brink of a nervous breakdown
    and is even cause for concern in Congress,
    which will discuss this Thursday
    the critical situation facing this insect,
    essential to the agricultural
    sector. According to the report, the
    first disquieting signs of this enigma
    became evident shortly after Christmas
    in the state of Florida, when
    beekeepers discovered that their bees
    had vanished without a trace. Since
    then, the syndrome which experts have
    christened as Colony Collapse Disorder
    (CCD) has reduced the country's swarms
    by 25 percent.

    Daniel Weaver, president of the US Beekeepers
    Association, stated that more
    than half a million colonies, each with
    a population of nearly 50 thousand
    bees, had been lost. He added that the
    syndrome has struck 30 of the
    country's 50 states. What is curious
    about the phenomenon is that, in many
    cases, the mortal remains of the bees
    are not found.

    According to a study conducted by Cornell
    University, these industrious
    insects pollinate crops valued at anywhere
    from 12 to 14 billion dollars.

    Scientists are entertaining all kinds
    of hypotheses, including the theory
    that a pesticide may have caused the
    bees' neurological damage and altered
    their sense of orientation. Others lay
    the blame on the drought and even
    mobile phone waves, but, what's certain
    is that no one knows exactly what
    has unleashed this syndrome.

    The worst may be yet to come: a new
    war aimed at securing gas and oil
    supplies that can take humanity to
    the brink of total annihilation.

    Invoking intelligence sources, Russian
    newspapers have reported that a war
    on Iran has been in the works for
    over three years now, since the day the
    government of the United States
    resolved to occupy Iraq completely,
    unleashing a seemingly endless and
    despicable civil war.

    All the while, the government of
    the United States devotes hundreds of
    billions to the development of highly
    sophisticated technologies, as those
    which employ micro-electronic systems
    or new nuclear weapons which can
    strike their targets an hour following
    the order to attack.

    The United States brazenly turns a deaf
    ear to world public opinion, which
    is against all kinds of nuclear weapons.

    Razing all of Iran's factories to the
    ground is a relatively easy task, from
    the technical point of view, for a powerful
    country like the United States.
    The difficult task may come later,
    if a new war were to be unleashed against
    another Muslim faith which deserves
    our utmost respect, as do all other
    religions of the Near, Middle or Far
    East, predating or postdating
    Christianity.

    The arrest of English soldiers at
    Iran's territorial waters recalls the
    nearly identical act of provocation
    of the so-called "Brothers to the
    Rescue" who, ignoring President Clinton's
    orders advanced over our country's
    territorial waters. Cuba's absolutely
    legitimate and defensive action gave
    the United States a pretext to promulgate
    the well-known Helms-Burton Act,
    which encroaches upon the sovereignty
    of other nations besides Cuba. The
    powerful media have consigned that
    episode to oblivion. No few people
    attribute the price of oil, at nearly
    70 dollars a gallon as of Monday, to
    fears of a possible invasion of Iran.

    Where shall poor Third World countries
    find the basic resources needed to
    survive?

    I am not exaggerating or using overblown
    language. I am confining myself to
    the facts.

    As can be seen, the polyhedron has many dark faces.

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    LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

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    Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery
    · Benedict hails Marx's analysis of modern man
    · Publication planned for 80th birthday
    John Hooper in Rome
    Guardian
    "Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-g