From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:25:34 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:25:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] 'Active' Castro meets China envoy Message-ID: <200704231825.l3NIPYdM001947@viola.tamara-b.org> [Fidel's meeting with the Chinese delgation is still mainstream news after 3 days. -NYTr] AP via CNN - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/04/21/castro.china.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest 'Active' Castro meets China envoy HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Photographs of Fidel Castro meeting with the head of a visiting Chinese Communist Party delegation were published Saturday in Cuba's party newspaper in the latest sign the Cuban leader is becoming increasingly active more than eight months after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. The Communist Party daily Granma reported that Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politiburo, met separately Friday with both Castro and his younger brother Raul, who has been filling in for his brother since July. A short message about the encounter was first read Friday night on state television and carried on official news services, but the new images of Castro were not released until Saturday. In two photographs published on Granma's Web site, Castro is seen dressed in a brown and red track suit with white detailing as he meets with Wu. In one, he sits in a rocking chair across from Wu with another member of the Chinese delegation between them, apparently taking notes on the meeting. In a second, the two men are standing and shaking hands. While he looks somewhat pale after months indoors, the 80-year-old appears much stronger than the early images of him last fall, dressed in red pajamas and resting in bed while visiting with his ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Fidel Castro's condition and exact ailment remain state secrets, but he is believed to suffer from diverticular disease, which can cause inflammation and bleeding in the colon. Castro has not been seen in public since before July 31, when he announced he had undergone surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his brother while he recovered. Since then, he has been seen only in photographs and videos released by the government, initially looking thin and weak but more recently appearing stronger. Cuban officials have been giving increasingly positive reports about Castro's recovery, sparking expectations that the he will make a public appearance soon, perhaps at the annual May 1 workers parade that draws hundreds of thousands of people. In recent weeks, he has written three editorials published in official media under the title "Reflections of the Commander in Chief," two about his opposition to the use of food crops for the production of ethanol for cars, and another accusing the U.S. government of protecting his old nemesis Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born anti-communist militant who was released this week from American custody while he awaits trial on immigration fraud charges. Cuba and Venezuela accuse him of violent acts against the island, including the 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner that killed 73 people -- something Posada denies. After meeting for an hour with Fidel Castro and delivering a letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao, Wu met with Raul Castro to discuss economic and other issues, Granma said. Also attending that meeting were Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Trade between the two communist countries has burgeoned in recent years, growing to US$1.8 billion last year, double that of 2005, according to Chinese officials in Cuba. Chinese exports of buses, locomotives and farm equipment and supplies to Cuba helped account for the sharp increase. After his stop in Cuba, Wu heads next to Colombia and Chile. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:26:01 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:26:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Iraq, Afghanistan War Vets Find Relief in the Footlights Message-ID: <200704231826.l3NIQ1Q4001959@viola.tamara-b.org> Interpress Service - Apr 22, 2007 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37442 Iraq, Afghanistan War Vets Find Relief in the Footlights by Aaron Glantz LOS ANGELES, Apr 22 (IPS) - The house lights go down and the stage lights come up on "The Wolf", the first production of VetStage, a non-profit theatre company run by veterans of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It opens with a funeral: a Roman Catholic priest preparing to deliver a eulogy for a U.S. soldier killed by a road-side bomb. Quickly, the scene changes and we're transported to a group therapy session under way at military mental institution. It's here that we meet our two main characters. Both are members of the Marine Corps facing court martial. The first, a female soldier accused of killing a fellow Marine after he raped her. The second, for massacring an entire Iraqi family in their home. The therapy session does not go well. "A lot of f---ed up sh-- happened in combat, that's what I think, supershrink," a third solider in the therapy session tells the military psychiatrist. "You know what, I'm tired so why don't we move on." The play's author, lead actor, and founder of VetStage is Sean Huze. He signed up for the Marine Corp on Sep. 12, 2001 -- the day after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC -- and served as an infantryman during the initial invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003. The Louisiana native had already worked as an actor playing bit parts in commercials and television shows before enlisting. Immediately after he returned he wrote a play called "The Sand Storm", a series of 10 monologues describing the Iraq war from the soldiers' perspective. Huze said that play helped him work through psychological issues he had returning to the United States after serving in Iraq. Then, in the west-coast city of Los Angeles, he founded VetStage, which seeks to present "one of the best opportunities for our nation's veterans to define their experience and how it is perceived by the public. In addition to that, it provides a positive, creative outlet for veterans to process their personal experience, enable them to make an artistic contribution to society and ease the transition back into civilian life," states its website. "The Wolf" is VetStage's first production, and is in association with the organisation Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Huze told IPS he was drawn to write "The Wolf" when he saw how the U.S. government and the media reacted to a Marine Corps massacre of 24 Iraqis civilians at Haditha in November 2005. "Some lance corporal is going to do 10 years in the brig or longer, and in the meantime the people who train Marines to do it, that condition Marines to do this, basically get off," he said. "They hang the individuals out to dry when really they're doing what they're trained and conditioned to do. That's why I took this kind of route with this play." Near the end of the first act, the two soldiers break out of the mental institution, but they can't lie low -- violence seems to follow them wherever they go. This is how the play's main character describes the massacre he perpetrated to his local priest: "They were sheep," he says, "and I am a wolf and I did what wolves do and that's what I told 'em and that's why they keep me locked up." "And what about now -- you're still a wolf?" the priest asks. "You can't turn someone from a sheep into a wolf and then back again, so where does that leave me now?" Karl Risinger is a member of the VetStage company and a U.S. army veteran who trained soldiers before their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. "I like the production," he said. "I think it's a story that needs to be told. [Veterans] have been programmed and trained and they're soldiers, and suddenly they get out of the military and they're home to normal life and they don't have to go through the normal regimens they have to go through in the military." "They're dealing with the stuff they've done during their military careers," he added. "Nobody really knows how to de-programme a soldier." "The Wolf" is a decidedly anti-war play, focusing not only on the conditions soldiers face after they come home, but attacking the George W. Bush administration's reasons for attacking Iraq. Still, Huze told IPS, the theatre company isn't only for veterans who think the war is wrong. "There are veterans who are part of VetStage who are conservatives who voted for Bush twice," he said, noting the organisation also offers acting and playwriting classes designed to help vets improve their skills and integrate better back into U.S. society. "Certainly for me, even though those aren't viewpoints that I hold, if they're vets who are involved in this who still have issues they want to work through and help them with writing they're able to do something artistically it helps them to transition back to being a civilian or a citizen." "I just care if they're military," he said, "and if they are, I want to help 'em out." (END/2007) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:28:22 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:28:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Ed Sullivan and Fidel (video link) Message-ID: <200704231828.l3NISMSM001977@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Martin McReynolds via David McReynolds - Apr 23, 2007 Martin, That is such a sweet touch out of history, more a comedy line, viewed now, the young Fidel, just assuming power, Ed Sullivan at the height of this powers - and I do like your verison better. Will send to a list that I think will enjoy it, whether they agree or not with Fidel. -David Martin McReynold wrote: Ed and Fidel For years I've remembered seeing Ed Sullivan interviewing Fidel Castro shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. What I remember is Ed putting his arm around Fidel's shoulder and saying something along the lines of, "I understand you played football as a young man. Do you think that prepared you for the rugged life of a guerrilla in the mountains?" And Fidel looking dumbfounded and stuttering out something in English about "Well, yes, maybe, perhaps..." I mentioned it on Downhold. I had actually tried to track down that clip for Fidel's obituary when I was working on it in the 1990s. I tried to contact CBS-TV through its bureaucracy but gave up in frustration. Now that I've asked Downholders, they've steered me to part of that interview -- a part that makes Ed Sullivan look like a hard-hitting interviewer catching Fidel in a classically revealing quote. Well, it is an eloquent moment, that you can see at: http://tinyurl.com/ywtyrz ... but I still like the part I remember better. But -- to think that instead of getting lost in the CBS bureaucracy, I could've just gone online and ordered up a DVD of Ed Sullivan shows from CBS. Well, I could NOW but I don't think that was possible then. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:29:16 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:29:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Krugman: A Hostage Situation Message-ID: <200704231829.l3NITHrv001989@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The New York Times - Apr 23, 2007 http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/opinion/23krugman.html A Hostage Situation By PAUL KRUGMAN There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it's a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders - the troops - if his demands aren't met. If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq. But this isn't a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn't really trying to win the argument on the merits. He's just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders. What's at stake right now is the latest Iraq "supplemental." Since the beginning, the administration has refused to put funding for the war in its regular budgets. Instead, it keeps saying, in effect: "Whoops! Whaddya know, we're running out of money. Give us another $87 billion." At one level, this is like the behavior of an irresponsible adolescent who repeatedly runs through his allowance, each time calling his parents to tell them he's broke and needs extra cash. What I haven't seen sufficiently emphasized, however, is the disdain this practice shows for the welfare of the troops, whom the administration puts in harm's way without first ensuring that they'll have the necessary resources. As long as a G.O.P.-controlled Congress could be counted on to rubber-stamp the administration's requests, you could say that this wasn't a real problem, that the administration's refusal to put Iraq funding in the regular budget was just part of its usual reliance on fiscal smoke and mirrors. But this time Mr. Bush decided to surge additional troops into Iraq after an election in which the public overwhelmingly rejected his war - and then dared Congress to deny him the necessary funds. As I said, it's an act of hostage-taking. Actually, it's even worse than that. According to reports, the final version of the funding bill Congress will send won't even set a hard deadline for withdrawal. It will include only an "advisory," nonbinding date. Yet Mr. Bush plans to veto the bill all the same - and will then accuse Congress of failing to support the troops. The whole situation brings to mind what Abraham Lincoln said, in his great Cooper Union speech in 1860, about secessionists who blamed the critics of slavery for the looming civil war: "A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, 'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!' " So how should Congress respond to Mr. Bush's threats? Everyone talks about the political risks of confrontation, recalling the backlash when Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in 1995. But there's a big difference between trying to force a fairly popular president to accept deep cuts in Medicare - which is what the 1995 confrontation was about - and trying to get a deeply unpopular, distrusted president to set some limits on an immensely unpopular war. Meanwhile, there are big political risks on the other side. If Congress responds to a presidential veto by offering an even weaker bill, voters may well react with disgust, concluding that the whole debate over the war was nothing but political theater. Anyway, never mind the political calculations. Confronting Mr. Bush on Iraq has become a patriotic duty. The fact is that Mr. Bush's refusal to face up to the failure of his Iraq adventure, his apparent determination to spend the rest of his term in denial, has become a clear and present danger to national security. Thanks to the demands of the Iraq war, we're already a superpower without a strategic reserve, unable to respond to crises that might erupt elsewhere in the world. And more and more military experts warn that repeated deployments in Iraq - now extended to 15 months - are breaking the back of our volunteer military. If nothing is done to wind down this war during the 21 months - 21 months! - Mr. Bush has left, the damage may be irreparable. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:30:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:30:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] The Problem with Alberto Message-ID: <200704231830.l3NIUncC002006@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed pearl Truthout - Apr 22, 2007 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042207A.shtml The Problem With Alberto "As one who worked as an assistant US attorney from 1983 through 2004 - in two districts, under four presidents and roughly ten different US attorneys - I can say that virtually every clause, and certainly the overall implication, of Gonzales's claim is false." By Elizabeth de la Vega After a day of testimony that showed Alberto Gonzales to be so self-contradictory, so conveniently vacant and - at times - so simply risible that even radio listeners could feel the disgust that permeated the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, we are all waiting to learn the attorney general's fate: Will he be pushed over the side, take a dive off the plank or simply hang onto the railing of the wreck the Bush administration has made of the Department of Justice? Certainly, Gonzales is unfit to be the nation's chief law enforcement officer. We knew that before he testified on April 19. We knew that before he was even confirmed. No one who signs off on tortured legal memos authorizing torture, kidnapping and illegal detentions is fit to be the attorney general of the United States. But the departure of Alberto Gonzales will not right the listing ship that is the Justice Department. Why? Because the problem with Alberto is that Alberto is only part of the problem. The real problem with the Bush administration's Department of Justice right now is that it is run by the Bush administration. Gonzales's Justice Department is the Bush administration's Justice Department. Therefore, Gonzales's story about the US attorneys scandal is the Bush administration's story. And even though the Bush White House has come up with some fabulous tales over the past six years, this one is a corker: Amazingly - the White House would have you believe - the list of US attorneys who should be "pushed out" was spontaneously generated without the benefit of human agency! Can you believe it??? Actually, no. Not even the most credulous - or biased - audience can suspend disbelief to that extent, which is why Gonzales struggled so mightily yesterday to convince everyone to stop obsessing about the facts of his account. Rather, Gonzales, as the spokesman for the White House, wanted us all to understand that, notwithstanding the considerable effort that was put into "reviewing" and then replacing US attorneys around the country, the US attorneys are, in fact, irrelevant. Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch had apparently been clued in on the talking points. From time to time, he would lob questions to the attorney general along the lines of "Do the US attorneys actually handle the public corruption cases themselves?" The well-coached and grateful Gonzales would then explain that, no, the work in the US attorneys' offices is done by the career prosecutors, who will keep doing their cases no matter who the US attorney is. Indeed, Gonzales offered plaintively, the office of the Attorney General didn't really even know "that much" about what was going on in the US attorneys' offices. As one who worked as an assistant US attorney from 1983 through 2004 - in two districts, under four presidents and roughly ten different US attorneys - I can say that virtually every clause, and certainly the overall implication, of Gonzales's claim is false. It is not true, for starters, that the AG's office does not know "that much" about what is going on in individual districts. US attorneys' offices have traditionally had to submit to Washington a frustratingly large number of reports, but the Bush administration has tripled those requirements, mandating weekly, monthly, yearly and sometimes even daily reports about every conceivable category of prosecution. Assistant US attorneys must now obtain prior approval from DOJ for indictments, plea agreements and sentencing recommendations in an unprecedented variety of cases. In some instances - the cases that arose out of the pre-Christmas 2006 mass arrests of illegal aliens, for example - the Bush administration Justice Department simply mandates exactly what the charges, plea agreement and sentence must be. Then there's the "Urgent Report" system instituted at DOJ in recent years. Section T3-18.200 of the US Attorney's Manual requires US attorneys' offices to send immediate reports to the highest levels of the Attorney General's office whenever there are "major developments" - defined to include even procedural motions - in "important cases," which include any cases that present a "high likelihood of coverage in news media, or Congressional interest." For cases involving public figures, the US Attorney's Manual requires that "appropriate officials, including the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, the associate attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the attorney general" be advised of the initiation of any case "in which public figures or entities are subjects of the investigation." Bottom line? The attorney general is notified immediately, not just when charges are brought in a public corruption case, but when the file is opened and every time that any activity, even procedural, occurs in the case. It was precisely such an Urgent Report that former San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam used to notify the Attorney General's office on May 10, 2006 that search warrants were going to be conducted in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham case. The next day, of course, was when Alberto Gonzales's top aide wrote an email talking about the "very real problem we have right now" with Carol Lam. It is equally untrue that the replacement of a US attorney could have no effect on public corruption cases because those will continue under the steady hand of career prosecutors. Before an assistant US attorney can issue even a single subpoena in a case, he or she has to fill out a "green sheet" - a case initiation form that is actually white - in order to cause a file to be opened. Given that opening a file in a public corruption case triggers the "Urgent Report" requirement, and knowing that the Bush administration has apparently removed its own Republican appointees for investigating Republicans, anyone with a brain and a mortgage would think twice - heck, even three times - before filling in the blanks on that theretofore innocuous form. Even if the intrepid career prosecutor completes the case initiation paperwork, a US attorney who is either fearful of - or beholden to - the Bush administration, rather than to the laws and Constitution of the United States, can simply fail, for no particular reason, to sign off on the form. Without leaving a single shred of evidence, in other words, the US attorney can stop a controversial investigation before it has even begun. At almost any stage, the ways to stymie or even completely kill off a prosecution are unlimited. Here are a few: Give the assistant US attorney a slough of additional cases that require immediate action because the defendants are in custody; insist that the FBI agents on the case be reassigned to an investigation the US attorney claims is more pressing; make unreasonable and never-ending demands about investigative leads that have to be pursued before the proof is considered sufficient; deprive the assistant US attorney of all prosecutorial discretion or - and this is an extremely creative one - promote him to a supervisory position so he has no time to work on the case. It is not just public corruption cases that are negatively impacted by the Bush administration's promotion of loyalty to the president and to individual US attorneys as the highest values in the Department of Justice at the expense of integrity and the prudent exercise of independent judgment on the part of its lawyers. This distorted ethos affects all of the cases, because what happens to career prosecutors under such circumstances? They leave. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in the Northern District of California. There, the US attorney, Kevin Ryan, was decidedly a "company man" who, like those in the inner circle of the Bush administration's Department of Justice, equated dissent with disloyalty. During Ryan's four-year tenure, 50 of the office's 100 lawyers - including myself - left, taking with them a total of approximately 500 years of experience. In the end, because of the intervention of the district's chief judge, Ryan himself was asked to resign, but the office will take a very long time to recover. So no one should be fooled by the White House's current attempt, through Gonzales's Congressional testimony, to suggest that its unprecedented firing of US attorneys for partisan political reasons was a trifling matter with no real consequences. No one should be fooled by their current attempt to save themselves from drowning by suddenly grabbing onto the very career prosecutors they've been throwing overboard in droves during the past six years. Most important, however, no one should be fooled into thinking that shoving Alberto Gonzales into the drink will get the Department of Justice back on course. The Department of Justice, like the Department of Defense, the Department of State and every other agency of the federal government, has lost its way because of the motley crew that is commanding the entire fleet: Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, in no particular order. Congress, please maintain your watch regardless of the fate of Alberto Gonzales. [Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor with over 20 years' experience, was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. A regular contributor to Tomdispatch as well as the author of "United States v. George W. Bush et al.," she will be appearing in the Boston area and Seattle in the coming months. (See schedule at http://www.sevenstories.com.) Ms. de la Vega may be contacted at Elizabethdelavega at Verizon.net.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:33:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:33:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Bush: Extradite Posada Now! - May 11, El Paso Message-ID: <200704231833.l3NIXQPR002034@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Carlos Rovira - Apr 23, 2007 Protest in El Paso, Texas Friday, May 11, 2007 - Protest vs. Posada - Bush: Extradite Luis Posada Carriles now! - Prosecute him for terrorism! - Free the Cuban Five! Luis Posada Carriles is a long-time admitted and convicted terrorist, trained by the CIA in explosives and sabotage to carry out attacks on Cuba. He is responsible for the murder of 73 people in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, and for Havana hotel bombings in the 1990's that killed an Italian tourist. In the 1970s, as an official in the DISIP, Venezuela?s ?intelligence? police, he tortured and murdered Venezuelan activists. In Panama, Nov. 2000, he led a group of terrorists to try to assassinate Fidel Castro with 33 pounds of C-4 explosives, which if successful, would have also killed hundreds of students where Castro was due to speak. In March 2005, Posada illegally entered the United States, and has been treated with kid gloves since then by the Bush administration. On April 19, Posada was freed on bail and flew immediately to Miami, despite being recognized as an unrepetant terrorist and danger to the community. The Bush administration refuses to honor Venezuela?s extradition request, where Posada planned the plane bombing. And since U.S.Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refuses to classify him as a terrorist, Posada is awaiting trial only on immigration fraud. Judge Kathleen Cardone ordered Posada?s release on bond until his El Paso trial on May 11. On Friday, May 11, when Posada is returned to El Paso for trial, people across the U.S. and around the world will hold protests demanding justice.The main protest will be in El Paso. Extradite Posada, Free the Cuban Five! While anti-Cuba terrorists like Posada are free, the U.S. government has persecuted, convicted and sentenced the Cuban Five, five men who were peaceably monitoring the actions of Miami terrorists like Posada, to stop their attacks. We will demand the Cuban Five?s freedom on May 11 as well. El Paso, Texas Protest: Fri., May 11, Federal Courthouse, 700 E. San Antonio Ave., 11:00 am Transportation and organizing contacts for the El Paso Protest: El Paso: 915-351-2643 Las Cruces: 505-522-3709 Albuquerque: 505-344-5049 Ju?rez MX: 1-656-614-9744 Orange County, CA: 714-235-6083 Los Angeles: 213-251-0125 San Francisco: 415-821-6545 What you can do: Send an electronic letter to your Congressperson on the website http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org Spread the word about May 11 actions in El Paso, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. Initiated by A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Co-sponsors: National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Southwest Organizing Project, National Network on Cuba (To endorse & for more information, visit: http://www.freethefive.org) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:37:11 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:37:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin Dead at 76 Message-ID: <200704231837.l3NIbBYf002051@viola.tamara-b.org> [Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev's last dirty trick, notorious drunk and presider over the final death throes of the USSR, is dead at 76.] AP via Yahoo - Apr 23, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070423/ap_on_re_eu/obit_yeltsin Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin dies By JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Writer MOSCOW - Former President Boris Yeltsin, who hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union by scrambling atop a tank to rally opposition against a hard-line coup and later pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, died Monday at age 76. Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, and Russian news agencies cited Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration's medical center, as saying the former president died Monday of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital. The first freely elected leader of Russia, Yeltsin was initially admired abroad for his defiance of the monolithic Communist system. But many Russians will remember him mostly for presiding over the steep decline of their nation. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up the complexity of Yeltsin's legacy in a condolence statement minutes after the death was announced. He referred to Yeltsin as one "on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors," according to the news agency Interfax. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Yeltsin "an important figure in Russian history." "No Americans, at least, will forget seeing him standing on the tank outside the White House (the Russian parliament building) resisting the coup attempt," Gates said while on a visit to Moscow. Yeltsin was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption -- but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years in power. Yeltsin steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media. His hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has proven far more popular even as he has tightened Kremlin control over both Russia's industry and its press. Yeltsin amassed as much power as possible in his office -- then gave it all up in a dramatic New Year's address at the end of 1999. His greatest moments came in bursts. After Communist hard-liners tried to overthrow Gorbachev and roll back democratic reforms in August 1991, Yeltsin stood atop a tank to rally resistance to the coup. He spearheaded the peaceful end of the Soviet state on Dec. 25 of that year. Ill with heart problems, and facing possible defeat by a Communist challenger in his 1996 re-election bid, he marshaled his energy and sprinted through the final weeks of the campaign. The challenge transformed the shaky convalescent into the spry, dancing candidate. But Yeltsin was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day-to-day government and nearly always blamed Russia's myriad problems on subordinates. Yeltsin damaged his democratic credentials by using force to solve political disputes, though he claimed his actions were necessary to keep the country together. He sent tanks and troops in October 1993 to flush armed, hard-line supporters out of a hostile Russian parliament after they had sparked violence in the streets of Moscow. And in December 1994, Yeltsin launched a war against separatists in the southern republic of Chechnya. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the Chechnya conflict, and a defeated and humiliated Russian army withdrew at the end of 1996. The war solved nothing -- and Russian troops resumed fighting in the breakaway region in fall 1999. In the final years of his leadership, Yeltsin was dogged by health problems and often seemed out of touch. He retreated regularly to his country residence outside Moscow and stayed away from the Kremlin for days, even weeks at a time. As the country lurched from crisis to crisis, its leader appeared increasingly absent. Yet Yeltsin had made a stunning debut as Russian president. He introduced many basics of democracy, guaranteeing the rights to free speech, private property and multiparty elections, and opening the borders to trade and travel. Though full of bluster, he revealed more of his personal life and private doubts than any previous Russian leader had. "The debilitating bouts of depression, the grave second thoughts, the insomnia and headaches in the middle of the night, the tears and despair ... the hurt from people close to me who did not support me at the last minute, who didn't hold up, who deceived me -- I have had to bear all of this," he wrote in his 1994 memoir, "The Struggle for Russia." Yeltsin pushed through free-market reforms, creating a private sector and allowing foreign investment. In foreign policy, he assured independence for Russia's Soviet-era satellites, oversaw troop and arms reductions, and developed warm relations with Western leaders. That was the democratic Yeltsin, who in August 1991 rallied tens of thousands of Russians to face down a hard-line Soviet coup attempt. Throughout his nearly decade-long leadership, he remained Russia's strongest bulwark against Communism. But there was another Yeltsin. He was hesitant to act against crime and corruption -- beginning in his own administration -- while they sapped public faith and stunted democracy. His government's wrenching economic reforms impoverished millions of Russians -- poor people whose wages and pensions Yeltsin's government often went months without paying. In the course of the Yeltsin era, per capita income fell about 75 percent, and the nation's population fell by more than 2 million, due largely to the steep decline in public health. Yeltsin was a master of Kremlin intrigues, and preferred the chess game of politics to the detail work of solving economic and social problems. He played top advisers off against each other, and never let any of them accumulate much power, lest they challenge him. He fired the entire government four times in 1998 and 1999. The economy sank into a deep recession in summer 1998, but Yeltsin rarely commented on the troubles and never offered a plan to combat them. He was quick to act if anyone threatened his hold on power, standing fast even when his traditional allies called on him to step down. He easily faced down an impeachment attempt by the Communist-dominated lower chamber of parliament in May 1999. In foreign affairs, he struggled to preserve a role for his former superpower. He called for a "multipolar world" as a way to counterbalance what Russia perceived as excessive U.S. global clout, and in spring 1999 he sent Russian troops rushing to Kosovo-- ahead of NATO peacekeepers -- to underline that Moscow would not be elbowed out of European affairs. He wrangled with the West in disputes over NATO expansion and Russia's relatively warm relations with Iran and Iraq. But as Russia's political and economic might withered, Yeltsin had little to offer other nations. Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born Feb. 1, 1931, into a peasant family in the Ural Mountains' Sverdlovsk region. As a mischievous child, he lost his thumb and index finger while playing with a stolen grenade. When he was 3, his father was imprisoned in dictator Josef Stalin's purges. His alleged crime was owning property before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Yeltsin was, by his own account, a garrulous, scrappy boy who loved pranks and was quick to fight. And from the start, he bucked authority. He was expelled from elementary school for criticizing a teacher at a school assembly. Early in his career as a construction engineer, he was given written reprimands 17 times in one year -- "a new record," he would later recall proudly. And his long career as a Communist Party official was rife with battles with higher party officials. He was educated as an engineer and married a fellow student, Naina Girina. They had two daughters. At age 30, Yeltsin joined the Communist Party after a brief career in construction in Sverdlovsk city, now Yekaterinburg. He became a full-time party official in construction in 1969, and seven years later was named the region's party boss. In 1985, Gorbachev, intent on his own reforms, brought Yeltsin to Moscow, where he shook up the city's party hierarchy. The strapping, silver-haired Yeltsin cut a popular figure in the capital, making a point of riding city buses instead of a limousine, standing in long lines in grocery stores and loudly demanding why managers were stashing away food for favored customers instead of selling it to ordinary consumers. A bitter rivalry soon grew between him and the more cautious Gorbachev. When Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev at a party meeting in November 1987, accusing him of a sluggish approach to reform, Gorbachev fired him. In the old days, that would have ended Yeltsin's career. But he stormed back to power in 1989, winning a Soviet parliament seat in the first real election in 70 years. The following year, Yeltsin dramatically quit the Communist Party, walking out of its final convention. His popularity grew. Yeltsin was a natural with crowds, shaking hands and bantering in a booming voice. For many Russians, he had the unpolished charm of a "muzhik" -- a tough peasant with common sense and a fondness for vodka. Even then, Yeltsin's career was punctuated by bouts of bizarre behavior that the public chalked up to alcohol. Red-faced pranks, missed appointments, inarticulate and contradictory public statements continued into his presidency, blamed by aides on jet lag, medication or illness. Yeltsin won Russia's first popular presidential election in a landslide in June 1991. Russia still was part of the Soviet Union, but the central government had started ceding power to the 15 republics. Kremlin hard-liners trying to stop that process launched the failed coup in August, putting Gorbachev under house arrest. But Yeltsin took control of mass protests in Moscow, leading the democratic opposition to victory. Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and confiscated its vast property. The ban was lifted in court about a year later, but by then Yeltsin had dealt the death blow to the tottering Soviet state. He and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus formed the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991, declaring the Soviet Union extinct. Gorbachev resigned within the month. Impatient to lead Russia into a new, prosperous era, Yeltsin quickly launched an economic-reform program that freed prices but sent them soaring, wiping out many people's savings. Inflation skyrocketed and production plummeted. Years later, he expressed regret over the rush, and said he'd been "naive." "I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich civilized future," he told the nation in a televised speech to announce his resignation on Dec. 31, 1999. "I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt." Tension grew between him and the Soviet-era parliament, climaxing in fall 1993 when Yeltsin disbanded the legislature. An armed standoff and street riots followed, and Yeltsin finally turned tanks against the parliament building. Scores of people were killed in the fighting. Afterward, Yeltsin pushed through a constitution that guaranteed a strong presidency and allowed him to brush off any serious parliamentary challenges. But growing hard-line influence led him to dump key reformers from his Cabinet, which alienated democratic forces. Their disillusionment grew after the start of the first Chechnya war and more hard-line gains in parliamentary elections in December 1995. By early 1996, Yeltsin was deeply unpopular and presidential elections loomed in June. But true to form, Yeltsin rallied when things looked bleakest, manipulating the media, enlisting the aid of the so-called oligarchs who had enriched themselves on the spoils of the Soviet economy in a grueling campaign. The campaign trips to Russian regions and exertion took a heavy physical toll, and by election day Yeltsin could not even make it to his scheduled polling station. Doctors later said he had suffered another mild heart attack during the campaign. He underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in November 1996, but continued to suffer from a series of other ailments. He also had long-running back trouble, and seemed increasingly shaky, both physically and mentally. Russians questioned who was running the country -- the doddering Yeltsin, or the aides and tycoons whom critics accused of exercising undue influence over Kremlin policy. Yeltsin's increasing frailty seemed to reflect the declining fortunes of the country he led. During public appearances, he would often stumble, and his speeches were punctuated by long, inexplicable pauses -- even when he had the text in front of him. Russians expected another halting speech on New Year's Eve 1999, but he stunned the nation and the world with his resignation -- having given no hint that he would ever give in to calls that he step down before his second term was up in spring 2000. He named his last prime minister, former KGB agent Putin, acting president -- giving him a huge incumbent's advantage over any would-be challengers. "Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people," Yeltsin said. "And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go." After his dramatic exit, Yeltsin appeared rarely in public -- popping up now and again at an official ceremony, holiday reception or tennis tournament. He traveled several times to China for what were described as health-boosting trips, and he looked fitter in retirement than he had in years. Yeltsin met about once a month with Putin, usually at his dacha in Barvikha outside Moscow, he told an interviewer with Russian state television on the second anniversary of his resignation. He said he felt stronger than during the presidency, less weighed down by stress, and never regretted his abrupt departure. He felt certain that the reforms he championed would continue under Putin, he said. "If I had doubts that the reforms might be reversed, I would not have resigned," Yeltsin said. Yeltsin is survived by his wife, two daughters and several grandchildren. Funeral plans were not announced. Copyright ? 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:38:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:38:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] US to 'respect' Iraqi wishes opposing wall Message-ID: <200704231838.l3NIcp9i002065@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via yahoo - Apr 23, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070423/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq U.S. to 'respect' Iraqi wishes for [actually, against] wall By LAUREN FRAYER Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD - The American ambassador said Monday the U.S. would "respect the wishes" of the Iraqi government after the prime minister ordered a halt to construction of a three-mile wall separating a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad. Meanwhile, bombings killed at least 46 people and wounding more than 100, authorities said, including a suicide attack that killed at least 19 near a restaurant outside Ramadi. A parked car bomb also exploded outside the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one civilian, and a British soldier was shot to death while on patrol in the southern city of Basra. Any plan to build "gated communities" to protect Baghdad neighborhoods from sectarian attacks was in doubt after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said during a visit to Sunni-led Arab countries that he did not want the 12-foot-high wall in Azamiyah to be seen as dividing the capital's sects. However, confusion persisted about whether the plan would continue in some form: The chief Iraqi military spokesman said Monday the prime minister was responding to exaggerated reports about the barrier. "We will continue to construct the security barriers in the Azamiyah neighborhood. This is a technical issue," Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said. "Setting up barriers is one thing and building barriers is another. These are moveable barriers that can be removed." Al-Moussawi noted similar walls were in place elsewhere in the capital -- including in other residential neighborhoods -- and criticized the media for focusing on Azamiyah. "It's exaggerated by the media. We expected this reaction by some weak-minded people," he said. But hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Azamiyah to oppose what they called "a big prison." "The main aim of these barriers is to protect civilians and to guarantee that security forces are in control and prevent terrorists from moving between areas," al-Moussawi said. The U.S. military announced last week that it was building a three-mile long concrete wall in Azamiyah, a Sunni stronghold whose residents have often been the victims of retaliatory mortar attacks by Shiite militants following bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents. But al-Maliki ordered construction halted on Sunday and U.S. officials said that the plans could change. "Obviously we will respect the wishes of the government and the prime minister," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Monday. He said the barrier was aimed at protecting Azamiyah, not segregating it. Sunni leaders and residents of the neighborhood, however, complain that it is a form of discrimination that would isolate the community. "There are other methods to protect neighborhoods," al-Maliki said Sunday in his first public comments on the issue, "but I should point out that the goal was not to separate, but to protect." "This wall reminds us of other walls that we reject, so I've ordered it to stop and to find other means of protection for the neighborhoods," he added during a televised live news conference during a state visit to Cairo, Egypt. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, indicated that there may have been a miscommunication. "Discussions on a local level may not have been conveyed to the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Garver said. The latest confusion reflected a lack of coordination between al-Maliki's government and the U.S. military even as they have touted their partnership in a nearly 10-week security effort to pacify Baghdad. The Shiite leader is on a regional tour seeking support for his government among mostly Sunni Arab nations. His comments about the barrier may have been aimed at appeasing them and Sunnis at home, despite his assurances to the Americans that there would be no political influence over tactical decisions. "Whether the prime minister saw this plan or not, I don't know. With him in Cairo, it complicates things," Garver said. Al-Maliki has countered U.S. plans in the past. In October, U.S. forces pulled down roadblocks around Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City hours after al-Maliki gave the order. At the time, the prime minister was said to have feared violence among members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is headquartered in Sadr City and loyal to the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Azamiyah on Monday, shouting slogans and carrying banners saying the concrete barrier would make them prisoners of their own neighborhood and an easier target for terrorists. Signs read: "Separation wall is a big prison for Azamiyah citizens" and "Azamiyah children want to see Baghdad without walls." No violence was reported. Dawood al-Azami, deputy director of the Azamiyah city council, said a questionnaire that was handed out in the area on Sunday indicated that 90 percent of the respondents strongly oppose the barrier. Crocker, who replaced Zalmay Khalilzad as U.S. ambassador, urged Iraqi legislators to pass key legislation that it is hoped will help bring minority Sunnis into the political process, saying "these months ahead are going to be critical." He said the security plan was important but its main purpose was to "buy time for what ultimately has to be a set of political understandings among Iraqis. Crocker said the intention of the barrier in Azamiyah as well as those constructed around markets in the capital is "to try and identify where the fault lines are and where avenues of attack lie and set up the barriers literally to prevent those attacks." "It is in no one's intention or thinking that this is going to be a permanent state of affairs," he added. Copyright ? 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:39:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:39:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Bombs kill 25 as US defends Baghdad wall Message-ID: <200704231839.l3NIdJ3w002077@viola.tamara-b.org> AFP - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070423180052.sjdqforp.html Bombs kill 25 as US defends Baghdad wall BAGHDAD (AFP) - A string of bomb attacks in Iraq on Monday killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens of others, as US and Iraqi officials defended the building of a wall around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad. A car bomb near an office of Kurdish leader Massud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party killed 10 people and wounded 20 more in Tal Isquf, a mainly Christian village in northern Iraq, party spokesman Abdul Gani Ali said. Witnesses said some of the victims were thought to be Kurdish "peshmerga" fighters. Bomb attacks also ravaged Baghdad, the epicentre of a campaign by Al-Qaeda militants to undermine Iraq's Shiite-led government and to foment sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Al-Yasmin restaurant near the capital's fortified Green Zone, killing seven people and wounding 14, a security official said. The walled zone houses the US embassy and the Iraqi parliament, where a suicide bomber triggered struck on April 12, killing one lawmaker. Two more car bombs exploded in a parking lot near the Green Zone, opposite the Iranian embassy and close to the Iraqi defence ministry. A bystander was wounded in the first blast. The Iranian embassy was not damaged in either explosion and it was unclear if it was the target. North of Baghdad in the violence-plagued city of Baquba, a bomber exploded his car near the city council building, killing four policemen including a senior officer, police Lieutenant Ahmed Ali said. In the western city of Ramadi, a car bomb destroyed a restaurant, killing four customers, said senior provincial security official Colonel Tareq al-Dulaimi. It was not clear whether the restaurant was attacked by a suicide bomber, but an insurgent did kill himself in a similar assault on a nearby police checkpoint that wounded four officers and a bystander, he told AFP. "I cannot confirm the attack on the restaurant was a suicide attack, there are many body parts. There are 20 people wounded, some of them seriously," said Dulaimi, who works with a coalition of tribes opposed to Al-Qaeda. A spokesman for the US Marines in Ramadi, Lieutenant Roger Hollenbeck, told AFP that both attacks were launched by suicide car bombers. Iraqi and US forces are battling an anti-American insurgency in Ramadi four years after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, but in recent months an alliance of Sunni tribes dubbed the Anbar Awakening has risen up to help them. A British soldier was killed on Monday in the southern city of Basra, the ministry of defence said in London, taking to 145 the number of British troops who have died in Iraq since the invasion. Iraqi and US officials, meanwhile, defended their decision to construct a three-mile (five kilometre) wall around Baghdad's dangerous Sunni district of Adhamiyah, even though Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki opposed it. The new US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, used his first news conference since his arrival last month to insist that the concrete wall was not intended to segregate the city's warring Sunni and Shiite communities. "I think it's important... that one not lose sight of the threat that is motivating some of the decisions that have been made," Crocker said. "The intention in Adhamiyah is clearly not to segregate communities nor to engage in a form of political or social engineering," he continued. "It's to try to identify where the faultlines are, where avenues of attack lie and to set up the barriers literally to prevent those attacks." The spokesman for the Iraqi forces engaged alongside US troops in enforcing the Baghdad security plan, Brigadier General Qassim Atta, said that many other districts already had or would have some form of barrier. He accused the news media of inflating the size of the five-metre (16-feet) tall barricade that US troops are erecting around Adhamiyah. "In fact the Adhamiyah security barrier has been exaggerated by the media, and we anticipated there would be some reactions by weak-minded people," he said, referring to criticism of the plan by many Iraqi politicians. Atta said Iraqi units involved in planning and building walls are under Maliki's command and implied the prime minister had reacted to false reports, saying: "He said he would not accept a 12-metre high security barrier." Maliki told reporters in Cairo on Sunday that he opposed the wall, saying its "construction is going to stop." As the controversy erupted, US President George W. Bush said on Monday that the security plan in Baghdad was helping to reduce sectarian violence. "There's been some progress. There's been some horrific bombings, of course, but there's also a decline in sectarian violence," he told reporters. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:39:56 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:39:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Congress Will Endorse Iraq Pullout Message-ID: <200704231839.l3NIdukF002089@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - Apr 23, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ?SITE=OHCIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Congress Will Endorse Iraq Pullout By DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday. Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations." The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said. Bush made his comments to reporters in the Oval Office as he met with senior military leaders, including his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. Taken together, Reid's speech and Bush's comments inaugurated a week of extraordinary confrontation between the president and the new Democratic-controlled Congress over a war that has taken the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops. Negotiators for the House and Senate arranged a late-afternoon meeting to ratify the timetable that Reid laid out. The demand for a change in course will be attached to a funding bill that is needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under an agreement by Democratic leaders, the final bill could trigger the withdrawal of U.S. troops as early as July 1 if Bush cannot certify that the Iraqi government is making progress in disarming militias, reducing sectarian violence and forging political compromises. The bill also would withhold foreign aid money if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. As part of the same measure, congressional negotiators also tentatively agreed on about $25 billion not requested by Bush for medical care for troops and veterans, aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, farm disaster relief and other programs. The add-ons have provoked a separate veto threat from Bush. Negotiators dropped provisions ridiculed by the president such as aid to peanut farmers and spinach producers. Reid said Bush was in "a state of denial" over the war, and likened him to another commander in chief four decades ago. "I remember when President Johnson, trying to save his political legacy, initiated the first of many surges into Vietnam in 1965," he said. Reid said thousands more U.S. troops died in Vietnam in the years that followed. Now, he said, Bush "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality - and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours." Reid had made similar comments at a White House meeting last week among Bush and top lawmakers, and this time, the president's spokeswoman fired back. She said it was Reid who was ignoring reality, not the president. Reid is in denial about the vicious nature of the enemy and about the U.S.-led plan to provide more security in Iraq, said deputy press secretary Dana Perino. "He's also in denial that a surrender date - he thinks it is a good idea. It is not a good idea. It is defeat. It is a death sentence for the millions of Iraqis who voted for a constitution, who voted for a government, who voted for a free and Democratic society." In a question and answer session after his speech, Reid was asked what the U.S. should do if U.S. troops leave and Iraq collapses into chaos. "We know this is an intractable civil war going on now," he responded. Reid drew criticism from Bush and others last week when he said the war in Iraq had been lost. The Nevada Democrat did not repeat the assertion in his prepared speech, saying that "The military mission has long since been accomplished. The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential." Reid said that in addition to the timetable, the legislation will establish standards for the Iraqi government to meet in terms of "making progress on security, political reconciliation and improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis who have suffered so much." The measure also would launch diplomatic, economic and political policy changes, the Nevada Democrat said. Reid also challenged Bush to present an alternative if, as expected, he vetoes the Democratic legislation. The president said that Petraeus will go to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers what's going right in Iraq - and what's not. "It's a tough time, as the general will tell Congress," Bush said. Still, the president insisted, progress is being made in Iraq as more U.S. troops head into the country to provide security. There is no doubt that Republicans in Congress have the votes to sustain Bush's threatened veto. That would require Congress to approve a second funding bill quickly to avoid significant disruptions in military operations. Reid's speech blended an attack on Bush, an appeal for patience to the anti-war voters who last fall gave Democrats control, and an attempt to shape the post-veto debate. "I understand the restlessness that some feel. Many who voted for change in November anticipated dramatic and immediate results in January," he said. "But like it or not, George W. Bush is still the commander in chief - and this is his war," Reid said. Reid said Democrats have sought Republican support for their attempts to force Bush to change course. "Only the president is the odd man out, and he is making the task even harder by demanding absolute fidelity from his party." Looking beyond Bush's expected veto, he said, "If the president disagrees, let him come to us with an alternative. Instead of sending us back to square one with a veto, some tough talk and nothing more, let him come to the table in the spirit of bipartisanship that Americans demand and deserve." ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:40:59 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:40:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Gonzales Vows to Stay on the Job Message-ID: <200704231840.l3NIexSp002104@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - Apr 23, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GONZALES_PROSECUTORS?SITE=OHCIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Gonzales Vows to Stay on the Job By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) -- Alberto Gonzales, with a fresh vote of confidence from President Bush, vowed Monday to remain as attorney general despite lingering differences with senators over the firing of federal prosecutors. Appearing at a news conference on identity theft, Gonzales said he will remain "as long as I can continue to serve effectively." "There are a series of priorities, a series of objectives, that I want to see accomplished," he said, "and we are working as hard as we can to achieve those objectives. Obviously, as head of an agency ... we worry about questions about morale. The way I do it is by speaking directly to U.S. attorneys. ... " "I have an obligation to work with the Congress and I will continue to work with the Congress," he said. "We're going to correct the mistakes that have been made. I have accepted responsibility," Gonzales said. "I've already indicated that I've made mistakes and I accept responsibility for that." Earlier, Bush gave his longtime friend and associate a strong endorsement. Appearing with Gen. David Petraeus at the White House, the president told reporters, "This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence." The president said that Gonzales' testimony before skeptical Judiciary Committee senators last week "increased my confidence" in his ability to lead the Justice Department. Separately, a White House spokeswoman said, "He's staying." Gonzales has been under fire for what the White House acknowledges was his poor handling of the firing of eight federal prosecutors. He claimed dozens of times at last week's hearing that he couldn't recall key details about the prosecutors' firings or about a key November meeting that documents show he attended. Bush said that while some senators did not like the way Gonzales answered the questions, he continues to back his attorney general. "As the hearings went forward, it was clear the attorney general broke no law, there's no wrongdoing," Bush said. However, key GOP lawmakers continued to raise doubts about Gonzales. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, said Monday that keeping Gonzales as attorney general will be "harmful to the Justice Department because he has lost his credibility." "When he said that he wasn't involved in discussions or deliberations, and then is contradicted by his three top aides and also by documentary evidence, ... his credibility has been substantially undermined," Specter said in Harrisburg, Pa. "And I think it does hurt the administration, and inevitably it hurts the (Republican) party." Specter added: "As long as (Gonzales is) the attorney general, I will continue to deal with him, but whatever he has to say I will take with more than a grain of salt." "All of America saw why so many of us had felt for so long that he shouldn't be attorney general," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a Judiciary committee member and one of Gonzales' most vocal critics. "He was not in command of the facts. He contradicted himself. And he doesn't really appreciate the role of attorney general." Schumer maintained that Gonzales ought to step down as soon as possible. Asked whether Gonzales should resign, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said: "I don't think he can be effective" if he remains in office. Bush spoke about Gonzales during an Oval Office meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Iraq war. "The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer - honestly answer - in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job," Bush said. White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said that, "Now there are some people, granted, that don't support the attorney general. But he has the full confidence of the president. We reserve the right to respectfully disagree with friends of ours on Capitol Hill in this regard." Acknowledging Gonzales' lack of support in Congress, Perino said the Justice Department has "a huge amount of responsibility outside of any dealings with Capitol Hill." "I think that it was good to get the hearing over with," she said. "People can take a step back and then either ask follow-up questions or move on." ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:41:40 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:41:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Fighting Fills Up Mogadishu's Hospitals Message-ID: <200704231841.l3NIfeBo002116@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - Apr 23, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SOMALIA?SITE=ORMED&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Fighting Fills Up Mogadishu's Hospitals By SALAD DUHUL Associated Press Writer MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- There are no empty hospital beds in Somalia's bloodstained capital, and barely enough bandages to patch up the wounded. Even bottles of medicine are running dry. But patients kept pouring in Monday - and they were the lucky ones, having survived another day of bullets and mortar shells as Islamic insurgents battled troops allied to the country's fragile acting government. "Even the shades of the trees are occupied at this point," said Dahir Dhere, director of Medina Hospital, the largest health facility in Mogadishu. "We are overwhelmed." Fighting rocked the city for a sixth straight day as Somalia struggled with its latest humanitarian crisis, its civilians getting slaughtered in the crossfire and others fleeing with little to eat and no shelter. A local human rights group estimates 1,000 civilians were killed earlier this month in four days of fighting and more than 250 have died in the latest battles. U.N. officials estimate more than 320,000 of the city's 2 million residents have fled since February. Ahmed Mohamed, 32, was not one of them. Shrapnel from an exploding mortar shell hit him over the weekend, crushing his right leg. "The doctors told me I would die unless they cut off my leg," Mohamed said, tears streaming down his face at Keysaney Hospital, which is packed beyond capacity with nearly 200 people. "So I have to let them do it." Mogadishu's other major medical facility, Al-Hayat Hospital, also reported all its beds full. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi insisted Monday that the interim government was winning its war with the insurgents, but he called for greater support from the international community. "If we do not get international support, the war may spread throughout the region and Africa," Gedi said. "These terrorists want to destabilize the whole region." The government and its Ethiopian backers have been facing increasing pressure from the U.S., European Union and United Nations over the mounting civilian death toll, but they appear determined to gain control of Mogadishu before a national reconciliation conference in June. The fighting has decimated the capital, already one of the most violent and gun-infested cities in the world. At least 18 civilians died Monday, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization group. A 6-month-old baby was among those wounded, said a witness, Khadija Farah. Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned against each other. The western city of Baidoa, where the interim parliament is based, was dubbed the "City of Death" in the 1990s during a searing drought and famine. Mogadishu, once a beautiful seaside capital, is now a looted shantytown. A national government was established in 2004 with help from the United Nations, but it has failed to assert any real control in the country. Last month, troops from neighboring Ethiopia used tanks and attack helicopters to crush a growing insurgency linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, a hard-line religious movement that had controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six quiet months in 2006. The group was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by special forces from the U.S., which accused the Islamic group of having ties to al-Qaida. The militants reject any secular government, and vow to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic state. Mogadishu and its surrounding towns are scenes of despair. Women and children flee on foot with little more than their clothes and some cooking pots, then sleep by the side of the road. In Afgoye, about 20 miles from Mogadishu, people fought over a spot shaded by a tree. "Everyone wants to sit in the small area under the tree," said Asha Hassan Mohamed, a mother of seven who reached Afgoye last week but returned to Mogadishu because she couldn't find any food. "It's so crowded because there is no shelter." The United Nations said the fighting has sparked the worst humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged country's recent history, with many of the city's residents trapped because roads out of Mogadishu are blocked. Catherine Weibel, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, said many of those who haven't fled the capital are too vulnerable to do so. "All the people who are sick, in wheelchairs, disabled, they cannot leave," she said. [Associated Press writer Elizabeth A. Kennedy contributed to this report in Nairobi, Kenya.] ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:53:08 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:53:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Jon Snow: Dasvidania, Boris Message-ID: <200704231853.l3NIr831002301@viola.tamara-b.org> Channel 4 News - Snowmail (UK) - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.channel4.com Dasvidania, Boris Boris Yeltsin is dead. Politically of course he's been dead a long time - since Decemeber 1999 to be exact. Those of us that remember Boris Yeltsin's regime were at that the time quite surprised that he made it to the end of his presidency - because not only did he drink like a fish, but he had a dicky heart and it seems that his heart was his undoing at the age of 76. In the end he has to be credited with having resisted the absurd anti Gorbachev coup which was led by a rag bag collection of clapped-out old guard communists who didn't enjoy the death of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin's courage in standing astride a tank turret resisting the coup will go down in history. But so will his failure to galvanise the Russian economy and to resist the disappearance of the Soviet family silver into the hands of the oligarchs. In a sense, Yeltsin 's failures begat Putin because things had become so loose and louche under Yeltsin that the Russian establishment moved very rapidly to Putin's drumbeat orchestrated as it was by the secret service of which Putin had been a key officer. The iron fist replaced the old soak. We'll be looking back at Yetlsin and very presently at modern Russia, taking stock - the picture is not a pretty one. Not least when viewed the through the prism of Chechnya. We'll be talking with former Prime Minister John Major, Sir Roderick Braithwaite who was ambo to Moscow when Yeltsin bestrode the tank and to Boris Berezovsky a beneficiary of the Yeltsin largesse. Read more of Boris Yeltsin's key dates: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/boris+yeltsin+dies/460352?intcmp=news_snowmail_boris Channel 4 News services Online: Watch our video reports at: http://www.channel4.com/news/watchlisten/video/ Subscribe to RSS feeds, podcasts and mobile phone bulletins. http://www.channel4.com/news/subscribe/ From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:55:06 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:55:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Call for Impeachment on Capitol Hill Message-ID: <200704231855.l3NIt6BF002332@viola.tamara-b.org> Impeach07 - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.impeach07.org Assignment editors note: TWO EVENTS FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007 Contact: Nolu Crockett-Ntonga, 301.219.1969 or profnolu at yahoo.com FIRST EVENT WHAT: Coalition statement in support of impeachment WHEN: 12:00 Noon ET, Wednesday, April 25, 2007 WHERE: The Cannon House Office Building Outdoor Terrace, Washington D.C. Call for Impeachment on Capitol Hill by Prominent Americans For immediate release, April 23, 2007- A group of prominent citizens will gather at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, April 25th to speak in support of impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney. The coalition includes Washington State Senator Eric Oemig, who has introduced a resolution for impeachment in that state's Senate. Mayors present will include Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City and John Shields of Nyack, NY. Former government official Daniel Ellsberg, who released the classified Pentagon Papers which revealed that the Vietnam war could not be won and would lead to many more casualties; and retired Army Colonel Ann Wright, a career diplomat who quit in protest the day the war in Iraq began, are also members of the coalition. "There comes a time when voices of conscience must sound the alarm and recommend the remedy," says Debra Sweet, Director of The World Can't Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime, and a member of the impeachment coalition. The coalition believes that there are sufficient grounds to begin impeachment proceedings in the House against both President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors including using fraud to persuade Congress to authorize the Iraq War. Also participating in the event will be actors, producers, playwrights, poets, authors and journalists, including Chris Hedges who was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism and John Nichols, a well known political blogger who also writes for The Nation magazine. Leading anti-war voices will also be present, including Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed during his service in Iraq and Andy Shallal, an Iraqi-American businessman. For a complete list of those participating, see http://www.impeach07.org SECOND EVENT Town Hall Forum on Impeachment That Evening An open forum on impeachment will be held Wednesday evening, featuring many of the speakers from the noon event. WHEN: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. ET WHERE: All Souls Unitarian Church, Pierce Hall 1500 Harvard Street N.W. Washington, DC 20009 MEDIA INFORMATION: Media are welcome to cover both events. Interviews can be arranged with participants in person or by telephone. Media can register when they arrive for either event. Pre-registration is not required. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 14:56:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Cuban Five: Ramon moving to Tucson Message-ID: <200704231856.l3NIujdW002344@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Cindy O'Hara - Apr 23, 2007 Cuban Five News: Ram?n Laba?ino being moved to Tucson, AZ prison Dear friends of Ram?n Laba?ino, For those of you who correspond with Cuban 5 hermano Ram?n Laba?ino, at his request I am passing along the word that he has received transfer papers to be moved from the Federal Prison in Beaumont, Texas, where he is currently incarcerated, to a new Federal prison near Tucson, Arizona. He anticipates that the move will take place over the next few weeks and will pass along his new address once he has moved. If his mail is disrupted or delayed, that is what is going on. Cindy From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:05:04 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:05:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Chirac Asks Chavez for Help with Colombian Hostage Message-ID: <200704231905.l3NJ54pw002408@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via International Herald Tribune - April 20, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/20/europe/EU-GEN-France-Venezuela-Betancourt.php Chirac calls on Chavez to help secure Colombia hostage Betancourt's release The Associated Press PARIS: Outgoing French President Jacques Chirac asked his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez on Friday to help secure the release of one-time Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, Chirac's spokesman said. Betancourt -- who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship -- and campaign manager Clara Rojas, were captured by Colombia's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in February 2002, while Betancourt was campaigning for the presidency in southern Colombia. Chirac's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said the French leader asked Chavez to "continue to take all possible initiatives to lead to a happy and peaceful outcome" of the situation. In a telephone conversation Friday, Chirac also asked Chavez to work towards a humanitarian accord that would allow for Betancourt's release. The FARC, Latin America's largest rebel group, wants to exchange 500 imprisoned rebels for 60 hostages, including Betancourt. Betancourt's family has pleaded for a negotiated prisoner swap -- an initiative France supports. During a visit to Paris in 2005, Chavez offered to help lobby for Betancourt's release. The Venezuelan leader, a close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, has said he hopes an agreement can be reached for Betancourt to return to her family. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:05:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:05:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Venez: Hospitals Warned Not to Flout Price Controls Message-ID: <200704231905.l3NJ5nuO002420@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via International Herald Tribune - Apr 22, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/22/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Hospitals.php Venezuelan leader says any hospital that flouts price controls could be seized The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he will enact a law to regulate prices at private hospitals and warned that his government would seize any hospital caught flouting the new controls. Chavez said he will approve the law by presidential decree, using special powers granted to him by the National Assembly nearly three months ago, as he aims to steer the South American country toward socialism. "We're going to have strict regulation. Any clinic that doesn't comply, let it be closed down," Chavez said. "We could take it for Inside the Barrio (a state health program), convert it into a popular clinic. No problem." Venezuela has a two-tiered health system in which wealthier, insured patients often can afford prompter, better treatment at private hospitals. Chavez has expanded the public health system, building new clinics, refurbishing hospitals and sending thousands of Cuban and Venezuelan doctors to live in poor neighborhoods and provide free care. Speaking during his television program "Hello, President," Chavez complained that childbirth costs at a private hospital can near US$4,000 (=802,900). "Medical capitalism -- that's the most perverse thing," he said during the program, broadcast from northwestern Yaracuy state. Chavez said the regulations aim to counter "the exploitation in the private hospitals, which affects the middle class above all." He did not say exactly when the law would be approved. Chavez warned earlier this month that his government could take over private hospitals if they continue raising prices. His health minister announced plans on Saturday to regulate prices at private hospitals. *** AP via International Herald Tribune - April 21, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/21/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Health-Care.php Venezuelan minister says government will regulate health care prices The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela's health minister said Saturday the government plans to regulate the prices that private medical centers charge for services, accusing them of speculation and overcharging patients. Erick Rodriguez told a news conference that "a process of regulation" was necessary because of "indisputable acts" showing that private health care providers were acting like a cartel and speculating on the prices of medical supplies. Rodriguez did not provide specifics on what kind of regulations would be imposed. The government has already been setting the prices for some 400 basic goods and services since 2003, when President Hugo Chavez imposed price controls and foreign exchange controls to try and stabilize the economy. Private health clinics have denounced delays by the government in approving U.S. dollars, which they need to import medical supplies, claiming that the backlogs are raising their costs. Rodriguez criticized Ricardo Alfonzo, president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Clinics, who recently said private health care centers were being forced to go to the blackmarket to acquire dollars. "That is a crime... you are violating the law," said the minister. Government critics say price and currency controls are behind shortages of some food staples, medicines and other products. Officials defend the measures as necessary to protect the interests of the poor and say there are no plans to lift them. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:18:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:18:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Amnesty criticises use of torture and death penalty in Iraq Message-ID: <200704231918.l3NJIREG002596@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness The Irish Times - Apr 21, 2007 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0421/1176455025987.html Amnesty criticises use of torture and death penalty in Iraq IRAQ: The Iraqi authorities have been castigated for executing defendants tried unfairly, writes Michael Jansen The Bush administration is facing mounting criticism of its policies in Iraq. Amnesty International yesterday castigated the US-supported Iraqi authorities for imposing the death penalty on defendants it says were tried unfairly and convicted on confessions extracted under torture. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 2004, 270 death sentences have been imposed and 100 people have been executed, including two women. Amnesty revealed in its report, Unjust and Unfair: The Death Penalty in Iraq, that Iraq has the world's fourth-highest number of executions after China, Iran and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Joost Hilterman, Middle East director of the International Crisis Group, speaking about the northern city of Kirkuk, warned: "The Bush administration is preoccupied with saving Iraq by its new security plan in Baghdad and has ignored the Kirkuk crisis." A report by the ICG, Iraq and the Kurds: Resolving the Kirkuk Crisis", said that the insistence by the Kurdish regional government on a referendum by year's end to decide the status of the oil-rich province was creating tensions between Kurd, Arab and Turkomen inhabitants and could result in a communal explosion if Kirkuk's future was dictated by a simple majority vote. Meanwhile, Sunnis and Shias are being separated by barriers instead of being brought together through dialogue and reconciliation. The US military is building a 5km-long 3.6 metre-high concrete wall in Baghdad to seal off the Sunni Adhamiyah neighbourhood, on the east bank of the Tigris, from surrounding Shia districts. When the wall is completed, Adhamiyah will become a gated community, with the predominantly Shia Iraqi army in charge of the gates, increasing Sunni unease about security. In 2003 and 2004, barriers were erected around the Green Zone, where parliament, government offices and the US and British embassies are located. Other locations, including military bases, police stations and markets, have been provided with cement slab barriers and blast walls. Recently, walls went up in the mainly Sunni area of Dora in south Baghdad to cut it off from adjacent Shia districts. Several restive towns and cities have been surrounded by huge sand banks to restrict access. But barriers have not halted suicide bombings or prevented attacks by Shia militias or Sunni insurgents. Iraqi analysts fear that barriers will partition the capital into warring sectarian enclaves and deepen fear and antagonism between Sunnis and Shias. Concern has been expressed that Baghdad could eventually be divided by the Tigris between Shias on the east bank and Sunnis on the west. In Ramadi, the restive capital of Anbar province, there has been a potentially positive development. Two hundred tribal leaders, representing 50 tribes, are to set up a provincial sheikhs council and form a political party to contest provincial elections later this year and the next parliamentary poll in 2009. They are inviting tribal figures from three other provinces to a convention. The tribes united last year to fight al-Qaeda and largely cleared them out of Anbar. But it is not certain that they can get together to form a party. The prime mover of this effort, Sheikh Abdul-Sattar, a member of the powerful Dulaimi tribal confederation, is seen as an ambitious man seeking to promote a personal agenda. C 2007 The Irish Times From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:19:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:19:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Health Collapse in US, Too Message-ID: <200704231919.l3NJJPQc002608@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Peter Bell Health Collapse in US, Too For some time now, there's been lots of cluck-clucking about the declining health indicators in the former Soviet Union and in China. Strong national health care in both countries has been replaced with a brutally dismembered economy and health sector in the post-Soviet kleptocracy, and as China's emphasis on delivery of health care has wavered and private freelancers of varying skill levels have taken advantage, health status is on the decline in both regions. Here in the Land of the Free, meanwhile, Massachusetts has already, and California is preparing to, give the insurance industry a handout on a breathtaking scale: you will soon be required to pay private industry for crappy health insurance. Many are rightly trying to avoid the handout Republicans want to give Wall Street under the guise of privatizing social security, giving each individual an account and requiring each individual to pay a broker to manage it. However, in the meantime Newt Gingrich's ludicrously complex "health savings accounts" have metastasized into a "fix" for the public health system. The "fix" is not to implement a national policy, raise taxes to support it, and give negotiating power and risk pooling to a strong bargaining group operating without a profit motive. Oh, no. The "fix" is to require individuals to purchase their own plans from the oh-so-trustworthy insruance industry, and to fine them if they do not. The "fix" does one thing extremely well: prevent the formation of a common risk pool. How well doe the current system of healthcare, which pits the healthy against sick, in the US work? Well, the infamous Baby Boomers are the first generation of US citizens in worse health than their parents. They will likely die earlier and sicker than their parents, too. Congratulations, Reagan Democrats! Congratulations, Clinton Democrats! Congratulations, Bush Boosters! You've done it! You've found a way to let the rightwing force you to buy into a system of healthcare that's doing you harm. If the trend continues, we will succeed in delivering to Iraq the benefits of democracy. We actually can achieve parity in quality of life with Baghdad. Since we've no real interest in achieving it by raising living standards there, it's fitting that we're choosing to do it the other way, by lowering the bar here at home. Mission Accomplished! Heckuva job! The Washington Post - Apr 20, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902458.html Baby Boomers Appear to Be Less Healthy Than Parents By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer As the first wave of baby boomers edges toward retirement, a growing body of evidence suggests that they may be the first generation to enter their golden years in worse health than their parents. While not definitive, the data sketch a startlingly different picture than the popular image of health-obsessed workout fanatics who know their antioxidants from their trans fats and look 10 years younger than their age. Boomers are healthier in some important ways -- they are much less likely to smoke, for example -- but large surveys are consistently finding that they tend to describe themselves as less hale and hearty than their forebears did at the same age. They are more likely to report difficulty climbing stairs, getting up from a chair and doing other routine activities, as well as more chronic problems such as high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes. "We're seeing some very powerful evidence all pointing to parallel findings," said Mark D. Hayward, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin. "The trend seems to be that people are not as healthy as they approach retirement as they were in older generations. It's very disturbing." While cautioning that the data are just starting to emerge, researchers say the findings track with several unhealthy trends, notably the obesity epidemic. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and those extra pounds make joints wear out more quickly, boost cholesterol and blood pressure, and raise the risk of a host of debilitating health problems. And despite all those gym memberships, baby boomers tend to be less physically active than their parents and grandparents, their daily routines often dominated by desk jobs and the drive to and from work. "A lot of what we visualize about the baby boomers are the people who went to college -- the highly educated group that gets all the attention. They're the cultural icon," said David R. Weir, an economist at the University of Michigan, noting that studies have shown that better-educated people tend to have more healthful lifestyles and better access to health care. "But not everyone went to college, and not everyone is engaging in these healthful activities." Even those who try to take care of themselves are not always entirely successful. Take Larry Kirkland, a 57-year-old sculptor who lives in Northwest Washington. Kirkland walks and swims regularly to stay in shape, watches what he eats, and fights to keep his weight down. Ask him about his health, and Kirkland will tell you that it's good. Well, pretty good. There's his blood pressure, which has been high for years. He takes medication to keep it under control. His cholesterol jumped, too, requiring another pill to keep that in check. Then his blood sugar started going up, prompting his doctor to remind him that he really should drop at least 10 pounds if he wants to avoid diabetes. "There are the creeping aches and pains. I dislocated my shoulder once, and that continues to bug me. I have knees that decide to be wobbly on occasion. I know that as you get older things tend to begin to fall apart," Kirkland said, adding that he gets fever blisters and that his psoriasis flares up when he is stressed. "I can get under quite a bit of pressure from my work," Kirkland said. In fact, boomers tend to report more stress than earlier generations -- from their jobs, their commutes, taking care of their parents and their kids -- all of which can take a physical toll, which is compounded by having less support from extended families and communities, experts say. "People are working two jobs. They are not sleeping as much. They're experiencing more job insecurity. They have less time to take care of themselves. They are more socially isolated," said Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Public Health. "This all could add up to a huge crisis and really calls for us to examine the things that perhaps we're not doing so well." Some researchers are skeptical, saying that U.S. life expectancy has increased consistently for decades, accompanied by a steady drop in disability rates. Rising rates of chronic disease may simply mean that such illnesses are being diagnosed earlier, which could translate into longer lives and less disability because boomers are getting their heart disease and diabetes under control sooner. "This doesn't cause me to despair," said Kenneth Manton, a demographer at Duke University. "You have to take this data in the context of other data, such as life expectancy." Others agree that the data are unclear because the baby boomers are not yet old enough to report major health problems in significant numbers, but they added that the findings so far are ominous. "We haven't seen any enormous effects yet," said David M. Cutler, an economist at Harvard. "But we may be starting to see some inklings of what's coming." One of the most alarming red flags was thrown up by the federally funded Health and Retirement Study, which is tracking more than 20,000 U.S. adults as they move through middle age toward retirement. When researchers examined the first wave of baby boomers to enter the study -- 5,030 adults born between 1948 and 1953 -- they were shocked to discover that they appeared to report poorer health than groups born between 1936 and 1941, and between 1942 and 1947. The baby boomers were much less likely than their predecessors to describe their health as "excellent" or "very good," and were more likely to report having difficulty with routine activities, such as walking several blocks or lifting 10 pounds. They were also more likely to report pain, drinking and psychiatric problems, and chronic problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. "It's not what I expected," said Beth J. Soldo of the Population Aging Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the analysis. It is unclear whether boomers are really sicker or are simply more health-conscious by dint of being better educated and having better access to information. They may also have higher expectations, making them more likely to notice and complain about aches and pains that earlier generations would have accepted as just part of getting older. "As they age, they may be less tolerant of the changes they see -- minor pains, less stamina, muscle loss and strength," Soldo said. "I don't just think they are crybabies or whiners. I think there is a changing definition of what good health means." But self-reports of health tend to be powerful predictors of risk of death at any given age, Soldo and others say. "We have been making progress with the elderly, who are doing better," said Dana Goldman, who studies health issues at the Rand Corp. "But while we've been patting our backs about the older people, the younger generation has been ignored. Disability is rising fastest among the youngest age groups." The findings are consistent with a number of studies, including one last year that found American adults have poorer health than their British counterparts, and a preliminary analysis of data collected between 1972 and 2003 for the National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative survey of more than 100,000 Americans. "Overall it looks like there's been some recent declines in overall health among younger adults compared to the cohorts of previous decades," said Robert Hummer, a sociologist at the University of Texas, who conducted that analysis. "It's worrisome." One of Hummer's colleagues produced similar findings in a survey of 2,500 adults between 1995 and 2001. "It's pretty scary," said John Mirowsky, who conducted the survey. "Until now people have been living longer and living longer without the need for assistance -- they can dress themselves and take care of themselves. But it looks like we may be on the verge of a change where we'll have an increasing proportion of the elderly needing assistance, and possibly a decline in life expectancy." If the findings are confirmed by further analysis, the trend could force policymakers to rethink a host of expectations and projections about the nation's overall medical bill and the future of Social Security and other retirement programs. "If people are entering early old age in worse health, it doesn't bode well for society," said Richard M. Suzman of the National Institute on Aging. "It's quite worrying." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:20:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:20:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Carpenters Union using email and txt-ing to mobilize members Message-ID: <200704231920.l3NJKs7m002623@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) - Apr 22, 2007 Politics and Technology http://www.politicsandtechnology.com/2007/03/carpenters_unio.html Carpenters Union using email and txt-ing to mobilize members The Business Journal reports that the carpenters union for Seattle and Portland are using text-messaging and email to mobilize their folks before some big contract negotiations. The Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters is text-messaging and e-mailing to gather input from and communicate to members. It has also recruited about 550 campaign captains to connect with peers at job sites. One early test of the effort will come in April, when 5,000-8,000 people are expected to show up at a rally in Tacoma, and several thousand more at one in Portland. "That's going to send a large message to the Pacific Northwest region and to those sitting down at the negotiating table," said Richard Heyn, one of the campaign captains. Even Doug Peterson, director of labor relations with employer group Associated General Contractors of Washington, agreed that a rally of that size would be unusual. The AGC and other contractors were invited to attend. "I've never seen it this big," he said. "As far as I know, it's a unique effort on the part of the carpenters." The union's ultimate goal: Rally membership and demonstrate unity before going into new contract discussions, and build a framework for future efforts. Why text messaging? Because they're on the job site - where cell phones are king, not laptops. With cell phones now as ubiquitous as hammers on carpenters' tool belts, the union has used text messaging to bring campaign captains together for meetings. As negotiations progress, the union might use text-messaging to send out updates, ask for input on specific contract proposals, and notify members about job-site rallies. And of course, a key strategic goal is reaching younger members - who haven't experienced this before: "It will be about the money when it comes down to the contract," he said, "but we have to address the fundamentals." That's particularly true for the younger members, who don't feel the same kinds of bonds to the union that their parents and grandparents did, Franklin said. "In the carpenter's union, and in the building trades in general, young members are a minority," Franklin said. About two-thirds of the Northwest Carpenters' members are 45 and older. Nationally, the average age of construction workers is in the mid-50s, according to a survey last year by Chicago-based outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. The union has focused on bringing in new members through apprenticeship programs, with about 200 apprentices joining last year. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:21:52 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:21:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Colleges Go Light on Women's Pay Inequity Message-ID: <200704231921.l3NJLqj9002638@viola.tamara-b.org> Womens eNews - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.womensenews.org Colleges Go Light on Women's Pay Inequity By Hannah Seligson WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--College women on the brink of graduation this spring may be in for a rude awakening. While they have enjoyed majority status on campus and graduate with higher grade point averages than their male classmates, young women still conspicuously lag in one crucial area: income earnings immediately after graduation. The American Association of University Women, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, released a report today that finds that one year after college graduation, women make 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn. As women's age increases they fall further behind men. Ten years out of school, women earn 69 percent of what their male peers do. "We controlled for everything that could have had an effect on earnings," Catherine Hill, director of research at the American Association of University Women, told Women's eNews. "And we still found a wage gap among a demographic that you'd expect there to be very little difference with, given, for the most part, that they don't have caregiving obligations. But surprisingly, and unfortunately, we find that women already earn less; even when they have the same major and occupation as their male counterparts." Researchers analyzed data of a nationally representative sample of over 19,000 male and female college graduates under the age of 35 and looked at two groups to measure the wage gap over time and to assess the most recent data on college graduates. The first group received bachelor's degrees in 1992-1993 and was interviewed in 1994, one year after receiving their degrees, and in 2003, a decade after graduation. The second group earned degrees in 1999-2000 and was interviewed in 2001, one year after receiving their degrees. The study found that those who received their degrees in 1992-1993 and those who received degrees in 1999-2000 did not have any significant difference in their earnings one year out of school, revealing that the wage gap has remained stagnant over time. There have been multiple data collection studies to document the gender wage gap by both government agencies and research entities in recent decades; because they vary in methodology and sampling, studies report subtle differences in measuring the gap. Lack of Campus Interest Jenni Daniels, 22, a coordinator for student programs at Tulane University in New Orleans and a 2006 Tulane graduate, says the findings are in sync with a lack of interest in the gender wage gap at her school. "Students just don't often show up to career programs. It's kind of a hard sell," says Daniels. "These women haven't dealt with pay inequity yet, so it seems far removed from their reality." Daniels says work-force preparation for women often plays second fiddle to issues such as sexual assault and body image. "Those issues feel more immediate to students than careers, in the sense that everyone knows someone who has been sexually assaulted or raped," she says. "How they feel about their bodies is also what these young women are thinking about. Eating disorders are rampant on college campuses." Lauren Magnuson, 20, a senior at Tulane, says she can't remember a course or conference on campus that has focus on the professional woman. "The majority of speakers who come to campus to talk about careers are men." Overlooked by Women's Studies Ann Mari May, a visiting professor of economics at Middlebury College in Vermont, says pay equity is an important topic for young women. "It's estimated that a woman will lose $420,000 over the first 20 years of her career by not negotiating on her first salary." May says campus interest in pay equity can be subdued because women's studies departments often skirt the subject. "Women's studies departments have lost touch with many day-to-day concerns for women, such as pay equity. It's why feminist economics is still a somewhat marginalized topic." Kassidy Johnson, a campus organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Arlington, Va., group dedicated to women's social, political and economic equality, is in touch with dozens of colleges in the South. She agrees that campus programming for women focuses more heavily on sexual assault, emergency contraception and global women's issues. However, Johnson says interest in pay equity was apparent at the group's recent national leadership meeting for younger women. "Young women want to know how to ask for a raise and negotiate their salary," she says. University Group Funds 11 Schools The American Association of University Women, for its part, is pushing women's workplace programming on a few campuses this year. The group, which has 500 college and university partners nationwide, launched in 2005 a grant-giving program, called Education as the Gateway to Women's Economic Security, to help implement campus-based programs along annual themes. This year it awarded grants of $5,000 each to 11 colleges to use in a variety of programs that fit the theme of planning for an economically secure future. Students at the University of Guam in Mangilao, with the support of faculty advisors, are studying how woman-friendly their university is. Roger State University in Claremore, Okla., is offering conferences on nontraditional careers and workshops on salary negotiation and financial management. Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia sponsored a series of events, including an art competition and exhibit, roundtable discussions and a "Women and Work" film festival. At Middlebury, students used the grant for a three-day symposium in March about women's economic security. Emily Theriault, 22, a senior and one of the co-organizers of the symposium, says it was the first time career issues were raised in such a visible forum in her four years on campus. "We have been taught to think that because we've gone to a good college that we'll get jobs that pay well," Theriault said. "I've seen some research about Middlebury College graduates, however, and it found that over the past 10 years the majority of high-paying fields--such as finance and consulting--are dominated by male graduates and the women are entering fields that don't pay as well." [Hannah Seligson is a freelance writer based in New York. Her book, "New Girl on the Job," will be published by Citadel Press in June.] For more information: American Association of University Women Study - Behind the Pay Gap: - http://www.aauw.org/research/statedata/index.cfm Feminist Campus: - http://www.feministcampus.org/default.asp Women Don't Ask - Negotiation and the Gender Divide: - http://www.womendontask.com/questions.html Copyright 2006 Women's eNews. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:25:12 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:25:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] New Revelations: FDA Fails to Protect Humans & Animals Message-ID: <200704231925.l3NJPDK3002666@viola.tamara-b.org> ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) - Apr 23, 2007 Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of drug recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell , chairman of the full House committee. Drug safety is not the only area in which FDA officials get failing grades. The FDA, it seems, flunks each and every arena over which the agency has regulatory authority. None of the divisions overseeing safety in in drugs, vaccines, food, and medical devices--for human as well as animal use-can be said to be functioning for the public good. The consequences of FDA's failure to protect the public health are documented in preventable harm to humans and animals. The Washington Post reports that FDA officials have known "for years" about contaminated food that sickened hundreds of people and killed at least three. But FDA officials who are entrusted with safeguarding the public health, did nothing to prevent illness and death from contaminated peanut butter and spinach. "Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply. FDA officials conceded that the agency's system needs to be overhauled to meet today's demands, but contended that the agency could not have done anything to prevent either contamination episode." The Associated Press has documented details about a case of abusive bullying of an FDA veterinary safety officer. A case that has much in common with the bullying of safety officers Andrew Mosholder, MD whose analysis of pediatric SSRI antidepressant drug data revealed a twofold increased risk of suicidal behavior, and David Graham, MD whose analysis of Vioxx data revealed an increased risk of cardiac arrest. Like these courageous public servants, Victoria Hampshire, adverse events coordinator in the veterinary division, was anxious about thousands of reported autoimmune, allergic, liver and other reactions to Wyeth's drug, Proheart 6, to prevent heartworm. For doing her job by insisting that the agency pay attention to drug safety hazards--in this case, almost 500 dogs had died after taking Wyeth's Proheart 6-more deaths than all competitors combined-she ran afoul. "What happened next - and the price she paid for speaking up - have spurred a U.S. Senate inquiry and shined a spotlight on the complex topography of drug safety, where interests collide like tectonic plates and squeeze decisions from all sides. On this landscape, the government's watchdogs come in disparate breeds too. Some whimper at approaching trouble; others bark gamely. And some, like Hampshire, won't give an inch." After withdrawing the drug in September 2004, "Wyeth has pulled all the plugs at the level of commissioner." After a meeting between Wyeth CEO and (then) Commissioner Lester Crawford, attended by (then) Chief Counsel, Daniel Troy, Hampshire was removed from her professional job, barred from speaking to FDA's advisory committee hearing about Proheart 6 recall, then FDA officials set the agency's intimidating Internal Affairs division upon her. Although a prosecutor had already ruled out most criminal charges, the Internal Affairs investigator made her sign a statement saying she could be fired and, if she lied, charged with perjury, and reminded her about the jailing of domestic guru Martha Stewart. This same abusive tactic was used against Dr. Mosholder and Dr. Graham when they insisted that the hazards of SSRIs and Vioxx be made public. AP reports that in June 2005, a Wyeth manager made a sales call at an Alabama veterinary practice, "where he openly blamed Hampshire for the Proheart 6 recall, according to a confidential letter written by a vet there to the FDA. The Wyeth employee boasted that the company had her investigated by private detectives, and she had been "taken care of," according to the letter obtained by The Associated Press. He then predicted the drug's swift return to market." Congressman Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget. Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav 212-595-8974 veracare at ahrp.org ~~~~~~~~~~ THE WASHINGTON POST - Apr 23, 2007 FDA Was Aware of Dangers To Food Outbreaks Were Not Preventable, Officials Say By Elizabeth Williamson The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply. FDA officials conceded that the agency's system needs to be overhauled to meet today's demands, but contended that the agency could not have done anything to prevent either contamination episode. Last week, the FDA notified California state health officials that hogs on a farm in the state had likely eaten feed laced with melamine, an industrial chemical blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets in recent weeks. Officials are trying to determine whether the chemical's presence in the hogs represents a threat to humans. Pork from animals raised on the farm has been recalled. The FDA has said its inspectors probably would not have found the contaminated food before problems arose. The tainted additive caused a recall of more than 100 different brands of pet food. The outbreaks point to a need to change the way the agency does business, said Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety arm, which is responsible for safeguarding 80 percent of the nation's food supply. "We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said. "We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm." Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget. In the peanut butter case, an agency report shows that FDA inspectors checked into complaints about salmonella contamination in a ConAgra Foods factory in Georgia in 2005. But when company managers refused to provide documents the inspectors requested, the inspectors left and did not follow up. A salmonella outbreak that began last August and was traced to the plant's Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter brands sickened more than 400 people in 44 states. The likely cause, ConAgra said, was moisture from a roof leak and a malfunctioning sprinkler system that activated dormant salmonella. The plant has since been closed. The 2005 report shows that FDA inspectors were looking into "an alleged episode of positive findings of salmonella in peanut butter in October of 2004 that was related to new equipment and that the firm didn't react to,. .. insects in some equipment, water leaking onto product, and inability to track some product." During the inspection, the report says, ConAgra admitted it had destroyed some product in October 2004 but would not say why. "They asked for some of our documentation and we made the request to them that they put it in writing due to concerns about proprietary information," ConAgra spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said last week. "We did not receive a written request,... they filed the report and that was that." Until February of this year. That's when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the FDA of a spike in salmonella cases in states near the ConAgra plant. The agencies contacted the company, which initiated a recall and shut the plant for upgrades.Brackett said that if the FDA inspector had seen anything truly dangerous the agency would have taken further action. But, he said, the agency cannot force a disclosure, a recall or a plant closure except in extreme circumstances, such as finding a hazardous batch of product. The problem in 2005, he added, "doesn't necessarily connect to the salmonella outbreak right now. It's not unusual to have it in raw agricultural commodities." The FDA has known even longer about illnesses among people who ate spinach and other greens from California's Salinas Valley, the source of outbreaks over the past six months that have killed three people and sickened more than 200 in 26 states. The subsequent recall was the largest ever for leafy vegetables. In a letter sent to California growers in late 2005, Brackett wrote, "FDA is aware of 18 outbreaks of foodborne illness since 1995 caused by [E. coli bacteria] for which fresh or fresh-cut lettuce was implicated.... In one additional case, fresh-cut spinach was implicated. These 19 outbreaks account for approximately 409 reported cases of illness and two deaths." "We know that there are still problems out in those fields," Brackett said in an interview last week. "We knew there had been a problem, but we never and probably still could not pinpoint where the problem was. We could have that capability, but not at this point." According to Caroline Smith DeWaal, who heads the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocacy group, "When budgets are tight... the food program at FDA gets hit the hardest." In next year's budget, passed amid discovery of contamination problems in spinach, tomatoes and lettuce, Congress has voted the FDA a $10 million increase to improve food safety, DeWaal said. The Agriculture Department, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs and keeps inspectors in every processing plant, got an increase 10 times that amount to help pay for its inspection programs. The FDA visits problem food plants about once a year and the rest far less frequently, Brackett said. William Hubbard, who retired as associate commissioner of the FDA in 2005 and founded the advocacy group Coalition for a Stronger FDA, said that when he joined the agency in the 1970s, its food safety arm claimed half its budget and personnel."Now it's about a quarter... at a time in which the problems have grown, the size of the industry has grown and imports of food have skyrocketed," Hubbard said. *** AP via Yahoo - Apr 22, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070422/ap_on_re_us/when_the_watchdog_barked_5 Official takes risks warning on pet drug By JEFF DONN The first hints of trouble came with vague warnings from the outer reaches of the bureaucracy. She was "pushing too hard." She was "alarmist." But it was something else - a clumsy bid to call her off the scent of the dangerous veterinary drug she was tracking - that really galled her. Maybe that was her last possible moment to keep soundless and safe. "When enough dogs die, this product will take care of itself," a colleague said. Her reply tumbled out like a boulder that, once rolling, will no longer stop. Victoria Hampshire heard herself say: "I don't know what I'm doing here then." What she was doing - trying to do, at least - was her job: She kept count of side effects from animal drugs for the Food and Drug Administration. She made tallies, analyzed numbers, and alerted supervisors when something seemed amiss. And something seemed amiss that spring of 2004. A big drug maker had crafted what seemed a star performer in Proheart 6, a three-year-old injected drug to prevent heartworm, the common parasite in dogs. Hampshire's numbers showed, though, that dogs were dying at alarming rates. What happened next - and the price she paid for speaking up - have spurred a U.S. Senate inquiry and shined a spotlight on the complex topography of drug safety, where interests collide like tectonic plates and squeeze decisions from all sides. On this landscape, the government's watchdogs come in disparate breeds too. Some whimper at approaching trouble; others bark gamely. And some, like Hampshire, won't give an inch. While dogs were dying, her dad's heart was failing. Gifford Hampshire was an FDA press officer in the 1960s, when the agency firmly held the public trust. There was no Vioxx scare, little fuss about taking money from industry. His daughter Victoria - everyone called her Tory - now worked as a veterinarian at the same agency. She grew up on a Virginia horse farm, where her mother raised basset hounds, and learned to treat animals with compassion. She once crafted little sleeping bags from cloth to help mice recover from surgery. Her dad was so proud of her. She'd worked hard on her government career. Then age 44, she was smart and upstanding in everyday life too, someone who points out undercharges and never speeds. But she wasn't timid. When she'd stare over reading glasses, it wasn't always fun to be her focal point. "I could feel like I'd get an honest opinion from her, without brownnosing," says Dr. Judith Davis, her former supervisor at the National Institutes of Health. That meant Hampshire was not always "a real subtle person," says Dr. Linda Tollefson, who was deputy head of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. In summer 2004, Hampshire was analyzing Proheart 6 side effects for a fast-approaching showdown with drug maker Wyeth. Evenings, she'd visit her dad at the hospital. Then she'd work into the night. She asked her dad if he wished she'd done anything differently in her life. Be less intense and have more fun, he suggested. That evening, she noticed an old Jaguar for sale on the roadside. She wrote a $1,000 check on the spot and drove it back to the hospital. She made a martini for her dad and pointed to the car parked outside. It would be her last moment of comfort for a long, long time. Two days after his death, setting aside her grief, Hampshire went toe-to-toe with Wyeth. She and Tollefson clearly remember the confrontation in a conference room at FDA headquarters. As adverse events coordinator, Hampshire was anxious about thousands of reported autoimmune, allergic, liver and other reactions. Almost 500 dogs had died after taking Proheart 6_ surpassing all competitors combined. But Wyeth was known for strongly defending its drugs from claims of harm. It had rallied for its estrogen replacement and for its half of the fen-phen diet combo. Its veterinary subsidiary, Fort Dodge Animal Health, had sold 18 million doses of Proheart 6, worth tens of millions of dollars. It surely wouldn't give up without a fight. Many vets also liked replacing pills with the twice-a-year shot, which put heartworm prevention back into their hands. One vet with ties to Wyeth lectured colleagues about seizing on Proheart 6 as a "hook" to pull in healthy pets for profitable regular exams. As the FDA meeting unfolded, the company said Hampshire was inflating her side-effect numbers. Things turned nastier when Hampshire said Fort Dodge had previously expressed its own concerns over tumors. Fort Dodge said it hadn't. "Either you're lying, or I'm imagining it," Hampshire erupted. Dr. Stephen Sundlof, FDA's veterinary chief, grabbed her hand under the table, silencing her, Hampshire says. (He didn't answer messages seeking comment for this story.) "Tory did not have experience dealing with animal pharmaceutical community people, who are not different than the human pharmaceutical people. They make a lot of money on this stuff. They will never ever admit there's something wrong," says Tollefson, who is now FDA's assistant commissioner for science. On Sept. 4, 2004, in the face of Hampshire's damning data, Wyeth ordered all Proheart 6 back from vets - without conceding it was dangerous. It was perhaps the largest recall ever of a pet drug. Two months later, Wyeth's chief executive officer went to FDA offices for a personal meeting with then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford. The CEO, Robert Essner, wanted to work out a big problem: Victoria Hampshire. His company had uncovered a Web site that gave Hampshire a cut of its drug sales. Though Proheart 6 was sold there, Wyeth focused on competing drugs. "We felt Dr. Hampshire had a conflict of interest in regard to her evaluation of this product, and we wanted the agency to be aware of it," says Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus. FDA policy banned agency vets who moonlight from taking payments by pharmacies independent of their own practices. But so many staffers unknowingly violated the rule that it was rewritten the next year. Hampshire acknowledges using the Web site, mainly to prescribe drugs for pets of old clients and friends, without needing to warehouse medicines at her Bethesda home. She says she meant to drop the site and hadn't bothered to disclose it as an outside activity that year - a bad decision, she now acknowledges. But an invoice shows her earnings were a mere $160 over 2 1/2 years. Wyeth also accused her of inciting complaints from dog owners like Jean Brudd, of Thornton, Colo., who had contacted the FDA about the deaths of her two dogs. In one e-mail to Brudd, Hampshire had written that "autoimmune disease is being reported in growing numbers" and laid out how Brudd's friends could submit side-effect reports. Hampshire says it was her duty to check complaints and help people navigate the FDA. Wyeth wanted Hampshire reassigned and threatened to sue her, says agency manager Tollefson, though Wyeth denies it. In the end, Crawford "thought it best... to protect Tory to get her out of it completely," explains Tollefson, who was briefed after the top-level meeting. She says she and Sundlof, the center head, agreed to transfer Hampshire. Tollefson says they also wanted to keep her from being a "distraction" when the recall was reviewed, because they too were troubled by the drug's safety record. Crawford didn't respond to interview requests for this story. In 2005, he abruptly quit the FDA and later admitted hiding stocks he owned in medical and food companies it regulated. He was fined about $90,000. But former FDA lawyer Daniel Troy, also at the Essner-Crawford meeting, defends how it was handled. "At the same time the FDA is actually getting smashed and bashed by the news media on conflicts of interest, here there was an allegation of conflict of interest, and the FDA took it seriously," he says. One morning two months later, Hampshire was working on Proheart 6 data when she was called in to the veterinary director's office without explanation. There, in a bright office decorated with a folksy painting of dairy cows, Tollefson waited with an FDA manager of market reviews. Hampshire figured they needed help as the FDA prepared to reconsider the Proheart 6 recall. But Tollefson inhaled sharply, as if steeling herself. Then she wiped a tear from her eye. Hampshire had known Tollefson since working at the health institutes; they were friendly, but she'd never seen anything like this. "Wyeth has pulled all the plugs at the level of commissioner," Tollefson told a stunned Hampshire. They were transferring her to the vaccines building to care for the rats and monkeys. She pleaded for her job. They refused to give details but reassured her that this would all blow over. She was likened to a cop who'd shot somebody in the line of duty. "I haven't shot anybody," she protested. "I've done my job." She left the office in tears. Her shame deepened when a committee of FDA advisers took up the Proheart 6 recall three weeks later in January 2005. She wasn't allowed to talk to them, and they voted just barely, 8-7, to keep the drug off the market for the time being. The next month, an agency inspector from Internal Affairs asked to see Hampshire. He told her she was under investigation over Wyeth objections to her outside activities. He referred obscurely to a "sinister plot." A prosecutor had already ruled out most criminal charges. But the inspector made her sign a statement saying she could be fired and, if she lied, charged with perjury. He reminded her about the jailing of domestic guru Martha Stewart over a financial conflict. Hampshire dragged herself through the next several months, feeling she'd been cast, weak and worthless, into a hole. A colleague worried she was headed for a breakdown. She was sent to an interim FDA office job within the capability of "anybody with half a brain," she says. She didn't know where the investigation would lead. She didn't know who might be bent on ruining her career, but she looked for a better job somewhere. She saw - or imagined - warning signs and potential enemies everywhere. She hoped for protection from members of Congress she contacted. She fretted at home. "To take this much stress home and not to sleep for weeks is not worth it," she says. Even her two children noticed changes in her. Then, out of the blue, there was a flicker of light. In April 2005, she landed a better job in the FDA itself, at a separate office that evaluates devices for the human heart. "It sounded to me like she really hadn't done anything wrong," explains her new supervisor, Dave Buckles. That July, more relief came: Hampshire was told she was cleared by agency investigators. "A valued employee" is how FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza now describes her, but she won't discuss the transfer and investigation. Tollefson now believes the affair was mishandled. "Everybody saw that we reassigned Tory, no explanation was ever given - not a good one - so the message to me was very clear: If you do your job right and you're questioned, you lose your job." Although Wyeth has been sued on behalf of dozens of people whose pets took Proheart 6, the company hopes to be vindicated too. It has kept selling the drug in Canada, Europe and elsewhere, and it has approached the FDA with more data for a possible U.S. comeback. In June 2005, a Wyeth manager made a sales call at an Alabama veterinary practice, where he openly blamed Hampshire for the Proheart 6 recall, according to a confidential letter written by a vet there to the FDA. The Wyeth employee boasted that the company had her investigated by private detectives, and she had been "taken care of," according to the letter obtained by The Associated Press. He then predicted the drug's swift return to market. That Wyeth manager, Glen Kimmorley, did not answer AP messages left at a home phone in his name. The Wyeth spokesman said Kimmorley "was expressing his own opinion and was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company." However, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has been investigating Hampshire's case, says Wyeth "tried to destroy a reputation." He added: "Her own agency sold her down the river." Hampshire still feels edgy, less trusting, shamefully naive about corporate influence on government. Her husband, Bob Balaban - himself a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health - says she's "not the same person." They hope for more answers from Senate investigators. Others have reached their own conclusions. Last year, Hampshire was sitting in a big conference room in Denver at a veterinary meeting of the U.S. Public Health Service. The agency was announcing its veterinarian of the year. She grabbed her camera to photograph the winner. And then, as if scripted by Hollywood, her own name was announced. She heard a health officer say she had "raised the bar in every category of professional and personal integrity, passion, and commitment." People rushed over to hug her. For the first time in years, she let down her guard. Copyright C 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:26:31 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:26:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] UK: Protestors plant GM trial site with organic potatoes Message-ID: <200704231926.l3NJQVx3002678@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by marcus (activ-l) - Apr 22, 2007 Indymedia UK - Apr 22, 2007 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/04/368519.html Protestors plant GM trial site with organic potatoes Press Release - 22 April 2007 People from all over Britain are currently planting organic potatoes in the field proposed as a GM potato trial site outside Hull. It is hoped that the donation of safe spuds will prevent the planting of the controversial crop, which threatens the livelihoods of local borage growers and organic farmers. Anna Lock explained; If you want to eat good safe potatoes, you have to plant good safe potatoes. By planting organic potatoes in this field today, the field will be rendered unsuitable for the GM trial. Scientific experiments need controllable variables, tiny organic seed potatoes hidden deep in the ground are a variable controlled only by nature. These seed potatoes will grow and BASFs experiment will no longer be possible on this site. The rally started as a GM-free potato picnic accompanied by live music with around 300 protestors, including kids and cyclists and many dressed as Mr Potato Head. A large number then set out across the field to plant organic potatoes. The rally marks the end of the governments consultation process on the experiment. The crop is the first to be proposed after public pressure bought an end to the trialing of GM in the UK nearly 3 years ago. Yolande Black travelled all the way from Bristol to attend today's protest, I think the government is testing the water with these potato trials, and it is vitally important that we show them that resistance is still alive and kicking and that we will continue fighting them every step of the way. GM is not a solution. 20% of conventional potato varieties are already resistant to blight and BASF have admitted that there is no market for GM food in the UK. 80 acres of borage have recently been sown near the trial site, and the crop will fail if beekeepers keep to the British Beekeepers Associations guidelines of keeping hives at least 6km distant from GM crops. The GM farmer has announced that he will not proceed if the issue is not resolved for his neighbours. Note to editors: 1. Contact details: Carl McCoy on 07858 177 178 or visit the website at Our websites are www.mutatoes.org 2. The site is one of two due to be planted this year, the second proposed trial site at the National Institute of Agriculture and Botany (NIAB) in Cambridgeshire last weekend. The Hull trial site is to replace the one in Derbyshire after the farmer who pulled out. BASF intends to continue the trials for the next five years 3. Borage is a lucrative crop grown as a source of Starflower Oil and used as a healthfood supplement and in skincare creams and cosmetics. BASF failed to contact the local borage farmers in advance of the trial. The farmers stand to lose up to #80,000. 4. On 5th April a public meeting and debate about the planting of the GM potatoes was held in Hedon. Dr Arpad Pusztai was one of the speakers attending. His experiments into feeding GM potatoes to rats appeared to demonstrate the GM potatoes cause damage to the rodents immune systems and growth rates. The work raised massive public concern and awareness of GM, but the experiments were never repeated. His evidence, and those of BASF's PR representative, caused the local council to renew their 2003 stance against GM. Opposition from local people attending was also strong, and a petition is due to be handed over to DEFRA and the farmer concerned before the rally. 5. In North America where GM crops are now widespread, cross-pollination regularly contaminates surrounding crops, even jumping species. Earlier in 2007 it was found that the experimental rice line LL601 had contaminated worldwide rice supplies, causing massive loss of markets, despite assurances that it was in a low risk cross pollination category. 6. BASF is a multinational company based in Germany. They were part of the notorious AG Farben which manufactured poison gas for the concentration camps, used slave labour and was convicted of war crimes at the end of WW2. It claims to be the largest chemical company in the world, and in 2005 it was the 3rd biggest global seller of pesticides. 7. Both Ireland and the Netherlands were due to run BASF's GM potato trials, but these were abandoned after concerns were raised about the environmental threats they posed. 8. Protestors are planting around 3000 organic seed potatoes of several different varieties. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:28:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:28:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Israelis Arrest Puerto Rican Activist in Palestine Message-ID: <200704231928.l3NJSRbQ002690@viola.tamara-b.org> The Freedom Archives - Apr 23, 2007 http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org Press Release: april 22-2007 Contact Info: Mary Anne Grady Flores Mobile Phone in Bil'in, Palestine: (from US: 011) -050-305-3265 For Immediate Release: Tito Kayak, Puerto Rican Activist for Palestine: Still Held in Israeli Military Prison Alberto De Jesus, a Puerto Rican activist know as Tito Kayak, was arrested Friday, April 20th, after unfurling a Palestinian flag on top of an Israeli surveillance tower of the Apartheid wall, next to the village of Bil'in, Palestine. His non-violent action took place simultaneously with a press conference at the weekly non-violent demonstration of the Apartheid wall. Tito Kayak is being held under military code in a prison in Beth El Settlement, near the city of Ramallah. He will possibly be held the full 96 hours routinely meted out to Palestinians under this code. His lawyers, Gaby Lasky and Lymor Goldstein are negotiating for his early release so that he can return to the US with his delegation from Puerto Rico on his scheduled flight tonight at midnight. We heard from Mr. Goldstein that Tito sends his greetings to the people of Bil'in and all Palestinians from prison. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mairead Corrigan Maguire from Northern Ireland, and Minister of Information for the Palestinian Authority, Mustafa Barghouti were the speakers at the press conference addressing the need for the removal of the wall and other issues caused by the occupation. Five hundred where joined by two hundred and fifty internationals for the weekly march to wall. The afternoon demonstration was marked by violence initiated by the Israeli soldiers who fired rubber bullets, tear gas and used a water cannon on the crowd of over 500 participants. Mairead Maguire was hit by a rubber bullet in the leg and a Channel 4, British TV camera man was left unconscious until the next day after being hit by a soldier's batton. This is the first incident where an international has been held under military code for non-violent civil disobedience. All other internationals who have been arrested have been released after 24 hours. Tito joined many internationals, including people from South Africa, Sweden, France, Spain, England , Germany, and those notables mentioned above at the invitation of the people of Bil'in to the Second Annual Conference on Popular Resistance. The village is a symbol of the non-violent struggle for the removal of the Apartheid Wall, the reclaiming of Palestinian lands, and the demand for an end to the military occupation of their towns and villages. Bil'in has had 60% of their land taken from them in 2005. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:29:39 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:29:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Blair's Britain makes me sick Message-ID: <200704231929.l3NJTd6S002704@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by marcus (activ-l) - Apr 22, 2007 The Sunday Telegraph - Apr 22, 2007 (posted 4/21/07) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/22/nmeach22.xml Meacher: 'Blair's Britain makes me sick' by Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor Tony Blair has created a "staggering degree of inequality" in Britain, perpetuated a culture of greed and undermined democracy, according to one of those vying to succeed him. Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, now a Labour leadership candidate, said that society was more unequal now than at any time since the 1930s. A new class, the "mega rich", had been given unprecedented power and access to government by Mr Blair, who was himself obsessed by money, he claimed. Mr Meacher said that he was close to securing the 44 names necessary to mount a challenge to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, the overwhelming favourite to succeed Mr Blair. "I'm getting very close to it," Mr Meacher said. "I have 25, [John] McDonnell has 15 and the overwhelming majority of those will switch to me if John realises that he can't make it and drops out." The MP for Oldham West said he believed passionately that Mr Brown should face a challenge. "People should have a choice. We should not have a coronation when there has been no debate on policy since Blair came in, in 1994. "It's crucial that Brown is made to answer as to what he's going to deliver to us. We are entitled to know." While Westminster was fixated on a Blairite challenger, Mr Meacher said, it would be wrong to underestimate the Left. "David Miliband, Charles Clarke, John Reid, it's a matter for them but it's quite interesting that there is a desperate thrashing around to find a candidate and they have not been able to do so. The tendency is to regard the Left as non-existent. That is a really serious misreading of the state of the Labour Party." Accusing Mr Blair of exacerbating inequality, he added: "We are now a more unequal society than at any time since the 1930s. The average package of the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company is GBP46,155 a week. The average wage is GBP400 a week. That is a staggering degree of inequality. "We now have four classes - an underclass who are so poor that they cannot participate in any meaningful way, a working class who are okay, a fairly well off middle class then a new category, the mega rich who are in a category of their own in terms of wealth, power and their influence on the Government through private meetings with ministers. "I feel very sick and angry about it. I didn't expect this to happen under a Labour Government. The reason it has happened is, if I can quote Peter Mandelson in 1997, New Labour is very relaxed about people getting filthy rich." Mr Blair, he said, had "far too little concern" for the people at the bottom. "Tony's natural mates are his big business friends. He feels comfortable with them, he admires and respects them and he gets a good response from them. They are only too glad to have someone in power whom they can do direct deals with." The Prime Minister, said Mr Meacher, had also ridden roughshod over Parliament. "It would be hard to say this is a genuine parliamentary democracy. The framework is there but the decisions are fixed at private meetings between the Prime Minister and the power brokers in society, the financial houses, industry and the media." Hitting out at the influence of Lord Sainsbury, the former science minister, with whom he sparred over the issue of genetically modified crops, Mr Meacher said: "People say that is why I was sacked. Lord Sainsbury was appointed by Blair. Blair himself is also pro-GM. Lord Sainsbury provided a lot of money to the Labour Party and he was clearly involved in a lot of GM research. This all mixed in with the Government's objectives." He said a "conscience of the nation" watchdog should be created to look at all decisions of national importance and prevent abuses of power. He claimed Mr Brown blocked a decision he took as environment minister to force the top 1,000 companies to publish their greenhouse gas emissions. "So if you ask if he's green - anything but. His feel for this agenda is very weak." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:30:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:30:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Appeals Court Won't Step Down from Mumia Case Message-ID: <200704231930.l3NJUs0a002719@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) Philadelphia Daily News - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.philly.com/dailynews/national/20070421_Appeals_court_wont_step_down_from_Abu-Jamal_case.html Appeals Court Won't Step Down from Mumia Case A federal appeals court said yesterday it will not step down from death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal's latest appeal, paving the way for a key hearing next month. Prosecutors had asked outside judges to hear the case because the husband of 3rd U.S. Circuit Judge Marjorie O. Rendell was district attorney during the 1982 trial in which Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a police officer. They said that created the appearance of a conflict. Judge Rendell, who is married to Gov. Ed Rendell, and three colleagues on the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit instead recused themselves for reasons not disclosed in the two-page ruling. The removal of those four judges leaves numerous others to serve on the three-judge panel hearing the case, the order said. Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and radio reporter, has been on death row for a quarter-century for the 1981 slaying of white Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. In Abu-Jamal's appeal, he argues that city prosecutors routinely removed qualified blacks from juries. Prosecutors deny the charge, but the 3rd Circuit has agreed to hear Abu-Jamal's lawyers argue the point at a May 17 hearing. "I'm very happy with the ruling because had the DA's motion been granted, it would have delayed things," Abu-Jamal's lead lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, told the Associated Press. "There would have been a denial of justice and we want this case to move forward as scheduled." Assistant District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr., who had sought the 3rd Circuit's recusal, did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages yesterday afternoon. Faulkner, 25, was killed after he pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother on Dec. 9, 1981. Abu-Jamal was found at the scene near the gun and later confessed, Burns said. His writings and taped speeches from prison have made him a cause celebre, leaving him with a melange of vocal supporters, from black activists to Hollywood celebrities. The French have named a street after him. Third Circuit judges Theodore A. McKee, D. Michael Fisher and Richard L. Nygaard were also recused from the case, the order said. * From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:36:05 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:36:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] TV: Two GI Resistance Films - May 7 - Sundance Message-ID: <200704231936.l3NJa5va002749@viola.tamara-b.org> Vietnam Veterans Against the War - Apr 22, 2007 http://www.vvaw.org A Night of GI Resistance on National Television - Monday, May 7, 2007 sent by Joseph Thomas Miller for VVAWINC CHECK IT OUT AND PASS IT ON!!! IT TAKES ALL OF US TO GET THE WORD OUT!!! LET EVERYONE YOU KNOW IN ON THESE EXTRAORDINARY FILMS On Monday May 7th 2007...there will be an historic night of GI resistance on national television as the Sundance Channel presents the U.S. broadcast premiere of both Sir! No Sir! and The Ground Truth: Sir! No Sir! Monday, May 7 The Sundance Channel 9 pm Eastern 8 pm Central 7 pm Mountain 6 pm Pacific The Ground Truth Monday, May 7 The Sundance Channel 10:30 pm Eastern 9:30 pm Central 8:30 pm Mountain 7:30 pm Pacific This is a wonderful chance for millions of people to see these films that, together, link the tremendous movement of American soldiers against the Vietnam war with the growing opposition among soldiers to the Iraq war today. MAKE MAY 7TH A DAY THAT SPARKS A SURGE IN OPPOSITION AMONG SOLDIERS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS TO THIS HIDEOUS WAR. After all, one good surge deserves another SUNDANCE PREMIERE WE URGE YOU TO GRAB THIS OPPORTUNITY. 1. Not Everyone has the Sundance Channel... 2. So if you do, PLEASE organize a house party to watch the films and spread their influence among soldiers and civilians alike. 3. If you don't, find someone who does and offer to bring the chips. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ALREADY EXTRAORDINARY EFFECTS "SIR! NO SIR!" HAS HAD ON ACTIVE DUTY SOLDIERS AND VETS!!! In preparation, to help spread the films, http://www.sirnosir.com is offering these specials: The Director's Edition DVD of the film and 1 1/2 hours of additional stories will be on SALE through May 15th $19.95 (from $23.95) The Limited Edition DVD, with the film and "Punk Ass Crusade" counter-recruitment video, is now available in bulk at a DISCOUNTED RATE: 5 for $50 10 for $80 15 for $105 20 for $120 (All plus shipping and handling) CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT HOW VETERANS FOR PEACE HAS USED "SIR! NO SIR!" FOR RESISTANCE The Ground Truth is also available in bulk at http://groundtruthstore.seenon.com/ PLEASE DO ALL YOU CAN TO MAKE USE OF THIS NATIONAL BROADCAST. SEND THIS EMAIL TO YOUR LIST AND MYSPACE FRIENDS, AND MAKE SURE YOUR ORGANIZATIONS POST AND SEND THIS E-BLAST OUT AS WELL... ENCOURAGE THE RESISTANCE! THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT FROM US AT DISPLACED FILMS DAVID ZEIGER AND JADE FOX Make a Resister out of a soldier vvawinc mailing list: vvawinc at vvaw.org http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawinc From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:47:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:47:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Mex City to legalize 1st tri. abortion, foes prepare challenge Message-ID: <200704231947.l3NJljYR002903@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) - Apr 22, 2007 El Universal - Apr 21, 2007 http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/24313.html Abortion foes prepare suit With Mexico City's legislature expected to legalize first- trimester abortions in a vote scheduled for Tuesday, members of President Caldersn's National Action Party (PAN) said Friday they are already preparing a constitutional challenge. Agustmn Castilla, a PAN deputy in the Federal District Legislative Assembly (ALDF), said his party's local legislatures will take steps to bring the new law before the Supreme Court after it passes. PAN federal Senate leader Santiago Creel, in the Yucatan capital of Mirida Friday for a party function, confirmed his party's plan to mount a legal challenge of the legislation. "If there's no life, there's nothing else," he said. Local legislators need 22 signatures from the 66-member ALDF to initiate a legal challenge. There are only 17 PAN deputies, so they will need to recruit help from the minor parties and/or dissidents from the other two major parties, both of which support the legalization bill. Together, the dominant Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have more than enough votes to decriminalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Polls also indicate the measure has strong support among Mexico City residents. However, the Catholic Church, the PAN and other anti- abortion forces have waged a furious campaign to derail the legislation. Pro-choice city legislators say they have received death threats over the issue, and national PRD leaders asked the federal Interior Secretariat Friday to guarantee their safety during next Tuesday's session. Florencio Salazar Adame, undersecretary for population, migration and religious affairs at the Interior Secretariat, said no. "It falls under the purview of the Mexico City government," he told the media. "The legislators should ask the city for protection." Pope Benedict XVI entered the fray Friday. Via a message from the Vatican's secretary of state, the pope said the pending Mexico City legislation "threatens the life of the unborn." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:48:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:48:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Bolivia Calls for Single So American Currency Message-ID: <200704231948.l3NJmR7h002915@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Bolivia Calls for Single South American Currency Havana, April 23 (acn) Bolivian President Evo Morales invited the members of the newly created South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) to create a single South American currency, which he suggested could be called the Pacha (earth in Quechua), Granma daily reported. "The idea came out of many discussions. We, looking towards the future, have proposed the name of Pacha," said Morales Saturday in Cochabamba, during an inspection of possible sites for building the headquarters of the South American parliament. Morales said that while there is consensus that South America use a single currency, Venezuela and other countries of the bloc have also proposed names for it, according to La Razon daily. The Bolivian president further said that the Bank of the South, being promoted by Venezuela and other countries of the region, could become the equivalent of a South American Central Bank to regulate the economies of its members. Morales also insisted on the importance of recovering the state's control over natural resources as the best way for countries to achieve economic development. inter/South America From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:49:09 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:49:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Chavez Calls for UN Intervention in Posada Case Message-ID: <200704231949.l3NJn973002927@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Chavez Calls for UN Intervention in Posada Carriles Case Havana, April 23 (acn) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez asked the United Nations to intervene in the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles, released last week by the United States government, Granma newspaper reported. Speaking on his Alo Presidente TV and radio program on Sunday, Chavez called the decision to release Posada embarrassing and proof of the double standard by the US government on the issue of terrorism. Chavez reiterated Venezuela's demand that Posada be extradited to the South American country to stand trial for organizing a 1976 plane bombing that killed 73 persons. The outcry against the freeing of the terrorist was echoed in several countries around the world. Upon arriving for a visit to Havana, Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Russia's Communist Party, said the release of Posada exceeds the limits of cynicism and shame. La Opinion, the Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper, ran an editorial Sunday calling the release of Posada a defeat of the US legal system and adds that the move sends a contradictory message from the US government. In Haiti, Dr. Jean Renald Clerisme, minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship, said the release of the terrorist was an insult to justice. "This man deserves to be brought to justice and there is no doubt that the world has already condemned him." In Moscow, the Russian Venceremos Movement, made up of different leftwing parties, and labor and civic organizations, delivered a message to the United States Embassy in which it repudiates the freeing of Posada Carriles on bail. Inter/posada carriles From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:50:41 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:50:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Posada: A Startling Tale of US Complicity [1998] Message-ID: <200704231950.l3NJofef002944@viola.tamara-b.org> [As most people know, Scheer has left the LA Times and now runs Truthdig at http://www.truthdig.com -NYTr] sent by Simon McGuinness Los Angeles Times - June, 20, 1998 COLUMN LEFT A Startling Tale of U.S. Complicity Posada's late-in-life confession paints an ugly picture of our already bankrupt Cuban policy. By ROBERT SCHEER When is it all right to blow up restaurants and kill tourists? Anytime, according to Luis Posada Carriles, who masterminded last year's attacks on Cuba's booming tourist industry, terrorizing disco dancers and diners alike. In a startling revelation this week, the 70-year-old Posada revealed that key Cuban American lobbyists in this country financed his activities, in apparent violation of U.S. law, while the FBI and CIA looked the other way. Once again, history won't keep its mouth shut. Little by little, the truth comes out, and our policy in Cuba gets exposed for the sham it is. For almost 40 years, we have isolated Cuba on the assumption that the tiny island is a center of terrorism in the hemisphere, and year after year we gain new evidence that it is the U.S. that has terrorized Cuba and not the other way around. It's obvious from the Posada interview that terrorism is morally acceptable not only to Posada, who confessed to many of the bloody details of his 35 years of sabotage of civilian targets inside Cuba in a New York Times interview, but also to high U.S. government officials who trained this international killer and employed him in many nefarious operations. The FBI and CIA also suppressed evidence of Posada's connection to the late Jorge Mas Canosa, the powerful Miami-based anti-Castro lobbyist whose campaign contributions and political clout with U.S. presidents has shaped U.S.-Cuba policy for decades. Mas Canosa died last year, but his organization, the tax-exempt Cuban American National Foundation, begun in 1981 at the suggestion of the Reagan administration, continues to be one of the nation's most powerful lobbying organizations. His replacement as chairman of the foundation is also named by Posada in the Times interview as having financially supported his activities. Posada first met Mas Canosa when the two men spent seven months being trained by the CIA in guerrilla warfare and explosives back in the 1960s. While Mas Canosa later concentrated on business activities and political organizing in Miami, Posada became a full-time terrorist. He has admitted to many acts of sabotage in Cuba and was arrested by the Venezuelan government in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines civilian flight in which 73 people, including teenage members of the Cuban fencing team, were killed. He protested that he did not order the attack and blamed it on a Cuban colleague but was held for nine years until a spectacular escape in 1985 in which prison officials admitted being bribed. Posada told the Times that Mas Canosa and other leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation paid to get him out of Venezuela. In any case, soon after the jailbreak, Posada was hired to work on the illegal Nicaraguan Contra supply operation run out of the White House by Oliver North. The plot, in violation of a congressional ban on such activities, was exposed when one of the planes carrying arms was shot down over Nicaragua and the pilot ended up identifying Posada as a key link with the Reagan White House. It was revealed previously that Posada has long been a dangerous terrorist backed by both official and unofficial sources in the U.S. Last month, the Miami Herald ran a detailed expose of Posada's operations and connections with the anti-Castro element in this country. The Herald revealed that a Cuban American businessman, Antonio Jorge Alvarez, who knew Posada in Guatemala, contacted the FBI office in Miami last year concerning Posada's role in the hotel and restaurant bombings, but the FBI does not seem to have followed up. Posada alleged in the interview that the FBI agent contacted by Alvarez was "a very good friend." He added that the FBI never investigated his operation and added, "As you can see, the FBI and the CIA don't bother me, and I am neutral with them. Whenever I can help them I do." When Posada was asked why he is talking so freely for the first time, the terrorist reflected on his advanced age and his desire, after the death of Mas Canosa, to revitalize what he views as a flagging movement. Whatever his motives, his story, a key piece in this most unsavory chapter of U.S. history, is too well documented by supporting evidence--released under the Freedom of Information Act from the files of the FBI and the CIA--to be ignored. Ironically, the point of Posada's attacks on tourist targets was to prevent Western businesses from opening Cuba to foreign investment. Despite the visit of the pope last year and increasing presence of joint venture capitalism, we continue to treat Cuba as a pariah state because embittered exiles in Miami have a death hold on U.S. foreign policy toward the island. [Robert Scheer Is a Times Contributing Editor. Web Site: Http://www.robertscheer.com] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:52:04 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:52:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] A BOMBER'S TALE: Part I - Taking Aim At Castro Message-ID: <200704231952.l3NJq4hZ002956@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness Sunday - July 12, 1998 [source not listed] A BOMBER'S TALE: Part I Taking Aim At Castro Key Cuba Foe Claims Exiles' Backing By ANN LOUISE BARDACH and LARRY ROHTER MIAMI - A Cuban exile who has waged a campaign of bombings and assassination attempts aimed at toppling Fidel Castro says that his efforts were supported financially for more than a decade by the Cuban-American leaders of one of America's most influential lobbying groups. The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, said he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba last year at hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing an Italian tourist and alarming the Cuban Government. Mr. Posada was schooled in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's. In a series of tape-recorded interviews at a walled Caribbean compound, Mr. Posada said the hotel bombings and other operations had been supported by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Its founder and head, Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last year, was embraced at the White House by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. A powerful force in both Florida and national elections, and a prodigious campaign donor, Mr. Mas played a decisive role in persuading Mr. Clinton to change his mind and follow a course of sanctions and isolation against Mr. Castro's Cuba. Although the tax-exempt foundation has declared that it seeks to bring down Cuba's Communist Government solely through peaceful means, Mr. Posada said leaders of the foundation discreetly financed his operations. Mr. Mas personally supervised the flow of money and logistical support, he said. "Jorge controlled everything," Mr. Posada said. "Whenever I needed money, he said to give me $5,000, give me $10,000, give me $15,000, and they sent it to me." Over the years, Mr. Posada estimated, Mr. Mas sent him more than $200,000. "He never said, 'This is from the foundation,' " Mr. Posada recalled. Rather, he said with a chuckle, the money arrived with the message, "This is for the church." Foundation leaders did not respond to repeated telephone calls and letters requesting an interview to discuss their relationship with Mr. Posada. But in a brief statement faxed to The New York Times, the group denied a role in his operations, saying "any allegation, implication, or suggestion that members of the Cuban American National Foundation have financed any alleged 'acts of violence' against the Castro regime are totally and patently false." The Recluse Talking on His Terms, After Years of Silence Mr. Posada, 70, has long refused to talk to journalists; his autobiography, published in 1994, provided only a sketchy account of his dealings with the foundation's leaders. But in two days of interviews, he talked openly for the first time about those relationships and how they figured in a fight to which he has devoted his life, a fight that has left him far from his declared goal of toppling the hemisphere's last Communist state. His motives for agreeing to the interviews are not easy to pin down. Mr. Posada, who has survived several attempts on his life, told a friend recently that he was afraid he would not live long enough to tell his story. For the first time, Mr. Posada also described his role in some of the great cold war events in which Cuban exiles were key players. He was trained for the Bay of Pigs at a camp in Guatemala, but did not participate in the landing on Cuban beaches after the Kennedy Administration withheld air support from the first wave of rebels, whose attack quickly foundered. It was Cuban exiles like Mr. Posada who were recruited by the C.I.A. for the subsequent attempts on Mr. Castro's life. Jailed for one of the most infamous anti-Cuban attacks, the 1976 bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner, he eventually escaped from a Venezuelan prison to join the centerpiece of the Reagan White House's anti-Communist crusade in the Western Hemisphere: Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North's clandestine effort to supply arms to Nicaraguan contras. Mr. Posada denied any role in the Cubana bombing, which killed 73 people, many of them teen-age members of Cuba's national fencing team. He agreed through an intermediary to meet with The New York Times, provided his current residence and alias, and the location of the interviews, were not divulged. Some of what he said about his past can be verified through recently declassified Government documents, as well as interviews with former foundation members and American officials. But he made several claims that rest solely on his word, including an assertion that he has agents inside the Cuban military and that American law enforcement authorities maintained an attitude of benign neglect toward him for most of his career, allowing him to remain free and active. Mr. Posada said all payments from the exile leaders to him were made in cash, and he said he did not know whether the money came from personal, business or foundation accounts. He said that the money was used for his living expenses and for operations and that Mr. Mas told him he did not want to know the details of his activities. In the interviews he was generally expansive on broad questions of philosophy but evasive on specifics. He spoke in Spanish and English, with difficulty, his speech distorted by the severe damage done to the nerves of his tongue in a 1990 attempt on his life. Mr. Posada said he was angered by recent newspaper accounts of his activities and eager near the end of his life to put his version of events on record, perhaps reinvigorating a movement he sees as lacking energy and direction since Mr. Mas's death. The exiles' foundation, created in 1981, has sought to portray itself as the responsible voice of the Cuban exile community, dedicated to weakening the Castro regime through politics rather than force. Thanks to that approach and millions in campaign donations, the foundation became one of Washington's most effective lobbying organizations and a principal architect of American policy toward Cuba. Any evidence that the foundation or its leaders were dispensing money to Republicans and Democrats while underwriting bombings could weaken the group's claim to legitimacy. That kind of activity could also violate the Logan Act, which makes illegal any "conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country." Mr. Posada's remarks hinted that the foundation's public advocacy of purely nonviolent opposition to Mr. Castro was a carefully crafted fiction. Asked if he functioned as the military wing to the foundation's political wing, much as the Irish Republican Army does for Sinn Fein, he replied, "It looks like that," and laughed. The Money Assertions and Denials On Sources of Support In the interviews and in his autobiography, "The Roads of the Warrior," Mr. Posada said he had received financial support from Mr. Mas and Feliciano Foyo, treasurer of the group, as well as Alberto Hernandez, who succeeded Mr. Mas as chairman. Dr. Hernandez and Mr. Foyo did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and it was unclear whether they were aware of how Mr. Posada might have used any money they provided. In his autobiography, Mr. Posada said Foundation leaders helped pay his medical and living expenses and paid for his transportation from Venezuela to Central America after his 1985 jailbreak. At times, Mr. Posada said, cash was delivered from Miami by fellow exiles, including Gaspar Jimenez, who was jailed in Mexico in the 1976 killing of a Cuban diplomat there. Mr. Jimenez is now an employee of the medical clinic that Dr. Hernandez operates in Miami, according to employees at the office. Mr. Jimenez did not respond to requests for comment. When the bombs began exploding last year at Cuban hotels, the Government there asserted that the attacks had been organized and paid for by exiles operating out of Miami, a claim it bolstered with the videotape of an operative confessing to carrying out some of the bombings. More recently, reports in The Miami Herald and the state-controlled Cuban press tied the operation to Mr. Posada. However, he told The New York Times that American authorities had made no effort to question him about the case. He attributed that lack of action in part to his longstanding relationship with American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. "As you can see," he said, "the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. don't bother me, and I am neutral with them. Whenever I can help them, I do." Mr. Posada gave conflicting accounts of his contacts with American authorities. Initially he spoke of enduring ties with United States intelligence agencies and of close friendship with at least two current F.B.I. officials, including, he said, an important official in the Washington office. "I know a very high-up person there," he said. Later he asked that those comments be omitted from any article and said it had been years since he had had these close dealings. An American Government official said the C.I.A. has not had a relationship with Mr. Posada "in decades," and the F.B.I. also denied his assertions. "The F.B.I. does not now have nor have we ever had a longstanding relationship with Posada," said John F. Lewis, Jr. who as assistant director in charge of the national security division supervises all counterintelligence and counterterrorism work for the agency. Declassified documents unearthed in Washington by the National Security Archives support Mr. Posada's suggestion that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had detailed knowledge of his operations against Cuba from the early 1960's to the mid-1970's. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel to the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations, said he had reviewed many of the F.B.I.'s classified files about anti-Castro Cubans from 1978 and had noted many instances in which the bureau turned a blind eye to possible violations of the law. As he put it, "When I read some of those things, and I'm an old federal prosecutor, I thought, 'Why isn't someone being indicted for this?' " On one point Mr. Posada was direct and unrepentant: he still intends to try to kill Mr. Castro, and he believes violence is the best method for ending Communism in Cuba. "It is the only way to create an uprising there," Mr. Posada said. "Castro will never change, never. There are several ways to make a revolution, and I have been working on some." Within militant Cuban exile circles, Mr. Posada is a legendary figure, celebrated for his tenacity and dedication to the anti-Castro cause. He has at various times also worked for Venezuelan, Salvadoran and Guatemalan intelligence or security agencies because, he explained, he wanted "to fight against the Communists, the people who helped Cuba." But the Cuban Government regards him as a terrorist and a "monstrous criminal" responsible for numerous acts of violence against official installations and personnel, on the island and off, and has called on the United States to curb his activities. Mr. Posada proudly admitted authorship of the hotel bomb attacks last year. He described them as acts of war intended to cripple a totalitarian regime by depriving it of foreign tourism and investment. "We didn't want to hurt anybody," he said. "We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come anymore. We don't want any more foreign investment." The bombs were also intended, Mr. Posada said, to sow doubts abroad about the stability of the regime, to make Cuba think he had operatives in the military and to encourage internal opposition. "People are not afraid anymore," he said. "They talk openly in the street. But they need something to start the fire, and that's my goal." The Bombings A Mastermind Reveals Some Key Secrets For several months the attacks did indeed discourage tourism. With a rueful chuckle, Mr. Posada described the Italian tourist's death as a freak accident, but he declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, "I sleep like a baby." "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop," he added. "That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time." In Havana last September, authorities arrested a 25-year-old Salvadoran, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, and accused him of carrying out a half-dozen of the hotel attacks. Mr. Posada said Mr. Cruz Leon, whom he described as a mercenary, had been working for him, but said "maybe a dozen" others reporting to him remained at large. The hotel bombings were organized from El Salvador and Guatemala, Mr. Posada said. Explosives were obtained through his contacts there, and subordinates in turn recruited couriers like Mr. Cruz Leon to take the explosives into Cuba and detonate them in carefully selected targets. "Everything is compartmentalized," Mr. Posada said. "I know everybody, but they don't know me." "This was an inside operation in Cuba," he added, explaining that he was now trying to think of another way to disrupt the Cuban economy and demonstrate to the Cuban people that Mr. Castro's security apparatus is not all-powerful and all-knowing. "Very soon there will be exciting news," he predicted. Mr. Posada said he had several ongoing operations, including one that resulted in Cuba's capture of three of his colleagues in early June. "Castro is keeping this a secret," he said. "I don't understand why." In response to several questions about operational details that he clearly did not want to answer, he jokingly said, "I take the Fifth Amendment." While agreeing to allow the interviews to be taped, he declined to be photographed, saying he did not want to provide Cuban agents with any information that would help them hunt him down. "The reason that I last so long is that nobody knows how I am," he explained. "Not having pictures of my pretty face has kept me alive a long time." In Guatemala in 1990, he was attacked and gravely wounded in what he describes as an assassination attempt mounted by his enemies at Cuban intelligence. He was hit with a dozen bullets, one of which shattered his jaw and nearly severed his tongue, requiring several rounds of reconstructive surgery. He said that during his long recuperation in El Salvador, some of his expenses were paid by Dr. Hernandez, the current chairman of the Cuban-American foundation, whom he described as "a great Cuban patriot and a dear friend." Just last year, he said, a Houston surgeon whom he also described as a friend flew to El Salvador and performed further surgery on him. Mr. Posada detailed instances of support from foundation leaders throughout his career. Mr. Mas, he said, helped organize his escape from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, and then helped settle him in El Salvador, where he joined the White House-directed operation that led to the Iran-contra scandal. "All the money that I received when I escaped from the jail," he said, "it was not that much, but it was through Jorge." Mr. Posada said Mr. Mas was also very much aware that he was behind the hotel bombing campaign last year. But the two men had a longstanding agreement, he said, never to discuss the details of any operation that Mr. Posada was involved in. "He never met operators, never," Mr. Posada said. "You ask for money from him, and he said, 'I don't want to know anything.' " Any discussion was "not specific, because he was intelligent enough to know who knows how to do the things and who doesn't know." Mr. Mas, he added, "was afraid of the telephone." "You don't talk like that on the telephone." Asked when he had last visited the United States, he answered with a laugh and a question of his own: "Officially or unofficially?" A State Department official said Mr. Posada was reported to have visited Miami in the summer of 1996. Mr. Posada acknowledged that he has at least four passports, all in different names. He regards himself as a Venezuelan citizen, but he has a Salvadoran passport bearing the name Ramon Medina Rodriguez, the nom de guerre he assumed during the Iran-contra affair, and a Guatemalan passport issued in the name of Juan Jose Rivas Lopez. He also reluctantly admitted to having an American passport. But he would not discuss how he had obtained it or disclose the name in it, saying only that he occasionally uses it to visit the United States "unofficially," and had once used it to gain refuge in the American Embassy when he was caught in the middle of a revolution in the West African country of Sierra Leone. "I have a lot of passports," he said with a laugh. "No problem." He added, "If I want to go to Miami, I have different ways to go. But I don't go. You can't control Customs people. They can do anything." "Then," he said, "Your friends can't help you." Images: Photos: Luis Posada Carriles, bottom right, who has waged a campaign aimed at toppling Fidel Castro, says Jorge Mas Canosa, top left, and other Cuban-American exile leaders gave him money over the years. (From left, Susan Greenwood for The New York Times (1992); United Press International (1982); Associated Press (1976)(pg. 1); KNOWING THE RIGHT PEOPLE: The Cuban-American National Foundation provided these undated photographs of Jorge Mas Canosa, its founder and president until his death last year, with Presidents Bush and Clinton. (Reuters/Archive Photos)(pg. 10) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:53:44 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:53:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] A BOMBER'S TALE: Part 2 - the 'Horrendous Matter' of a Bombing Campaign Message-ID: <200704231953.l3NJriBe002968@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness The New York Times via NY Transfer - July 12, 2007 http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040830/005902.html A BOMBER'S TALE; A Cuban Exile Details the 'Horrendous Matter' of a Bombing Campaign By ANN LOUISE BARDACH and LARRY ROHTER During the summer of 1997, bomb explosions ripped through some of Havana's most fashionable hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing a foreign tourist and sowing confusion and nervousness throughout Cuba. It was something shocking and inexplicable in a police state notorious for its tight security, and from one end of the island to the other, people speculated about who might be responsible. At his office here in the mountains of Central America, a Cuban-American businessman named Antonio Jorge (Tony) Alvarez was certain he knew the answer. For nearly a year, he had watched with growing concern as two of his partners -- working with a mysterious gray-haired man who had a Cuban accent and multiple passports -- acquired explosives and detonators, congratulating each other on a job well done every time a bomb went off in Cuba. What is more, Mr. Alvarez overheard the men talk of assassinating Fidel Castro at a conference of Latin American heads of state to be held in Margarita Island, Venezuela. Alarmed, he went to Guatemalan security officials. When they did not respond, he wrote a letter that eventually found its way into the hands of Venezuelan intelligence agents and officials of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Venezuelan authorities reacted energetically to the information, searching for explosives on the island where the meeting was to be held. But in the United States the letter elicited what Mr. Alvarez described as a surprisingly indifferent response. An agent in the Miami office reached him by phone, Mr. Alvarez recalled in recent interviews, and said a colleague would call soon to arrange to speak with him. In the meantime, he urged Mr. Alvarez to leave Guatemala immediately. "He told me my life was in danger, that these were dangerous people, and urged me to get out of Guatemala," said Mr. Alvarez, a 62-year-old engineer. "But I never heard from him again." Had the F.B.I. met with Mr. Alvarez, agents would have heard a remarkable tale about the anti-Castro underworld. They would have learned that the gray-haired man was Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro exile who has devoted his life to overthrowing the Cuban Government. They would also have heard about possible links between the plotters in Guatemala and Cuban exiles living in Union City, N.J., who Mr. Alvarez said were wiring money to the plotters. That allegation raises questions about whether American laws were broken in the Cuban hotel bombings, in which an Italian tourist was killed and three people were wounded. John F. Lewis Jr., an F.B.I. assistant director in charge of national security issues, declined to comment on Mr. Alvarez's letter or whether any agent had spoken with Mr. Alvarez. F.B.I. officials would say only that as a matter of policy they respond to reports of possible acts of violence anywhere. But Mr. Alvarez says the F.B.I. showed a studious lack of curiosity about the bombings. And Mr. Posada, who acknowledged in an interview that he had directed the operation, said he had no indication that the F.B.I. was investigating him. In the interview, Mr. Posada described the F.B.I. agent who had phoned Mr. Alvarez in Guatemala, Jorge Kiszinski, as "a very good friend" whom he had known a long time. "He's going to retire this year," said Mr. Posada. Mr. Lewis of the F.B.I. said such a friendship between the two men was implausible. "Agent Kiszinski has had two contacts with him in his entire life, the last of which was a number of years ago," he said. Mr. Posada expressed confidence that the F.B.I. was not examining his operations in Guatemala, because "the first person they would want to talk to is me, and nobody called." In addition, he said, no one from the bureau has tried to interview his collaborators. "I would know," he said. Mr. Alvarez, in contrast, has been embittered by his experiences as a whistle-blower and believes that Mr. Posada has long provided information to American authorities. "I think they are all in cahoots, Posada and the F.B.I.," he said. "I risked my life and my business, and they did nothing." In his letter alerting Guatemalan authorities to the plot, Mr. Alvarez wrote that while he opposed the Castro Government and Communism, "I believe that terrorism is not the way to resolve the Cuban (or any other) situation." Mr. Alvarez said Cuban exile politics and plotting were the last thing on his mind when he first came here in 1996 with hopes of building electric power plants in rural areas. On the advice of friends, he hired a fellow Cuban exile who has lived here since 1970, Jose Francisco (Pepe) Alvarez, to manage a company he had set up. To run another, he recruited Jose Burgos, a recently retired veteran of the Guatemalan Army Corps of Engineers who had worked, Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Posada said, as a bodyguard for the family of a former Guatemalan president. In interviews here, both Mr. Burgos and Pepe Alvarez denied any connection to the hotel bombings, although Pepe Alvarez said he had known Mr. Posada for 30 years. "He and I are old now, too old for that sort of thing," Pepe Alvarez said. "Hell, I'm the same age as Fidel Castro." A Strange Visitor Shakes Things Up At first, Tony Alvarez said, things seemed to be running smoothly. But he soon noticed that his partners were spending much of their time with a strange visitor, a Cuban with a shattered jaw and a strangled voice "like that of a deaf-mute," giving their guest free rein to make phone calls from the office to El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras, Spain and the United States. Eventually, Mr. Alvarez said, his partners confided to him that the visitor was the infamous Luis Posada Carriles, known to his friends by the ironic nickname Bambi. His other noms de guerre include Solo, in honor of the dashing spy character in the 1960's television series "The Man from Uncle," and Lupo, an acronym meaning wolf in Italian. As events rapidly made clear, Mr. Posada's main interest was not in making money or helping Guatemala rebuild, but in waging his own private war on Cuba and Fidel Castro. At the office one day early last year, Mr. Alvarez recalled, Mr. Posada came by and handed out "a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills" to his partners. They, in turn, "were going to an electronics store and buying detonators and small calculators with timers" of the type that could be used with bombs, he said. That was suspicious enough, Mr. Alvarez said. But his biggest surprise came when he found explosives in an office closet. "In a plastic bag," he recalled, "they had 23 tubes of stuff made by the Mexican military industry, supposed to be the latest in explosive materials in the world. I saw it." In addition to Mr. Posada, two Guatemalans, whom Mr. Alvarez identified as Marlon Gonzalez and Jorge Rodriguez, began to frequent the office. Both men were introduced to him as friends and former army buddies of Mr. Burgos. During a recent interview, Mr. Posada said they were his bomb makers who joined his cause because "that was how to make the big bucks." Efforts to contact the two men here were unsuccessful. Mr. Posada said he had learned in May that Mr. Gonzalez had been murdered. Asked why and by whom, he replied: "Who knows? He talked too much." Mr. Burgos denied that he had ever met either of the two men Mr. Posada identified as bomb makers; he acknowledged that a previous job on military road projects had given him access to Guatemalan Army explosives warehouses. In April 1997, the first reports of an explosion in the discotheque of Havana's most fashionable hotel, the Melia Cohiba, were published in Miami. Those accounts were promptly denied by the Cuban Government, which relies on tourism as its principal source of hard currency. Over the next five months, however, nearly a dozen explosions occurred at hotels, restaurants and discotheques in Havana and the chic beach resort of Varadero. Cuba was forced to acknowledge the attacks. All told, Mr. Posada said, it took "maybe a month or two" to organize the bombings. Asked how the explosives had been smuggled in, Mr. Posada laughed and replied: "You know what a circus is? Inside an elephant." It was a cryptic remark, but perhaps a true one. A Salvadoran arrested by Cubans and charged in several of the bombings had worked for a private security agency in El Salvador. According to his mother, one of his assignments was protecting a Mexican circus that toured Central America and later traveled to Cuba. Tony Alvarez said he had overheard talk about another possible smuggling route. "Posada, Pepe and Jose talked about the success of the bombs they sent to Cuba," he said. "They also talked about a senior mechanic who works for Aviateca who travels frequently to Cuba and who has been helping them." Aviateca, the Guatemalan airline, flies to Havana. At another point, he added, his partners offered his secretary "an all-expenses-paid trip to Cuba in a five-star hotel, in return for which all she had to do was deliver a package to a certain person who would come to the hotel to meet her." According to Mr. Alvarez, the secretary declined, "because she didn't want to be involved in anything that appeared dishonest or illegal." Intercepting a Fax, And Seeking Help Then, in August, at the height of the bombing campaign in Cuba, Tony Alvarez said, he intercepted the fax that Mr. Posada had sent from El Salvador and signed Solo. Mr. Posada acknowledged that he had written the document, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times from a Venezuelan official. The fax refers to a problem Mr. Posada had at the time: the reluctance of American news organizations to take seriously the claims of Miami exile groups that bombs were going off in Cuba. "If there is no publicity, the job is useless," the message read. "The American newspapers publish nothing that has not been confirmed. I need all the data from the discotheque in order to try to confirm it. If there is no publicity, there is no payment." The message also discussed payments for bombings, saying that money would be "sent by Western Union from New Jersey" to "liquidate the account for the hotel." The document instructed Pepe Alvarez to collect electronic transfers of $800 each from four Cuban exiles there. One, identified in the fax as Abel Hernandez, appears to be the owner of Mi Bandera (My Flag), a supermarket and restaurant in Union City, a heavily Cuban-American town just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. At the restaurant's entrance, one of Mr. Posada's paintings faces a photograph of Mr. Hernandez arm in arm with Jorge Mas Canosa, the late founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Mr. Hernandez denied knowing or sending money to Mr. Posada. The other three men named in the message also live in Union City and belong to the Union of Former Political Prisoners, an exile group whose members have served long terms in Mr. Castro's jails and are committed to his overthrow by any means. It is not clear whether the money was actually transferred or whether those named as sending it knew of its purpose. In the interview, Mr. Posada asked a reporter whether the four men in Union City "could get in trouble for this." Mr. Alvarez said the fax so alarmed him that he wrote a letter about "this horrendous matter" and gave it Guatemalan intelligence. Mr. Alvarez also recalls overhearing plans for an attack on Mr. Castro when he was scheduled to visit Guatemala in December 1996 and again at the meeting in Margarita Island in November 1997. Venezuela responded to the information with alarm: Mr. Posada had served as chief of operations for Venezuelan intelligence for seven years, and in 1976 had been arrested in Caracas on charges of blowing up a Cuban airliner and killing all 73 persons on board. He spent nearly nine years in prison there, so he had both the knowledge and the motive needed to carry out an attack on Mr. Castro on Venezuelan soil. Mr. Castro attended the meeting without incident in early November, flying in with a protective convoy of three airplanes. But before his arrival, more than 250 Venezuelan and Cuban agents combed the luxury Isla Bonita Hotel, where the gathering was to be held, and the Government expelled of the Cuban exiles who had flocked to the island ahead of Mr. Castro. There was, however, a curious arrest shortly before the summit meeting: Four men in a boat were stopped by the American Coast Guard off Puerto Rico. Almost immediately, the leader of the group, Angel Alfonso Aleman, of Union City, blurted out that he was on a mission to kill Mr. Castro, according to court testimony by Federal officers. American law enforcement officials quickly determined that the boat was registered to a member of the executive board of the Cuban-American National Foundation. In addition, one of the guns aboard was traced back to the group's president, according to court documents. The trail also led to Union City. Mr. Alfonso, who spent 18 years in Mr. Castro's prisons, is a past president of the Union of Former Political Prisoners and a friend of the four men listed on the fax, group members said. A group member said Mr. Alfonso told him that "Pepe Alvarez is one of the names we use to get money to Posada." For his part, Mr. Posada acknowledged a warm friendship with Mr. Alfonso, whom he referred to by his nom de guerre, La Cota, which means the parrot. He said that Mr. Alfonso was a "very good and dedicated person" and that he had first met him in Miami in 1991. Mr. Posada denied knowing the four men whose names were on the fax he had written, saying only that "somebody told me" to expect the money. Mr. Posada said he had had nothing to do with the Puerto Rico plot, which he described as amateurish. He expressed surprise that the men had used weapons registered to a leader of the foundation. "It doesn't look too professional to do that," he said. "I was surprised that he talked, that he said, 'I want to kill Castro.' " Holding an imaginary rifle aloft, he said that if he had been aboard the boat, he would have told American officials that "those guns were for shooting birds." A Bomber's Tale Next: Decades of Intrigue. Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban exile who talked in a series of interviews about his violent efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro, tells of a long career as a commando and his links with the Central Intelligence Agency. GRAPHIC: Photos: PICKING UP THE PIECES -- Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, above, a Salvadoran arrested in several hotel attacks, showing where he hid explosives in one instance. Workers hauled debris from a Havana hotel last summer. (Reuters); (Canadian Press)(pg. 10); PROVIDING EVIDENCE -- An excerpt from the fax that Luis Posada Carriles acknowledges sending to associates in Guatemala after the hotel bombing campaign started in Cuba. Mr. Posada was frustrated by American news organizations' reluctance to report the attacks without official Cuban acknowledgment that they took place. The excerpt reads as follows: "If there is no publicity, the job is useless. The American newspapers don't publish anything that hasn't been confirmed. I need all the data on the discotheque so I can try to confirm it. If there is no publicity, there is no payment. I await news today, tomorrow I will be away for two days. Greetings, Solo"(pg. 11) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:54:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:54:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] May Day: Cubans to Protest Impunity, Demand Justice Message-ID: <200704231954.l3NJsQmF002980@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles May Day, Cubans will Protest Impunity and Demand Justice Havana, April 23 (acn) On May Day, the Cuban people will demand justice and energetically condemn impunity after Luis Posada Carriles was released by US authorities, a call made over the weekend by the Cuban Workers Federation states. The labor organization has issued a call on all Cubans to participate in the marches to celebrate International Worker's Day and demand the notorious assassin be tried for his crimes. Meanwhile, the annual meeting whereby the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) meet with the island's labor movement was presided Saturday by CTC general-secretary Salvador Valdes Mesa. Jose A. Carrillo Gomez, head of the FAR Political Department, presented the armed forces report to the workers. The idea of the armed forces reporting to the workers, a tradition during the Cuban revolution, is unprecedented and considered a motive of pride for Cuban workers. Carrillo said the 2006 account includes, "The significant advances obtained in preparing the country for defense, thanks to the effort of the members of our institution and the entire nation." The CTC National Secretariat report to the membership was also approved at the meeting by the plenary of the organization. It covered the implementation of the tasks since last year's 19th CTC Congress. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:55:36 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:55:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Haitian Foreign Min. Begins Visit to Cuba Message-ID: <200704231955.l3NJtaPB003008@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Haitian Foreign Minister Begins Visit to Cuba Havana, April 23 (acn) Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship [?sic] Jean Renald Clerisme arrived in Cuba on official visit at the invitation of his counterpart Felipe Perez Roque. The Hatian official's visit is seen as a way to strengthen bilateral relations between the two Caribbean nations. Jean Renald Clerisme and Felipe Perez Roque as scheduled to hold talks and sign an agreement between the two countries' Foreign Ministries, Granma daily reported. Cuba's history is linked to its neighbor to the East, the first independent nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. The two countries share strong cultural bonds and are both members of the Non-Aligned Movement, currently chaired by Cuba. The also maintain ties of cooperation, especially in the fields of health and education. During his visit, Clerisme will also meet with other Cuban government and Communist Party leaders and visit places of historic and cultural interest. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Apr 23 15:56:11 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:56:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Iran's Foreign Min. on Official Visit to Cuba Message-ID: <200704231956.l3NJuBrD003020@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Iran's Foreign Minister on Official Visit to Cuba Havana, April 23 (acn) Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is on an official visit to Cuba at the invitation of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. The visit by the Iranian official is a sign of the excellent relations between the two countries and the desire to further strengthen them, notes the Cuban Foreign Ministry. Mottaki is scheduled to meet with top Cuban government and Communist Party leaders. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 13:53:58 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:53:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Herbert: The Imus Virus Message-ID: <200704241753.l3OHrwsd011250@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The New York Times - Apr 23, 2007 http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/opinion/23herbert.html Words as Weapons By BOB HERBERT Just days after Don Imus was taken off the air for a slur hurled at members of the Rutgers women's basketball team, a police sergeant conducting a roll call at a precinct in Brooklyn is reported to have called the three female officers in the room "hos" as he gave them an order to stand up. The women, two of whom are black and one a Latina, refused to stand. Another officer, unable to resist the great "fun" of mocking his female colleagues, is reported to have called out, "No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos." The women said they were stunned almost to the point of disbelief by the comments. They were the only women in the gathering of 17 police officers in the room, including the supervising sergeant. There was a sickening quality to the moment. The women said they felt violated, hurt and humiliated. The incident occurred on April 15, a Sunday, at the 70th Precinct, which gained national notoriety in 1997 as the precinct in which Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was sodomized by police officers with a broken broomstick. The three women, Tronnette Jackson, 36, Karen Nelson, 31, and Maria Gomez, 29, said they were attending a routine roll call session when Sgt. Carlos Mateo, referring to them, said, "Stand up, hos." The Imus controversy, in which Mr. Imus had referred to the Rutgers players as "nappy-headed hos," was still big news and on everyone's mind. The three women remained seated. They said another police officer, Ralph Montanez, then chimed in: "No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos." The women remained silent, and seated. Sergeant Mateo is reported to have said, "Jackson and Gomez, why aren't you standing?" Another police officer said to the sergeant, "They are offended and they are protesting that you called them hos." This is just one example of the myriad ways in which racist and sexist comments like Mr. Imus's help to poison the atmosphere all around us. Another example occurred two days prior to this incident when a narcotics sergeant in Queens is alleged to have "jokingly" said to a black female officer, "Don't give me no lip or I'll have to call you a nappy-headed ho." One of the toughest points to get across in this society is that racism and sexism are always contemptible, and are never harmless. The targets of racist and sexist comments should not just swallow the insults. They should react as if they'd been slapped in the face. The three women in the 70th Precinct case have decided to fight back. Their initial complaint to Sergeant Mateo, immediately after the roll call, was brushed aside, they said. They then complained to the precinct's integrity control officer and hired a lawyer, Bonita Zelman. This morning they will file a complaint in federal court, asserting that the degrading comments at the roll call amounted to illegal discrimination against them based on their gender and ethnic background. This is not a small matter. It's fair to wonder, for example, how eager a supervisor might be to recommend a major promotion for an employee he refers to as a "ho." "We have tremendous concern about the effect of language like this on women police officers," said Ms. Zelman, "particularly women of color trying to make their way in the largely white male bureaucracy of a police department." Also concerned about the effect of language like this is the police commissioner, Ray Kelly. Discussing the 70th Precinct case, he told me yesterday that he found the comments "despicable." He declined to go into much detail because the matter is being investigated by the department's Equal Employment Opportunity division. But the department let it be known that Sergeant Mateo had been transferred out of the 70th Precinct and would no longer be serving in a supervisory position. Both he and Officer Montanez could be subject to disciplinary charges. Commissioner Kelly said he found the entire matter "very, very disturbing" because the city had worked hard over the past few years to make the Police Department a place where women and minorities "could feel at home." The Queens narcotics sergeant is also likely to face disciplinary action by the department, which has been infected, like other organizations around the country, with what Ms. Zelman calls the "Imus virus." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 14:00:41 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:00:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Sheehan: Mass Murderers; Doonesbury: Impeach Bush in VT Message-ID: <200704241800.l3OI0fQ7011319@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl BuzzFlash - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/961 Mass Murderers by Cindy Sheehan "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." -Chief Seattle, 1855 Last night, at the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner, we did not get the usual "stellar" comedy performance from George Bush in deference to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Who can forget that "uproariously hilarious" bit he did looking for WMD under the couch in his office in 2004 shortly before my son was killed in Iraq by this joker in chief? How nice that George reined in his comedic impulses for the families and friends of the murdered VT students.because I can assure you, their families are finding nothing funny right now. Troops dying unnecessarily every day in Iraq has not even slowed down this annual event with correspondents and George Bush has not found it in the slight bit crucial to temper his comedy routines in deference to the families that he has destroyed by his war for profit in Iraq . By all accounts, the mass murderer of VT's horrific events on Monday was a disturbed loner and there was plenty of warnings and hints that he may do something violent, but no one could predict the magnitude of the horror. >From accounts of George Bush' early life (Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank) from thinking it was funny to put firecrackers in the anus' of frogs and blowing them up to burning pledges to his fraternity with cigarettes and his alcohol and cocaine abuse.we, as a nation, should have seen his mass murderous tendencies coming from leagues away. Instead we rolled over and played apathetic when he was unconstitutionally selected by the Supreme Court as President in 2000. He gleefully made fun of people he was about to execute as governor of Texas , and he and Al ("I don't recall") Gonzales never had an ounce of compassion for a single soul condemned to death. In early August of 2005, 21 Marines from Ohio were murdered by their Commander in Chief's homicidal tendencies and there was no national mourning for them. Not one elected official called for a nation-wide lowering of flags to half mast for these brave souls who were mortally abused by George's war of terror. The cable news networks did not go on 24 hour reportage of the events, and person, who killed them. There were no profiles of their lives. No bereaved family member had the opportunity to tell America what a wonderful son, friend, lover, student, athlete, was lost in the desert of Iraq : too young, and just as random, violently, or senselessly as the ones killed in Blacksburg , Va. last week. My friend, Vickie Castro's son, Jonathan, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a mess tent incident shortly before Christmas in 2004. Jon was Vickie's only child. He was a brilliant, handsome man with a bright future ahead of him. He made a horrible, but honorable, mistake by enlisting in the US Military to be sent off to war to die to enrich Dick and George and their buddies, and he and his family paid dearly for that honest mistake. The flags may have been lowered in his hometown, but no one, but Jonathan's closest friends and family mourn him to this day in this country. Jonathan's coffin wasn't even allowed to be photographed and his body was returned to his grieving family with the utmost secrecy as if to cover the shame of this rogue state. We, as a nation, were rightly shocked, saddened and repulsed by the murders of 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. My heart grieves with the friends and families of the fallen. I know what a ghastly path they have been forced to step off on by a maniac who unthinkably had easy access to weapons of limited (but infinite) destruction. Another sociopathic killer with inexplicable and unconstrained access to the planet's most deadly arsenal, George Bush, has condemned 100 times 33 of our nation's bravest and brightest to death and most people walk around indifferent to the fact that our White House is inhabited by a serial killer of historic proportions. Bloody King George has even more tragically claimed the lives of more than 20,000 times 33 innocent victims in Iraq . Where is the public horror and outrage over these killings? Where was the 24 hour news coverage this past week when over 500 people were killed in Baghdad and 65 decomposing bodies were found? I was in DC this past week when George's bullet proof entourage (he always travels like he is outside the Green Zone in Iraq---how sad to have so many enemies you have to be put in a prison of your own making) hurried down to Blacksburg to participate in memorial services for the slain---yet, he has not attended one service for one of his murder victims in Iraq. Many people will justify this reaction to the crimes at Virginia Tech and lack of reaction to our murdered soldiers and people of Iraq by saying that our troops volunteer and the people of Iraq are uncounted collateral damage. Consequently, because we have an all volunteer military our children are getting what they deserve and because BushCo took another tragedy of 9-11 and exploited those needless deaths to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, the people of Iraq deserve this constant violence? Thirty-three dead is sickeningly yet realistically a good day in Iraq . When do we Americans rise up and insist the carnage end for our brothers and sisters there? Life is life and it is all precious---whether students in college, soldiers in the field, or inhabitants of an occupied, defenseless country. Until we as a nation wake up to the fact that our state's directed violence to any human demeans and implicates each and every one of us in these crimes, the actions of April 16th and state sponsored horrors that have been perpetrated on a daily basis since Sept 11, 2001, will continue. True peace and true justice are not possible when our national compassion is limited to a certain demographic of victim. Until we wake up and abhor and are appalled at violence even when it is not directed at unborn babies, or mostly white Americans, we are all condemned to living under regimes that condone, profit from, order and commit mass murder. Please join Cindy, The Camp Casey Peace Institute, Gold Star Families for Peace, CODEPINK , Congress Reps John Conyers (D-Mi) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and others, as we march on the Nation's Capital on May 14th demanding an end to the violence in the Middle East and for the impeachment of the Bush Regime. *** Doonesbury on the campaign in Vermont to Impeach Bush: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db070409.gif http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db070410.gif http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db070411.gif From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 14:20:04 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:20:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Barack Obama and His Slumlord Patron Message-ID: <200704241820.l3OIK4YG011374@viola.tamara-b.org> [Part Two is appended following Part One. Also below, Obama's response. See the original URLs for links and related material. -NYTr] sent by Kelly Pierce - Apr 24, 2007 Barack Obama and his slumlord patron On Monday, the Chicago Sun-times began the first of an exhaustive two-part investigation of his relationship with a Chicago slumlord. Below is the main article from the first day. The series contains a number of sidebar articles and photographs. The article below and related material can be found at: Chicago Sun-Times - April 23, 2007 http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/353829,CST-NWS-rez23.article ABOUT THIS SERIES Staff reporter Tim Novak examines previously unreported government-funded, low-income housing deals involving Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the indicted political fund-raiser. Obama and his Rezko ties DAY ONE OF TWO BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter/tnovak at suntimes.com For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side. It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony" Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on. But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building. Obama has been friends with Rezko for 17 years. Rezko has been a political patron to Obama and many others, helping to raise millions of dollars for them through his own contributions and by hosting fund-raisers in his home. Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko's low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems -- including squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers. The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found. "Their buildings were falling apart," said a former city official. "They just didn't pay attention to the condition of these buildings." Eleven of Rezko's buildings were in Obama's state Senate district. Obama, now a U.S. senator running for president, has come under fire over his friendship with Rezko, who was charged last fall with demanding kickbacks on state business deals under Gov. Blagojevich. Much of the criticism has centered on two real estate deals involving Obama's South Side mansion. In the first, Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price for a doctor's home, while Rezko's wife paid the doctor full price for the vacant lot next door. Then -- a few months before Rezko was indicted -- Obama bought part of that lot from Rezko's wife. But Obama's ties with Rezko go beyond those two real estate sales and the political support, the Sun-Times found. Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm -- Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland -- that helped Rezmar get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 of their 30 apartment buildings for the poor. Obama role unclear Just what legal work -- and how much -- Obama did on those deals is unknown. His campaign staff acknowledges he worked on some of them. But the Rezmar-related work amounted to just five hours over the six years it said Obama was affiliated with the law firm, the staff said in an e-mail in February. Obama, however, was associated with the firm for more than nine years, his staff acknowledged Sunday in an e-mail response to questions submitted March 14 by the Sun-Times. They didn't say what deals he worked on -- or how much work he did. "The senator, relatively inexperienced in this kind of work, was assigned to tasks appropriate for a junior lawyer," according to an e-mail from Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. "These tasks would have included reviewing documents, collecting corporate organizational documents, and drafting corporate resolutions." In fact, Gibbs wrote, "Senator Obama does not remember having conversations with Tony Rezko about properties that he owned or any specific issues related to those properties." Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience when they created Rezmar in 1989 to rehabilitate apartments for the poor under the Daley administration. Between 1989 and 1998, Rezmar made deals to rehab 30 buildings, a total of 1,025 apartments. The last 15 buildings involved Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland during Obama's time with the firm. Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble: . Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure. . Six buildings are currently boarded up. . Hundreds of the apartments are vacant, in need of major repairs. . Taxpayers have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans. . At least a dozen times, the city of Chicago sued Rezmar for failure to heat buildings. For five weeks, the Sun-Times sought to interview Obama about Rezko and the housing deals. His staff wanted written questions. It responded Sunday but left many questions unanswered. Other answers didn't directly address the question. Among these: When did Obama learn of Rezmar's financial problems? "The senator had no special knowledge of any financial problems," Gibbs wrote. Did the senator ever complain to anyone -- government officials, Rezmar or Rezko -- about the conditions of Rezmar's buildings? "Senator Obama did follow up on constituency complaints about housing as [a] matter of routine," Gibbs wrote. Did the senator ever discuss Rezmar's financial problems with anyone at his law firm? "The firm advises us that it [is] unaware of any such conversations," Gibbs wrote. Turns down Rezmar job Obama's friendship with Rezko began with a telephone call. It was 17 years ago. Obama had just become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Newspapers wrote about him. One story caught the eye of David Brint, a vice president of Rezmar, a new company that had become the Daley administration's favored developer of low-income housing. "I just cold-called him," Brint said in an interview. Brint said he wanted to know if Obama would come work for Rezmar, developing housing for the poor -- something Obama had expressed interest in, according to the story Brint had read. Brint arranged for Obama to meet Rezko, but Obama didn't take the job. Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard, subsequently returned to Chicago to lead a voter-registration drive in 1992. The next year, Obama joined Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, a 12-lawyer firm that specialized in helping develop low-income housing. The firm's top partner, Allison S. Davis, was, and is, a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, appointed by Mayor Daley. Davis was also a friend of Rezko. Davis and Rezko would eventually go into business together, developing homes. Another firm partner, Judson Miner, ran the city Law Department under Mayor Harold Washington, one of Obama's political idols. Asked what Rezko cases Obama worked on, Miner told the Sun-Times, "We'll put together a list of the cases he worked on involving Rezko/Rezmar in the next day or two." That was March 13. He never provided the information. While at the law firm, Obama spent much of his time working on issues that would help improve conditions in poor neighborhoods, according to his first book, Dreams from My Father, published in 1996. "In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and community groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the inner city, and housing for the poor," Obama wrote in the book. Three community groups represented by Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland were partners with Rezmar in the troubled housing deals. Rezko offers Obama support Obama had been at the firm for two years when he began his political career, running to replace state Sen. Alice Palmer. Rezko became Obama's political patron. Obama got his first campaign contributions on July 31, 1995: $300 from a Loop lawyer, a $5,000 loan from a car dealer, and $2,000 from two food companies owned by Rezko. Around that time, Rezmar began developing low-income apartments in partnerships with the Chicago Urban League and two other not-for-profit community groups, both founded and run by Bishop Arthur Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God and a powerful ally of the mayor -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., known as WPIC, and the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization. All three community groups were clients of the Davis law firm. Davis himself was treasurer of WPIC when it went into business with Rezmar. Why go into business with Rezmar? "We thought they were successful," Davis said, noting that little development was taking place in Woodlawn. At the time, Rezmar had been in business for six years and had become one of City Hall's favored developers of low-income housing, managing 600 apartments in 15 buildings it rehabbed with government funding. Teaming now with community development groups, Rezmar rehabbed another 15 buildings, with 400 apartments, between 1995 and 1998. Each deal involved a mix of public and private financing -- loans from the city or state, federal low-income-housing tax credits and bank loans. By the time Rezmar started working with those community groups, at least two of its earlier buildings were falling into disrepair -- including the Englewood apartment building at 7000 S. Sangamon where the tenants were without heat for five weeks. The tenants there had no heat from Dec. 27, 1996, until at least Feb. 3, 1997, when the city of Chicago sued to turn the heat on. The case was settled later that month with a $100 fine. It was during that time that the area's new state senator, Barack Obama, got a $1,000 campaign donation from Rezmar. The date: Jan. 14, 1997. Obama works on Rezmar deals Obama spent the next eight years serving in the Illinois Senate and continued to work for the Davis law firm. Through its partnerships, Rezmar remained a client of the firm, according to ethics statements Obama filed while a state senator. Davis said he didn't remember Obama working on the Rezmar projects. "I don't recall Barack having any involvement in real estate transactions," Davis said. "Barack was a litigator. His area of focus was litigation, class-action suits." But Obama did legal work on real estate deals while at Davis' firm, according to biographical information he submitted to the Sun-Times in 1998. Obama specialized "in civil rights litigation, real estate financing, acquisition, construction and/or redevelopment of low-and moderate income housing," according to his "biographical sketch." And he did legal work on Rezko's deals, according to an e-mail his presidential campaign staff sent the Sun-Times on Feb. 16, in response to earlier inquiries. The staff didn't specify which Rezmar projects Obama worked on, or his role. But it drew a distinction between working for Rezko and working on projects involving his company. "Senator Obama did not directly represent Mr. Rezko or his firms. He did represent on a very limited basis ventures in which Mr. Rezko's entities participated along with others," according to the e-mail from Obama's staff. Obama buys Rezko land Over the years, Rezko, Mahru, their wives and businesses have given more than $50,000 to Obama's campaign funds, records show. And Rezko has helped raise millions more. Rezko was among the people Obama appointed to serve on his U.S. Senate campaign finance committee, the Sun-Times reported in 2003. The committee raised more than $14 million, according to Federal Election Commission records, helping send Obama to Washington in 2004. As a U.S. senator, Obama grew closer to Rezko. Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, Rezko's wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000 below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko's wife. Last year, Rita Rezko sold a strip of that vacant lot to Obama for $104,500 -- a deal Obama later apologized for, acknowledging that people might think he got a favor from Rezko. Obama called the episode "boneheaded" and a "mistake." At the time Obama bought that strip of land, it had been reported that Rezko was under federal investigation for influence-peddling involving the administration of Blagojevich, whose campaign also received Rezko's financial support. Rezko has since been indicted for allegedly demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Blagojevich. Rezko's trial has been postponed while investigators sort through his finances. 'Disenchanted with Rezmar' Rezmar's final low-income housing deals involving the Davis law firm went bad quickly. Those deals were supposed to provide affordable housing for at least 25 years. But the first deal Rezmar struck with the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp. collapsed in just six and a half years, when the state sued for foreclosure. WPIC and its sister agency, the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, ultimately forced Rezmar to give up control of all 12 buildings they rehabbed together, citing financial troubles and deteriorating conditions of the buildings. The state foreclosure suit came because Rezmar had stopped making monthly mortgage payments in March 2001 on a state loan to help turn an old nursing home into low-income apartments at 6140 S. Drexel, in Obama's state Senate district. "WPIC became disenchanted with Rezmar and wanted to get rid of them," Brazier said. "They thought the buildings weren't being kept up properly. There were some financial problems." Rezmar and WPIC cut all ties last October, when the Chicago City Council agreed to let Rezmar out of a city loan. Rezmar transferred its interest to The Wolcott Group, a management company run by business partners of David Brint -- the man who had introduced Rezko to Obama. Contributing: Chris Fusco and Art Golab *** Chicago Sun-Times - Apr 24, 2007 http://www.suntimes.com/news/355099,cst-nws-rez24a.article Broken promises, broken homes Why didn't City Hall stop him? DAY TWO OF TWO BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter/tnovak at suntimes.com Two decades ago, Antoin "Tony'' Rezko was running a food company that peddled hot dogs on Chicago's beaches. Daniel S. Mahru supplied the ice. These businessmen had a brainstorm for a new venture -- rehabbing rundown buildings for poor black families. Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience. Yet City Hall gave their new company, Rezmar Corp., a $629,000 loan to help fix up an abandoned apartment building at 46th and Drexel. They had applied for the loan just six days after Richard M. Daley won his first term as mayor in 1989, having campaigned on a promise to build more housing for the poor. Rezko and Mahru got the loan four months later, and quickly became one of the Daley administration's favored developers. They got deal after deal -- between 1989 and 1998, more than $100 million from the city, state and federal governments and bank loans to rehabilitate 30 buildings in Chicago. Rezmar was paid at least $6.9 million to develop those apartments. Taxpayers have lost $5.7 million in grants and loans written off by the Daley administration, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found. Millions more could be written off, based on court records and interviews. And the IRS has so far demanded that corporations repay $7.8 million in tax breaks they got for investing in Rezmar apartments that failed to provide low-income housing for at least 15 years. Rezmar was supposed to provide 1,025 apartments for the poor. But today: - Six of its 30 buildings are boarded up. - Seventeen went into in foreclosure, most after Rezmar abandoned them. - An 18th building is being foreclosed on by the state. Rezmar walked away from it, leaving it to the corporate investors, who got a state loan to try to save it but failed. The building is now boarded up. - Hundreds of apartments are vacant, most in need of major repairs. "Every one of these properties has failed," said Phillip Kupritz, the architect on every Rezmar low-income rehab. In a brief interview, Mahru said, "We did our best." Rezko did not respond to interview requests regarding the low-income housing deals. Rezko is under federal indictment on unrelated charges, accused of demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under the Blagojevich administration. He's also charged with fraudulently obtaining a $10 million loan for pizza restaurants he began while fixing up low-income buildings with tax dollars. 'I sold him ice' Rezko, a native of Syria, came to Chicago in the late 1970s to study engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He joined an engineering company, designing nuclear power plants. He left to design roads for the state Transportation Department, making $21,590 in his one year there. In 1984, Rezko went to work for Crucial Concessions Inc., owned by Herbert Muhammad, whose father, Elijah Muhammad, founded the Nation of Islam. Herbert Muhammad also was the longtime manager of boxing great Muhammad Ali. Crucial had a contract with the Chicago Park District to sell food on the beaches and in many South Side parks. Rezko was running Crucial when he met Daniel Mahru. "That's an interesting story," Mahru said. "He sold food along the beaches, and I sold him ice." Mahru, chief executive officer of Automatic Ice Inc., which leases ice makers to bars, hotels and restaurants, grew up on the North Shore. He had been an attorney with a big Chicago law firm. He and Rezko incorporated Rezmar in January 1989, when Chicagoans were focused on Daley's campaign to oust Mayor Eugene Sawyer. Daley won, and Rezmar came seeking funding from City Hall. "Rezmar Corp. expects this project to be the first of many during the next few years," Mahru wrote in Rezmar's first application to the city Housing Department. And it was. As Rezmar's loan application was pending, Daley reformed the Housing Department. Daley said he found that housing officials were giving loans to their cronies. So the mayor's staff would now decide who got the money. And his staff liked Rezmar, which got more than $24 million in loans and $8.5 million in federal tax credits from the city to rehab 14 buildings during Daley's first six years as mayor. Daley's top advisers signed off on those deals before the City Council approved them. Among the staff, according to records and interviews, was Daley's longtime friend Tim Degnan, who ran the City Hall patronage office. "You trying to put me in the middle with Rezko?" Degnan said in a brief phone conversation. "I don't recall anything about Rezko." All 14 of those buildings ended up in financial straits. Today, three are boarded up. Problems soon developed How did inexperienced developers like Rezko and Mahru get money from the city, state and banks? It was the people Mahru hired, and his business acumen, said Robin Coffey, a vice president at Harris Bank. "It was his team," Coffey said. "It was his management style. He was using contractors we knew. He was outsourcing management." Along with the city, Harris funded Rezmar's first project in 1989. Over the years, Harris gave Rezmar more than $10.6 million to help rehab 18 buildings. Harris also put in additional money, purchasing some of the $50 million in federal tax credits Rezmar obtained from the city or state for the projects. Two buildings Harris funded -- at 5751-5759 S. Michigan and 7000-7010 S. Sangamon -- began having problems within a year or two, Coffey said. "By year five, it wasn't in great condition," she said of the Michigan property. "It had vacancies, high turnover." The bank put part of the blame on the neighborhoods and kept giving Rezmar money. Harris has lost at least $1 million on Rezmar loans. And the bank has had to repay the IRS for some federal tax credits it got by investing in Rezmar buildings. City knew of problems Mahru ran Rezmar's day-to-day operations. Rezko was the schmoozer. He showered politicians with money for their campaign funds and got others to do the same. He gave to Democrats -- foremost among them former Cook County Board President John Stroger, Gov. Blagojevich, Daley and Sen. Barack Obama. Rezko gave to Republicans, too -- among them former Gov. Jim Edgar, the late Rosemont Mayor Don Stephens and President George W. Bush. He also gave to others who held sway over Rezmar's housing deals -- like Chicago aldermen. Meanwhile, Rezmar's low-income apartments were deteriorating, and it stopped repaying some loans. So why did the city keep lending Rezko's company more tax dollars? "During the time he did work with us -- and that was many years ago -- there was nothing to indicate there was a problem," Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said. In fact, there was. City attorneys repeatedly went to court to force Rezmar to make repairs to its buildings and, in some cases, to get the heat turned on. State loans helped In 1991, Jim Edgar had just been elected governor, and Rezko had been "very helpful" in raising money for Edgar, according to Robert Kjellander, a top Illinois Republican Party official and one of Edgar's top fund-raisers. Rezko and Mahru hired Kjellander, an influential lobbyist, to help get state money for housing projects. "It just lasted a couple years," Kjellander said. Eight months after Edgar took office, the Illinois Housing Development Authority gave Rezmar a $500,000 loan to help rehab a 65-unit building for senior citizens in South Shore. A year later, Rezmar came back to the state and got a $60,000 loan, citing cost overruns. Eight years later, Rezmar abandoned the building, leaving it to its partner in the deal, the Chicago Equity Fund, whose corporate investors had purchased tax credits from Rezmar to help pay for the rehab. The building was left in disrepair, and the Equity Fund investors were facing IRS penalties if the project didn't survive for 15 years. So the fund got a separate loan from the state, for $381,839, to try to rescue the building. Today, all three mortgages are delinquent. The state is foreclosing on the building in hopes of finding someone who can run it and the senior citizens can continue living there. Rezmar got paid first If one of these low-income housing deals failed, lenders and investors would lose money -- but not Rezmar or its owners. Rezko and Mahru weren't responsible for any government or bank loans. And they would never have to repay the $50 million in federal tax credits they got to rehab the buildings. But they were guaranteed to make money. Rezmar put just $100 into each project and got a 1 percent stake as the general partner in charge of everything. Rezmar got to hire the architect and contractor, as well as the company that would manage the buildings, screen tenants and make repairs. The management company Rezmar hired? Chicago Property Management, also owned by Rezko and Mahru. Rezmar made its money on upfront development fees. And Rezmar got paid first -- $6.9 million in all from its deals. The development fees ultimately came from taxpayers. Here's how that worked: The federal government gives the city and state a set amount of tax credits to hand out for low-income projects. Developers, like Rezmar, are awarded those credits, then sell them to corporate investors at a fraction of their value. The investors profit through those tax breaks. Rezmar got part of its development fees when its deals closed. It got the last of those fees when tenants moved in. Under its deals with the Chicago Equity Fund, Rezmar promised to cover all operating losses in any building for seven years. But after that, Rezmar began walking away from the buildings, often leaving them with many vacant apartments and other problems. "They had every incentive to walk away from the deals," said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), who had six Rezmar buildings in her ward. One former government official knowledgeable about the deals said: "It's too coincidental that, once the developer fees are in their pockets, the things start going down.... We never had one guy with that many deals go belly up. "Were we all to blame for not going after Rezmar when they started going bad? Yeah. There were huge drug problems in a lot of their buildings. Their tenant screening left a lot to be desired." 'Financial difficulties' That's what city officials called it when Rezmar stopped making the $2,982.79 monthly payment on its first city loan after just three years. Rezmar got the $629,000 loan to fix up a 44-unit abandoned building at 4611-4617 S. Drexel. But rental income never met expectations. Tenants came and went, leading to high vacancy rates and maintenance costs. Property taxes were higher than expected. And Rezmar hadn't planned for one expense that turned out to be necessary: security guards to keep drug dealers away. Rezmar's deals "were doomed to fail," said David Brint, Rezmar's former executive vice president. "You had unrealistic expectations on expenses and income." Rezmar missed 16 payments on its first city mortgage, and the city changed the terms: Rezmar would have to pay just $465 a month, instead of $2,982.79. Meanwhile, the city and state each gave Rezmar more money for two more buildings -- one in Logan Square, another in Uptown. Both later went into foreclosure. City official's concern ignored Rezmar's financial problems became a concern to city officials in the summer of 1998 -- six years after it first missed payments on city loans. Rezko and Mahru were seeking a $3.1 million loan in 1998 for what would be their final low-income housing project. Rezmar's loan application apparently made no reference to financial problems, including a bank's threat to foreclose on Rezmar's first deal, the building at 46th and Drexel. This worried Jack Markowski, then the city's first deputy housing commissioner, now commissioner. "For Rezmar, I'd want to see their 1997 computation since rumors are that they're in bad shape," Markowski wrote in a July 8, 1998, memo to his staff. Despite Markowski's concerns, the Daley administration gave Rezmar a $3.1 million loan to help rehab 84 apartments. Asked about his 1998 memo, Markowski issued a statement last week saying the city gave Rezmar the loan because "credit references were positive and loans current." And Markowski noted that others -- First National Bank of Chicago and Apollo Housing Capital -- invested in that project. That deal included three of the mayor's top African-American allies: Bishop Arthur Brazier, Leon Finney Jr. and Allison Davis. Brazier and Finney ran the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, a not-for-profit group that was Rezmar's partner in the project. Davis' company is listed in state records as an investor in the deal, though the state said he didn't end up investing in the deal. Davis said he had no recollection of investing in the deal. But one of his companies formed a partnership with Apollo and got a $130,000 fee on that deal, state records show. Davis and Finney are also members of the Chicago Plan Commission, appointed by Daley. No keys, no heat Two years later, Rezko and Mahru began abandoning their buildings, dumping them to its limited partner, the Chicago Equity Fund. "I told Dan [Mahru] that he ought to stay in, that he owed it to us and the properties," said William Higginson, who founded and was president of the Chicago Equity Fund. "I understand the [seven-year] guarantee is gone, but that doesn't mean the responsibility was gone. They said they couldn't do it." Rezmar's buildings were in bad shape, according to a May 14, 2001, letter Higginson wrote to state housing officials asking them to suspend the mortgage payments for six months. "We were faced with innumerable problems," Higginson wrote. "No keys for dozens of units; no heat in over half of the buildings; Insufficient record-keeping to enable us to identify actual tenants as well as delinquent tenants; high percentage of tenants rent that were 3-4 months behind; back payables that exceed $350,000; and capital improvements, legal costs for evictions and unit turnovers that will cost between $300,000-$400,000 over the next 12 months." As Rezko and Mahru left many black neighborhoods with deteriorating apartment buildings, they moved on to something new -- building upscale condos and townhomes in booming Chicago neighborhoods, including the South Loop. 'A problem... for years' Mahru blamed Rezmar's problems on their low-income tenants -- tenants he and Rezko were responsible for screening. "We lost huge amounts of money operating those buildings," Mahru said. "There's no money in affordable housing. The tenants don't pay their rent. You can't evict them. And when you finally evict them, they owe more than a year's rent, and the apartment is a mess. There's no money to clean it up or fix it up. That happened over and over again." Janet Jenkins witnessed the deterioration of one building that Rezmar co-developed with the Chicago Urban League a dozen years ago. Today, the 12-unit building at 62nd Street and Rhodes is boarded up. And she's glad. "Oh, absolutely," said Jenkins, 57, who lives a few doors south of the building. "That building has been a problem to this block for years. "We had numerous complaints. Drug selling. Prostitution. The whole nine yards. Filthy. Deplorable. Rats. Mice. Roaches. Urine. Feces. Name it." 'A big disappointment' Preckwinkle, the South Side alderman, has a long friendship with Rezko. She got more than $30,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko, his family and business associates over the years. And Rezko served on her campaign finance committee for years. Still, she criticizes Rezko and Mahru for leaving their six buildings in her ward "marginally occupied, full of drug dealers and thugs. They had a whole bunch of deferred maintenance. And they stripped the buildings of all of their reserves. "That Rezmar would do this was a big disappointment to me." *** Chicago Sun-Times - Apr 24, 2007 http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/355098,CST-NWS-obama24.article Obama: I didn't know about Rezko problems BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said Monday he accepted campaign contributions from Antoin "Tony" Rezko without knowing that Rezko was a slumlord with problem buildings in the state Senate district Obama represented at the time. "Should I have known these buildings were in a state of disrepair? My answer would be that it wasn't brought to my attention," Obama, who's seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said at a South Side campaign stop. His comments came in response to a Chicago Sun-Times report that he had done previously undisclosed legal work between 1995 and 1998 on a series of troubled low-income-housing deals involving Rezmar Corp., owned by the indicted businessman. Obama worked for a small Chicago law firm -- Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland -- between 1993 and 2004. The firm worked on deals that got $43 million in government funds for 15 apartment buildings Rezmar rehabilitated with not-for-profit community groups. Four of the buildings ended up being foreclosed on. In all, Rezmar rehabbed 30 buildings. A third of those were in the Illinois Senate district Obama represented between 1997 and 2004. Many of the buildings fell into disrepair and financial straits while Obama was state senator, prompting the city to repeatedly sue over problems including no heat. Obama, a friend of Rezko for 17 years, said he often got complaints as a state senator about housing problems. But, he said, "As far as I can tell, we were never contacted by Rezko tenants." Obama got more than $50,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko, Rezko's family, his businesses and business associates between 1995 and 2004, records show. "Mr. Rezko gave me campaign contributions," Obama said. "While I was a state senator, he had buildings in my district that apparently were not managed properly. I had no knowledge of that at the time." Obama said he did just five hours of legal work on Rezmar projects. ? Copyright 2007 Sun-Times News Group From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 14:22:31 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:22:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Bush Regime Officials Under a Cloud Message-ID: <200704241822.l3OIMVJE011402@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl AP via Rad-Green mailing list - April 22, 2007 Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Bush administration officials under a cloud The Associated Press A rundown of President George W. Bush's appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. His trial also implicated top political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney in a campaign to discredit her husband, Iraq war critic and retired ambassador Joe Wilson. Libby, who plans an appeal, is awaiting a June 5 sentencing. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is fighting to hold onto his job in the face of congressional investigations into his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Two top aides have resigned in the investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. Emails and other evidence released by the Justice Deparment suggest that Rove played a part in the process. Other e-mails, sent on Republican party accounts, either have disappeared or were erased. Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank and a former deputy defense secretary, acknowledged he helped arrange a large pay raise for his female companion when she was transferred to the State Department but remained on the bank payroll. The incident intensified calls at the bank for his resignation. J. Steven Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became deputy Interior Secretary J., last month became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff influence- peddling scandal, pleading guilty to obstructing justice by lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with the convicted lobbyist. Abramoff repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients. Former White House aide, David H. Safavian, was convicted last year of lying to government investigators about his ties to Abramoff and faces a 180-month prison sentence. Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff. Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the top Justice Department prosecutor in the environmental division until January, bought a $980,000 (euro720,270) beach house in South Carolina with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Donald R. Duncan and oil and gas lobbyist Griles. Soon thereafter, she signed an agreement giving the oil company more time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries. Congressional Democrats have denounced the arrangement. Matteo Fontana, a Department of Education official who oversaw the student loan industry, was put on leave last week after disclosure that he owned at least $100,000 (euro73,497) worth of stock in a student loan company. Claude Allen, who had been Bush's domestic policy adviser, pleaded guilty to theft in making phony returns at discount department stores while working at the White house. He was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and fined $500 (euro367). Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist who became chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged in congressional testimony earlier this year that he changed three government reports to eliminate or downplay links between greenhouse gases and global warming. He left in 2005 to work for Exxon Mobil Corp. Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force procurement officer, served nine months in prison in 2005 for violating federal conflict-of-interest rules in a deal to lease Boeing refueling tankers for $23 billion (euro17 billion), despite Pentagon studies showing the tankers were unnecessary. After making the deal, she quit the government and joined Boeing. Eric Keroack, Bush's choice to oversee the federal family planning program, resigned from the post suddenly last month after the Massachusetts Medicaid office launched an investigation into his private practice. He had been medical director of an organization that opposes premarital sex and contraception. Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon at the agency earlier this year with other top GSA political appointees at which Scott Jennings, a top Rove aide, gave a PowerPoint demonstration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008. A congressional committee is investigating whether the remarks violated a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. Robert W. Cobb, NASA's inspector general is under investigation on charges of ignoring safety violations in the space program. An internal administration review said he routinely tipped off department officials to internal investigations and quashed a report related to the Columbia shuttle explosion to avoid embarrassing the agency. He remains on the job. Only Bush can fire him. Julie MacDonald, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but has no academic background in biology, overrode recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species and improperly leaked internal information to private groups, the Interior Department inspector general said. Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 14:26:24 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:26:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Yeltsin: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish Message-ID: <200704241826.l3OIQO1B011419@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart Yeltsin - former Russian President dead: GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH! by Mohammad Basirul Haq Sinha A man who made destitutes out of millions of Russians - but 10 Billionaires who all left for the West! A megalomanic who deliberately made banana republic out of Russia. A drunkard who sold Russian Nuclear Deterance for bottles of Vodka and American Green Cards for his own Family Members! A twit who valued more the CIA Spy Master than his own brave soldiers! Yeltsin was the disgrace of Russia. He ruled by Decree! And he allowed Imperialism to take over the Globe! If the misery of millions count for anything; he'll not rest for a second in the Hell. Yeltsin Rule did bring about the Bush Imperialism and promoted Sharon Israeli Aggression! May all three be damned for Eternity! *** Bangla Vision (Yahoo) - Apr 2, 2007 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla-vision/message/23629 Yeltsin - former Russian President dead. By Kevin Cain zabolsh at yahoo.co.uk GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH ! MAY YELTSIN AND THE REST OF HIS MURDEROUS COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY BAND OF THEIVES BE PACKED UP, WRAPPED UP AND SHIPPED OFF TO ISRAEL FOR BURIAL! RUSSIAN LAND HAS NO PLACE FOR THE LIKES OF HIM OR HIS LOT IN THE FACE OF GAIDARS, CHUBAISES AND OTHER HITLERIST SCUM OF THE EARTH! MAY THE IMPENDING SECOND SOCIALIST REVOLUTION SWEEP THE LAND OF SOVIETS OF SUCH FILTH! LENIN AND STALIN LIVE ON! LONG LIVE LIVE AND STALIN! GLORY AND HONOUR TO TRUE SOVIET PEOPLE! DEATH TO ALL TRAITORS, AND BETRAYERS OF THE SOVIET MOTHERLAND! From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 14:40:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:40:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] 2 different approaches to health care: Cuba, USA Message-ID: <200704241840.l3OIeEZT011455@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Bob Guild via Jane Franklin - Apr 23, 2007 Two different approaches to healthcare: Cuba and the US Yesterday, the NYTimes ran a front page story about the increase in infant mortality in the South, particularly among African Americans. [See: Infant Mortality Climbs in US South (Apr 22, 2007) here:] http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070416/061617.html In January, MEDICC Review (http://www.medicc.org) ran an article on the continuously declining infant mortality rate in Cuba. Today, the Associated Press printed an article which tries to figure out how Cuba has roughly the same life expectancy as the US - with far far fewer resources. -Bob Guild [The second and third items follow.] MEDICC Review - Jan, 2007 http://www.medicc.org The Story Behind Cuba's Decline in Infant Mortality By Gail Reed January 21, 2007 -- Fewer infant deaths in two of Cuba's most unlikely regions are mainly responsible for the country's 2006 record-low infant mortality announced earlier this month. Cuba closed last year with an infant mortality rate of 5.3 per 1,000 live births, down from 6.2 in 2005, largely because of progress made in the eastern provinces and the capital of Havana. The historically lesser-developed eastern region ? home to Cuba's highest mountains, most precarious water supply and generally most difficult living conditions ? registered significant drops in infant mortality in 2006. And rates for five out of the six provinces in this region not only decreased, but were below 5.0 (Camag?ey, Las Tunas, Holgu?n, Granma and Guant?namo) with only Santiago de Cuba turning in a higher rate (7.9 from 7.2 in 2005).[1] Santiago has also registered significantly higher maternal mortality rates in the last few years.[2] This problem, in addition to higher than expected 2006 infant mortality rates in a few provinces, are the subject of ongoing analysis by Cuban authorities. Sleepless in Havana The big Cinderella story, however, was Havana City (population 2.2 million and a province unto itself according to Cuba's political-administrative divisions). With infant mortality hovering between 6.6 and 7.1 since 2001, it seemed progress had stalled. But then the rate dropped to 4.9 in 2006, making Havana one of a handful of the world's capitals where infant mortality registers below national rates. Dr Yamila de Armas, Vice Director of Havana's Health Department in charge of the city's medical services, credits the breakthrough to a tighter organization of services, more individualized, patient-centered focus on high-risk mothers-to-be, and lastly, to the introduction of improved technology. She also points to simultaneous reduction in infant mortality and late fetal deaths: "When both decline, you know you're on the right track," she told Cuba Health Reports. Table 1: Infant Mortality Havana, Cuba, Selected Indicators (2005-2006) Indicator.................................2005.......2006 Total births.............................18,953....18,083 Deaths <1 yr................................132........88 Infant mortality (x1,000 live births).........6.7.......4.9 Late fetal mortality (x1,000 live births)....10.1.......9.6 Low birthweight (%)...........................5.6.......5.4 Source: Statistics Division, Havana City Province Health Dept, Boletin Diario, Programa de Atencion Materno Infantil (Summary, 1/1/06-12/31/06). Dr de Armas credits the results to a process begun in November 2005 involving specialists at primary and secondary care levels, in what she calls a "taking off the kid gloves" overhaul of treatment protocols and best practice guides. "We included pediatricians, ob-gyns and others in the polyclinics, and maternity and pediatric hospitals," she notes. "We pulled the protocols out of the drawer and began reviewing them against our practice and our results, which were of course different in different institutions, in different services." In some cases, protocols themselves were changed. "But more important," Dr de Armas told CHR, "the protocols came to life: each one was ratified or reformed according to the evidence-based consensus among all these professionals actually working in the services, not something imposed from above." Like all capitals, Havana is complex, beset by great transient populations, and in Cuba's case, serious public transportation woes and crowded housing conditions. Thus, the country's commitment to provide universal health care faces special challenges, not the least of which is keeping track of pregnant women, and especially those at risk. Dr. Yamila de Armas: "taking off the kid gloves" "We started by looking at the gaps," says Dr de Armas, "figuring out how to better care for these women before they become pregnant, to better control conditions such as hypertension that can present risks during pregnancy. And once we found a woman with risk factors who had become pregnant, then we looked for ways to maximize individualized care for her beyond what we were already doing. That meant following her closely through the system, from family physician to polyclinic and hospital level, and composing a team of physicians responsible for her care from the beginning." An innovation introduced along these lines was the "partogram" ("delivery-gram"), or the critical route outlined for every pregnant woman at risk. "Each patient was first identified as at-risk at the primary care level by her family doctor and her polyclinic ob-gyn," explained Dr de Armas. "The hospital where she would give birth was notified at that point, and from then on the specialists at both levels began to work together on her care." As a result, each month in a given geographic area, the hospital and surrounding primary care providers met to discuss patients nearing their due dates, to review whether the actions foreseen were proportionate to the level and nature of risk for each. Women with particular conditions were referred early on in their pregnancy to the hospitals best suited for delivering their newborns. Until then, for example, a diabetic woman would go to her municipal hospital to deliver, and only upon the onset of any complications, would she be transferred to the hospital housing the national reference center for diabetes. But in 2006, as a result of the "partogram," her case was transferred to the reference hospital months before her due date. The result was a specialized hospital team well-informed about her case from the start, an institution better equipped to deal with potential complications and an end to last-minute patient transfers. Wider use of modern technology, such as high-frequency ventilators in perinatal services and greater emphasis on study, evaluation and continuing medical education complete the picture, explaining the increased survival rate for Havana's newborns. Table 2: Infant Deaths (<1 yr), Havana Cuba: Main Causes Cause/Number of Deaths......2005..2006 Congenital malformations.....33...15 Hypoxia, anoxia, asphyxia....21...11 Other perinatal affections...22...10 Acquired sepsis...............8....9 Hyaline membrane..............2....3 ADD...........................6....2 Pulmonary hemorrhage..........2....2 Congenital sepsis.............7....1 Intraventricular hemorrhage...3....1 Source: Statistics Division, Havana City Province Health Dept, Boletin Diario, Programa de Atencion Materno Infantil (1-1-06-31-12-06). As Goes Havana So Goes the Nation The level of organization, competency and technology in Havana's medical services has repercussions beyond capital-born babies, since most of the nation's tertiary referral institutions are located here for complex maternal and pediatric care. Such is the case with the Children's Heart Center at the William Soler Pediatric Teaching Hospital[3], serving as the hub of a national network for diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart malformations. Dr de Armas notes that better integration of the network with community genetics programs contributed to decreased infant mortality nationally in 2006 by identifying risks earlier. In reducing the nation's infant mortality to a record low, Havana was joined by Holgu?n province, which registered the country's lowest rate at 3.8 per 1,000 live births. This accomplishment was particularly noteworthy, considering that the province is still recovering from several years of critical drought. The lack of rainfall had seriously affected hygiene until kilometers of aqueduct were installed to link the region to new water supplies, and the rains finally came. Meanwhile, the mountainous provinces of Granma and Guant?namo historically lagged behind others in this important health indicator. For example, in 1995, at the height of Cuba's economic crisis, when the nation registered 9.4 infant mortality, Granma's rate was the highest in the country at 10.9. However, they have caught up over the years, particularly by making it possible for mothers-to-be at risk to get round-the-clock care at maternity homes during their last months of pregnancy, and by offering nutritional supplements at workplaces and farming cooperatives, free of charge. The results are impressive: by 2006, Granma's infant mortality had declined to 4.4 and Guantanamo's to 4.8. The highest infant mortality in 2006 came from central Ciego de ?vila province (9.0), which has traditionally registered rates well below the national figures. Health authorities are expected to spend the first quarter of the year analyzing both the success stories of Havana and the eastern provinces as well as the cases of the three provinces which registered an increase in infant mortality: Ciego de Avila ( 5.2 in 2005 to 9.0 in 2006), Santiago de Cuba (7.2 to 7.9) and the agricultural province of Havana, which surrounds the capital of the same name (5.7 to 6.1). Notes & References 1. For further statistical information on infant mortality in Cuba, see Cuba Health Data. 2. Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio: Cuba, Segundo Informe, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Economicas, La Habana, July 2005, pp. 49-54. 3. For more details on pediatric cardiology in Cuba and the national network, see Pediatrics: The First Year of Life in Cuba. MEDICC Rev. 2005 June;7(6). *** Associated Press - April 23, 2007 Castro, 80, is a leading example of Cuba's healthy life expectancy By Will Weissert ASSOCIATED PRESS HAVANA ? "Fidel: 80 More Years," proclaim the good wishes still hanging on storefront and balcony banners months after Cubans celebrated their leader's 80th birthday. Fidel Castro may be ailing, but he's a living example of something Cubans take pride in ? an average life expectancy roughly similar to that of the United States. They ascribe it to free medical care, mild climate, and a low-stress Caribbean lifestyle, which they believe make up for the hardships and shortages they suffer. "Sometimes you have all you want to eat and sometimes you don't," said Raquel Naring, a 70- year-old retired gas station attendant. "But there aren't elderly people sleeping on the street like other places." Cuba's average life expectancy is 77.08 years ? second in Latin America after Puerto Rico and more than 11 years above the world average, according to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book. It says Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years for women, compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for Americans. Most Cubans live rent-free, and food, electricity and transportation are heavily subsidized. But the island can still be a tough place to grow old. Homes that were luxurious before Castro's 1959 revolution are now falling apart and many cramped apartments contain three generations of family members. Food, water and medicine shortages are chronic. But most prescription drugs and visits to the doctor are free and physicians encourage preventive care. "There's a family doctor on almost every block," said Luis Tache, 90 and blind from glaucoma but still chatty and up on the news. A relaxed lifestyle, which prizes time spent with family over careers, helps keep Cubans healthy, Tache said. "It's bad for production, bad for the nation," he said. "But it's good for the people." The government runs residence halls for senior citizens with no family to care for them, though space is severely limited. Community groups make sure older people look after one another. "It's a very happy society. There aren't so many worries and problems and that helps," said Alida Gil, 57, leader of a community group in Old Havana known as "Circle of Grandmothers 2000." Shortly after 8 a.m. every weekday, Gil leads two dozen elderly women through 40 minutes of calisthenics on the windowless, water-damaged ground floor of a state-owned building adorned with photos of Castro and his brother, Raul. Raul Castro, 75, took over in July after the president underwent intestinal surgery. Officials offer increasingly upbeat reports about his progress, but his condition and ailment remain state secrets. The government says it wants Cuba to become the world leader in life expectancy, vying with the 82-year average for Japan and Singapore. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:42:01 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:42:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Frank Rich: Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac Message-ID: <200704241942.l3OJg11w011884@viola.tamara-b.org> The New York Times - Apr 22, 2007 http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/opinion/22rich.html Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac By Frank Rich President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration. But he couldn't inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the "surge" was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg's. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war. At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (aka romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice. Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders. Mr. Gonzales's politicizing of the Justice Department is a mere bagatelle next to his role as White House counsel in 2002, when he helped shape the administration's legal argument to justify torture. That paved the way for Abu Ghraib, the episode that destroyed America's image and gave terrorists a moral victory. But his efforts to sabotage national security didn't end there. In a front-page expos? lost in the Imus avalanche two Sundays ago, The Washington Post uncovered Mr. Gonzales's reckless role in vetting the nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security in December 2004. Mr. Kerik, you may recall, withdrew from consideration for that cabinet post after a week of embarrassing headlines. Back then, the White House ducked any culpability for the mess by attributing it to a single legal issue, a supposedly undocumented nanny, and by pinning it on a single, nonadministration scapegoat, Mr. Kerik's longtime patron, Rudy Giuliani. The president's spokesman at the time, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the White House had had "no reason to believe" that Mr. Kerik lied during his vetting process and that it would be inaccurate to say that process had been rushed. Thanks to John Solomon and Peter Baker of The Post, we now know that Mr. McClellan's spin was no more accurate than his exoneration of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Wilson leak case. The Kerik vetting process was indeed rushed - by Mr. Gonzales - and the administration had every reason to believe that it was turning over homeland security to a liar. Mr. Gonzales was privy from the get-go to a Kerik dossier ablaze with red flags pointing to "questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption," not to mention a "friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime." Yet Mr. Gonzales and the president persisted in shoving Mr. Kerik into the top job of an already troubled federal department encompassing 22 agencies, 180,000 employees and the very safety of America in the post-9/11 era. Mr. Kerik may soon face federal charges, and at a most inopportune time for the Giuliani presidential campaign. But it's as a paradigm of the Bush White House's waging of the Iraq war that the Kerik case is most telling. The crucial point to remember is this: Even had there been no alleged improprieties in the former police chief's New York r?sum?, there still would have been his public record in Iraq to disqualify him from any administration job. The year before Mr. Kerik's nomination to the cabinet, he was dispatched by the president to take charge of training the Iraqi police - and completely failed at that mission. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran recounts in his invaluable chronicle of Green Zone shenanigans, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Mr. Kerik slept all day and held only two staff meetings, one upon arrival and one for the benefit of a Times reporter doing a profile. Rather than train Iraqi police, Mr. Kerik gave upbeat McCain-esque appraisals of the dandy shopping in Baghdad's markets. Had Mr. Kerik actually helped stand up an Iraqi police force instead of hastening its descent into a haven for sectarian death squads, there might not now be extended tours for American troops in an open-ended escalation of the war. But in the White House's priorities, rebuilding Iraq came in a poor third to cronyism and domestic politics. Mr. Kerik's P.R. usefulness as a symbol of 9/11 was particularly irresistible to an administration that has exploited the carnage of 9/11 in ways both grandiose (to gin up the Iraq invasion) and tacky (in 2004 campaign ads). Mr. Kerik was an exploiter of 9/11 in his own right: he had commandeered an apartment assigned to ground zero police and rescue workers to carry out his extramarital tryst with the publisher Judith Regan. The sex angle of Mr. Wolfowitz's scandal is a comparable symptom of the hubris that warped the judgment of those in power after 9/11. Not only did he help secure Shaha Riza her over-the-top raise in 2005, but as The Times reported, he also helped get her a junket to Iraq when he was riding high at the Pentagon in 2003. No one seems to know what she actually accomplished there, but the bill was paid by a Defense Department contractor that has since come under official scrutiny for its noncompetitive contracts and poor performance. So it went with the entire Iraq fiasco. You don't have to be a cynic to ask if the White House's practice of bestowing better jobs on those who bungled the war might be a form of hush money. Mr. Wolfowitz was promoted to the World Bank despite a Pentagon record that included (in part) his prewar hyping of bogus intelligence about W.M.D. and a nonexistent 9/11-Saddam connection; his assurance to the world that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for reconstruction; and his public humiliation of Gen. Eric Shinseki after the general dared tell Congress (correctly) that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the invasion. Once the war began, Mr. Wolfowitz cited national security to bar businesses from noncoalition countries (like Germany) from competing for major contracts in Iraq. That helped ensure the disastrous monopoly of Halliburton and other White House-connected companies, including the one that employed Ms. Riza. Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It's no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn't possibly win a war. Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war's endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it's clear that he's the one with reason to be afraid. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:43:44 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:43:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Are You Listening, Leahy? Huge Win for Impeachment in VT Message-ID: <200704241943.l3OJhiNZ011896@viola.tamara-b.org> Counterpunch - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04232007.html Are You Listening Senator Leahy? Huge Win for Impeachment in Vermont By DAVE LINDORFF "SR16 Senate resolution urging Vermont's Representative in the United States House of Representatives to introduce, and Vermont's United States Senators to support, a resolution requiring the United States House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President and the Vice President of the United States." The impeachment movement, which has been building steam since the November election, got a big boost this morning when the Vermont Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the US Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The 16-9 vote, which saw the Senate's six Republicans joined by only three Democrats on the losing side, will make it difficult for Vermont House Speaker Gaye Symington, a Democrat who has opposed the impeachment resolution drive, to keep the measure from being voted on the House floor. Symington has been arguing against such a resolution, claiming it would be "divisive." The vote in the state senate was a huge victory for grassroots Democratic activists, who had been forced over recent months to overcome opposition to impeachment from the national Democratic Party leadership, and from their own state's Democratic Congressional Delegation. Leading Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have been arguing that impeachment could hurt Democratic prospects among independent voters in the November 2008 elections. But impeachment activists have countered that the president and vice president have violated the law and undermined the Constitution, and that it is inappropriate to let strategic and tactical interests of the Democratic Party enter into the decision on whether to impeach. To get around opposition from leading Democrats, Vermont's impeachment activists organized a statewide grassroots campaign to have as many towns as possible endorse impeachment in resolutions introduced at the annual town meetings that are the primary form of governance in most of the state's municipalities. In the end, 39 towns voted for impeachment resolutions in their annual meetings in February. This sent a strong message to state legislators about the mood of the voters in the state. In the end, that message trumped pressure from Washington. "This gives an immeasurable boost to the national push for impeachment, and the timing could not be better, " said David Swanson, a leader of the national impeachment movement who runs a website at www.afterdowingstreet.com. Swanson noted that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, is preparing to introduce a bill of impeachment against the Vice President Cheney next Wednesday. And adds that impeachment groups are planning coordinated events all over the country on April 28th (http://www.a28.org). He said, "What just happened in Vermont went down exactly the way things should in a democracy. Citizens raised their voices, passed local resolutions, and demanded that their state senators act. The hard work of Dan DeWalt, Ellen Tenney, and so many other Vermonters is beginning to pay off. Vermont may be remembered as the state that saved the Republic." The mass movement for impeachment in Vermont has also had its impact on the local media there, which in turn may have pushed the state's senators to act. On April 13, a week before the senate vote, the state's third-ranked newspaper, the Brattleboro Reformer, ran an editorial headlined "Impeach Bush or Get Out of the Way." The paper wrote: There will be a time when future generations will look at us and wonder why President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not removed from office. They will look at us and question why, when confronted by the most corrupt and incompetent administration ever witnessed in the United States, nothing was done to stop Bush and Cheney. They will look at the craven behavior of the Democrats, too afraid to take on the president when it mattered. They will look at the Republicans, so intoxicated with power that they backed their president to the hilt, even as he ran this country off a cliff. They will look at the press, and how too many journalists were cowed into parroting the words of the administration. They will look at the voters, and shake their heads in disbelief that a number of Americans voted for all this -- the electoral equivalent of the chickens voting Colonel Sanders president. And they will look at Vermont, and how a bottom-up impeachment effort with broad support ran into a brick wall of indifference in Montpelier as well as Washington. The editorial pointedly attacked House leader Symington and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, saying: History will not look kindly on House Speaker Gaye Symington for her insistence that her chamber must focus on "important matters" and that the House "does not have the time" to deal with impeachment. History will not look kindly on Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, who has talked loudly about impeaching Bush and Cheney, but won't pursue the issue as long Symington says no. The grassroots and media pressure clearly worked on Shumlin, who had long insisted he supported impeachment, but that there "wasn't time" for an impeachment resolution. Shumlin allowed the vote today, and it sailed through, belying concerns about time. Now the pressure shifts to Symington. The Vermont Senate vote carries enormous significance. If it is followed by a similar vote in the Vermont House, where a similar resolution has 20 sponsors, Vermont will be the first state in the nation to have a joint resolution calling for Congress to begin impeachment of the president. One newspaper, the Vermont Guardian, reports that House impeachment backers plan to spend the next few days collecting signatures from fellow representatives to introduce an identical resolution next Wednesday in their chamber. Says State Rep. Dave Zuckerman, "We will take the same language the Senate passed today and turn it in Tuesday afternoon, which gives people around the state time to call their representatives and ask them to sign it; we would then have it on the calendar for Wednesday and the speaker will either let it be voted on or have it sent to committee." He added, "Many of us are quite pleased they took the vote, but it's clear that it only happened because citizens got involved." Under Thomas Jefferson's Manual for Rules of the House, such a joint resolution, should it pass, is an alternative route to impeachment, and would require the House Judiciary Committee to initiate an impeachment hearing to determine whether grounds for impeachment of the president and vice president exist. It would no longer be possible, in other words, for Speaker Pelosi to continue blocking impeachment and intimidating representatives from filing impeachment bills. It would also be a strong signal that the American public wants impeachment. Finally, it would be impossible for the corporate media to continue to maintain, as it has done for over a year now, that impeachment is simply the desire of a group of fringe left-wing Democrats. Bush and Cheney are still a long way from being in the dock in Congress, but today's vote in the Vermont Senate has to have sent a cold chill up the spine of both men, who now have to start contemplating about the fate of Richard Nixon. Certainly when the late Father Robert Drinan (D-MA) filed his initial impeachment bill against Richard Nixon, who had won re-election by a landslide, no one expected to see the president actually facing impeachment hearings and removal from office. But hearings, and more bills of impeachment, followed, Nixon's crimes were laid bare on prime time TV, and in the end three articles of impeachment were voted out of the House Judiciary Committee, one of them unanimously. Nixon resigned from office in disgrace when it became clear he would be impeached in the House and removed by the Senate if he tried to stay on. Slowly, steadily, the public, grassroots movement to impeach this criminal president and vice president, and to restore the rule of law, and the Constitution, is building. Soon it will be the leaders of Congress, not of the Vermont legislature, who will be facing the wrath of angry voters demanding that they stop dithering and start honoring their oaths of office to uphold and defend the Constitution. As the Brattleboro Reformer put it, Congress is "shirking its responsibility" because when it comes to impeaching Bush and Cheney, "nothing is more important." Update: In a joint statement issued in Washington, DC, Vermont's Congressional delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch, responded to the state senate resolution by saying that "before we talk about impeachment," current investigations in the Congress need to be "allowed to run their course." Ignoring the fact that 39 towns in the state, including some it Vermont's larger municipalities, have voted out impeachment resolutions, the three, all Democrats, go on to say, "In our view, the people of Vermont want us to focus our attention on such issues as ending the war in Iraq, protecting the needs of our veterans, raising the minimum wage, addressing the crisis of global warming and providing health care to all of our citizens." Never mind that the Democrats' narrow majorities in Congress mean that they cannot hope to deliver on any of those issues in the next two years. More importanbtly, if ever there was a case of elected officials ignoring the clearly expressed will of their constituents, this is it. Not even content to claim that they "know better" than the popular will and are acting on their own best impulses, but rather, claiming to somehow "know" what the people of the state want, Leahy, Sanders and Welch are demonstrating graphically just how divorced the Democratic Party in Congress and the DNC has become from the party's own rank-and-file. If a vote for the impeachment resolution passes in Vermont's House of Representatives next week, too, and that doesn't sway these three pompous solons into action, Vermonters will have their task cut out for them come November 2008. Welch in particular should be sent packing if he turns his back on his own state's legislature and voters. [Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff at yahoo.com] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:45:01 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:45:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] US Breaks Its Word, Keeps N Korea on Terror List Message-ID: <200704241945.l3OJj1jO011924@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com US Keeps N Korea on Terror List Seoul, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) The US will keep the Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea listed as a sponsor of terrorism, along with Iran and Iraq, violating what it said in an accord on February 13. Yonhap news agency said anonymous diplomatic sources forwarded that the Department of State report will repeat its position held until November last year, even though the subsequent US-PDRK accord says the US "will start bilateral talks. to advance towards restoring full diplomatic ties." Washington said it "will no longer label the PDRK as sponsor of terrorism nor use the Trading with the Enemy Law against the PDRK." Yonhap says the report Guidelines of Global Terrorism will be issued over the weekend or next week with the PDRK listed again, even though its actions over the past 20 years don't point to such a conclusion. The PDRK pledged to close down its reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang within 60 days in exchange for 50,000 tons of oil. The deadline expired on April 14 but the PDRK tied the closing to the return of 25 million dollars the US had frozen at Delta Asia Bank in Macao, The Philippines. ef emw jhb mf PL-16 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:46:36 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:46:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Juan Cole: Al-Maliki Stops Wall-building at Adhamiya Message-ID: <200704241946.l3OJkaWP011938@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) Informed Comment - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.juancole.com/ Al-Maliki Stops Wall-building at Adhamiya by Juan Cole Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked Sunday that the US military halt its construction of a security wall around the Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya. Al-Maliki spoke from Cairo where he is meeting with foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors. The mainstream US media will sidestep this point, but al-Maliki pretty explicitly said that the reason he called off the wall building is that he doesn't want his government compared to that of Israel. That is, the Adhamiya wall is being likened in the Arab world to the Apartheid Wall being built by the Israelis in the West Bank. Al-Maliki made the statement in Cairo, and when he referred to the "other walls" he didn't want the one in Adhamiya compared to, he pointed toward Israel. The Western press is bringing up the Berlin Wall as part of his meaning, but the videotape makes it absolutely clear that his referent was Israel's project. On the other hand, Nassar al-Rubaie, a Sadrist member of the Iraqi parliament, did warn that the US is building a series of Berlin Walls in Baghdad. The politics of the wall points to the ways in which the Israeli-Palestinian issue is absolutely central to the difficulties the United States is having in being accepted in Iraq. Many Iraqis perceive the US presence as just an extension of Israeli occupation of Arabs and Arab land, and routinely refer to US troops as "the Jews." The Israeli government has grossly mistreated the Palestinian people, the current condition of which is grave. The wall the Israelis are building is built on Palestinian land and has stolen more land from Palestinians and has in some instances run through Palestinian villages, cutting them in two and separating families. The Apartheid Wall has provoked demonstrations. So being a foreign military force in an Arab country and looking like they are building security walls similar to that of the Israelis just puts the US and its ally, al-Maliki, in a very difficult position. Not to mention that walling people up is intrinsically unappealing as a governing strategy. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:48:23 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:48:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Landau: Axis of Cowards - Bush, Congress, the Media Message-ID: <200704241948.l3OJmNfn011950@viola.tamara-b.org> Counterpunch - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/landau04232007.html Axis of Cowards: Bush, Congress and the Media The Courage to Withdraw By SAUL LANDAU George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and his staff of neo con hard liners, and assorted handwringers could not have predicted the horror show that erupted in Iraq. The war makers were ignorant. Most remain that way--and proudly. Did Bush shake his head when he saw a typical April 8 US newspaper photo (AP), showing an Iraqi man in Mahmoudiyah, some 20 miles south of Baghdad, trying to rescue his belongings after a pickup truck exploded? The fortunate man -- 15 others died in the attack; more were wounded--found a suitcase with only some shrapnel in it. Why does the media play only on the negative side, showing evidence of what appears to be another typical bloody day under US occupation? Even the Red Cross--not exactly sensational media -- announced that Iraqi conditions of life continued to deteriorate. Last week, Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr called on followers to attack US military personnel, his answer to Bush's "surge" (read escalation). In Najaf, tens of thousands burned American flags and demanded: "leave." Bush spun this event, calling it an example of free expression in Iraq. How will he spin 2,000 assassinated Iraqi doctors, all slain since the US invasion of Iraq? (Dr. Bert De Belder, coordinator of 'Medical Aid for the Third World) Hoping the public would not recall his May 1, 2003 "mission accomplished" claim, Bush reported "progress"--after four years -- in restoring security to some parts of Baghdad. Senator John McCain's "shopping tour" of Baghdad required a large and armed entourage, including attack helicopters flying overhead. He pronounced Baghdad secure--more so than his failing presidential campaign. Iraqi child mortality has spiraled upward. No wonder, given deteriorating sanitation and water conditions, lack of food and war violence. Arab television shows children among the Iraqis detained by US troops during routine raids. You'd think someone was filming "Cops" in Baghdad. "20/20" and "60 Minutes" should do weekly episodes on Iraqi sanitation. Joseph Chamie, former UN director of the Population Division, said sanitation in the country had regressed to 1950 levels. A recent UN Population Department study showed 1/3 of Iraqis living in poverty; more than 20% in destitution. More than half a million Baghdad residents have no access to water for most of the day; electricity for 3 hours daily. One of eight Iraqis has fled the country. Almost one of nine has died since George W. Bush liberated them; almost one of four Iraqis gone. An early March New York Times/CBS News poll rated Bush at 29% approval. Poll numbers indicate public disgust with the war. The White House clings to "credibility," no matter the human and economic costs; most Members of Congress wring their hands as if to stave off an attack of courage that would allow them to vote to cut off funds for war. In late September 2002, I interviewed Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Iraqi Parliament speaker Sadoun Hamadi (now deceased). In addition, I talked to dozens of Iraqis in Baghdad, Najaf, Karballah, Babylon and Mahmoudadyiah. The Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Kurds and Turkmen with whom I spoke all identified themselves as Iraqis. Whatever their religious or ethnic differences, they agreed on one thing: "Don't come." No matter how much they hated Saddam Hussein, they concurred: a US invasion and occupation would worsen Iraq's situation. "You have no idea what will happen if your armies come here," said Ghassan, an engineer. "One of my brothers died in the war against Iran," said a shop keeper in Babylon. "Another died in the first Gulf War. If US troops come here we will have another war, the worst one. Please don't come. Tell your President what I said." He smiled. The war makers, brilliant intellectuals like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, knew nothing of Iraqi reality. Nor did they evince interest in learning. Their neo con formula holds that as the strongest military power the United States can impose democracy by force to countries ruled by brutal dictators. They fashioned the "axis of evil," spun the "rogue states" phrase for the media as ways to disparage disobedient third world governments. Academics invented "failed states." Hey, call 'em anything but late for dinner. Why should Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby bother studying the country they wanted the U.S. to invade? In 2002, their bosses held prayer meetings for war and cheer-led intellectuals and pundits, most of whom had never fought so much as a schoolyard brawl. [landau.jpg] Wolfowitz shrugged off the cost factor as well, since he wouldn't have to pay. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." (Testimony before House Committee on Appropriations, 3/27/03) The "brilliant" advisers relied on Iraqi dissidents who fed them faulty pre-war intelligence and a rosy picture of post-Saddam Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, admitted to the British Telegraph "We are heroes in error," (2/19/04) He was right about the error. He lied to Dick Cheney, whose staff then cherry picked intelligence to reinforce the lies. High ranking aides like Libby and Feith ordered intelligence providers at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans to censor information that might contradict their war rant. (Lt. Col. Ret. Karen Kwiatkowski, Salon.com 10/23/04) Cheney repeated myths of Saddam-Al-Qaeda connections and of Iraq's supposed yellow cake uranium purchase in Niger. The CIA knew better. Cheney dismissed the truth. Lies worked better to convince a frightened Congress, media and public. Cheney used the Karl Rove super-tactic: he threw fear in the faces of potential skeptics to intimidate them. It worked. Congress authorized Bush's invasion of Iraq; the media behaved like White House PR hacks. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," wrote Ali A. Allawi in his new book. (The Occupation of Iraq, Yale University Press 2007) Allawi accuses US occupiers of such "shocking" mismanagement that people who hated Saddam Hussein now have "turned their backs on their would-be liberators." Since 2003, Allawi -- a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004 -- educated in the United States and at Oxford University, served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister. He observed the April 9 fall of Baghdad and waited for a US plan to allow Iraq to recover and reconstruct under a viable new government. Instead, US authorities disbanded the coherent institutions--the military (more than 300,000 men with weapons) and the Ba'ath Party. This created massive unemployment and left Iraq without an internal security force. In September 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Chief Paul Bremer ordered the privatization of 192 public sector companies. People whom Allawi refers to as Saddam's old boys, a "commercial gang," grabbed the new businesses. Without army and police, looting began. The thieves sold Iraq's infrastructural equipment in neighboring countries. Bremer later complained--in his 2006 book, My Year In Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope-- that the Bush White House micromanaged or mismanaged the administration he was supposed to lead. Allawi alleges that the US failed to reconstruct Iraq's electricity, health care and sanitation infrastructure, but instead offered the media an "insipid retelling of 'success' stories." Way back, on April 9, 2003, US Marines orchestrated the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Four years later, Kadhim al-Jabouri, an Iraqi weightlifting icon, stood in front of TV cameras and pounded through the concrete pedestal bearing the statue. "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't," he said. "We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is getting more dangerous. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher ... Saddam was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse." Instead of a brutal but secular government, religious Shia clerics like Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the much younger Moqtada al Sadr now have great power. Iran has far more influence in Iraq than ever. The entire Middle East has become more combustible. Bush's bumbling has led to an immense increase in military spending as well. Spending on weapons far outranks education and health outlays. Bush still uses fear as his main political tool. He screamed at Congress for more funds for Iraq and Afghanistan wars and behaved as if they had gotten the country into the mess. Bush claimed the "courage" to take the country to war. Congress and the media rubber stamped his decision. They collectively lack the courage, integrity and responsibility to admit the error and stage a rapid US withdrawal. So, the rest of us had better keep pushing hard. [Saul Landau's new book, BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD, with a foreword by Gore Vidal, is now available from Counterpunch Press. His new film, WE DON'T PLAY GOLF HERE, is available on DVD from roundworldmedia at gmail.com] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:49:10 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:49:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] US Loses another 12 Troops in Iraq Message-ID: <200704241949.l3OJnABK011962@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com US Loses another 12 Troops in Iraq Baghdad, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) A rebel attack in northern Iraq resulted in nine US soldiers killed and 20 others wounded, the US command said in a release Tuesday. The action took place Monday, when a driver charged his vehicle at a military base in central Diyala province. The new losses have brought the US death toll so far this month in Iraq to 85, the deadliest since December, when it amounted to 112. The US command also reported another US soldier was killed yesterday by a home-made roadside bomb near Moqdadiya base, north of Baghdad. In the meantime, Aswat al Iraq news agency informed the resistance caused another two US deaths last night, when their caravan activated explosive traps in southern Husseiniya locality. sus dig mt mf PL-15 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:50:21 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:50:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] The War Goes Ever On Message-ID: <200704241950.l3OJoLbK011977@viola.tamara-b.org> Counterpunch - Apr 24, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04242007.html A Permanent Occupation? The War Goes Ever On By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Is the Iraq war to become a permanent feature? The war persists despite the opposition of a majority of Americans and Iraqis. The war persists despite warnings from US generals that the stress is breaking the US Army. The war persists despite its enormous cost in red ink and dependence on foreign loans. The war persists despite its total failure. The war persists despite the known fact that it was based on Bush administration lies and deception. President Bush's latest delusion--the surge--has not increased security. The surge has been accompanied by new records of daily Iraqi civilian casualties, such as the 312 Iraqis killed and 305 wounded on April 18. Recently, US commanding general David Petraeus said that Iraqis would just have to learn to live with daily bombing attacks. Petraeus promises Iraqis decades of violence when he says, "Iraq is going to have to learn--as did Northern Ireland--to live with some degree of sensational attacks." For the past two years polls of the US public have shown that a majority of Americans believe that it was a mistake to invade Iraq. Polls of Iraqis show that large majorities support attacks on US troops and want US forces withdrawn from their country. The Iraqi Ministry of Health has concluded that 70% of primary school students in Baghdad suffer from trauma-related stress from passing dead bodies in the streets, from witnessing relatives being killed, and from being injured in attacks. President Bush and his dwindling band of apologists allege that the US cannot withdraw from Iraq without a bloodbath between Sunnis and Shiites. This bloodbath is already occurring. Indeed, the bloodbath was caused by the US invasion, which took political power from Sunnis and gave it to Shiites in the form of a US protectorate or colony. Bush's invasion of Iraq had no justification. Continuing the war has no positive effects. Each day that the war continues produces more pointless casualties, more red ink and dependence on foreign creditors, more trauma, and more hatreds. The Bush administration is continuing the war without a realizable or defensible goal. Although the Iraqi government is supposedly a democratically elected majority Shiite government, in reality it is puppet creature of the US occupation without real power and without public support. The "Iraqi government" exists only within the heavily fortified and US guarded "green zone" in Baghdad. Even this protected zone is subject to attacks. Just last week the parliament was bombed As a colony or protectorate, Iraq is too costly to maintain. The US has already incurred out-of-pocket and future costs of $1 trillion or more. The total gains from oil exploitation and military-security complex profits do not approach this massive figure imposed on US taxpayers which is growing by the day. As bad as it is, the situation could suddenly become much worse. Those in charge of US policy want to expand their targets from Sunni insurgents to Shiite militias. US forces have been unable to prevail over a lightly armed insurgency drawn from 20% of the population. The Shiite population is three times larger. Moreover, Shiites control southern Iraq, the territory through which US supplies must pass from Kuwait to Baghdad. If the Bush administration manages to get itself at war with 80% of the Iraqi population, US troops could be cut off and destroyed. How would an unstable egomaniac such as President Bush deal with the humiliation? The US dollar, already under pressure from large and growing trade deficits, has lost more of its value to the Bush administration's dependence on foreign borrowing to finance its war. With foreigners accumulating huge annual sums in US denominated assets, the US dollar's reserve currency role is jeopardized. If the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreigners will not finance our wars or our trade and budget deficits. The risks of Bush's war both to Iraqis and Americans is out of proportion to any conceivable gains. The war is all cost and no benefit. Iraqis have been made massively insecure, and their country has undergone tremendous destruction and turned into a training ground for terrorists. The entire Middle East has been put at risk of Sunni-Shiite conflict. Muslim hostility to US puppet regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan is rising. The Saudis have warned Washington that the Iraq war is causing the ground to shake beneath their feet. Bush claims that he invaded Iraq because he so highly values democracy that he desired to establish one in Iraq as an example for other Middle Eastern countries to follow. However, what Bush has demonstrated to Muslims is that American democracy is unresponsive to citizens and voters. Bush has demonstrated to the world that the US government is controlled by a small oligopoly of vested interests, the public be damned. Democracy means a government that follows the will of the people. Bush is ignoring public opinion and has made it clear that he will continue the practice. Bush has shown the world that the only difference between American dictatorship and other dictatorships is that, for now, Americans are permitted to remove their dictator after his term is served. [Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:53:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:53:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Afghan Torture: Demands for Canadian Defense Min to Resign Message-ID: <200704241953.l3OJrIDd011989@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) Canadian soldiers torture Afghans, Defense Minister will not resign, report says Al Jazeera - Apr 23, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A8D9C4B5-12AC-450A-A02B-F714BE36674A.htm Canada minister in Afghan abuse row Opposition politicians in Canada are demanding the resignation of the defence minister after allegations Afghan prisoners, detained by Canadian troops, were tortured after being handed over to local authorities. The Globe and Mail newspaper spoke to 30 men who said they were beaten, starved and subjected to electric shocks in Afghan custody. "Is the prime minister going to demand the resignation of his defence minister?" Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party, asked in parliament on Monday. Stephen Harper, the conservative prime minister, promised to raise the report with Kabul but said Gordon O'Connor would keep his job. "These are allegations, serious allegations, and this government is taking them seriously," he said. Ottawa is already investigating earlier reports that Canadian troops had handed over Taliban suspects despite knowing they could be harmed. Torture treaty Professor Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia, a leading expert in international relations, said if the allegations proved to be true, Canada had broken a United Nations treaty against torture and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. "I hope the Canadian people realise just how terrible a day this is. If this report is accurate, Canadians have engaged in war crimes," he said. Canada has about 2,500 troops deployed in around the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Fifty-four soldiers have died during the mission, nine in the last two weeks. O'Connor admitted last month he had misled parliament when he told MPs that the Red Cross would inform Canada if detainees were being mistreated. "Is the government going to do what has to be done now? Immediately stop the transfer [of prisoners], launch a public inquiry and sack the minister of defence today," Jack Layton, leader of the New Democrats, said. One Afghan police official interviewed by the Globe said that some suspects "need some torture, because without torture they will never say anything". According to the Globe report, Mahmad Gul, a farmer, said he was interrogated by Afghan police for three days in May 2006. Canadian soldiers visited him between beatings. "The Canadians told me 'give them real information, or they will do more bad things to you'," Gul said. Source: Agencies From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:54:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:54:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Somalia fighting spreads to Kismayu Message-ID: <200704241954.l3OJsQPg012001@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) Al Jazeera - Apr 23, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0918D5A2-70AE-4794-8855-355524AA88AD.htm Somalia fighting spreads to Kismayu Troops from Somalia's transitional government have clashed with clan members in the southern port of Kismayu, as fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, entered a sixth day. Government soldiers were reported to have been pushed to the edge of the town by late on Monday. Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow said residents told him that up to 15 people had been killed. "This morning fighting occured between one of the main clans there, its militia was fighting Somali government forces and as the day developed .. the clan militia got the upper hand," he said. "This is a clan that has not been happy with the government coming to Kismayu and has been complaining ... to senior government officials." Mogadishu fighting In Mogadishu, at least 37 more people were killed as fighters opposed to the transitional government battled Ethiopian forces. Mohamed, a resident, said: "Anybody who has any means of fleeing the area has left." The UN refugee agency said last week that more than 321,000 people had fled the capital since February 1, but clan elders told AFP news agency that figure could now be closer to 400,000 with the exodus of thousands more over the past six days. Mukhtar Mohamed, a resident of Fagah in northern Mogadishu, said: "I have seen Ethiopian tanks taking positions and heavily shelling insurgent positions. "The fighting is heavier [than] yesterday, the rivals are exchanging machine gun, mortar and anti-aircraft fire." At least 267 people have died since the clashes began last Wednesday, the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, a local group that tracks the number of casualties, said. Casualties increasing Hussein Said Korgab, a spokesman for the Hawiye clan, Mogadishu's largest, said: "The fighting is very heavy and the casualties are steadily increasing everyday. The Ethiopian forces are hitting civilians indiscriminately." This week's fighting alone has displaced at least tens of thousands of people and destroyed expensive property, he added. "At least 70,000 [people] have evacuated their homes. Property worth $500m has been destroyed. The Ethiopian and government forces will take ultimate responsibility for all this mess," he said. Hundreds of civilians, clutching their personal belongings, took advantage of relative calmness in southern Mogadishu and fled their neighbourhoods. Bur Dheere, a mother-of-three, said: "We have no place to stay in this town. Everywhere in Mogadishu is the same - death. We are running away until we reach a safer place." National instability Ethiopian troops helped Somalia's interim government push the Union of Islamic Courts from the country's south and central regions in January. Fighting continues months after the defeat of the Islamic courts [AFP] Since then, fighting has steadily grown worse as remanents of the movement backed by Hawiye clansmen continue to fight, vowing to defeat the interim government and drive out foreign forces from the country. On Monday, Ali Mohamed Gedi, Somalia's Ethiopian-backed prime minister, said that his government was winning the battle but called for greater support from the international community. On the Mogadishu-based Shabelle radio, he said: "Until the terrorists are wiped out from Somalia, the fighting will go on." "If we do not get international support the war may spread throughout the region and Africa," he said. "These terrorists want to destabilise the whole region." Somalia has lacked an effective government ever since Barre's removal from power touched off a deadly power struggle that has defied more than 14 attempts to create a government that can stabilise the country of about 10 million people. Al Jazeera and agencies From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 15:55:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:55:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] FAS Secrecy News - 04/24/2007 Message-ID: <200704241955.l3OJtUtW012029@viola.tamara-b.org> SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2007, Issue No. 43 April 24, 2007 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ Support Secrecy News: http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp ** PRESIDENTIAL SECRECY AND THE LAW ** PENTAGON PROPOSES NEW ACCESS RESTRICTIONS ** VARIOUS RESOURCES ON INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ** AIPAC TRIAL LIKELY TO BE POSTPONED PRESIDENTIAL SECRECY AND THE LAW Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity, according to a provocative new book on the subject. "When the president lacks diplomatic or interpersonal skill, he is likely to compensate by shielding his activities -- even shielding his very self -- from the public, relying on secrecy rather than diplomacy," write political scientists Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver in "Presidential Secrecy and the Law." The authors explore how the growth of executive branch secrecy has transformed the institution of the presidency and the character of American government. Secrecy, they say, "has depoliticized the president's role in governmental action. Where a president may do what is desired in secret, there is no reason to withstand the ordeal of a political battle to achieve the same ends." "Increasingly, our governmental institutions are unable to hold the president accountable for actions undertaken in secret in the name of national security. In a subtle but sweeping way, this failure is working detrimental changes in our federal government institutions." The authors review the landscape of national security secrecy and the accumulation of unchecked executive authority and they proceed to critique the performance of the legislative and judicial branches. Legislative initiatives such as the War Powers Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that were intended to restrain the executive branch have consistently backfired, they contend, serving instead to legitimize the presidential actions that they were intended to restrict. "As counterintuitive as it may seem, we conclude that congressional efforts to control executive abuse in areas of purported national security concerns are ill-advised. These efforts insulate the president and establish a bureaucratic machinery and process for engaging in precisely the kinds of activity that were meant to be avoided." "We argue that aggressive action to control executive branch abuse of secrecy should not come from Congress but from the courts, which are in a position to provide the scrutiny necessary to discourage presidential abuse of secrecy powers." For more information, see "Presidential Secrecy and the Law" by Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007: http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/9324.html A White House obsession with secrecy should not be confused with a commitment to good security. Rep. Henry Waxman yesterday itemized several gross violations of classified information security policy in the Bush White House and called upon former White House chief of staff Andrew Card to explain security practices during his tenure. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/waxman042307.pdf PENTAGON PROPOSES NEW ACCESS RESTRICTIONS The Department of Defense has asked Congress to enact two expansive new provisions in the FY 2008 defense authorization act to help it restrict public access to information. One of the provisions would create a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for certain unclassified information related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other would establish civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized publication or sale of maps and images ("geodetic products") that the Secretary of Defense has designated for "limited distribution." The proposed exemption for unclassified WMD information, which was proposed and rejected by Congress last year (SN, 04/18/06), is exceptionally broad in scope. Its definition of "weapons of mass destruction" even extends to devices that are not lethal, as long as they may cause "serious bodily injury to a significant number of people" (50 U.S.C. 2302). The Pentagon's argument for the exemption is further undermined by the assertion that without it, unclassified information could "easily" assist a terrorist to make or use a weapon of mass destruction. The notion that terrorism is "easy," popular with some New York Times op-ed writers and other lazy persons, was memorably dissected by George Smith of GlobalSecurity.org (SN, 08/16/05). The second provision to penalize "inappropriate disclosures" of geodetic information, "including postings of such products on the internet," originated with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), which said it could not effectively protect these unclassified maps and images without a new criminal prohibition. "For several years, products bearing the LIMDIS [limited dissemination] caveat have wrongfully been offered for sale to the public ... on eBay or displayed on internet sites. To date, DCIS efforts to prosecute the eBay sellers have not been successful." An organization that engaged in unauthorized disclosure or dissemination of such materials would be subject to a penalty of "not more than $500,000 for each violation...." The text of the two proposed Pentagon access restrictions, with accompanying explanation and justification, may be found here: http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2007/defauth-prop.html VARIOUS RESOURCES ON INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY Some notable new or newly-acquired publications include these: "Physical Security Program," Department of Defense Regulation 5200.08-R, April 9, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/5200_08r.pdf "National Defense Intelligence College," Department of Defense Instruction 3305.01, December 22, 2006: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/i3305_01.pdf "Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance: Preliminary Observations on DOD's Approach to Managing Requirements for New Systems, Existing Assets, and Systems Development," U.S. Government Accountability Office testimony [GAO-07-596T], April 19, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/gao-07-596t.pdf "Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900" by W. Seth Carus, August 1998 (rev. February 2001): http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/cbw/carus.pdf AIPAC TRIAL LIKELY TO BE POSTPONED The unprecedented trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful receipt and disclosure of national defense information, is likely to be postponed from its scheduled start date on June 4. The need to resolve disagreements between the parties over the handling of classified information involved in the case will "knock the trial date into a cocked hat," said Judge T.S. Ellis, III at an April 19 hearing. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/aipac/rosen041907.html The Judge gave prosecutors until May 2 to decide whether they will propose a new set of "substitutions" for classified evidence, which would then need to be reviewed by the defense and the court under the provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act. Alternatively, prosecutors may decide to stand fast with their previous proposal to bar public access to the classified evidence, a position that the judge has already rejected, thereby setting the stage for an appeal. Judge Ellis issued a detailed memorandum opinion on April 19 to explain why he concluded that the prosecution proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence is not authorized by statute or precedent. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/aipac/memop041907.pdf The memorandum opinion advised the government that any proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence would have to be thoroughly supported by "a highly detailed explanation of the ensuing harms to national security... [since] much of the classified information at issue [here] is not self-evidently damaging to national security." _______________________________________________ Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to secrecy_news-request at lists.fas.org with "subscribe" in the body of the message. To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to secrecy_news-remove at lists.fas.org OR email your request to saftergood at fas.org Secrecy News is archived at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html Secrecy News is available in blog format at: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here: http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp _______________________ Steven Aftergood Project on Government Secrecy Federation of American Scientists web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood at fas.org voice: (202) 454-4691 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:00:59 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:00:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Haiti Reborn Update - Apr 24, 2007 - Neptune Freed Message-ID: <200704242000.l3OK0xCD012085@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tom Ricker, Quixote Center/Haiti Reborn haiti-list at quixote.org Haiti Reborn Update - Apr 24, 2007 Dear friends, I hope this message finds you well. This update has a few action items and some news. First, we just embedded a video on our website from the satirists at the Onion News Network concerning news coverage of Haiti ? very funny, but sadly all too true. So check it out when you have a chance ? its only 2 minutes long. Just Say ?No? One of our partner programs here at the Quixote Center ? the Alliance for Responsible Trade ? is organizing a signature ad campaign calling on Congress to ?Just say no? to fast track. Fast track is the common name for ?Trfast trackade promotion authority? ? which is a process through which Congress passes its Constitutional authority (one might say obligation) to regulate international commerce to the President for a period of years ? usually five years at a time. This seemingly innocent authority is actually quite controversial because Congress essentially agrees to vote yes or no on trade agreements negotiated by the President with no amendments or re-working of the text. The Alliance for Responsible Trade is asking Congress to just say no to fast track right now ? no quick fixes. Then they can take some time to evaluate our current trade policy and reform it. You can read more about the campaign, fast track, and the details on signing the New York Times signature ad here. They are asking a donation for signature. This issue is potentially very important for Haiti. If Bush were to get Fast Track authority it is likely that the next regional bloc to be included in this administration?s piece meal construction of a hemisphere wide trade zone would be CARICOM (the Caribbean Common Market) ? which now includes Haiti. Central America?s experience with ?negotiating? should be a warning to CARICOM. The Central America regional integration process was completely disrupted by the CAFTA. It would be the same for CARICOM. And Haiti already has the lowest tariffs in the region ? the result of which has been the destruction of Haiti?s agriculture and soaring unemployment. Jubilee Conference/Debt Update A couple of weeks ago I send around a reminder about the Latin America Solidarity Conference in Chicago (which happened April 13-15), and was told by a few folks that it was a little late - for many people who were seeing it for the first time - to make plans to actually attend. My apologies. So not to repeat that mistake ? I want to let everybody know about another conference ? in Chicago again ? with a bit more advanced notice. This is with the Jubilee USA Network. It is their second annual grassroots conference June 15-17. To get more information check the website. Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center are members of the Network Council of Jubilee USA and will be attending the conference. Jubilee USA is a network of faith-based, solidarity, environmental and human rights organizations that have been working for debt cancellation for the world?s poorest countries for 10 years now. We have been working with them recently in promoting the House resolution to cancel Haiti?s debt, H. Res 241, introduced by Maxine Waters (D-CA) in March. This resolution has gained 4 new co-sponsors, for a total of 11, since it was introduced. An identical resolution introduced during the last Congress garnered 65 co-sponsors so we have our work cut out for us! We will be calling for a national call-in day/day of action for debt cancellation on May 18, Flag Day in Haiti, one of several important celebrations of Haiti?s hard won independence and sovereignty. So mark your calendars! Of course if you are so inspired there is no reason to wait until May 18 to call your member of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor H. Res 241. The capital switchboard is 202- In other news? Our delegation to Nicaragua with some of the founders and leaders of the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) has been delayed again. Our partners in this effort based in Nicaragua have been working hard to get the appropriate paperwork done in order to secure visas for five women from KOFAVIV. This has proven a difficult process, with many hurdles, but we are within a week of a final decision on the visas. However, since the delegation was slated for May 3-10 ? which begins next Thursday ? we decided to delay for three weeks to provide plenty of time to work out the details once the visas are granted. Among other things, the visas need to be picked up in the Dominican Republic, since Nicaragua has no consulate in Haiti. Funeral services were held in Miami this weekend in memory of Lifaiti Lully. Lully died at the end of 22-day voyage in open waters from Haiti. Lully was one of 102 Haitian?s that ventured the crossing to Florida. The 101 survivors are being held in detention at several facilities in South Florida. Unlike other refugees, Haitians are detained during proceedings concerning their fate. Most other people are paroled out to family-members or friends while their futures are determined. Detention makes it nearly impossible for refugees to seek council and it splits up families. The fate of the detainees is still open. Community members in Miami and several members of Congress have asked President Bush to release them to family members. The local Catholic Church has said it would take responsibility for them as well. A formers US soldier, born in Haiti, Henry Petit-Homme took part in a 15-day hunger strike to protest the detentions. To keep up to date on the case you can visit the website of Fanmi Ayisyen nan Miyami (FANM) ? a grassroots organization long active in the defense of the rights of Haitian refugees. We will have more on the case next week ? Tuesday May 1 has been called as a national for the promotion of immigrant rights. Finally, former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune has been released and cleared of all charges. Below is a press release on this case. Have a great week, Tom *** (visit Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti for more on this case.) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, April 20, 2007 Brian Concannon, IJDH.org, (541) 432-0597, brianhaiti at aol.com Jens Iverson, HastingsHumanRights.org, (347) 200-1449, iverson j at uchastings.edu Mario Joseph, BAI, 011-509-221-6200, mariohaiti at aol.com ALL CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST FORMER HAITIAN PRIME MINISTER TWO YEARS AFTER LAW STUDENTS AND ATTORNEYS LODGE COMPLAINT WITH INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION Many political prisoners continue to suffer in dismal prison conditions. San Francisco, CA: April 20, 2007. After years of illegal imprisonment and unsubstantiated charges, former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune is a free man. A Haitian appeals court has ruled that all charges against him must be dropped, due to the unconstitutional manner in which they were filed. Charges against former Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Privert were also dropped. While Neptune is free, many others are not,? stated University of California Hastings law student Jens Iverson. ?Neptune?s release is a case study in how international pressure and attention can help those caught in a dysfunctional justice system, where many prisoners are simply forgotten and left to rot.? U.C. Hastings Professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza stated that ?the partnership between renowned Haitian attorneys such as Mario Joseph, human rights experts and willing law students has proven to be truly effective. But much remains to be done.? On April 20, 2005, law students at the University of California, Hastings, along with Haitian and U.S. attorneys filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of Neptune. Neptune had been illegally imprisoned since June 2004. The law students? petition requested immediate action on the part of the Commission to prevent further endangerment of Mr. Neptune's life. In addition to calling for the former Prime Minister?s immediate release from arbitrary detention, the petition asked for international oversight and supervision of Haitian prisons in order to improve their dismal conditions. Mr. Neptune?s continued detention placed his life in substantial danger. He survived at least two assassination attempts, as well as a prison massacre and a prison breakout since his arrest. While the Yvon Neptune was eventually released from prison due to the worldwide outcry at his illegal imprisonment, charges remained lodged against him. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR) decided in November 2005 to declare the present case for Yvon Neptune admissible with respect to Articles 5, 7, 8, and 25.1 of the American Convention and to proceed with the examination of the merits of the case. In November 2006, at the request of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR), the Bureau des Advocats Internationaux, the Institute for Justice for Democracy in Haiti, and the Hastings Human Rights Project for Haiti, submitted their support for referral of the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. ?The Appeals Court victory is not the victory that Mr. Neptune and his ?co-defendants deserve, and the prosecutor had recommended, because it does ?not recognize the absence of evidence against them,? explains Brian ?Concannon of the Institute of Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a co-filer of ?the complaint before the Inter-American Commission that brought Neptune?s ?plight to worldwide attention. ?But it is a victory, because it ends ?almost three years of legal struggle, including over two dangerous years in ?prison for Mr. Neptune and Mr. Privert. Credit is due Mario Joseph and his ?legal team at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, but the lawyers never ?would have had their day in court without the persistent pressure applied ?from outside Haiti.? The IACHR is conducting an on-site visit to Haiti from April 16-20, 2007 to observe the human rights situation. The IACHR is charged by the Organization of American States (OAS) to examine and report on human rights in the western hemisphere. The Commission investigates claims of human rights violations, makes recommendations to governments, and refers cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Commission investigated the violations of Neptune?s rights and referred the case to the Court. That case will remain active due to the suffering Neptune endured and the overriding concerns regarding Haiti?s defective justice system. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:01:42 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:01:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] More women rule, and die, in Mexico's drug gangs Message-ID: <200704242001.l3OK1gdB012097@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) Reuters - Apr 20, 2007 More women rule, and die, in Mexico's drug gangs By Robin Emmott Reuters TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Challenging the stereotype of macho Mexico, women are moving into positions of power in male-dominated drug cartels but in the process suffering gruesome deaths in turf wars among traffickers. At least 20 women drug smugglers have been killed by rival gangs so far this year, many of them suffocated with tape, compared to about 15 for all of last year, police say. The highest-profile case is that of Enedina Arellano Felix, who now jointly runs the Tijuana cartel based across the border from California after one of her brothers, top trafficker Francisco Javier, was captured last August. "This is a new phenomenon we are only just becoming aware of," said a senior federal police officer who declined to be named. "We are seeing it in the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels, possibly even in the Juarez and Gulf gangs," he said, referring to Mexico's main trafficking organizations. U.S. law enforcement officials say 46-year-old Enedina, an accountant, works alongside her brother Eduardo in leading the cartel, using the pseudonym Maria Cecilia Felix. Ironically, female traffickers often get their starts in the police, before moving to the drug gangs for better money. Corrupt female police officers have proved adept at recruiting teams of attractive, well-dressed women to smuggle drugs past border guards in the face of increased security, winning the respect of cartel leaders. Women are unlikely to be searched during drug raids because Mexican police and army units rarely include a female team member, police say. "Many women are also good business managers. We believe Enedina Arellano has a pharmacy and construction business," said a former Mexican police intelligence officer who declined to be named. LIFE IMITATING ART? Around 700 people have been killed so far in 2007 in fierce battles for control of smuggling routes that have prompted President Felipe Calderon to send thousands of troops to troubled areas. Women are less likely to become caught up in the violence but they not immune to dying brutally. They are often killed execution-style, shot with their hands and feet tied behind their backs, or suffocated with duct tape. Senior Tijuana policewoman Monica Ramirez, once considered one of the most promising female officers on the northern border, was killed in February by Tijuana cartel hit men after being jailed for running a smuggling cell linked to the group. Police sources say she was shot dead in a prison hospital to keep her from informing. Women in Mexico have long taken second place in public life but their presence has grown in recent decades in areas ranging from jobs in assembly plants to government positions as they challenge workplace sexism. Around a fifth of Mexico's federal lawmakers are women. In a case of life imitating art, Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte presaged the trend in the drug trade in his 2002 bestseller "Queen of the South" -- a meticulously researched novel about fictional Mexican drug magnate Teresa Mendoza. Partly set in Mexico's Pacific state of Sinaloa -- today the base of No. 1 trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman -- the formidable Mendoza rises out of poverty as a gang moll to become a tough, tequila-drinking drug kingpin in her own right, selling Colombian cocaine to a Russian crime gang. "The book was prophetic," said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at San Diego State University. "The more active role of women is going to give a new twist to drug trafficking. It may become less violent, more businesslike," he added. Poverty and a lack of well-paid jobs in Mexico appear to be the main causes of the increasing female involvement in trafficking, with many women eager to swap their tin-roof shacks for a proper house and to educate their children. "Drug trafficking brings status and excitement. It is a route out of hardship," said Jose Maria Ramos, a security expert at the Tijuana-based research institute Colegio de la Frontera Norte. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:02:52 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:02:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Venezuela Securing Colombia Border Message-ID: <200704242002.l3OK2q7R012109@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Venezuela Securing Colombia Border Caracas, Apr 24 (Prensa Latina) Venezuela announced reinforcement of its military presence in Zulia state on the border with Colombia, as part of an agenda implemented on Tuesday to improve security. Military sources indicated that the First Infantry and Military Garrison Division in Maracaibo are due to activate as of Wednesday the 12th Infantry Brigade, which has three battalions and its operation center will be in Machiques de Perija municipality. General Juan Vicente Paredes told press that some 2,000 soldiers will secure all the Zulia territory and particularly support agricultural producers and farmers, victims of outrages by Colombian paramilitary groups. The deployment is part of a plan revealed this month by Defense Minister General-in-Chief Raul Baduel, to reinforce military control along the border with Colombia, with the deployment of some 15,000 soldiers. Baduel stated that the operation will ensure security in a zone mainly affected by illegal armed groups, drug traffickers and criminals. sus iff ml mf PL-13 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:04:11 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:04:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Venez Asks World Support for Posada Extradition Message-ID: <200704242004.l3OK4BVI012121@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Venezuela Requests World Support for Posada Carriles Extradition Havana, April 24 (acn) Venezuela asked multilateral organizations and governments of the world for support of its extradition request against Luis Posada Carriles, the notorious terrorist recently released on bail by US authorities. "Venezuela calls for the mobilization of the international public opinion and nations, as well as for the energetic action by governments and multilateral organizations to not allow that impunity favors the terrorists and their promoters", read a communiqu? issued by Caracas, Granma daily reports. The message issued by the Venezuelan authorities ratifies the immediate extradition of the dangerous criminal. The release of Luis Posada Carriles was the result of a maneuver by the George Bush administration to protect him, and with it, Washington promotes impunity and openly offends the memory of the victims of a sabotaged Cubana airliner in 1976. The message reads that "the complicity action is aimed at buying the silence of Posada Carriles who, was a long-time CIA agent and a key man for the Bush clan." Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government will take the Posada release case to the Wednesday session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS). From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:05:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:05:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Posada and Baseball Top News in Cuba Message-ID: <200704242005.l3OK5XGa012136@viola.tamara-b.org> Circles Robinson Online - Apr 20, 2007 http://circlesonline.blogspot.com/2007/04/posada-and-baseball-top-news-in-cuba.html Posada and Baseball Top News in Cuba By Circles Robinson Thursday night's exciting broadcast of the baseball playoff game between rivals Santiago de Cuba and Industriales was peppered with between inning messages showing outrage over the release from a US prison of the most notorious terrorist of the Western Hemisphere. Cubans love their baseball, but despise Luis Posada Carriles. The CIA trained, naturalized Venezuelan, is credited with killing 73 people in a sabotage of a Cuban airliner in 1976; several Havana hotel bombings in the 1990s; playing a lead role in the Iran-Contra affair in the 80s, and plotting numerous assassination attempts over several decades. "George Bush's government is an accomplice of this terrorist," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro told the press. "It has protected him and today it has guaranteed his freedom in a mockery of international law." "They let the executioner out!" was the headline on Cuba's nightly newscast. Mixing sports and politics is something that many people dislike, but in Cuba they are sometimes interwoven. Given that an entire Cuban fencing team was among Posada's plane bombing victims, the mix seemed utterly appropriate. Meanwhile, the Cuban baseball championship best-of-seven series continues with Santiago de Cuba leading 2-0 after winning at home on Wednesday by a score of 19-6 and 8-6 on Thursday. The series now shifts to Havana's Latinoamericano Stadium for games three and four on Saturday and Sunday. The packed stadiums and avid television and radio audience will enjoy the ball games with a frenzied passion not seen in baseball in the USA, but that will not hide the indignation over the terrorist being free in Miami. Posada's release from jail --where he was being held only on immigration offenses-- had long been considered by many Cubans as probable, with the time and place the only question at hand. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:07:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:07:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Democ Now- Pertierra on Posada: How US Deals with Terrorism Message-ID: <200704242007.l3OK7RAr012150@viola.tamara-b.org> Democracy Now via Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Posada Carriles Case: How US Deals with Terrorism Washington, Apr 23 (Prensa Latina) Well-known US journalist Amy Goodman said Monday the Posada Carriles case highlights a major gap in how the US deals with international terrorism. Luis Posada Carriles walked out of a New Mexico jail last week, free on bail. Posada was being held on immigration charges. But most people who know his name want to see him tried for terrorism, said Goodman. In a special coverage of the case, Goodman said in Democracy Now webradio program that Posada was connected to the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. As a former CIA operative, Posada was detained in the US on immigration charges since he snuck into the country in 2005. The US has refused to extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela. On this issue, Amy Goodman interviewed Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban parliament, Luis Fernandez, attorney for Luis Posada Carriles, and Jose Pertierra, Washington-based lawyer representing the Venezuelan government in its demand for extradition of Posada Carriles. Following, Prensa Latina offers a rush transcript of the interviews. AMY GOODMAN: A new phase has opened in a case that highlights a major gap in how the US and many others view international terrorism. Luis Posada Carriles walked out of a New Mexico jail last week, free on bail. Posada was being held on immigration charges, but many say he should be tried for terrorism. Posada is the anti-Castro Cuban militant who was connected to the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that resulted in the deaths of all seventy-three people on board. Posada Carriles is a former CIA operative who has worked for years to bring down the Cuban government. He has been detained in the US on immigration charges since he snuck into the United States in 2005. The US has refused to extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela. On Sunday, the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the US of protecting international terrorism and said that Posada Carriles, that his case should be taken to the United Nations. Cuba has also renewed calls for Posada's extradition. This is Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon. RICARDO ALARCON: [translated] According to international law, according to antiterrorism agreements, when there is an attack on a civil plane, the country that has a suspect in its custody and is asked for him to be extradited to another place so that he can be investigated and tried, that country that has him has only two options: to extradite him or, without exception, to try him itself. Posada is not a suspect. Posada was being tried, formally accused over twenty years ago by another Venezuelan government, by other Venezuelan courts that have been demanding him ever since then. AMY GOODMAN: Posada is now in Miami, ahead of his immigration trial next month. Last week, Posada's attorney Luis Fernandez argued Posada's past is irrelevant to his status today. LUIS FERNANDEZ: This decision by the appellate court to uphold Judge Cardone's brilliant decision was very important, because the government was banking on using tactics of things that happened or alleged things that happened over thirty years ago to dissuade a judge from giving a defendant his right to go out and be out on bond while he's pending trial. AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Venezuela, where we're joined by Jose Pertierra. He's the Washington, D.C.-based attorney who has been retained by the Venezuelan government to represent the country of Venezuela in the Luis Posada Carriles case here in the United States. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Jose Pertierra. JOSE PERTIERRA: Good morning, Amy. It's a pleasure to be with you. AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you talk about the significance of this development of Posada being released from jail? JOSE PERTIERRA: Amy, I don't think there's any doubt that Luis Posada Carriles is a terrorist and has been a terrorist for years and that he was the mastermind behind the downing of the plane in 1976 that killed those seventy-three innocent people. What we're seeing now, though, by his release from prison is the conduct of the United States throughout this case, that rather than obey the law and abide by its international treaty obligations and by US law, the United States is neither extraditing him nor prosecuting him for murder, but is instead trying to hide behind judicial decisions that the Bush administration has almost invited by its conduct. Let me just briefly tell you what I mean. We contend that the White House has manipulated the US judicial system in such a way as to get exactly the kind of decision that it wanted in the immigration case and also the case that's presently pending in El Paso. Rather than charge him for murder, the US has charged him only with lying on an immigration form. The US has refused to present any witnesses, any evidence, any documents, despite a wealth of documents that we have submitted and that exist in CIA files. They've failed to cross-examine any witnesses. It's a manipulation of the judicial system that has de-legitimized the US judicial system. You know, we see the scandal that's occurring now with the firings of prosecutors who wanted to implement the law and abide by their conscience. This is a case where prosecutors didn't obey their conscience; they obeyed the White House. And in so doing, they have released this international terrorist into the streets of Miami. AMY GOODMAN: Jose Pertierra, can you outline the evidence that there is that he was connected to the 1976 Cuban airliner bombing that killed all seventy-three people on board? JOSE PERTIERRA: Well, Amy, there were four people directly involved: two people who actually placed the two bombs on the plane, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo; and two masterminds, Mr. Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both Bosch and Posada are free in Miami, one pardoned by Bush, father, the other one freed by Bush, Jr. The two people who placed the bombs, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, were convicted in Caracas to twenty years in jail, and they've served their time and have now been released. Both of those men confessed to the authorities in Trinidad, where they were captured, and their confessions are even -- some of them are even in handwritten form - that they received training in explosives from the CIA, that they worked for the Venezuelan Secret Intelligence Agency at the time, and that Luis Posada Carriles was their boss who directed them. We have their confessions. We have telephone calls that were placed by these men to Mr. Posada Carriles in Caracas. Although they didn't reach him, they left a message in coded words saying that the bus had crashed and the dogs had died, referring to the plane and the passengers. These were coded words that were used. We also have a wealth of CIA and FBI declassified documents that show that Posada Carriles even bragged about the downing of the plane before it happened. Posada himself talked to CIA sources in Caracas and said that a Cuban plane -- that we're going to down a Cuban plane and that Orland Bosch, his accomplice, has all the details. Those documents can be found on the George Washington University's National Security Archive website for all to see. This is a man who was indicted in Caracas for seventy-three counts of murder in relation to the downing of the plane. While the case was pending and before judgment could be reached, he escaped from prison in 1985 and has been an international fugitive since. The case in Venezuela could not proceed when he escaped, because under Venezuelan law, if you escape, the process stops. There's no in absentia verdicts under Venezuelan law. So the warrant was issued, and now what Venezuela is asking is that the White House abide by its treaty obligations to Venezuela and return him to finish his trial here. AMY GOODMAN: You're in Venezuela right now, Jose Pertierra. You represent the Venezuelan government. JOSE PERTIERRA: Pardon me? AMY GOODMAN: You're in Venezuela now. You represent the Venezuelan government in this case. The US said that they wouldn't extradite Carriles to Venezuela because they were concerned he would be tortured there. Your response? JOSE PERTIERRA: I'm glad you raise that, Amy, because there has been a great deal of confusion about this, and I think on purpose. The White House wanted to confuse all the legal issues surrounding this case. What we have is an immigration judge who decided that Posada could not be removed or deported under immigration laws to Venezuela. However, under US law, extradition trumps immigration rulings. That is to say, he can be extradited despite this decision by an immigration judge that he should not be deported. And the lead case on that is the precedent-setting case from 1963 by the US Board of Immigration Appeals, ironically enough dealing with a Venezuelan, a Venezuelan dictator by the name of Peres Jimenez, who had come to the United States and sought asylum and he was wanted in Venezuela for corruption. The Board of Immigration Appeals held that deportation proceedings should be suspended and the extradition process should proceed, because extradition trumps immigration. And secondly, Amy, the law is very clear that if the United States for political reasons decides not to extradite an individual, it is obligated under international treaty conventions that deal with terrorism to prosecute that individual for the crimes committed abroad, but to prosecute him in the United States. And the language of those conventions are very clear. It says, "shall, without exception whatsoever, prosecute the individual in the territory where he is found." So there is no wiggle room there. The law says you extradite or prosecute, but you don't free him into the streets of Miami and charge him only with merely lying on an immigration form to an immigration official. AMY GOODMAN: Jose Pertierra, I want to thank you very much for joining us. Jose Pertierra is a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who is now in Venezuela. He has been hired by the Venezuelan government to represent Venezuela in the case against Posada Carriles. We thank you very much for joining us. We will certainly continue to follow this case. ef ln PL-36 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:08:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:08:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Harold Pinter Joins World Petition on Posada Case Message-ID: <200704242008.l3OK8J55012162@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Harold Pinter Joins World Petition on Posada Carriles Case Havana, April 24 (acn) British author Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate for Literature (2005), added his name to a petition demanding that notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, recently released on bail by US authorities, be extradited to Venezuela to be tried for the 1976 sabotage of a Cubana jetliner that killed 73 people. During the last eight days a petition that began circulating with the names of 150 writers, scholars, artists and other celebrities has grown to 3,500. Among them are Nobel Prize Winners Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nadine Gordimer and now Harold Pinter. Harold Pinter denounced the US justice system for freeing Luis Posada Carriles and for evading charging him for his acts of terrorism. He called the Bush regime "the most dangerous that has ever existed, even more dangerous than the Nazi government in Germany because of the scope and depth of its activities and its intentions throughout the world." Other new petition signers demanding justice in the case of Posada were Mexican scholars Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and John Saxe Fernandez; Puerto Rican author Luis Lopez Nieves; German economist Elmar Altavater; and Paraguayan professor Martin Almada, who was a victim of Operation Condor that tortured and murdered thousands of South Americans. Le Monde editor Ignacio Ramonet, upon signing the petition in Paris, said that he was well aware of the sham and was willing "to join the protest." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:09:06 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:09:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] World Unionists Expected at Havana May Day Events Message-ID: <200704242009.l3OK96Bq012174@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles World Unionists to Attend Havana May Day Celebrations Havana, April 24 (acn) More than 860 unionists from 61 nations have already confirmed participation along the Cuban people in upcoming May Day celebrations. Confirmed participants represent 167 trade unions from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the United States and Canada. Messages sent by the unionists to the Cuban Workers Federation explain that their participation at International Workers Day in Havana is aimed at breaking the over-45-year US economic, financial and commercial blockade of the island. The General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions George Mavrikos, as well as renown Latin American union leaders have also confirmed their participation at the Havana celebrations. Those friends coming to Havana for May Day celebrations will be sharing with the Cuban workers and people in general their struggle against dirty US maneuvers aimed at toppling the Cuban Socialist Revolution, said the General Secretary of Cuba's Workers Federation (CTC) Salvador Valdes Mesa. The guests from around the world will attend cultural galas, meetings among unionists and will visit work centers in different economic sectors. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:10:37 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:10:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] As Fidel predicted: Food, biofuel industry clash over land use Message-ID: <200704242010.l3OKAb0I012189@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness EU Observer - Apr 23, 2007 http://euobserver.com/9/23916/?rk=1 Food and biofuel industry clash over use of farmland By Lisbeth Kirk EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The rising trend towards using biofuel, including in the European Union, is putting the food industry on a collision course with the renewable energy industry over the future use of the world's limited farmland. "Land availability for both food and fuel is very questionable", managing director Guenther Buck of food-giant Unilever warned at a conference organised by the European Parliament's green group in Brussels last week. His comments came just a month after the EU agreed that biofuels should constitute at least 10 percent of fuels used in new vehicles by 2020. The multinational company estimates that in 20 years time, an extra 50% food production will be needed to feed the world's growing population. "Without agricultural intensification this will require an additional 2.5 billion hectares of land - as much as two thirds of the current forest area. And this is before biofuel production sets in," Mr Buck said. Prices on rapeseed, which is used for both food and fuel, have doubled since 2000 and the world's wheat stocks are at a very low level, according to the Unilever director. Meanwhile, green MEPs say that the boom in biofuel production around the globe is creating dangerous competition between the world's 800 million car owners and the two billion people living below the poverty line. The likely outcome of the clash will be a rise in the cost of food while the intensification of agriculture is also expected to lead to severe environmental problems, excess use of fertilizers, water scarcity, erosion and loss of flora and fauna. On top of this, there is likely to be further global pressure to move towards more GMO crops, Unilever argues. Both food and fuel is possible But the biofuel industry hit back during the 3rd International Conference on GMO-Free Regions, Biodiversity and Rural Development, arguing that both "food and fuel is possible". "If we need to produce more food at some point in the future, it is easy to turn back the production", Raffaello Garofalo of the European Biodiesel Board said. "Revolutions are always met by conservatism - in this case from those who are used to having the raw materials", Mr Garofalo said. Biofuels have emerged as one of the greener solutions to growing demands for energy while at the same time making the industrialised world less dependent on imports from the Middle East and Russia. In addition, it can be a new source of revenue for farmers in the EU and the US. But the impact of biofuels on climate change remains questionable. Many scientific studies say the energy equation for plant fuels is negative with palm oil plantations quickly expanding into tropical rainforests. In Brazil, for example, tropical forests have been cut to produce soybeans and sugar - both used in biofuels, but also as food. The conference in Brussels last week is likely to be just the beginning of a long and serious debate on these issues as the 27-nation bloc works out how it will fulfil both the biofuel commitment as well as its promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:13:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:13:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Remembering a Friend of the Forests Message-ID: <200704242013.l3OKDIla012217@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by American Lands Alliance (activ-l) - Apr 24, 2007 Remembering a Friend of the Forests: Jim Jontz by Randi Spivak It is with tremendous personal sadness that I report the passing of Jim Jontz on April 14 at his home in Portland after a two-year battle with cancer. Jim was 55. As both a mentor and colleague, I feel that forests and wildlife have lost one of their greatest champions. Jim had a fierce dedication to protecting forests and wildlife. Many forests slated for the chainsaw still stand today because of his tenacity and courage. Jim was a visionary - he was always ahead of the curve. He made his mark as someone who changed political reality, during his career in Congress, as former executive director of American Lands Alliance, and in the many other issues he championed. We owe Jim, and the many other activists he worked with a debt of gratitude for protecting so many of our national treasures. The 1991 Almanac of American Politics described Jim Jontz as ?one of those incredibly hardworking and gifted natural politicians ? who has routinely done the impossible.? And that he did. As a Congressman from Indiana, Jim took up the mantle to fight for the Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest. At the height of the destruction of old growth forests in Oregon, Washington, and California Jim introduced the Ancient Forest Protection Act in 1991. That was when I met Jim, coming back to DC for one of the many lobby weeks he helped organize. The ensuing campaign brought national attention to the liquidation of old growth forests. Jim?s deep commitment to these forests earned him the support of celebrities and others who shared his love of America?s national treasures. It also won him the enmity of powerful logging interests and their supporters in Congress. Jim?s fight to save old growth forests probably ended his career in Congress. The timber industry targeted him for defeat when he ran for a fourth House term in 1992, and he lost that bid. But that didn?t stop his work. He took up where he left off as executive director of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign, now known as American Lands Alliance, in the fall of 1995. As executive director, Jim helped convince Representative Elizabeth Furse to introduce the Rider Repeal bill in 1995 and then led the effort to document all of the roadless area sales under the Rider. It was a massive project that involved documenting more than 150 pending roadless sales. Thanks to the hard work of forest monitors across the country the campaign published a report, which Jim, with the help of allies in the national environmental groups, used to convince then Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to issue a directive canceling 157 Rider roadless sales. At Jim?s direction, American Lands Alliance initiated the Citizen?s Call for Old Growth and Roadless Area Protection to support the efforts of grassroots activists working to protect these areas. This petition, widely endorsed by conservation groups, scientists, and city councils, is what brought to light the massive costs to taxpayers of building damaging logging roads and ultimately led to the creation of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. One of Jim?s political principles was getting the public to tell their stories directly to Members of Congress. Through his leadership, American Lands brought countless activists to Washington, DC to press the case for protecting national forests, and the clean water, wildlife habitat, and spectacular recreation opportunities they provide. Upon leaving American Lands, Jim continued to hone the cutting edge, helping to create the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, a group dedicated to bringing labor and environmental advocates together. He was elected president of Americans for Democratic Action in 1998 and at the time of his death was project coordinator for ADA?s Working Families Win project. Jim waged the hard battles and remained true to his convictions. His idealism was rare in politics. He never gave up. When the odds looked grim and when others may have conceded defeat, he carried on ? it was through this tenacious energy that he helped create lasting political change, and this change will forever be Jim Jontz?s legacy. Jim showed courage in challenging times. He had a contagious optimism and an unrelenting drive. Jim will be missed, but the causes he championed will always bear his mark. Jim?s family has asked that any contributions to honor Jim be in support of any of the following three charities: American Lands Alliance 726 7th Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003 Hoosier Environmental Council Foundation, 1915 West 18th Street, Suite A, Indianapolis, IN 46202 Americans for Democratic Action Education Fund, 1625 K Street, NW, Suite 210, Washington, DC 20006. Randi Spivak Executive Director From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:15:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:15:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Invest in weather - UBS launches global warming index Message-ID: <200704242015.l3OKFZks012234@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) Financial Times via Daily Dispatches - Apr 24, 2007 http://www.gata.org/node/5011 Invest in weather -- UBS launches global warming index [And Pete Rose got thrown out of baseball for gambling... -cpowell] Financial Times - April 24, 2007 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a3eaf348-f201-11db-b5b6-000b5df10621.html Climate Change Provides Rise to Weather Hedge By Paul J. Davies The first global warming index is to be launched this week by UBS, allowing businesses most affected by the uncertainty of climate change -- from ice-cream salesmen to makers of winter coats -- to hedge their profits against it in a simple and transparent fashion. Retail and institutional investors will also be able to buy exposure to, or short sell, the index in much the same way they would with the FTSE or Dow Jones stock indices. If temperatures rise, so will the value of the index. Ilija Murisic, executive director of hybrid derivatives trading at UBS, said the impact of global warming had brought explosive growth in the weather derivatives market. A recent report from PwC said the volume of weather derivatives traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange jumped from $9.7 billion in 2004-5 to more than $45 billion in 2005-6. "Global warming has created much more volatility in temperatures and weather conditions, which has led to increased liquidity in the weather derivatives market," Mr Murisic said. "The weather derivatives market is very segmented and quite arcane but has good liquidity. We want to create an index where people can simply invest, like they can with a stock index." The index is based on weather derivative contracts for winter and summer traded on the CME. These "heating degree day" and "cooling degree day" contracts measure the difference between average daily temperatures and a given base in a number of cities round the world. The UBS index will initially be based on 15 US cities, including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Las Vegas, because these are the ones most actively traded on the CME. However, Mr Murisic said that, as the market continued to grow, cities in other regions such as London, Tokyo, and Paris were likely to be added. UBS hopes the index will turn the complex business of investing in the world's weather into a popular asset class, one that is entirely uncorrelated with returns in other assets such as stocks or bonds. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:33:21 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:33:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Google Tops Major Transnationals Message-ID: <200704242033.l3OKXL8C012294@viola.tamara-b.org> [See Financial Times (subscription req'd) excerpt following PL's report -NY Transfer] Google Tops Major Transnationals London, Apr 23 (Prensa Latina) The US Internet company Google has surpassed well-known transnationals such as General Electric (GE), Microsoft and Coca-Cola, according to a survey by the British firm Millward Brown. The survey notes the development of e-commerce and companies operating on the Internet over traditional multimillion-dollar firms, according to economists. In 2006, Google became the world's most expensive company, with 66.34 billion dollars (48.96 billion euros) in assets. The ranking shows that Google is above GE (61.88 billion dollars), Microsoft (54.95 billion) and Coca Cola (44.13 billion). Curiously, Google's value also exceeded that of Wal-Mart (the world's largest supermarket chain), McDonald's and BMW. The survey analyzed 100 companies and their financial data, in addition to the opinions of one million consumers. Millward Brown's report is published in conjunction with the British newspaper Financial Times. hr jg rfc PL-40 *** Financial Times - Apr 23, 2007 (sub required) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ca07ed04-ef24-11db-a64e-000b5df10621.html No 1 company: The values of its founders propel Google to the top By Richard Waters It started with a misspelling. According to David Vise, in his book "The Google Story," the company?s founders had been brainstorming about possible names for days and were out of ideas. Then one sketched the word Googleplex on the whiteboard. A mathematical term meaning 1 followed by 101 zeroes, it caught the deep technological intent of the company. Shortened to Google, it also struck them as playful and in keeping with the new (at the time) spirit of the internet, no doubt by analogy to Yahoo ? a result of the double ?o? ? and the seemingly senseless nature of the word hiding an arcane meaning. It was only the next day that someone passing the whiteboard pointed out that it should have been spelt Googol. [...] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:34:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:34:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] New wave of multinationals poses competitive threat to US Message-ID: <200704242034.l3OKYkB0012306@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) - Apr 24, 2007 International Herald Tribune - Apr 22, 2007 New wave of multinationals poses competitive threat to U.S. By William J. Holstein NEW YORK: A new wave of foreign competitive pressure is beginning to ripple through the U.S. economy, from companies in emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China. These companies are seeking to become world-spanning multinationals - just as Samsung Electronics emerged from South Korea and Toyota sprang from Japan in earlier phases of globalization. From Brazil, Embraer has become a big supplier of regional jets in the airline industry. Other Brazilian companies, like Braskem, Embraco and Natura, are also expanding in a variety of global markets. Russian companies like Gazprom, Lukoil and Rusal are using Russia's natural resources to leap into the United States and other countries. India is producing powerhouses in technology services like Wipro, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, and global competitors in manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. The world's largest steel company is now controlled by Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian living in Europe. China may be the largest single source of new multinationals. Aside from Lenovo, which bought IBM's personal computer division, Haier is emerging in appliances, Huawei Technologies is competing against Cisco Systems to sell telecommunications equipment around the world and the Pearl River Piano Group is carving out a huge share of the piano market. The emergence of these new multinationals is part of "the biggest shift in the global economy since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century," says Antoine van Agtmael, the author of a new book, "The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World-Class Companies is Overtaking the World." "We are seeing a rebalancing of the global economy back to where it was before the Industrial Revolution, when China and India were major powers in the world." How is it that so many companies that once would have been content to operate in their home markets have so rapidly gained the expertise to manage complex multinational operations? One explanation is the new ease of global communication and air travel. Another is that the necessary expertise is available for sale. "These companies are hiring people from anywhere in the world," said Peter Williamson, a professor at Insead, the business school, and co-author of "Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition." "They're engaging Ogilvy & Mather to do their advertising. They're using McKinsey for their strategy," he said. "There's been a very big shift in the ability to obtain knowledge that once would have been very slow to build up." Estimates of the number of these new multinationals vary considerably. Van Agtmael's book identifies 25 of them. A study from the Boston Consulting Group last year named 100. Accenture, the consulting firm, says that there were 62 emerging-market multinationals in the Fortune Global 500 in 2005, up from 20 in 1995; it predicts that the number may hit 100 within 10 years. Not all the would-be competitors will be successful, of course. Van Agtmael acknowledges that some will have to learn to focus on a few core areas where they truly excel, rather than engaging in a broad mix of activities as they have done at home. Western multinationals also have advantages in distribution, logistics and branding. But clearly, enough of these new companies will succeed that Americans will feel it, with both positive and negative results. On the positive side for consumers, most of these companies have low cost structures and will be able to offer lower prices. But there will be some pain as well. "A lot of people who felt that their companies or their jobs were protected because they were in the high-value-added or high-tech kinds of businesses used to think that the rise of these companies was irrelevant to them," Williamson said, referring to fields like architecture, design and pharmaceuticals. But now, he said, "their companies are going to face competitors providing pretty much the same level of technology or design competence at a quarter or 20 percent of their price." That means that American companies will have to look at their own operations with a "zero-base mentality," said William Green, chief executive of Accenture. Companies that do not design business models that are competitive with those of the emerging multinationals will simply be blown away, he said. The emerging giants have different strategies, reflecting their strengths, says Harold Sirkin, senior vice president of the Boston Consulting Group, based in Chicago, and co-author of its 2006 study. Some, particularly the Chinese companies, have mainly used cheap labor to undercut established companies. The emerging multinationals have not had time to establish brand names, as Sony or LG have done, but they will compensate for that. "They are either going to buy American companies and use their brands or develop their own brand names," says Sirkin, who regularly consults in China and India. Others, like Embraer of Brazil, have learned to exploit a local base of excellent but low-cost engineering talent. Companies like Johnson Electric, which is based in Hong Kong and has the capacity to produce three million motors a day, have strong positions in a global product niche. And Russian companies have leveraged their natural-resource wealth to set up distribution channels and make acquisitions in the West. Sirkin says that over the long run, the entry of the new multinationals into the U.S. market will be a "bigger deal" than the previous arrival of Japanese or Korean businesses, if only because countries as big as China and India are likely to spawn many important companies. "We'll see the next Toyota coming from China and the next Samsung coming from India," he said. The new multinationals represent a far more complex phenomenon than a surge of imported products, which can be blocked or reduced by tariffs and quotas, experts say. These companies will be buying assets, and while political disputes may block some deals, as in the case of a Dubai group aiming to buy American ports or of Haier trying to buy Maytag, there does not seem to be any stopping of the broader trend. The emerging multinationals will also be building new plants in the United States and offering services and products that are in great demand, like the IBM computers now sold by Lenovo. But Sirkin is optimistic that the U.S. economy will continue to flourish. "There are a lot of imports coming in from China today, but what's our unemployment rate?" he said. "It isn't 43 percent. We've responded." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:36:52 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:36:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] EU Banks: 'Too big to fail' isn't explicit policy...yet Message-ID: <200704242036.l3OKaqrk012321@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) 'Too big to fail' isn't explicit policy for European banks ... yet -cpowell Financial Times - April 22, 2007 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/84dc0ef0-f10d-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html Trichet Kills Plan for Public Rescue of Banks By George Parker BRUSSELS -- Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, has succeeded in killing a proposal for European Union member states to agree detailed plans for a public bailout of a failing bank, designed to stop financial chaos spreading across the continent. Mr Trichet was backed by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, in arguing at a meeting in B-Berlin that plans for a publicly funded rescue operation would send the wrong signals to markets. Both feared that the proposal, pushed during last year's Finnish presidency, would lead to significant moral hazard if the markets believed that finance ministers and central bankers would intervene to save a big bank. The proposal now looks dead. Finance ministers of Britain and Germany -- Europe's two biggest financial services centres -- also oppose an ex-ante agreement on who would foot the bill if a systemic crisis hit more than one country. The debate was sparked by fears the EU is unprepared for a cross-border crisis in an era of banking consolidation. Forty-six groups have activities in more than one EU state, representing 58 percent of banking assets. Ministers and central bankers at the Ecofin meeting on Saturday agreed to carry out more work on improving co-operation and planning for a crash but there was little support for a detailed "burden sharing" plan for funding a public bailout. Their approach reflects the tone of an internal paper, drawn up by senior bank and finance ministry officials, that said: "Moral hazard should be minimised by a firm commitment to the primacy of private-sector solutions in crisis management." "Constructive ambiguity" should be maintained regarding the circumstances and timing under which public intervention could take place, the economic and financial committee paper said. Mr Trichet, who led opposition to the idea at the meeting, said it was right to discuss the principles for dealing with a systemic crisis but it was "not appropriate" to have detailed plans for cross-border burden sharing. Although the Ecofin meeting basked in good economic news -- all eurozone members vowed to balance their budgets by 2010 -- ministers and bankers are scanning the horizon for trouble. Hedge funds are seen as a particular cause for concern, with Germany pushing for an international code of conduct to govern the industry. Ed Balls, the British Treasury minister responsible for the City of London, proposed at the meeting greater international information sharing to assess investment banks' exposure to hedge funds. Mr Balls, who will give more details of the plan in a speech on Monday, will argue that hedge funds play a positive role in financial markets and reject suggestions they disclose portfolio positions in some sort of register. He believes investors should not be lulled into thinking that a regulator is protecting them with respect to individual funds but that more international understanding is needed of overall exposure to hedge funds. Britain's Financial Services Authority already conducts a regular six-month survey of prime brokers and Mr Balls believes the main financial centres should co-operate in such work. "We believe the quality of prudential supervision of hedge fund activity would be enhanced if there were greater co-operation between regulators in surveying investment banks' exposure to hedge funds, pooling that information," he said. He will be discussing the proposal with other international colleagues in the run-up to next month's Group of Eight finance ministers' meeting in Potsdam. Charlie McCreevy, the EU internal market commissioner, backed an industry-led approach to the regulation of hedge funds, arguing that they were "big boys who know what theybre doing." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:39:43 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:39:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Mega-Merger to Create Biggest EU Bank, 13,000 Lost Jobs Message-ID: <200704242039.l3OKdh6P012335@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Mega-Merger to Create Biggest European Bank, 13,000 Lost Jobs Amsterdam, Apr 23 (Prensa Latina) Almost 13,000 workers will lose their jobs with the merger made by Dutch bank ABN Amro and British Barclays to create the second greatest bank in Europe, said a spokesman of the Dutch bank Monday. For the operation to be completed, Barclays (3rd British bank) should pay 8,266.46 billion dollars to ABN Amro. The merger should be accepted by financial authorities and both entities? stockholders, and includes elimination of 12,800 jobs and transfer of 10,800 fixed jobs to places where working labor is cheaper. Negotiations between the two entities lasted the whole weekend, and last details were closed Sunday night. Officials from the two entities met with trade union delegations to discuss affectations of the operation for the working sector. This merger will give birth to the world?s fifth most important bank, and the second in Europe, with a payroll of 217,000 employees and 47 million clients. A joint communiqu? said the Barclays Bank will control 52 percent of the stocks and ABN 48 percent. hr tac jmg PL-45 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:40:50 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:40:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform Message-ID: <200704242040.l3OKeo7F012350@viola.tamara-b.org> Alternet - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50406/ Bush Poised to Veto Long-Sought Labor Reform By Joshua Holland One of the most important bills for working Americans of the last 10 years is likely to go down in defeat, even though Democrats control Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is an anti-union-busting measure that would restore the right to form unions, a right working people have enjoyed mostly on paper since the "Reagan revolution" stacked the deck against workers trying to organize. The House passed the bill last month, but it's widely expected to be defeated in the Senate, and if it does survive, it will almost certainly fall to George Bush's veto pen. If EFCA is defeated, it will carry little or no political cost, largely because America's corporatocracy has done a bang-up job of framing the debate. A coalition of big business groups conducted a wildly misleading poll, one that gave respondents the (false) idea that the bill will diminish rather than protect workers' rights -- specifically, their right to a fair vote about whether to unionize. They've taken that spin and synchronized it across the whole of the conservative communications infrastructure -- from business-funded think tanks to right-wing blogs, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to lawmakers walking the halls of Congress. But while the right's rhetoric has been in perfect lockstep, the bill's been pushed almost exclusively by organized labor, with too little outreach to the broader progressive movement and little in the way of a coordinated and effective message. As a result, the media's characterized it as a "union bill" -- which plays to the idea that it's driven by "special interests" -- and it's likely to die a quiet death with little notice among the general public. Given the Democratic control of Congress and the debilitated state of working America, this is a tragedy. The need for reform is urgent. Union busting has reached a high art form in the United States. Companies no longer need thugs and gun-toting Pinkertons to keep workers from exercising their legal rights to organize; now they have high-priced, Armani-wearing lawyers, who simply brainwash workers into silence. The tactics are as subtle as they are insidious. A study by Cornell University labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner found that: nine in 10 employers facing a union campaign force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent train supervisors on how to attack unions and require them to deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee; half of employers threaten to shut down the plant if workers organize; and three out of four hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, "often based on mass psychology and distorting the law." Increasingly, cunning forms of intimidation are often enough to produce a "no" vote. If organizers manage to get and win a vote among workers to unionize, management is able to dispute the outcome, and the case can drag on, often for years. While it's pending, pro-union workers lose their jobs: A study published this year (PDF) by economists John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer found that "almost one in five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign." That's illegal -- workers are guaranteed the right to organize -- but since the Reagan administration gutted U.S. labor protections, companies that cross the line pay modest penalties that can be written off as part of the cost of remaining union-free. The result has been predictable: Between 1975 and 2004, the rate of union workers in the private sector fell by almost two thirds (PDF). In 2000, only one in seven American employees were covered by a collective bargaining agreement, while two-thirds of all workers in the rest of world's highly advanced economies enjoyed that protection. The decline in union membership can account, at least in part, for exploding income and wealth inequality. As economist Dean Baker writes in his new book, "The United States Since 1980," in the 20 years following the election of Ronald Reagan, "the share of national income that went to the richest 5 percent of families rose by more than one-third ... [while] the share of income going to the poorest 20 percent of the population fell by more than 25 percent." A stronger labor movement would go a long way towards reversing that trend. Unionized workers earn 15 percent more than their non-union counterparts, have more vacation time and are more likely to have employer-funded pensions and health insurance (PDF). A strong labor movement isn't only vital for union members; labor's decline over the past three decades is at least partially to blame for American workers' loss of benefits and job security, for a dysfunctional immigration system, for the near absence of family and medical leave and for the easy passage of NAFTA-style corporate investment deals, despite Americans' widespread unhappiness with their outcomes. Healthy unions lift up all working people; economists have long discussed the "union threat effect" -- that employers offer higher pay and better benefits to workers who don't belong to a union in order to keep them from joining one. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is simple: It beefs up penalties for employers who violate workers' rights under the law, creates a mediation and arbitration system for disputes, and allows workers to form a union if a majority simply sign a card saying they want representation (a summary of the measure can be found here). This bill alone won't reverse the long decline of American labor -- union organizers say more is needed to create a truly level playing field -- but it would be a huge step in the right direction. EFCA is an enormous threat to the leisure class -- in 2004, the share of national income going to workers was the lowest since they started tracking the data in 1929, while corporate profits were at an all-time high -- and the campaign they've mounted to kill the measure shows that, regardless of how much George W. Bush's presidency damaged the conservative movement, the Right still has significant advantages in steering the debate. According to "RollCall," "Deep-pocketed corporate lobbying groups have joined together [to kill EFCA], today announcing the launch of a new coalition to coordinate their activities." The industry group, called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, "has the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others." The group sponsored a series of ads attacking lawmakers who supported the measure in key House districts and is expected to ratchet up the campaign in the Senate. The coalition's spin makes no mention of beefing up penalties for violating workers' rights or creating new dispute-settlement procedures; instead, they seized on a compelling talking point tailored to America's political culture: That the "card-check" provision of the EFCA does away with the secret ballots that Americans have come to expect when casting their votes. Big Business commissioned a Zogby poll that's dangerously close to the political "push-polls" of campaign infamy. The questions were remarkably dishonest, and the results were what the pollsters and their clients were looking for. Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statement: "Every worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union." Nine out of ten respondents agreed, including 87 percent of Democrats. That's to be expected; the strategy is to depict management's assault on the ability to organize as protecting "workers' rights." Seven out of ten respondents said they'd be less likely to vote for a member of Congress "who voted in favor of taking away a worker's right to have a federally supervised secret ballot election to decide whether to organize a union." Armed with their push-poll, the right's noise machine has been typically disciplined; all corners of the conservative movement are on message: Big Labor wants to do away with secret ballots, and it's pulling the Democrats' strings to make it happen. Perhaps EFCA will defy expectations and become law (you can help out here). If it doesn't, it will be, in part, because progressive institutions -- the blogosphere, labor, liberal Democrats -- haven't yet developed the kind of close coordination the Right can still muster. Missing is a nice, easy-to-understand alternative narrative -- something like: "End the Stalinist election process," or "the Soviets also had secret ballots" -- and the infrastructure needed to repeat that message over and over again. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. (c) 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 16:45:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:45:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] A Short History of the Christian Right Message-ID: <200704242045.l3OKjIXS012378@viola.tamara-b.org> Counterpunch - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/lendman04232007.html Apocalyptic Imperialists A Short History of the Christian Right By STEPHEN LENDMAN Chris Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism. There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative" heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad-style, by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really about and who the real criminals were. The wars and subsequent show-trials had nothing to do with myths about it fed us by Western media. Those wanting the truth can find it in excellent books like Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade; the extensive research and writings of Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, law professor Michael Mandel; and the newest book out on the subject titled Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by British journalist John Laughland. Edward Herman wrote a superb review of the book in the April, 2007 issue of Z Magazine now available in which he pointedly says "the rules of the (illegally constituted) ICTY (established by the US and UK) stood Nuremberg on its head" and Laughland states "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it" to hide NATO's crimes and allow more of the same playing out now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Christian Right supports these type crimes and motives for them readers will understand from Hedges' new book. He's also written many articles and is the author of four books including his bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning drawing on his experiences in the conflicts he covered describing how people and nations behave in wartime. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. His newest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America published in 2007 and subject of this review. It's an incisive examination of the huge threat extremist Christian fascists pose to a shaky free society most people in the US take for granted but no longer will after reading this important book. Hedges was educated at Colgate University and received a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. For a time he was a seminarian and is now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute as well as a writer and lecturer at Princeton University where he teaches in the Program for American Studies. He was also an early vocal critic of the Bush administration's plan to attack, invade and occupy Iraq characterizing war as "the most potent narcotic invented by humankind" while professing not to be a pacifist. This review will cover the essence and flavor of American Fascists beginning with some background on the Christian right, its influence, and danger it poses that Hedges covers in detail. He said he wrote the book out of anger and fear of the fundamentalist Christian Right seeking to establish theocratic dominion over society in America in the name of God and is using the Republican party as their vehicle to do it. He compares the movement's messianic mission to Italian and German fascism of the last century cloaking itself in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power under theocracy's literal meaning from the Greek words "Theos" meaning "God" and "cratein/crasy" meaning to rule. They're not kidding and neither is the risk they'll gain control of government with some observers in Washington believing they already have it including journalist/commentator Bill Moyers saying "for the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." Some call them "The Christian Mafia" noting they're well-funded by and allied with wealthy, powerful hard right businessmen like beer magnate Joseph Coors and Amway founder Richard DeVos, Sr. Hedges calls them American Fascists, and his powerful book leaves no doubt how great a threat they are to our cherished liberties in a free society now in great jeopardy. Below is an explanation of the Christian Right and fundamentalist movement overall before getting into the book. The Christian Right and Its Fundamentalist Movement The Christian or Religious Right is broadly defined to include adherents of the radical or hard right embracing their kind of extremist political, economic, social and religious ideology falsely called conservative which is a relative term referring philosophically to favoring traditional values including libertarian ones centered on the right of everyone to be master of his or her own fate. Earlier, sociologist scholar Sara Diamond wrote extensively on the rise of right wing groups in the country providing readers with a wealth of information based on her firsthand research. In her seminal 1995 book, Roads to Dominion, she traced the various movements over the past 50 years identifying four types she discovered: 1. The anti-communist conservative movement that in the 1970s included moral traditionalism of the emerging Christian Right. 2. The racist Right including the KKK and other segregationist groups and later the paramilitary white supremacist movement. 3. The Christian Right with its evangelical roots, and 4. Neoconservatives with roots in the Cold War and Democrat party later finding a new home in the Republican party under Ronald Reagan. Diamond explained these movements involved scores of organizations, not monolithic in beliefs, who nonetheless share a common set of policy preferences that unite them listing three core areas - the economy, the "nation-state in global context (military and diplomatic)," and moral norms relating to race and gender. The movements are also unified in their advocacy of free-market capitalism, anticommunism (now anything left of center), US worldwide military hegemony, traditional morality, superiority of native-born white male Christian Americans, and the traditional nuclear family. In addition, Diamond lists what she calls the "three pillars of the US Right" calling them "tendencies, not absolutes" - libertarianism, anticommunist militarism (now all liberal/progressive/leftist non-extremist Christian ideology), and traditionalism. In her book, Diamond included a detailed history of the Christian Right explaining how it came to be the largest, most influential movement on the far right dominating policy-making in Republican-led governments and especially the one not yet in power under George W. Bush. She explained it all in over 300 fact-crammed pages and another 100 pages of notes and references. It's important background information summarized here briefly to set the stage for Hedges important account of what the Christian Right is up to today, why it matters, and why this dominant movement threatens freedom and democracy in America and the values most here hold dear, including most of the 70 million evangelicals, a minority of whom are radical ideologues selling their dogma of hate and domination to convert the others and destroy non-believers. Our Secular State Founding Principles Christians founded America believing church and state should be separated, and Jefferson called for "a wall of separation" between them in 1802 after freedom of religion became part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Today that bedrock founding principle is jeopardized by the extremist Christian Right. If they get their way, they'll tear down that wall with considerable public support from the 40% in the country polls say take the Bible literally, and nearly one-third believe in the "rapture" as Hedges explains in his book. The notion comes from conservative Protestant eschatology denoting the final happening when "good Christians" on earth are saved and "raptured" to heaven to be with Jesus in eternal immortality while non-believers are doomed to a more hellish, less "rapturous" fate Hedges characterizes as suffering "unspeakable torments below." These believers and all others are entitled to their views, but the Constitution forbids them forcing them on others. Earlier Supreme Courts agreed in decisions requiring a "wall of separation" between church and state prohibiting the adoption of any state religion and requiring government to avoid undue involvement in religion, its trappings or expressions. That status was put in jeopardy following the introduction in Congress of the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004." It was then reintroduced in near-identical form in 2005, never passed, and now awaits its fate in the Democrat-led 110th Congress or a future one that may or may not let it die. If it's ever adopted in its present form, it will turn the country into a de facto theocracy despite its supporters' denial. Don't believe them as getting this passed is key to the Christian Right's mission to turn America into a fascist theocracy where constitutional law is abolished in favor of extremist Christian dogma Dominionists like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and others in the movement want to be the supreme law of the land. In their world, under their law, practitioners of other faiths will be lawbreakers including about 75 million non-Christians and many others of the faith not willing to go along with their interpretation of it. The "Constitution Restoration Act of 2005" will also deny the Supreme Court's right to challenge anyone in or affiliated with federal, state or local government acknowledging the Christian "God (in their canon) as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." Henceforth, any judge at any level interpreting the new law differently would be subject to impeachment and prosecution in the United (extremist Christian) States of (fascist) America ruled by people like Pat Robertson and others like him. American Fascists Masquerading as True Christians - Defiling the Teachings of Christ, His Twelve Apostles and Others of the Faith Hedges begins his book with a powerful quote from Blaise Pascal that "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Until the modern era, the best examples in Christendom were the first Crusades when Popes like Urban II sanctioned holy wars between 1095 - 1291 to wrest Jerusalem and the "Holy Land" from "heretic" Muslims and later ones in the 16th century against infidels - in the name of God. Today in America, Dominionists are the new "crusaders" Hedges equates with 20th century fascists because of their fanaticism. They cloak their ideology in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power they claim is sanctioned by the Almighty to give the movement moral legitimacy. But beneath the surface, their doctrine is dark and foreboding posing real dangers to a free society not to be taken lightly. It comes from their view of Genesis 1:26-31 they interpret to mean God gave man "dominion....over all the Earth," and that Jesus commanded his followers to impose godly rule over everyone denouncing people of other faiths and non-believers. The modern blueprint for this ideology comes from the writings of RJ Rushdoony's 1973 book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, calling for a Christian government. It advocates torture and death for gays, non-Christians resisting conversion, anyone committing blasphemy, and women guilty of "unchastity before marriage." Ideology of Radical Christian Right Fascists Christian Right extremists advocate a frightening ideology detailed below. It includes: * Racial hatred. * White Christian supremacy. * Blind adoration and obedience of the movement's leadership while discouraging free and independent thought. * Male gender dominance portraying Jesus as a real man dominating through force like a powerful warrior ignoring fundamental Christian "thou shall not kill" doctrine. It's an ideology of hyermasculinity centered in a male-dominated authoritarian church and in the home where men are encouraged to dominate their wives, and women and children are taught to submit. Well-known Christian Right leader James Dobson built his career on these ideas and now has a huge media empire dispensing advice as a Christian therapist over his Focus on the Family program. He's heard on more than 3000 radio stations and 80 TV stations reaching 200 million people in 116 countries from his 81 acre campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado employing 1300 people. He's fiercely anti-choice and anti-gay and has backed political candidates advocating abortionists be executed. He also calls stem cell research "state-funded cannibalism" and urges Christian parents take their children out of public schools and put them in Christian ones teaching his ideology. Dobson preaches male dominance calling non-submission a violation of God's law. He also thinks murder is wrong but not when committed against infidel Iraqis or Islamic terrorists saying all non-believers, heretics and sinners will be consumed in an End Times Tribulation of terrible calamities and torment lasting seven years with non-redeemers condemned to eternal punishment. True believers adhering to holy scriptures, however, will be saved and "raptured" to eternal life and bliss in heaven. But getting there means going along with what he, End Times guru Timothy LaHaye, and other dominant Christian Right figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell preach including that they have a divine right to rule and must be obeyed. Hedges notes that televangelists like Robertson, Benny Hill, Paul and Jan Crouch and others "rule their fiefdoms as despotic potentates" some adherents might think isn't God's way of doing things. They travel with burly bodyguards in kingly luxury on private jets; have amassed huge personal fortunes, much of it gotten from listener subjects; and show up everywhere in limousines with all the pomposity of heads of state and billionaire CEOs but in their case playing God as false prophets "clutching the cross and the Bible (offering seductively), like Mephistopheles, to lead us to a mythical paradise and impossible, unachievable happiness and security" provided we surrender our will to theirs and our money too, which is one way they get rich. They preach a false gospel of prosperity and well-being preying on the gullible to believe faith alone cures illness, overcomes emotional distress, and assures financial and physical security so there's no need for traditional secular institutions, social service organizations and government regulatory agencies to exist. The movement preaches those not trusting them lack faith, that God alone is enough, and that fate is determined by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in a world in which individuals surrender their will to a higher authority dictated by the leadership. Hedges sums it up saying tyranny follows when "fealty to an ideology becomes a litmus test for individual worth" and a world of "miracles and magic" is the only "place to turn for help" ruled by Christian Right extremists "grow(ing) rich off (the vulnerable) who suffer" becoming passive in the process. * Hatred of gays, the "gay agenda," and everyone in the LBGT movement with Christian Right adherents believing "same-sex attraction" can be cured like a virus their ideological medicine can fix. They define the problem as "male gender deficit" for which "reparative therapy" is the antidote gotten from a close connection with a strong heterosexual man "comfortable in his male role." With nonsensical ideological fervor, they believe bonding with a straight man makes homosexuality disappear while at the same time denouncing gays as depraved perverts and criminals threatening all Christians. * Disdain for non-believers and rational intellectual inquiry. * Condemnation of self-criticism and debate as apostasy. * Frequent use of the death penalty including for abortionists, gays, Muslim "terrorists" and other "heretics." * Adoration of militarism, war and apocalyptic violence. Adherence to these notions is so extreme that in the run-up to the Iraq conflict, many Christian Right leaders and End Times believers preached opposing war was anti-American and contrary to God's plan and what's written in the Bible as they interpret it. Their many supporters in Congress include Minority Leader John Boehner, who supports endless wars. He recently said "The spread of radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to our nation (and) the free world....They are (everywhere and) growing right here in America....dedicated to killing Americans (and) our allies, and ending freedom and wanting to impose some radical Islamic law on the entire world." With leaders like Boehner in Congress and the administration, it's easy to see the influence of radical Christian fundamentalist poison infecting the body politic and threatening everyone with it. * Illegalization of abortion even in the case of rape and incest. * Ending public education with Bush administration help budgeting billions of dollars for extremist Christian faith-based organizations. They renounce proved science like evolution allowing only creationism repackaged as "intelligent design" to be taught as well as other extremist Christian values sold through the "big lie" to trick those in the movement to believe mysticism and magic are facts. Hedges calls the process a "war on truth" where the culture war front lines are in classrooms, and the battle is one traditional educators are losing. Core values of a free and open society are being destroyed and replaced through a process of thought control based on pseudoscience assaulting the real thing on everything challenging extremist Christian ideology from creation to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global warming to war and peace. It's also happening inside government alarming the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) advocacy organization to write in its March, 2004 Scientific Integrity in Policymaking report: "There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the (scientifically unethical) manipulation, suppression, misrepresentation of science by the (Christian Right dominated) Bush administration are unprecendented." * A primary Christian mission to proselytize non-believers to the faith by recruiting "soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ" quoting Dr. D. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Coral Ridge, Florida near Fort Lauderdale, just north of Miami. His voice is dominant in the Christian Right and carried over the huge multimedia empire he built with his weekly broadcasts heard and seen on more than 600 TV stations, four cable networks and the Armed Forces Network reaching millions of people. He also has a six day a week radio show on 744 stations reaching millions more preaching his radical ideology that "the Christian view of morality (according to the Christian Right) is the (only) one that should prevail in America" while denouncing liberal churches and other religions as godless. He holds workshops teaching how to sell his brand of religiosity using the same kinds of brainwashing/marketing techniques political and other extremist movements know work. They promise believers eternal life while those not saved are damned to eternal punishment. * Rejection of secular humanist notions of reason, ethics, social equity and justice believing a better world is possible through good will in a free and open society. Also claims secular humanist organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and others want to destroy a Christian America. They further include the major TV networks (for airing sex and violence); major newspapers and magazines; US State Department; foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie; the UN; the Democrat party left/liberals; Harvard, Yale and 2000 other universities; and all others not buying their gospel of extremist white Christian dominionism and hate. * Seizing on the common denominator of pain, disillusion, dislocation, suffering and despair felt by millions caused by a culture of "soulless landscapes filled with strip malls and highways" to build a mass movement of servile, unthinking followers. They've replaced the real world of science, law and rationality with unquestioning belief in the word of the leadership and a glorious other utopian unreal world of prophets, mystical signs and magical mumbo jumbo that's real to them and in which they're "protected, loved, guided and blessed." It promises what followers don't have - a stable home and family, loving community, fixed moral standards, financial and personal success, and abolition of doubt and uncertainty based on religious vision and moral clarity. It also frighteningly promises a final apocalyptic battle of their "good" against all else they call "evil" exterminating the forces believers blame on their despair after which they will emerge victorious and saved. * A Christian totalitarian ethic based on a gospel of "free -market" capitalism, militarism and intolerance of democratic freedom of thought and action. * A fanatical devotion to and support for the state of Israel as Jerusalem, and specifically the Temple Mount Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, is where Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians believe the second coming of the Messiah will be and thus is the holiest site in the world for Christians and Jews as well who want it for a third and final Temple. Enter Rev. John Hagee of the 18,000-strong Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, global TV ministry, and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI) radical organization founded in early 2006. He's perhaps the most extremist, bellicose and influential Christian Zionist in America today preaching Muslims are Islamic fascists waging war against Western civilization. His antidote is a gospel of preemptive war against Islam in self-defense including one against Iran now if he had his way. The danger is warmongering hate-preachers like Hagee and others reach large audiences convincing millions of adherents they're right. The Dark Side of Radical Christian Morality Hedges notes the movement's appeal is from the leadership's promise of a moral Christian nation promising renewal. But the message hides a darker side with Dominionists awaiting a fiscal, social and/or political crisis great enough to end democratic constitutional government replacing it with their vision of a Christian fascist theocratic America. In the meantime, they spent a generation working for this and now have great influence at state, local and federal levels of government. Hedges notes the movement already controls the Republican party. In addition, Christian fundamentalists hold a majority of seats in 18 of 50 states plus large minorities in the others. Also, (as of the book's publication) 45 senators and 186 House members got 80 - 100% approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups: The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum and Family Resource Council. This represents a dominant mass movement succeeding because mainstream Christians and the major media aren't confronting it, and their passivity threatens the constitutional rights of a democratic state on life support sinking fast with help from the Christian Right on the ascendancy. They're influence is spread by Christian broadcasters commanding large audiences estimated to be 141 million in the US through radio and TV. They preach the Christian Right gospel flaunting their wealth, power and celebrity status to show it works for believers of the faith. They believe in unrestrained free-market capitalism, divinely sanctioned to freely create a global marketplace of (non-Christian, non-believing) serfs, denied all rights, forbidden to organize, and left to the mercy of a repressive state and corporate predators out for profit and to be allowed to dictate wages and control the right to work. Compassion for the less fortunate is left to individual acts of charity and the churches with government out of it entirely and only dedicated to social control and aggressive militarism dictated by a warrior God (meaning Jesus) giving Christian America the right to rule the world and assure corporate giants can suck all the profit and life out of it. Hedges explains the Christian Right sells an ideology believing it's a "Christian duty to embrace the exploitation of others, to build a Christian America where freedom means the freedom of the powerful to dominate the weak....to bring about (their notion of ) a Christian utopia (that when no legal or social protections remain) it will be too late to resist (and the movement's leadership will be in control of everything)." Their plan is to "convince the masses to agitate for their own incarceration" shocking as that notion sounds, but it's working. The movement is on a "crusade" against constitutional government working for now within the political system it wants to destroy and remake in its own image. Awaiting the time they'll take over, they're creating a parallel system within the existing one in which only "Bible-believing" judges, Christian teachers, and pseudo-reporters on Christian broadcasts are tolerated. And only white Christian men championing their extremist doctrine will be allowed to rule. Students are taught this ideology in Christian schools Hedges says are the fastest growing segment of the private school system. Textbooks used call Islam, Buddhism and African religions "false," Hinduism "pagan," and even Catholicism "distorted." It's also heard on the campaign trail from candidates like "stalwart on the Christian Right" 2006 Ohio gubernatorial losing candidate Kenneth Blackwell who as secretary of state and co-chair of Ohio's Committee to Reelect George Bush in 2004 "arranged" for enough votes in the state to go to the sitting president to swing Ohio and the election for him. In his own losing effort in 2006, he appeared at Christian Right rallies laying out a blueprint for an authoritarian state where all dissent is heresy yet campaigned carefully not to offend those outside the movement by avoiding religious terminology. Christian Right Fascism in Real Time in "Bush's Shadow Army": Blackwater USA Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill characterizes Blackwater USA as "the world's most powerful mercenary army" in his new book about them. Like Hedges' book, it's frightening reading needing exposure. It describes a "shadowy mercenary company....largely off the congressional radar....having remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus" with no accountability or oversight on the ground in Iraq, (working for the State Department, not the Pentagon, with a $300 million no-bid contract), Afghanistan, on US streets and in neighborhoods like New Orleans, and coming soon to a city and neighborhood near you courtesy of the Gestapo-like Department of Homeland Security. With backing from the Bush administration, it operates outside the law and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and is immune from civil lawsuits like the military. Scahill calls Blackwater the "Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard (along with the CIA long-serving in that capacity and that uses Blackwater in its illegal covert operations abroad and at home)." Blackwater was founded in 1996 by former Navy SEAL and now super-rich Erik Prince who's closely tied to the Christian Right he funds and supports. It came into its own post 9/11 becoming a dominant player in the Bush administration's "Global War on Terror" (GLOB) now rebranded "The Long War." Today, Blackwater employs 2300 personnel in nine countries with 20,000 or more private mercenary contractors ready to go wherever needed and are part of the 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 48,000 of whom are paramilitary mercenaries. It also has a fleet of 20 aircraft (believed to have been used covertly as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary renditions" of targeted individuals), including helicopter gunships, a private intelligence division, and operates at home on its 7000 acre Moyock headquarters Scahill calls "the world's largest private military base." It's not enough for Blackwater in the burgeoning world of privatized secret mercenary paramilitary armies coming soon to a neighborhood near you, so the company is preparing by seeking an environmentally sensitive protected agricultural preserve southeast of San Diego, CA for it current expansion plans. It's an 824 acre site in Potrero, CA surrounded by the Cleveland Forest Blackwater wants for a military training base with 15 firing ranges for automatic and non-automatic weapons and various types of commando-type training facilities residents don't want near their community for obvious reasons concerning safety. People everywhere should object, for what may endanger one isolated community now or a larger one in New Orleans already may threaten us all in a paramilitarized America we're heading for locked down by Blackwater-type storm troops enforcing Christian Right fascist dogma. In the meantime, Blackwater is cashing in big as a war profiteer getting huge no-bid Bush administration contracts Congress belatedly is showing interest in wanting to oversee to eliminate abuses. Whether it will happen, however, is problematical as current laws on the books aren't enforced making it likely new ones won't be either on all matters relating to foreign wars, so-called "terrorism," or anything claimed for national security. As long as the nation is in wars both parties support and the Christian Right is dominant, companies like Blackwater will thrive. With them, wars are easier to get into and harder to end meaning the culture of militarism will grow abroad and at home that's part of the Christian Right's agenda to impose its extremist theocratic rule on the country where, if it happens, democratic freedom, as we know it, is incompatible. Under it, Blackwater's private army will be on our city streets as thuggish paramilitary enforcers licensed to terrorize and kill with impunity bringing to America what they're well paid to do abroad. "Eternal" Fascist Chickens Coming Home to Roost A generation ago, the notion of a "global Christian empire" was barely credible, but Hedges' ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, 80-year old Dr. James Luther Adams, warned back then we'd all one day be fighting "Christian fascists." It was when Pat Robertson and other radical televangelists began preaching a new political religion aimed at creating a dominant Christian world according to their extremist views. Adams was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and saw with horror what happened there firsthand. Hedges says he "was not a man to use the word 'fascist' lightly." He understood before most others the similarities of that time in Germany to what was developing here around 1980. He saw "how the mask of religion hides irreligion (and) our world is full to bursting with (various) faiths, each contending for allegiance." It was a virtual "battle of faiths, a battle of the gods who claim human allegiance." Adams knew deep-seated resentments and bigotry exist in all democratic societies like Weimar Germany and saw it emerging in 1980s America promoting the destruction of democracy. He feared late in his life a movement here was on the march, more cleverly packaged and sophisticated than in the past and this time with no serious opposition. He saw hatreds being stoked, progressive forces weakening, and the despair of tens of millions of Americans losing good manufacturing and other well-paying jobs being easy prey for smooth-talking fanatics like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell promising miracles and visions of apocalyptic glory. Adams said then to watch the Christian Right's treatment of gays knowing the Nazis used their "values" to repress opponents and just days after coming to power in 1933 Hitler banned all gay and lesbian organizations as his first target with many others to follow. Pastor Martin Niemoller warned us in different versions of his famous quotation listing Jews, communists and trade unionists targeted but omitting the one Hitler chose first. He didn't speak out because he wasn't one of them, and when they came for him there was no one left. It was too late. Adams explained gays in a Christian Right dominated American would be the first "social deviants" singled out for condemnation, disempowerment and elimination as in Nazi Germany. Other targeted groups would follow, and we would be next. He then warned as does Hedges that forces against American democracy are "waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security." The Christian Right awaits that time "with gleeful anticipation" wanting adherents to be ready. Hedges warns we also must be ready quoting Alvin Toffler saying "if you don't have a strategy you end up being part of someone else's strategy." It means challenging the Christian Right's gospel of hate, "exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God" with a doctrine of life, hope and respect for the worth and dignity of everyone, and their right to practice their beliefs openly in a free society. That's the American dream shared by free people everywhere. At the book's end, Hedges says preserving it means giving up "passivity, challeng(ing) aggressively this movement's deluded appropriation of Christianity (and fighting back) to defend tolerance." Wishing won't make it so. Defending democracy means working at it every day. Today we face an imminent threat to our freedom against which "tolerance coupled with passivity is a (deadly) vice" that will destroy us unless we're on guard to be sure it doesn't. [Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:27:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:27:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Somalia: US grabs for power in Horn of Africa Message-ID: <200704242127.l3OLREqJ012709@viola.tamara-b.org> Freedom Socialist Vol. 28, No. 2 April-May 2007 http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol28no2/28208Somalia.html The bombing of Somalia U.S. grabs for power in Horn of Africa by Monica Hill Why is the U.S. Air Force strafing southern Somalia? Why is the carrier USS Eisenhower in the Indian Ocean? What possible threat is Somalia to the U.S.? The White House claims the right to attack other countries to get suspected al-Qaeda members. But no al-Qaeda operatives were hit on Jan. 8, the first acknowledged U.S. military action in Somalia since 1994. Seventy nomads and their cattle perished. The herders were bombed at night as they camped around fires to deflect mosquitoes. They were among many civilian casualties that resulted from three days of U.S. air strikes near towns. More U.S.-sponsored bloodshed is likely since the State Department just hired military contractor DynCorp for services in Somalia. Imperial designs on a key nation. What the U.S. does not want in Somalia is a government independent of its control. Puppet regimes are more profitable -- especially given Somalia's 1,700-mile coastline overlooking the oil tankers and warships that pass through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Now that prospects for oil extraction have risen sharply in Africa, which holds the third-largest reserves in the world, the stakes are even higher. The Horn of Africa's strategic position and possibilities for exploitation are of interest to all the major military and economic players. By 2015, an estimated 25 percent of U.S. oil imports will come from Africa. China is already dependent on African oil and eager for other resources, as are the continent's former colonizers in the European Union. The U.S. is determined to outgun any competition. Withstanding a harsh history and present reality. Among African countries, the population of Somalia is uncharacteristically homogenous. The majority are of one Somali ethnicity and speak the same Somali language. And they have united more than once to confront unwanted rulers. For example, they ousted U.S.-backed dictator Siad Barre in 1991. In a cynical bid to reestablish outright colonialism under a humanitarian guise, the U.S. then invaded Somalia. In 1993, the people drove the Marines out of their nation's capital city, Mogadishu -- an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A. In the next years, Somalia still faced intractable problems. It was very underdeveloped because European colonizers had done nothing to advance technology and education. Economic and natural disasters were exacerbated by colonial mismanagement and, later, by loans and "aid" that benefited only imperial lenders. Regional military commanders ("warlords") and their militias imperiled daily life. With no government and no social services for nearly 15 years, Somalia became increasingly lawless. Kidnapping, piracy, rape, clan and border warfare, and sheer deprivation turned half the population into refugees -- a Somali diaspora living in camps and marginal communities around the world. In summer 2006, a coalition of religious courts (Union of Islamic Courts, UIC) moved to fill the void. Backed by military power, these courts provided social services and education along with relative social order. Some, but not all, were in the hands of fundamentalists who tried to enforce extremist Sharia laws. Their threats of executions for not praying five times a day, or playing nonreligious music, were decidedly unpopular. The courts controlled Mogadishu and southern Somalia for about seven months, but were defeated by U.S. and Ethiopian warships and troops in December 2006. Remnants of the UIC formed a resistance organization that now wages guerrilla war. Pitted against the Islamic courts movement is the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), financed by the U.S. and European Union. No one really expects the TFG to establish a government of national unity. It is the 14th attempt by the U.S. and U.N. to install a puppet regime in Somalia since 1991. TFG has a 275-member parliament made up largely by the military commanders who presided over the previous 15 years of chaos and their handpicked representatives. It is a classic proxy government that can't stand without imperialist money; it has little respect among the people. Somali Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar, at the University of Minnesota, says, "TFG has not served a glass of water to a child." Both the TFG and UIC are based among wealthy Somali merchants who, through clan structures, compete for and control local resources and trade. Neither represents the interests of Somalia's workers. And "neither group stands to protect the rights of women," says Amina Mire, a Somali lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. But lacking a third, progressive option, "Somali women seem to be giving a qualified support to the Islamists." As Ethiopian troops withdraw, the U.S. and U.N. hope that African Union allies will send peacekeeping troops. But none are responding eagerly, and forces from Uganda were immediately fired upon as they set foot in Mogadishu. Mahdy Maweel, a Somali journalist in Seattle, bluntly expresses popular sentiment: "Somalia doesn't need any troops from other puppet governments." U.S. troops out of Africa! It's said that Somalia's legacy of border disputes with Ethiopia make it impossible for the two peoples to unify. But a demonstration on Jan. 22 at the White House, where Somali and Ethiopian Americans rallied together against the attacks on Somalia, shows otherwise. Ethiopians declared that their own dictator, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, "is already at war with the people of Ethiopia and now he's waging a war against the people of Somalia." Somalis called for a halt to "the kind of killing done in the people's name by the elites while the rest of us pay the price." Their common cause deserves the vocal and insistent support of the whole of the U.S. anti-war movement. o No "peacekeeping" troops in Somalia from the U.N., U.S., African Union or anywhere else! o Stop ICE raids and deportations of Somali and other immigrants in the U.S.! Why is the U.S. Air Force strafing southern Somalia? Why is the carrier USS Eisenhower in the Indian Ocean? What possible threat is Somalia to the U.S.? The White House claims the right to attack other countries to get suspected al-Qaeda members. But no al-Qaeda operatives were hit on Jan. 8, the first acknowledged U.S. military action in Somalia since 1994. Seventy nomads and their cattle perished. The herders were bombed at night as they camped around fires to deflect mosquitoes. They were among many civilian casualties that resulted from three days of U.S. air strikes near towns. More U.S.-sponsored bloodshed is likely since the State Department just hired military contractor DynCorp for services in Somalia. Imperial designs on a key nation. What the U.S. does not want in Somalia is a government independent of its control. Puppet regimes are more profitable -- especially given Somalia's 1,700-mile coastline overlooking the oil tankers and warships that pass through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Now that prospects for oil extraction have risen sharply in Africa, which holds the third-largest reserves in the world, the stakes are even higher. The Horn of Africa's strategic position and possibilities for exploitation are of interest to all the major military and economic players. By 2015, an estimated 25 percent of U.S. oil imports will come from Africa. China is already dependent on African oil and eager for other resources, as are the continent's former colonizers in the European Union. The U.S. is determined to outgun any competition. Withstanding a harsh history and present reality. Among African countries, the population of Somalia is uncharacteristically homogenous. The majority are of one Somali ethnicity and speak the same Somali language. And they have united more than once to confront unwanted rulers. For example, they ousted U.S.-backed dictator Siad Barre in 1991. In a cynical bid to reestablish outright colonialism under a humanitarian guise, the U.S. then invaded Somalia. In 1993, the people drove the Marines out of their nation's capital city, Mogadishu -- an embarrassing defeat for the U.S.A. In the next years, Somalia still faced intractable problems. It was very underdeveloped because European colonizers had done nothing to advance technology and education. Economic and natural disasters were exacerbated by colonial mismanagement and, later, by loans and "aid" that benefited only imperial lenders. Regional military commanders ("warlords") and their militias imperiled daily life. With no government and no social services for nearly 15 years, Somalia became increasingly lawless. Kidnapping, piracy, rape, clan and border warfare, and sheer deprivation turned half the population into refugees -- a Somali diaspora living in camps and marginal communities around the world. In summer 2006, a coalition of religious courts (Union of Islamic Courts, UIC) moved to fill the void. Backed by military power, these courts provided social services and education along with relative social order. Some, but not all, were in the hands of fundamentalists who tried to enforce extremist Sharia laws. Their threats of executions for not praying five times a day, or playing nonreligious music, were decidedly unpopular. The courts controlled Mogadishu and southern Somalia for about seven months, but were defeated by U.S. and Ethiopian warships and troops in December 2006. Remnants of the UIC formed a resistance organization that now wages guerrilla war. Pitted against the Islamic courts movement is the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), financed by the U.S. and European Union. No one really expects the TFG to establish a government of national unity. It is the 14th attempt by the U.S. and U.N. to install a puppet regime in Somalia since 1991. TFG has a 275-member parliament made up largely by the military commanders who presided over the previous 15 years of chaos and their handpicked representatives. It is a classic proxy government that can't stand without imperialist money; it has little respect among the people. Somali Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar, at the University of Minnesota, says, "TFG has not served a glass of water to a child." Both the TFG and UIC are based among wealthy Somali merchants who, through clan structures, compete for and control local resources and trade. Neither represents the interests of Somalia's workers. And "neither group stands to protect the rights of women," says Amina Mire, a Somali lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. But lacking a third, progressive option, "Somali women seem to be giving a qualified support to the Islamists." As Ethiopian troops withdraw, the U.S. and U.N. hope that African Union allies will send peacekeeping troops. But none are responding eagerly, and forces from Uganda were immediately fired upon as they set foot in Mogadishu. Mahdy Maweel, a Somali journalist in Seattle, bluntly expresses popular sentiment: "Somalia doesn't need any troops from other puppet governments." U.S. troops out of Africa! It's said that Somalia's legacy of border disputes with Ethiopia make it impossible for the two peoples to unify. But a demonstration on Jan. 22 at the White House, where Somali and Ethiopian Americans rallied together against the attacks on Somalia, shows otherwise. Ethiopians declared that their own dictator, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, "is already at war with the people of Ethiopia and now he's waging a war against the people of Somalia." Somalis called for a halt to "the kind of killing done in the people's name by the elites while the rest of us pay the price." Their common cause deserves the vocal and insistent support of the whole of the U.S. anti-war movement. o No "peacekeeping" troops in Somalia from the U.N., U.S., African Union or anywhere else! o Stop ICE raids and deportations of Somali and other immigrants in the U.S.! From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:31:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:31:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Israel's Economic Siege Fuels Hamas-Fatah Conflict Message-ID: <200704242131.l3OLVQ04012726@viola.tamara-b.org> Freedom Socialist Vol. 28, No. 2 April-May 2007 http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol28no2/28207Palestine.html [The article below appeared in the January 2007 issue of Socialist Action. It offers a clear-sighted analysis of the reasons for the tensions between Hamas and Fatah and the role of Israel and the U.S. in inflaming these antagonisms.] Israel's economic siege of Palestine fuels fratricidal conflict between Hamas and Fatah by Gerry Foley Inter-Palestinian conflicts continue to increase despite the attempts of the leaderships of the various organizations to achieve a common front against Israel. The internecine warfare between Hamas and Fatah took a sharp upturn after three young children of a Fatah official were assassinated, presumably by Hamas supporters, on Dec. 11, 2006. Also in mid-December, the Fatah president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, announced that he was calling for a new election. Hamas, which won the last election only about a year ago, denounced his proposal as a "coup d'etat." On Jan. 5, Abbas declared the Hamas militia illegal. The response of the Islamic group was that they are going to double the size of their force, to 12,000 fighters. The following day, Jan. 6, Fatah staged a huge rally in Gaza, marked by bellicose talk. In this situation, if Abbas tried to enforce his order, it would mean full-scale civil war. In the recent period also, the main Palestinian groups have been unable to maintain the truce in Gaza, in which the Israelis agreed to stop strikes against the resistance there and the Palestinian organizations, including the Palestinian Authority, agreed to prevent the firing of handmade Qassam missiles into Israel. The agreement went into effect Nov. 26. The Palestinian Authority deployed thousands of security forces in northern Gaza to try to enforce it. However, by Dec. 27, the Israeli authorities claimed that 60 Qassams had been fired into their territory. One missile that landed in the closest Israeli town, Sderot, on Dec. 26 seriously injured two young boys. The organization that claimed credit for most of the firings is the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, a mainly military formation, which did not clearly commit itself to the truce, although it did not announce that it would defy it. On Dec. 27, the Israeli authorities announced that they intended to resume strikes in Gaza against the missile launchers. Islamic Jihad said that if the Israelis resumed their attacks, they would fire even more missiles. It claimed that it had been firing the missiles in reprisal for Israeli operations against its leaders in the West Bank. Thus, the level of desperation and bitterness in the Palestinian territories -- which have been fomented by Israeli attacks and repression -- seems to have reached the point where the official leaderships are unable to control the fighters. The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem issued a report at the end of 2006 that over the past year Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, three times the number killed in the previous year. Moreover, the cutting off of funding of the Palestinian Authority by Israel and its imperialist allies has inflamed the rivalry between Hamas and Fatah, since it has prevented the Palestinian Authority from paying the wages of its employees, most of whom are supporters of Fatah. The pretext for stopping the flow of aid and tax and customs money to the PA was the refusal of Hamas, now in control of the PA government, to formally recognize Israel. Thus, the PA's failure to pay wages is a result of a siege of Hamas, from which the mainly Fatah employees of the Authority suffer. The result is bitterness between the two Palestinian organizations, with Fatah blaming Hamas for imposing unbearable hardship on the Palestinian people and Hamas blaming Fatah for capitulation to Israeli pressure. The U.S. and Israeli support for Abbas against Hamas is evident. The latest and most dramatic evidence is the shipment of thousands of guns and a big store of ammunition from Egypt to Abbas' presidential guard with the approval of the Israeli authorities, without which it would not have been possible. Haaretz gave a detailed account of the arms transfer in its Dec. 28 issue, but some officials in Abbas' government are trying to deny it. Obviously, it is embarrassing to Fatah to be seen to be supported by the Zionists. This embarrassment was noticeable in the TV clips of the meeting between the Israeli premier, Ehud Olmert, and Abbas in late December. Olmert was effusive. Abbas was grim, with a disgusted look on his face. Although he, and probably a large part of Palestinian public opinion, may consider it necessary to give way to Israeli pressure in this instance, it is nothing they can be proud of. Some polls indicate that Fatah would win new elections, undoubtedly because many Palestinians have been demoralized by the economic siege of the Hamas government. But in the Dec. 28 issue of Haaretz, Danny Rubenstein wrote: "In preparing for the civil war, Fatah is in an inferior position as compared to Hamas. Certainly this is the case in Gaza. And it is primarily the case with respect to the internal organizational level. Fatah's leadership institutions are not functioning. "The branches are falling apart and Fatah's secretary general, Farouk Kaddoumi, is cooperating openly with Khaled Meshal in Damascus." Rubenstein cited a number of reasons for Fatah's weakness, but he noted: "The truth must be acknowledged, and it is that most of Fatah's weakness stems from the fact that its diplomatic agenda has failed. The political process that started with the Madrid Conference in 1991 and perhaps even earlier, with the Palestine Liberation Organization Council in Algiers in 1988, which recognized Israel, was led by the top Fatah leadership and reached a dead end. Not now, but six years ago when the bloody clashes started. Since then, the tendency has been clear: Fatah is on the retreat." Rubenstein continued: "The Oslo Accords [which set up the PA] were perceived by Israel as a license to expand the settlements in the West Bank and to build new neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. The facts are known: The number of residents in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem doubled during the 1990s. "Hamas gained strength not necessarily because the Palestinians have become more religious, but because West Bank residents woke up in the morning and out of their windows, in front of their eyes, they saw more and more fences and roadblocks, and more bypass roads. 'Get up in the morning and see my death approaching,' wrote a resident of a village near Ramallah." The Haaretz writer came to the conclusion that Abbas could only win his confrontation with Hamas if the U.S. and Israel offered him some serious concession, some hope of progress for the Palestinian people. All past experience indicates, however, that this would be unlikely. What Israel and its allies are offering Abbas most concretely is guns to fight Hamas. And however much that may temporarily reinforce his security forces, it can only further discredit him and ultimately lead to his downfall. Moreover, the failure of the principal Palestinian organizations to control their fighters, which has become evident in recent weeks, indicates that the fighters do not trust any of their leaders and will not accept orders from any of them to stop attacking Israel. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:33:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:33:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Iraq: US oil industry closes in on the prize Message-ID: <200704242133.l3OLXPd3012751@viola.tamara-b.org> Freedom Socialist Vol. 28, No. 2 April-May 2007 http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol28no2/28206Iraq.html Iraq: U.S. oil industry closes in on the prize As the Iraqi people struggle to survive, foreign exploiters make their move by Steven Strauss In 1999, Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney stuck his head in the sand and saw dollar signs. He called it "the prize": billions of barrels of Middle Eastern oil. Now, Vice President Cheney and the oil barons he serves are closer than ever to the prize within the prize -- Iraqi oil. The ink is nearly dry on Iraq's new hydrocarbon law, a scheme to transfer Iraq's vast oil wealth to U.S. and British companies. It will make the previous no-bid corporate rip-offs for "reconstruction" look like lemonade stands. On the way to the bank, these neo-con artists will have to tiptoe around the hundreds of thousands of dead and mutilated bodies their war has produced. Their partners in crime, the Iraqi puppet government, will cheer them on. But Iraqi voices of resistance are getting louder every day -- and a mass rebellion against this law is the one force still capable of defeating it. Payers and players. Washington has been shooting its way towards its ultimate prize, and Iraqis are the ones standing between it and its target. According to a joint study by U.S. and Iraqi university researchers, 650,000 more Iraqis have died since the invasion than would normally be expected during that period of time. The overwhelming majority of them died by violence. People live in constant fear; about 1.5 million have fled as refugees. Unemployment exceeds 70 percent. Two-thirds of Iraqi children are not attending school. Still, many people outside Iraq believe that the disaster will only worsen if U.S. troops leave. Iraqis do not share this view: two-thirds want foreign troops to leave now. The Bush clique in Washington responsible for Iraqis' troubles has two willing accomplices, Baghdad's puppet government and the Democratic "opposition" at home. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is someone Washington can work with, for the moment. True, members of his Islamic fundamentalist, anti-communist, and anti-woman Dawa Party bombed the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1983. But today, he supports the hydrocarbon law. Meanwhile, top Democrats as of this writing are dodging questions about the new law. They have at times taken potshots at the Bush administration with criticisms of no-bid contracts as "unfair" forms of corporate plunder. But their basic position on the exploitation of Iraqi oil is clear from the conclusions of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group of 2006. The committee advised that the U.S. military "protect oil infrastructure and contractors" and that the U.S. government help "prepare a draft oil law" and "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." Iraqi oil is as profit-laden as it gets. Second only to Saudi Arabia in proven reserves, Iraq leads the planet in untapped oil fields. Its crude is of the highest quality, and sits very close to the surface, making it relatively inexpensive to produce. The hydrocarbon law will transform Iraq's long-nationalized oil industry into a privatized haven. Under the terms of the draft now before the Iraqi Parliament, oil majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron would acquire 30-year leases to the fields, and keep 75 percent of the profits until infrastructure investments are recouped. Thereafter, they would be allowed to keep 20 percent -- an unprecedented amount in the Middle East, where 10 percent is more typical -- under "production-sharing agreements" (perhaps with a different name, as PSAs are widely detested in the region). According to the human rights and oil monitoring group Platform, the law was drafted with the help of the Virginia firm BearingPoint, sent for review to oil companies and the U.S. government, and then passed on to the International Monetary Fund. Baghdad politicians have only recently begun to read it. They must have been told that the law is now ready for their signatures. Repression and resistance. Oil represents 75 percent of Iraq's gross domestic product; the country's economic survival depends on it. The selloff of this resource will climax a campaign by the occupiers to restructure Iraq's economy in their own interest (although international law makes this illegal). Early on, occupation proconsul Paul Bremer declared every industry except oil, gas and banking open to privatization and foreign exploitation, while keeping Saddam Hussein's anti-union laws intact. He lowered the monthly wage of most Iraqi workers to $35 (U.S.), eliminated food and housing subsidies, and gave outside corporations the right to keep 100 percent of their profits, with no obligation to reinvest in Iraq or hire Iraqi workers. Bremer also arrested anti-occupation workers with the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. In August 2003, Basra oil workers struck Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which had been given a lucrative, no-bid contract to repair oil facilities. Strikers won a pay raise to about $100 and the abandonment of a plan to exclude Iraqis from the work. Iraqi unionists are aware of U.S. designs and determined to thwart them. Ghasib Hassan, the head of the Railway and Aviation Union, proclaimed that "we will never accept the privatization of oil." The primacy of oil also explains much of the sectarian fighting. Shiites and Kurds inhabit oil-rich regions. Most Sunnis do not, and their insurgency is partly about protecting a share of oil income. But hostility to the oil sellout is hardly limited to the Sunnis. One prominent Shiite opponent at present is cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who commands a militia of 80,000. The recent U.S. troop surge is designed in part to put down this opposition. Alarmed at the growing restiveness, prominent establishment voices are urging Washington to act decisively. On February 17, the "anti-war" New York Times called on Congress to "link further financing for the war to the performance of Iraq's Shiite-led government," including "disarming sectarian militias" and "adopting a formula to share oil revenues equitably." In other words, it wants the Shiites in the government who are for the hydrocarbon law to neutralize the Shiites and Sunnis who are against it, and to placate the workers with whatever is left of oil revenues after the oil giants get their share. Women workers and the way forward. The struggle for women's rights in Iraq is key to winning the demands of workers and national independence. Given Washington's undemocratic and anti-labor aims, it necessarily finds its base of support among conservatives -- in this case, Islamic reactionaries. As this base grows stronger, women are among the first victims. Iraqi women are increasingly deprived of ordinary freedoms and subject to rapes and "honor killings." Compelled to defend themselves, they will find natural allies among workers fighting the imperialist rape of their country. MADRE, an international women's rights organization, observed that Washington "has strengthened conservative Islamic forces in Iraq," but has made "no effort to engage with or include progressive women's groups." This has spurred many Iraqi women to "fight simultaneously against the U.S. occupation and the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism." The 2004 election of Hashimia Muhsin Hussein as the first female head of an Iraqi labor union is therefore of great significance. The Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions attributed her victory in the Electricity and Energy Workers' Union in Basra to "her reputation as a solid defender of workers' rights and particularly of women's rights." Iraqi workers and women need mutual political support to be successful. They are up against not only a misogynist, anti-labor Iraqi government of fundamentalist parties, but also the misogynist, anti-labor U.S. government of two corporate parties standing behind it. And recognition of workers and women as the key progressive forces in Iraq is important for the anti-war movement internationally, especially in the U.S. -- not least because of the light this understanding sheds on the nature of the enemy at home. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:38:56 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:38:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Venezuela to take Posada Case to OAS, UN Message-ID: <200704242138.l3OLcufk012783@viola.tamara-b.org> El Universal - April 23, 2007 http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/04/23/en_pol_art_venezuela-to-submit_23A858869.shtml Venezuela to submit to OAS Posada Carriles' case The Venezuelan government is getting ready to submit Wednesday the case of anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles for the consideration of the Organization of American States (OAS) Permanent Council, OAS reported Monday. Posada Carriles, 47, a former CIA agent, was released on bail last Thursday after paying a bail accounting for USD 350,000. He will be restricted to his own house in Miami until May 11th, the starting date of a trial for migration fraud in El Paso, Texas. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that the government plans also to take the case to the United Nations (UN). The OAS agenda for the Wednesday session includes, among others, the "Venezuela's statement in relation to anti-terrorist efforts -Release of Luis Posada Carriles," said OAS in a press release. Posada Carriles, who had been detained in the United States since May 2005 for migration issues, fled from a Venezuelan prison in 1985. Washington has refused to extradite him by arguing that Posada Carriles might be tortured. *** UPI - April 23, 2007 http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/04/23/venezuela_to_petition_un_over_posada/ Venezuela to petition U.N. over Posada United Press International CARACAS, Venezuela April 23 (UPI) -- Venezuelan officials said they would petition the United Nations about the U.S. decision to release on bond Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles. President Hugo Chavez said he would take his complaint to the international body, claiming Washington is protecting a known terrorist, El Universal reported Monday. Posada was released last week on $350,000 bond while he awaits trial scheduled for May 11 on immigration fraud charges. The 79-year-old Posada contends he entered the United States across the Mexican border in 2005, though Cuban officials assert he was smuggled into the country with the help of anti-Castro activists. Officials in Caracas called for Posada to be extradited to Venezuela to face trial for a 1970s plane bombing. Posada, who escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, is charged in Venezuela with masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976, killing 73 people. He has denied any involvement in the bombing. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:50:04 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:50:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Dahlia Wasfi: 3 Speaking Events - Apr 24, 25 Calif Message-ID: <200704242150.l3OLo4QJ012834@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - Apr 24, 2007 3 speaking events with Dahlia Wasfi "I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my mother's side-Ashkenazi Jews who fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler's Anschluss. It is for them that we say 'Never again.' I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my father's side, who are not living, but dying, under the occupation of this administration's deadly foray in Iraq. From the lack of security to the lack of basic supplies to the lack of electricity to the lack of potable water to the lack of jobs to the lack of recon-struction to the lack of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are much worse off now than before we invaded. 'Never again' should apply to them, too..." -Dahlia Wasfi Tuesday, April 24, 7:30 PM Speaking Event with Dahlia Wasfi "Bring Them Home NOW" - Unitarian Universalist Society At The Onion (ph. 818-772-1555) 9550 Haskell Avenue, North Hills, California For more information: Allan Taylor - 818-772-1555 Wednesday, April 25, 12:00 PM Speaking Event with Dahlia Wasfi UCLA Social Justice Speakers Series University of California - Los Angeles 405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, California For more information: Samantha - 818-419-6994 - HYPERLINK "mailto:Samantha at codepinkalert.org"Samantha at codepinkalert.org Wednesday, April 25, 7:00 PM Speaking Event at Thousand Oaks Main Library "Bring Them Home NOW" 1401 E. Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, California For more information: Gordon Clint - 805-498-9401 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:53:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:53:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Self-Help Graphics Fundraiser -Apr 29 (Calif) Message-ID: <200704242153.l3OLrFOh012848@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - Apr 24, 2007 Self Help Graphics & Art info at selfhelpgraphics.com 21 Apr 2007 Self Help Graphics & Art Fundraiser Over the last two years Self Help Graphics & Art has encountered incredible challenges. Beginning with a change in administration to briefly closing its doors, the last two years have been the roughest period for one of the most pre-eminent Chicano and Latino art organizations in the country. During this short timeframe we've made many strides to stabilize the organization. Today, however, the organization is experiencing an incredibly strained cash flow. As a member of the board, I am asking for your help. Below is an invitation to a print sale. Your attendance will demonstrate support for one of our community's most revered treasures. Please bring a friend. We have very affordable art work with many pieces from some of the biggest names in Chicano art that Self Help has nurtured including Frank Romero, Wayne Healy, Vincent Valdez and Yolanda Gonzales. If you cannot attend, we would be so grateful for a donation. Donations can be made to paypal at selfhelpgraphics.com Thank you and I hope to see you there. WHAT: Self Help Graphics Print Sale WHERE: Self Help Graphics & Art 3802 Cesar E. Chavez Blvd./Gage WHEN: Sunday, April 29, 2007 3-7 p.m. HOSTED BY: Valarie De La Garza & Raquel Dominguez RSVP: Please e-mail valarie at delagarzaprcom.com Appetizers & cocktails to be served From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:55:12 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:55:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Climate Change: Why We Can't Wait Message-ID: <200704242155.l3OLtCLL012876@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The Nation via Alternet - Apr 21, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50795/ [This is an adaptation of a talk delivered February 26 at the National Press Club. Comments relating to policy are Dr. Hansen's personal opinion and do not represent a NASA position.] Climate Change: Why We Can't Wait The country's leading climatologist gives us the five necessary steps we need to take to prevent catastrophic climate change. By James Hansen The Nation There's a huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known about global warming by those who need to know: the public and policy-makers. We've had, in the past thirty years, one degree Fahrenheit of global warming. But there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline due to gases that are already in the atmosphere. And there's another one degree Fahrenheit in the pipeline because of the energy infrastructure now in place -- for example, power plants and vehicles that we're not going to take off the road even if we decide that we're going to address this problem. The Energy Department says that we're going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year -- not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before. If we do follow that path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet -- one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones. I've arrived at five recommendations for what should be done to address the problem. If Congress were to follow these recommendations, we could solve the problem. Interestingly, this is not a gloom-and-doom story. In fact, the things we need to do have many other benefits in terms of our economy, our national security, our energy independence and preserving the environment -- preserving creation. First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2. That technology is probably five or ten years away. It will become clear over the next ten years that coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2 are going to have to be bulldozed. That's the only way we can keep CO2 from getting well into the dangerous level, because our consumption of oil and gas alone will take us close to the dangerous level. And oil and gas are such convenient fuels (and located in countries where we can't tell people not to mine them) that they surely will be used. So why build old- technology power plants if you're not going to be able to operate them over their lifetime, which is fifty or seventy-five years? It doesn't make sense. Besides, there's so much potential in efficiency, we don't need new power plants if we take advantage of that. Second, and this is the hard recommendation that no politician seems willing to stand up and say is necessary: The only way we are going to prevent having an amount of CO2 that is far beyond the dangerous level is by putting a price on emissions. In order to avoid economic problems, it had better be a gradually rising price so that the consumer has the option to seek energy sources that reduce his requirement for how much fuel he needs. And that means we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at the same time. The result would be high-tech, high-paid jobs. And it would be very good for our energy independence, our national security and our balance of payments. But a price on carbon emissions is not enough, which brings us to the third recommendation: We need energy-efficiency standards. That's been proven time and again. The biggest use of energy is in buildings, and the engineers and architects have said that they can readily reduce the energy requirement of new buildings by 50 percent. That goal has been endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors, but you can't do it on a city-by-city basis. You need national standards. The same goes for vehicle efficiency. We haven't had an improvement in vehicle efficiency in twenty-five or thirty years. And our national government is standing in court alongside the automobile manufacturers resisting what the National Research Council has said is readily achievable -- a 30 percent improvement in vehicle efficiency, which California and other states want to adopt. The fourth recommendation -- and this is probably the easiest one -- involves the question of ice-sheet stability. The old assumption that it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years for ice sheets to change is clearly wrong. The concern is that it's a very nonlinear process that could accelerate. The west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is very vulnerable. If it collapses, that could yield a sea-level rise of sixteen to nineteen feet, possibly on a time scale as short as a century or two. The information on ice-sheet stability is so recent that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report does not adequately address it. The IPCC process is necessarily long and drawn out. But this problem with the stability of ice sheets is so critical that it really should be looked at by a panel of our best scientists. Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on this and report its conclusions in very plain language. The National Academy of Sciences was established by Abraham Lincoln for just this sort of purpose, and there's no reason we shouldn't use it that way. The final recommendation concerns how we have gotten into this situation in which there is a gap between what the relevant scientific community understands and what the public and policy-makers know. A fundamental premise of democracy is that the public is informed and that they're honestly informed. There are at least two major ways in which this is not happening. One of them is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are staffed at the headquarters level by political appointees. While the public affairs workers at the centers are professionals who feel that their job is to translate the science into words the public can understand, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case for the political appointees at the highest levels. Another matter is Congressional testimony. I don't think the Framers of the Constitution expected that when a government employee -- a technical government employee -- reports to Congress, his testimony would have to be approved and edited by the White House first. But that is the way it works now. And frankly, I'm afraid it works that way whether it's a Democratic administration or a Republican one. These problems are worse now than I've seen in my thirty years in government. But they're not new. I don't know anything in our Constitution that says that the executive branch should filter scientific information going to Congressional committees. Reform of communication practices is needed if our government is to function the way our Founders intended it to work. The global warming problem has brought into focus an overall problem: the pervasive influence of special interests on the functioning of our government and on communications with the public. It seems to me that it will be difficult to solve the global warming problem until we have effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy- makers. ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:56:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:56:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Venez: Chavez Stands Firm on Non-Renewal of RCTV License Message-ID: <200704242156.l3OLuR07012888@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - April 24, 2007 [After protests in Caracas yesterday challenging the government's decision not to renew the broadcasting license of RCTV on public channels, El Universal reports that President Chavez will stand firm. In a radio address on Sunday, Chavez stated that "the license is expiring and the state has the right to grant this permit to citizens under any other form." RCTV is the oldest television channel in the country, but also the most notorious for legal offenses, having faced government sanctions six times since the 1970s. The decision not to renew the license -- which still allows RCTV to transmit through cable and satellite broadcasting -- will allow new voices to reach the airwaves in Venezuela. -VIO] El Universal - April 23, 2007 http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/04/23/en_pol_art_chavez-says-he-is-no_23A858705.shtml Chavez says he is not accepting pressures on RCTV case By Reyes Theis "Forget about renewal. This will not happen ever," said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to reassert his decision not to renew a broadcasting license to Caracas-based private TV network RCTV. "What you should accept is a fact that is quite clear: the license is expiring and the state has the right to grant this permit to citizens under any other form," Chavez Sunday during his radio and TV show =A1Alo, Presidente! (Hello, President!), broadcast from a ranch "rescued" by the Venezuelan Government in Urachiche, central Yaracuy state. "People who believe they can put pressure on me by appealing to international organizations, foreign governments, and the evil court of this and that, with demonstrations, forget it! You are not going to put pressure on me; with nothing and for nothing. Just accept it. If you cannot face it, it is up to you. And if you believe you are overthrowing my government, you are wrong again, and this will be worse for you," the Venezuelan ruler warned, and reminded that RCTV broadcasting license expires next May 27. According to Chavez, there are plots under way to overthrow his government. In this connection, he stated: "Messieurs Minister of Defense, of the Interior and Justice, governors, and mayors, start preparing your counteroffensive plans. If they attack, our counterattack will be overwhelming, with civilian and military forces." Socialist power Chavez branded the media as "swine," claiming they have manipulated his remarks on his 21st-century socialism, and once again invited the military to "undertake the socialist project." He added "it is a must for Venezuelan military officers." In Chavez' view, people slashing out at his call for the military to support his socialist plans "are arguing this is proselytism, but all they want is we, you, generals, officers, sub-officers and troops to go back to what you were in the past: the tools the capitalism used to exploit people." He stated that "the Armed Force is a political instrument" and has the last word as to the fate of the people. "The Armed Force has an obligation to support the decision of the majority, and the majority here endorsed socialism. The Armed Force has no other choice than supporting the people's lawful and constitutional decision." Price regulation for private clinics Chavez announced he is drafting a resolution -under the Enabling Law that granted him special ruling powers- to "regulate exploitation in private clinics." "Any clinic failing to comply shall be closed down. Perhaps we could use its premises to install (government primary healthcare plan Barrio Adentro -mostly administered by Cuban doctors), or we could use it as a popular clinic. That is why I am making this a resolution applicable nationwide." "If there is need to expropriate, expropriation will take effect immediately. We have no complex about anything." Further, Chavez once again urged political organization supporting his revolutionary process to join his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Finally, Chavez claimed that the United States has okayed his assassination, and labeled US President George W. Bush' administration as "terrorist" for the release last week of Cuban anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 17:57:40 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:57:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] McCain Bashes Chavez in Energy Speech Message-ID: <200704242157.l3OLve5R012900@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - April 24, 2007 [Reuters and the Associated Press report on comments made by presidential hopeful John McCain during his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC based think tank. While talking about energy and security issues, McCain said that President Chavez was using oil profits to "establish a dictatorship, bully his neighbors and succeed (Cuban President Fidel) Castro as Latin America's leading antagonist of the United States." He also defended a joke he made last week in which he answered a question about military action against Iran by briefly singing the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann,": "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb anyway..." -VIO] Reuters via The Washington Post - April 23, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301071.html W.House hopeful McCain details energy platform By Chris Baltimore WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican 2008 presidential hopeful John McCain detailed his energy policy platform on Monday, taking swings at OPEC oil producers, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and tariffs that protect domestic ethanol producers. The Arizona senator said that if elected, he would work to cut U.S. oil imports, which account for about 60 percent of daily usage. "As president, I'll propose a national energy strategy that would amount to a declaration of independence from the fear bred by our reliance on oil sheiks," McCain said in remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lashing out at OPEC, which produces about a third of the world's oil, McCain said that crude oil "availability and price are manipulated by a cartel of countries where our values aren't typically shared." In Venezuela, also an OPEC member, President Hugo Chavez is using oil revenues to "establish a dictatorship, bully his neighbors and succeed (Cuban President Fidel) Castro as Latin America's leading antagonist of the United States," he said. McCain's critics, including Democratic party leaders, have noted, however, that one of McCain's top campaign finance advisors, former Rep. Tom Loeffler of Texas, has lobbied for Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter and the de-facto leader of OPEC. "John McCain can't have it both ways, hiring a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia as one of his campaign's top strategists while at the same time calling for energy independence," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. McCain defended Loeffler, calling him "a very respected individual." "I don't have to recite his credentials," he told reporters after the speech. McCain said he supported using home-grown sources like corn and switchgrass to make fuel to replace foreign supplies, but said he would drop tariffs and subsidies which have kept imports in check. Speaking to reporters following his remarks, McCain said he would let lapse a 54 cent-per-gallon tariff on ethanol imports which expires at the end of 2008. "I have opposed subsidies and import tariffs and I would certainly let it drop," McCain told reporters, referring to the import tariff. In his speech, McCain also repeated his call for the United States to cut its emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases through a cap-and-trade system. McCain said U.S. should build more nuclear plants, which emit no greenhouse gases, after a 25-year building hiatus. "The barriers to nuclear energy are political, not technological," and political squabbles over where to store spent radioactive fuel has "made it virtually impossible to build a single new plant," he said. McCain said that as president, he would support efforts to make the U.S. economy more energy-efficient, from high-tech lightbulbs to space-age building materials for cars and lighter, more powerful batteries to obviate the need for crude oil to power cars. "We need to dispel the image of conservation that entail shivering in cold rooms reading by candlelight and lower productivity," he said. *** AP via The New York Times - April 24, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-McCain-Energy.html McCain: Address Energy Security, Warming The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican presidential contender John McCain on Monday warned about U.S. reliance on foreign oil and the threat of global warming, dismissing even some in his own party who suggest climate change is a Hollywood-driven notion. The way people in this country use oil "is a serious threat to our security, our economy and the well-being of our planet," the Arizona senator said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Al-Qaida must revel in the irony that America is effectively helping to fund both sides of the war they caused. As we sacrifice blood and treasure, some of our gas dollars flow to the fanatics who build the bombs, hatch the plots and carry out attacks on our soldiers and citizens," he said. "The transfer of American wealth to the Middle East helps sustain the conditions on which terrorists prey." McCain's speech was one of three policy addresses before his formal presidential announcement on Wednesday in New Hampshire. The candidate has been seeking momentum for his second White House bid, buffeted by below-par fundraising totals, a drop in public opinion polls and widespread criticism of his hopeful assessment of progress in Iraq. His tone Monday was doggedly serious. He read his nearly 25-minute speech from a teleprompter, lightening his delivery only slightly during the upbeat portions of the speech. The senator pledged that as president, he would propose a national energy strategy that would "amount to a declaration of independence from the fear bred by our reliance on oil sheiks and our vulnerability to the troubled politics of the land they rule." McCain also termed global warming "a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge" and added that "the problem isn't a Hollywood invention." McCain favors climate-change legislation that would set caps on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and offer incentives for industries to come up with new energy sources. "The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak havoc with Gods creation," he said. Some Republicans have resisted legislation on climate change, fearing the impact on the energy industry. Others, such as Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., have suggested global warming is a hoax. McCain singled out Iran and Venezuela as examples of nations that because of their oil wealth -- and their ability to hold that over the United States' head -- have no incentives to change their troublesome ways and open their economies and governments. "The politics of oil impede the global progress of our values, and restrains governments from acting on the most basic impulses of human decency," McCain said. Answering questions afterward, McCain pledged to turn around his lower-than-expected fundraising. He also repeated his defense of a joke he made on the campaign trail last week in which he answered a question about military action against Iran by briefly singing the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann." "That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran," he said. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..." Critics have said the joke was reckless. McCain said Monday that anyone who would take it seriously should "lighten up and get a life." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:10:50 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:10:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Palestine: The Legend of the Removed Checkpoints Message-ID: <200704242210.l3OMAo9W013066@viola.tamara-b.org> Electronic Intifada - Apr 24, 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6830.shtml Opinion/Editorial The Legend of the Removed Checkpoints by Ran HaCohen Last Monday's paper gave us a small reason to be happy. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for the second time in just a few weeks. Reporting the meeting -- described by Palestinian sources as "fruitless" -- Ha'aretz noted: "An IDF lieutenant-colonel also attended the meeting. The officer briefed the Palestinians on the plan to remove IDF roadblocks in the West Bank. According to the officer, the IDF has so far removed 44 roadblocks. He added that the IDF was planning to remove an additional 17 in the next stage of the plan. The sources said that the Palestinian delegation requested the removal of more roadblocks, and that Olmert expressed his willingness." Good News, Isn't It?! Hear, hear: the IDF removed 44 roadblocks! This may not be much, given the rather extensive list of restrictions imposed on Palestinians, i.e.: Standing prohibitions - Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are forbidden to stay in the West Bank. - Palestinians are forbidden to enter East Jerusalem. - West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing. - Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Jordan Valley. - Palestinians are forbidden to enter villages, lands, towns, and neighborhoods along the 'seam line' between the separation fence and the Green Line (some 10 percent of the West Bank). - Palestinians who are not residents of the villages Beit Furik and Beit Dajan in the Nablus area, and Ramadin, south of Hebron, are forbidden entry. - Palestinians are forbidden to enter the settlements' area (even if their lands are inside the settlements' built area). - Palestinians are forbidden to enter Nablus in a vehicle. - Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden to enter area A (Palestinian towns in the West Bank). - Gaza Strip residents are forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby crossing. - Palestinians are forbidden to travel abroad via Ben-Gurion Airport. - Children under age 16 are forbidden to leave Nablus without an original birth certificate and parental escort. - Palestinians with permits to enter Israel are forbidden to enter through the crossings used by Israelis and tourists. - Gaza residents are forbidden to establish residency in the West Bank. - West Bank residents are forbidden to establish residency in the Jordan Valley, seam-line communities, or the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan. - Palestinians are forbidden to transfer merchandise and cargo through internal West Bank checkpoints. Periodic prohibitions - Residents of certain parts of the West Bank are forbidden to travel to the rest of the West Bank. - People of a certain age group -- mainly men from the age of 16 to 30, 35, or 40 -- are forbidden to leave the areas where they reside (usually Nablus and other cities in the northern West Bank). - Private cars may not pass the Swahara-Abu Dis checkpoint (which separates the northern and southern West Bank). This was canceled for the first time two weeks ago under the easing of restrictions. Travel permits required - A magnetic card (intended for entrance to Israel, but eases the passage through checkpoints within the West Bank). - A work permit for Israel (the employer must come to the civil administration offices and apply for one). - A permit for medical treatment in Israel and Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem (The applicant must produce an invitation from the hospital, his complete medical background, and proof that the treatment he is seeking cannot be provided in the occupied territories). - A travel permit to pass through Jordan Valley checkpoints. - A merchant's permit to transfer goods. - A permit to farm along the seam line requires a form from the land registry office, a title deed, and proof of first-degree relations to the registered property owner. - Entry permit for the seam line (for relatives, medical teams, construction workers, etc. Those with permits must enter and leave via the same crossing even if it is far away or closing early). - Permits to pass from Gaza, through Israel to the West Bank. - A birth certificate for children under 16. - A long-standing resident identity card for those who live in seam-line enclaves. Checkpoints and barriers - There were 75 manned checkpoints in the West Bank as of January 9, 2007. - There are on average 150 mobile checkpoints a week (as of September 2006). - There are 446 obstacles placed between roads and villages, including concrete cubes, earth ramparts, 88 iron gates, and 74 kilometers of fences along main roads. - There are 83 iron gates along the separation fence, dividing lands from their owners. Only 25 of the gates open occasionally. Main roads closed to Palestinians, officially or in practice - Road 90 (the Jordan Valley thoroughfare). - Road 60, in the North (from the Shavei Shomron military base, west of Nablus and northward). - Road 585 along the settlements Hermesh and Dotan. - Road 557 west from the Taibeh-Tul Karm junction (the Green Line) to Anabta (excluding the residents of Shufa), and east from south of Nablus (the Hawara checkpoint) to the settlement Elon Moreh. - Road 505, from Zatara (Nablus junction) to Ma'ale Efraim. - Road 5, from the Barkan junction to the Green Line. - Road 446, from Dir Balut junction to Road 5 (by the settlements Alei Zahav and Peduel). - Roads 445 and 463 around the settlement Talmon, Dolev, and Nahliel. - Road 443, from Maccabim-Reut to Givat Ze'ev. - Streets in the Old City of Hebron. - Road 60, from the settlement of Otniel southward. - Road 317, around the south Hebron Hills settlements." So, given this list, as I was just saying, removing 44 roadblocks may not be much, but nevertheless, it is good news. Isn't it? Back in December 2006 ... Let's refresh our memory. It all started last December, when Olmert met Abbas. Olmert promised to remove checkpoints in the West Bank: "I intend to personally supervise it," he told Abbas, "so that the Palestinian society would feel the relief" (Ha'aretz, Dec. 24, 2006). The same day, Ha'aretz reported that Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his deputy Ephraim Sneh were actually working on a plan to facilitate Palestinian movement in the West Bank. The two must have spent the whole night in their office, devising a plan for dismantling not less than "45 out of approximately 400 checkpoints." At dawn, just as they intended to retire for a short nap, they found Ha'aretz at the doorstep, the top of which headline read: "IDF Opposes Olmert Plan to Dismantle West Bank Checkpoints." This sounded like a story worth following. In a democracy, the government sets the policy, the army carries it out. In other kinds of regimes, the army sets the policy, the government nods. Which regime is Israel's? Olmert Withdraws A few days later (Ha'aretz, Dec. 27, 2006) the prime minister indeed ordered the army to dismantle scores of checkpoints -- but "in a second phase, dependent on an additional decision of the political echelon." So at the first stage, no checkpoints will be removed (and then we'll see). This, as some Israeli sociologists claim, has always been Israel's regime: instead of risking a dispute with the army, the government complies with the army's demands. Meanwhile, Aluf Benn of Ha'aretz revealed that the "new" plan to dismantle 45 checkpoints was nothing but an old document, prepared by the Israeli army originally in English -- an "export product" for American eyes -- back in 2005. And never implemented, of course. So much for the sleepless night of Olmert's aides: all they did was feed the media with an old army document. The Army Rewards Anyway, the prime minister gave the army a green light not to dismantle any checkpoint. The army, for its part, did not leave this ministerial gesture unrewarded. On Jan. 17 Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli army finally complied. "The Israel Defense Forces announced yesterday that it recently removed 44 dirt barriers that were located near Palestinian villages in the West Bank. In recent years, the army established nearly 400 barriers and permanent roadblocks. The move is one of a series of steps aimed at easing restrictions on the Palestinians that were announced following the December 24 meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas." So you see: Olmert did keep his solemn promise, and the Israeli army did carry it out and did dismantle 44 checkpoints. At least, that's what the army announced, and the Israeli army always tells the truth. Well, almost always. Oops ... In this exceptional case, it took less than a week to expose the dirty deal between the government and the army. Scores and dozens of such deals -- among the government, the army, and the settlers -- are never exposed; the entire Israeli colonial project is based on such deals, made behind the back of all democratic mechanisms. But this was an exception. On Jan. 22, following an embarrassing UN report, the army had to admit: The Israel Defense Forces admitted yesterday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist. Last Tuesday, the IDF announced that it had removed 44 dirt obstacles that blocked access roads to West Bank villages, to fulfill promises made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting a month ago. Olmert had pledged measures to ease the lives of Palestinian civilians. However, a military source admitted yesterday that these obstacles 'had either been removed before the political level decided on the alleviations or had been bypassed by Palestinians earlier, and a decision had been made not to rebuild them.' So the 44 "removed" checkpoints, or dirt obstacles, didn't exist in the first place. The Israeli lie probably counted on Israel's information superiority: after all, who could count all those checkpoints better than the Israeli army? Alas, the UN turned out as an unexpected party-pooper. Yesterday's Lie Is Today's Truth But why bother to tell the truth when a lie is just as good? Three months later, Israel is again counting on our short memory. In an official meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president, no less, the army airs once again the legend about the 44 "removed checkpoints." The lie exposed in January is recycled as truth in April, and everybody is happy: Israel can claim it kept its promise, the Americans can claim progress in the "peace process," even President Mahmoud Abbas can claim an achievement. Who would bother to remind us that all this is nothing but a lie? The abused Palestinians haven't felt any relief whatsoever, but have been cynically cheated once again. And all of us media consumers have been duped along with them. Remember this next time the Palestinians show their inexplicable ingratitude. Remember this next time you hear an official Israeli announcement. [Dr. Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and grew up in Israel. He has a B.A. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and his PhD is in Jewish Studies. He is a university teacher in Israel. He also works as a literary translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. Mr. HaCohen's work has been published widely in Israel. "Letter from Israel" appears occasionally at Antiwar.com. This article, which first appeared on Antiwar.com, is republished with the author's permission.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:16:42 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:16:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Mexican Trucks: Public Citizen Sues to Stop Pilot Program Message-ID: <200704242216.l3OMGgMD013104@viola.tamara-b.org> Public Citizen - Apr 24, 2007 http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2418 April 24, 2007 Public Citizen Sues Government Agencies to Stop Illegal Pilot Project That Would Give Mexico-Domiciled Trucks Full Access to U.S.Highways Consumer, Environmental and Labor Groups Join Lawsuit to Prevent Implementation of NAFTA Truck Program That Violates Federal Law WASHINGTON, D.C. - Public Citizen joined environmental and labor groups late Monday in suing the federal government to challenge an illegal pilot program that will authorize up to 100 trucking companies based in Mexico to perform long-haul operations within the United States. The groups contend that the project violates federal requirements that the public receive notice and time to comment, and that it would have significant environmental and public safety repercussions. Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Law Foundation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Brotherhood of Teamsters' Auto and Truck Drivers Local 70 and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in federal court in California. The groups are seeking an injunction requiring the DOT and FMCSA either to comply with the law by providing public notice of the pilot program and an opportunity for the public to comment on the program - or to set aside the pilot project as unlawful. "This so-called pilot program was rushed through in secrecy to serve as a showpiece to permit the Bush administration to proclaim victory and declare the entire southern border open to unfettered, long-haul truck commerce before the end of 2008," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "Congress and the courts should not allow it." Mexico-domiciled motor carriers currently are permitted to operate in the United States only in specified commercial zones along the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The zones vary in size from approximately three to 20 miles inland from the U.S. border. On Feb. 23, DOT Secretary Mary Peters announced a pilot program to authorize select Mexican trucking companies to perform long-haul operations within the U.S. beyond the current commercial zone and across the nation's roadways. She also announced that safety inspectors from FMCSA would travel to Mexico as part of the pilot program. Despite numerous requests by Congress and by environmental, public interest, labor and industry organizations to Peters and the DOT for information about the pilot program, the details of the project are still shrouded in secrecy. The groups are asking the court to find that the failure to publish a detailed description of the pilot project in the Federal Register and the failure to provide notice and an opportunity for public comment violate federal law. They are also seeking an injunction against further implementation of the pilot program unless the agencies comply with these requirements. The administration's program is an attempt to implement a 2001 NAFTA order that required highways in Canada, Mexico and the United States to be fully accessible to trucking companies based in any NAFTA signatory nation. The Clinton administration refused to open the U.S. to Mexican trucking companies because of concerns that the trucks present safety and environmental hazards. Mexico filed a challenge under NAFTA, and in 2001, won a ruling from a NAFTA tribunal ordering the U.S. to open the border or face permanent trade sanctions. The Bush administration announced it would comply with the tribunal's order. In response, a new law initiated by Congress was enacted to ensure that FMCSA enforced U.S. safety requirements before permitting any Mexico-domiciled motor carriers to operate beyond the border zones. Also, in 2002 and 2003, Public Citizen and a coalition of consumer, labor and environmental groups successfully sued in U.S. federal court to block the Bush administration's attempt to implement trucking rules allowing Mexico-domiciled trucks based on environmental concerns. The Supreme Court ruled against the groups in 2004. In March 2007, Public Citizen sued FMCSA on behalf of the nonprofit group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety to compel the agency to release information about the pilot program. The highway safety group had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October 2006, but the agency has refused to release information about the methodology for evaluating the pilot project or respond to the FOIA request as mandated by law. Also in March, Claybrook warned a Senate appropriations subcommittee about the legal problems with the Bush plan and the safety improvements needed before allowing full, cross-border trucking from Mexico. She maintained that the Bush program fails the 2001 congressionally mandated safety requirements and that officials violated public notice and comment rules. She also said that the one-year project would be of too short duration and too small in scope to create an accurate and reliable analysis of the safety performance of NAFTA trucks. "On the U.S. side, the agency responsible for overseeing the public safety for large trucks is incompetent and the staff administering the law is largely indifferent and regularly ignores its responsibilities. On the Mexican side, the regulatory regime does not ensure a level of safety that supports entry onto our nation's highways," said Claybrook. Allowing full access to Mexico-domiciled trucks will also have a negative environmental impact on Southwestern states that are struggling to meet federal air quality levels. According to Sierra Research, an environmental consulting firm, Mexico-domiciled carriers typically emit substantially more pollutants than U.S.-domiciled trucks. Stringent new U.S. emissions standards and a new requirement for ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel will create an even larger difference between U.S. trucks and Mexico-domiciled trucks in emissions of oxides of nitrogen, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter. In the highway corridors from San Antonio, Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico, and from Tucson, Ariz., to Hermosillo, Mexico, approximately 80 percent of smog-causing oxides of nitrogen and 90 percent of other pollutants are caused by freight trucking, according to the federal government's own research. In March, as part of the pending supplemental appropriations bill, the Senate voted to require the Department of Transportation to comply with all existing U.S. legal requirements governing entry of Mexico-domiciled trucks into the United States, to publish details of the program and to allow time for comments. "This situation highlights how NAFTA threatens essential public safety and environmental quality in ways totally unrelated to trade," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division. "It's no wonder that Congress is not interested in providing President Bush with more fast-track authority to further expand the NAFTA model to other countries." To read the complaint [PDF], click here: http://www.citizen.org/documents/mexicocomplaint.pdf To read a petition for review [PDF], click here. http://www.citizen.org/documents/mexicopetition.pdf From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:19:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:19:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Crying over Labeled Milk Message-ID: <200704242219.l3OMJV6f013128@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by marcus (activ-l) - Apr 24, 2007 LiveScience - 24 April 2007 http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070424_bad_labeling.html Crying over Labeled Milk By Christopher Wanjek Monsanto, the multinational biotechnology corporation and leading producer of genetically engineered seed with a near monopoly on many crops and annual revenue exceeding $7 billion, is worried that you are being misled. For this reason, the company wants to ban shady dairy farmers like those rascally Amish and weirdo hippies from labeling their products free of artificial hormones. Earlier this month, Monsanto complained to the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Committee about the proliferation of labels with language such as "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones," as found on milk sold by Oakhurst Dairy in Portland, Maine. Monsanto says this scares consumers into thinking there's something unhealthy about its human-made recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) or by the Monsanto brand name, Posilac, now in about one-third of American dairy cows. Probably safe for humans Monsanto's rBGH, approved by the FDA in 1993, increases milk production by more than 10 percent. Monsanto takes somatotropin, a natural protein hormone, and mass-produces this using DNA-recombinant technology similar to how insulin medication is made. Although the FDA deemed rBGH safe, nearly every government in the world as well as the Coded Alimentarius Commission, which sets international food standards, disagreed and placed a ban on rBGH-a ban that is only now slowly being lifted. There were economic concerns about rBGH's affect on milk production and price as well as health concerns. Numerous studies have since shown that rBGH is likely safe for human consumption. Early on, however, studies published in prominent journals found that milk from rBGH-treated cows had elevated levels of another bovine hormone called IGF-I. And unrelated research, such as a highly regarded study from Harvard published in 1998 involving 15,000 men, found a connection between IGF-I and prostate cancer. What about the cow? The cows don't seem to be faring as well as humans, though. A study published in the Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research in 2003, analyzing numerous other studies, found that rBGH-treated cows were 25 percent more likely to have an udder infection called mastitis, 40 percent more likely to fail to conceive, and 55 percent more likely to develop clinical signs of lameness. Dairy cows are already bred for high milking output, and the artificial boost from rBGH takes a toll on their bodies. Monsanto Posilac's label in fact warns, "Cows injected with Posilac are at increased risk for clinical mastitis." Infections often are treated with antibiotics, raising concern about their overuse. For animal welfare reasons alone, consumers have the right to know how their milk is produced. Freedom of speech Monsanto was aggressive about rBGH from the get-go and infamously stopped a Fox news affiliate in Florida in the early 1990s from broadcasting a report on it, which most consumers knew nothing about because of the lack of labeling. When the reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, refused to yield, Fox fired them. Ultimately the plan backfired after the reporters successfully sued Fox under the Florida whistle-blower law and eventually won the 2001 International Goldman Environmental Prize. In 1994 the FDA placed limits on wording rBGH foes could use, and some states prohibited labeling outright. Ben & Jerry's and three other companies needed to sue Illinois and Chicago for the right to say their products did not come from cows treated with rBGH. Ben & Jerry's adds the FDA-preferred wording: "The FDA has said no significant difference has been shown and no test can now distinguish between milk from rBGH treated and untreated cows." Oakhurst Dairy and many other producers do not have this voluntary disclaimer, which Monsanto says violates the FDA's rules on misleading labels. No such disclaimer is needed for organic labeling, stating the conventional foods are just as safe. Truth in labeling It is difficult to ascertain the truth about rBGH's safety because Monsanto itself doesn't do well with accurate labeling. On its website Monsanto posts a fact sheet reportedly from the FDA but actually written by a scientist from Cornell University. The dead giveaway is that FDA fact sheets don't use underlining and exclamation points-as in "YES!"-to answer such softball questions as "Are milk and meat from bST-supplemented cows safe?" The so-called fact sheet is comically slanted in industry's favor. Also note the lack of "r" in "bST," Monsanto's way of minimizing the artificialness of rBST. Similarly, Monsanto's posting called "Questions And Answers About bST From The United States Food And Drug Administration," with language not typical of an FDA factsheet, doesn't seem to appear on any FDA website. Proposed FDA rulings include not telling consumers when food is irradiated or derived from clones . Monsanto goes the extra step to limit what the other guy can say as well. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:51:32 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:51:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Posada: Justice Trampled Underfoot Message-ID: <200704242251.l3OMpWIj013243@viola.tamara-b.org> Bahamas News Online - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.jonesbahamas.com/?c=128&a=12369 Editorial Justice Trampled Underfoot Today we report and comment on some new information we received over the weekend. Information received tells us that "thousands of Cuban youths strongly condemned on Thursday the double-standard behavior of the US administration proven by the release of Luis Posada Carriles on bail." Their main claim was that while George W. Bush protects an international terrorist, he also holds five Cuban heroes in prison, who precisely were fighting terrorism. On the basis of what we have learned we are convinced that Luis Posada Carriles stands revealed as a man who has had a most interesting career. He is most unlike most old men we know. That is so because this man is not only reputedly an ex-CIA operative in the war against Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution; but that he is also today the subject of a raging controversy that involves the United States of America, Cuba and Venezuela. This is so because Luis Posada Carriles is widely considered a most terrifying terrorist; having allegedly had a part in numerous attacks against Cuba and some of that beleaguered country's neighbors. As reported and widely suspected, it is said that Posada Carriles played a major role in bringing down a Cuban airliner in 1976. That catastrophe left some 76 people dead. Today he is wanted by Cuba and Venezuela. A longtime opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting trial and was detained in Florida in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. That both countries have valid claims is not in any real dispute among people who would be both objective and truthful. The fact that matters is that it is also quite evident that there is little to suggest that the United States will oblige either country. In response, Venezuela has responded. We are told that this country will ask the United Nations to investigate why the U.S. has failed to prosecute or extradite Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles on charges he masterminded the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner. We are also told that in Cuba, relatives of the 73 people killed in the bombing off Barbados held a vigil in front of a U.S. mission, while the government accused the White House of arranging Posada`s release to cover up past CIA secrets. As regards the Venezuelan initiative, we are told that they are "looking to approach governments and people through this hemisphere and around the world to jointly ask the United Nations ... to investigate through hearings the conduct of the United States in the last almost two years in the way it has proceeded to protect this terrorist." Yet again, as we are being told, "Venezuela plans to bring the case before a U.N. Security Council U.N. Security Council committee monitoring counterterrorism efforts, and would argue the United States has violated Resolution 1373, approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The resolution says U.N. member states should "ensure that anyone who has participated in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts ... is brought to justice." Like very many people around the world who observe such things; we are of the view that the United States of America should concede the point and do the right thing. That `right thing' would be to have Luis Posada Carriles charged for the crimes he has masterminded; inclusive of those terrorist attacks that left so very many innocent men, women and children quite dead. By way of context and background, we believe that it should be known that our great neighbor to the north has a well-deserved reputation as a champion of human rights in the world. As any reading of twentieth century history would reveal, that reputation was won first at home; and thereafter its magnificent lesson was transmitted to the world. Here we reference the struggles for civil rights, the struggle for women's rights and more recently the continuing struggle on the part of people who are gay and lesbian. In all these the United States of America has proven that its charter was sufficiently elastic and capacious to accommodate these righteous demands for freedom, dignity and justice. Regrettably, this great legacy is today being besmirched and fouled by what seems a countervailing tendency towards duplicity and god-awful double-dealing. Nowhere is this more clearly apparent as it is to be found in how the United States has allowed its foreign policy towards the Caribbean and Latin America to be skewed and distorted by a persistently rabid band of anti-Castro zealots residing in the south Florida area. By all accounts these people have waged a relentlessly focused and sometimes terror-filled campaign against the Republic of Cuba and its people. Fortunately for the Cuban people, these efforts have failed. But tragically for us all, justice is being trampled underfoot in the United States of America. We are today sad for our great neighbor. Copyright Jones Communications Ltd. ? - Nassau, Bahamas. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:53:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:53:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] New Refinery Set to Help Cuba Become an Oil Exporter Message-ID: <200704242253.l3OMro7V013255@viola.tamara-b.org> AFP via France 24 - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=070423051531.yfu06m3h&cat=business New refinery to turn long-time importer Cuba into oil exporter by Carlos Batista A modernized oil refinery is set to go on line in December, official media reported Sunday, in a shift due to turn imports-dependent Cuba into an oil exporter. Overhauled with capital from a joint Venezuelan-Cuban company, the Cienfuegos refinery in south-central Cuba will meet the Caribbean country's own demands, and earmark 9,000 barrels of gasoline a day for export, Venezuela's communications and information ministry said in a release circulated here. Vice President Carlos Lage confirmed the facility was set to start operations in December, the Juventud Rebelde newspaper reported Sunday. Lage said the refinery would process 65,000 barrels per day of petroleum by late this year or early 2008, the paper said. In addition to its new processing potential, the Americas' only communist government also is betting big that black gold from its waters could once and for all eliminate the perpetual Achilles' heel of the local economy: energy. Cuban authorities in late March said Havana was optimistic it could soon see a breakthrough in exploiting major oil reserves. That could mark a sea change that would see the cash-strapped regime become a flush energy exporter, with ample funding to perpetuate itself. "We are sure. We are convinced" that major oil reserves lie in the Gulf of Mexico just north of the island, Basic Industry Minister Yadira Garcia told reporters at the Geosciences Conference 2007 in Havana. At the moment, Cuba gets cut-rate oil from Venezuela, its closest international ally and most important economic partner. But depending on the relationship with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez leaves the Cuban economy vulnerable to any change in that arrangement. Yet "2008 is going to be very promising insofar as undersea seismic studies and drilling in areas of our economic zone," Garcia said at the time. Next year, she added, "the drilling phase in the blocs we are working with Repsol" will start. The Spanish multinational is just one of the firms elbowing in, along with Norsk Hydro, Canada's Sherrit, Malaysia's Petronas and India's Videsh. Cuba has divided its exclusive zone into 59 blocs for exploration and production, 16 of which are contracted out. Repsol has six, Sherrit and Petronas have four each, while Videsh has two. Eight more are under negotiation -- four with Venezuela's state-owned PDVSA and another four with an Asian country which Cuba has not disclosed. The other 35 are still up for grabs. Repsol in 2005 was the first to break ground in the area, but the company determined the crude it discovered was not commercially exploitable at that time. Repsol brought in partners in Videsh and Norsk Hydro to share the risk and to benefit from Norsk's technology, in order to keep exploring in its six blocs. While US lawmakers opposed to Cuba's communist regime have warned drilling in waters between Cuba and US shores could present potential environmental concerns, some US multinationals are irked that the US economic embargo is keeping them from getting in on this potential gold rush. In 2006, Cuba produced about 3.9 million tonnes of oil, seven times more than 1990 when the former East bloc collapsed, depriving Cuba of its long-accustomed supply of cut-rate Soviet crude. ? 2007 AFP - Rodrigo Arangua Copyright ? 2007 FRANCE 24. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Apr 24 18:55:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:55:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [NYTr] Michael Moore's 'Sicko' Will Compare US Health Care with Cuba's Message-ID: <200704242255.l3OMtQEj013283@viola.tamara-b.org> Alternet - Apr 23, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50911/ Controversial Michael Moore Flick 'Sicko' Will Compare U.S. Health Care with Cuba's By Don Hazen To state that controversy and Michael Moore go hand and hand is to utter the obvious, and Moore's latest film Sicko will clearly be no exception. Sicko, which will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is a comic broadside against the state of American health care, including the mental health system. The film targets drug companies and the HMOS in the richest country in the world -- where the most money is spent on health care, but where the U.S. ranks 21st in life expectancy among the 30 most developed nations, obviously in part due to the fact that 47 million people are without health insurance. The timing of Moore's film is propitious. Twenty-two percent of Americans say that health care is the most pressing issue in America. Health care will clearly be a major issue in the upcoming presidential campaign, as the problems with America's health care system have mushroomed during the Bush administration. For example, between 2001 and 2005 the number of people without health insurance rose 16.6 percent. The average health insurance premiums for a family of four are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712 for a full-time, minimum-wage worker. In addition, the lack of insurance causes 18,000 excess deaths a year while people without health insurance have 25 percent higher mortality rates. Fifty-nine percent of uninsured people with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes skip medicine or go without care. Under wraps, but one s