From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 03:58:15 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 03:58:15 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Impeachment Fever Spreads - Mass. Dems Pass Resolution Message-ID: <20070521035815.3985f0c3@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Carpenter - May 20, 2007 Progressive Democrats of America http://pdamerica.org/ Mass Dems Keep National Momentum Going Impeachment momentum stretches now from one corner of our country to another. On Saturday, the Massachusetts Democratic Party resoundingly passed a resolution to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney just 20 days after the California Democratic Party passed its impeachment resolution. With ever more revelations of an out-of- control White House (now with sick-bed coercion), support for impeachment is growing generally and is becoming mainstream inside the Democratic Party. . .except for a few national leaders. Both the California and Massachusetts resolutions were passed at the Democratic state party conventions, both due to the leadership of PDA. At both conventions, PDAs impeachment stickers were enthusiastically displayed by many hundreds of delegates, way beyond PDA members whether those delegates prefer Clinton or Kucinich or whomever. The Massachusetts resolution called on the states delegation in Congress to investigate Bush/Cheney for misleading our nation into war, torture and warrantless wiretapping -- and if the investigation supports the charges, vote to impeach both Bush and Cheney as provided in the Constitution. TAKE ACTION TO KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING: 1) Get your local town, city or state to pass its own resolution. Nearly a dozen towns in Massachusetts had passed resolutions before this weekends state convention, when Massachusetts Democrats became the 14th to have their state Party endorse an impeachment resolution. For a complete list, go to: http://www.impeachpac.org/resolutions-list 2) Encourage your Congress member to co- sponsor H Res 333, Articles of Impeachment already introduced against V.P. Cheney. Support H Res 333! http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=9672446 3) Order your "ImpeachMINTS" today, and join the hundreds of people who are flooding Congress with mints aimed at freshening democracy! Paste this link -- https://www.pdamerica.org/impeachmints.php -- into an email and encourage your friends to order mints. * * Resolution to Impeach George W. Bush & Richard B. Cheney (5/19/07) Whereas George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have: * Deliberately misled the nation about the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war; * Condoned the torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention & US law; * Approved illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens without a warrant; and, Whereas these actions have undermined our constitutional system of government, damaged the reputation of America, and threatened our national security, Therefore, the voters of the Massachusetts Democratic Convention call upon the Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate these charges and if the investigation supports the charges, vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America. Progressive Democrats of America is a grassroots PAC that works both inside the Democratic Party and outside in movements for peace and justice. Our goal: Extend the victory of Nov. 2006 into a permanent, progressive majority. PDAs advisory board includes six members of Congress and activist leaders such as Tom Hayden, Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin and Rev. Lennox Yearwood. More info: http://pdamerica.org/. Authorized and Paid for by Progressive Democrats of America. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:00:38 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:00:38 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Rangel defends secret trade deal with Bush Message-ID: <20070521040038.0881afb6@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - May 19, 2007 http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2007-05-19T092329Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-298954-1.xml U.S. House Democrat defends trade deal with Bush Washington - A senior Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday defended a trade deal reached last week with the Bush administration, in response to criticism from some party members. "I think there's a lot of misunderstanding with the agreement," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, told PBS' Nightly Business Report. "I cannot see how anybody would be upset in the Democratic Party, except for one thing: they were not included when we had the press conference." Rangel was the lead Democratic negotiator in talks with the Bush administration and Republican lawmakers aimed at clearing the way for approval of free trade pacts with Peru and Panama and easing the path for pacts with Colombia and South Korea. After months of closed-door negotiations, the deal reached last week in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office includes a long-time Democratic party demand for labor and environmental provisions enforced through trade sanctions, the same as for commercial provisions of the pact. However, a number of Democratic lawmakers -- such as Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Rep. Brad Sherman of California and Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine -- have complained that Rangel ignored the broader trade concerns of House Democrats. They have demanded a full meeting of House Democratic members on Tuesday to discuss their views. Other critics of the so-called "secret deal" complain it could allow the White House to win approval of trade agreements with the support of less than half of the House Democrats, who control the chamber after last year's election. Since that victory, Rangel has stressed his desire to restore bipartisan support for trade through an "American" trade policy, rather than a Republican or Democratic one. In the interview, Rangel offered no apology for the deal that was struck and said the only thing he would do differently was to reach it "much faster. I'd ignore a lot of people that really was just wasting my time, and didn't intend to support it all." Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:02:55 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:02:55 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] UN calls for action against Somalia piracy 'plague' Message-ID: <20070521040255.27281909@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) Reuters via SomaliNet - May 20, 2007 07:21 pm http://somalinet.com/news/world/Somalia/10531 UN calls for action against Somalia piracy 'plague' By Mohamed Abdi Farah. The United Nations called on Sunday for international action against "a plague of piracy" off the coast of Somalia that is threatening to cut aid to one million people, Reuters reports. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said the movement of aid supplies to the Horn of African country was under severe threat. "We urge key nations to do their utmost to address the plague of piracy, which is now threatening our ability to feed one million Somalis," WFP executive director, Josette Sheeran, said in a statement. "Unless action is taken now, not only will our supply lines be cut, but also those of other aid agencies working in various parts of Somalia." Piracy has been rife off Somalia since the country slid into chaos after warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Many pirates claim to be "coastguards" protecting their waters against illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste. Last year, WFP was forced to suspend aid deliveries for weeks after the hijacking of two ships it had contracted. In the latest attack on Saturday, pirates killed a guard working for a WFP-contracted ship's agent who was among those sent to intercept the pirates after they attempted to hijack the vessel. The pirates attacked the Jordanian-registered MV Victoria about 111 kilometres (68.97 miles) from Merka, south of Mogadishu. It was on its way to the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania after delivering 4,000 tonnes of food aid to Merka. The ship returned to Merka after the guards repulsed the attackers, WFP said. "WFP is very saddened and alarmed by the death of the guard, who showed great courage while the ship came under attack. We send our condolences to his family," Sheeran said. Attacks have risen since Islamists, who controlled most of south Somalia in the second half of 2006, were ousted in January. Four days ago, gunmen captured two fishing vessels, while another came under attack and managed to escape. Source: Reuters From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:05:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:05:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Growing repression in Mexico Message-ID: <20070521040535.04d4879c@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) International Viewpoint - May 2007 http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1260 Atenco leaders sentenced to 67 years imprisonment by Phil Hearse In a vicious act of class reprisal Ignacio del Valle Medina, Felipe Alvarez Hernandez and Hictor Galindo Gochicua, leaders of the Peoples Front for the Defense of the Land in Atenco, were sentenced on Saturday 5 May to 67 years 6 months jail each for the events in Atenco in early May 2006. In a timing which is undoubtedly cynical and symbolic, the court chose the first anniversary of a mass meeting in Atenco at which subcommandante Marcos denounced the brutalisation of Atenco's citizens. That brutalisation- started with clashes on Wednesday May 3 2006, when more than 200 people were arrested and two killed, as police brutally prevented flower sellers from Atenco setting up stalls on the building site which is to become a new Wal- Mart shopping mall. Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, chair of the Mexican Senate's Human Rights Commission denounced the sentences as a "terrible vengence, which has the objective of silencing the demand of the people for liberty and justice". These vicious sentences come in the wake of the fraudulent election last summer when right-wing candidate Felipe Calderon was put into power, on the back of panic in the Mexican ruling class (and the US government) that the election of PRD candidate Manule Lopez Obrador might lead to Mexico linking up with Bolivia and Venezuela, opening a new front of leftwing struggle in Latin America. It also comes in a climate of growing repression aimed at the popular movements - massive repression against the rebellion in Oaxaca in which dozens appear to have been killed, many are missing and many more are being held as political prisoners. As reported by Narco News the police and military are stepping up their repression of the Zapatistas' Other Campaign. The provocation in San Salvador Atenco in May 2006 was directly linked to the participation of the town in the Other Campaign and the visit of Marcos; in addition it was an attempt at revenge for the successful local struggle in 2002 that prevented the local peasants' land being seized for a new Mexico City airport. Repression in growing apace in Mexico. Under previous president Vicente Fox and now Felipe Calderon, both of the neoliberal PAN party, the number of political prisoners has gown to over 400. Deaths in social protests are becoming much more common too - the highest level since the military repression against the Party of the Poor in Guerrero state in the early 1970s. This is the consequence of the neoliberalisation of Mexico since the late 1980s. Social inequality is growing rapidly - Mexico now has some of the richest people in the world and many of the poorest, especially in the countryside. The Mexican bourgeoisie, dripping in narco super-profits and the profits from agribusiness and the maquiladora assembly plants, has responded with extreme violence to the explosion of social struggles. In 2006 the people of Atenco were viciously attacked by paramilitary police, dozens of women were raped, two people were killed, dozens of houses wrecked, money stolen and dozens severely wounded. Now it is the victims who suffer what are in effect life sentences. A huge international campaign for the release of all Mexican political prisoners is needed. Below is an account of the events of May 3-4 2006 in Atenco. An eyewitness said, "At 7am this past Wednesday, May 3, state police blocked 60 flower vendors from setting up their stands at the Texcoco local market.The police beat and arrested those who resisted. "The flower vendors called to the residents of neighbouring San Salvador Atenco for help and the Atenco residents blocked the highway that borders their town and leads to Texcoco. "The police response was overwhelming: hundreds of state and federal police, most clad in riot gear, arrived to lift the blockade. Atenco resisted, with machetes, clubs, Molotov cocktails and bottle rockets. The police tried to lift the blockade five times throughout the day, and five times they were repelled. "The violence was extreme. Photographs published in local papers show Atenco protestors beating a fallen policemen, police beating tens of fallen protestors. Severe beatings. Protesters kicking one fallen police officer in the face, groups of police pulverizing tens of protestors with rocks and batons. "Police also attacked photographers from both the national and the international press. Photographers and television cameramen from Associated Press, Reuters, Milenio, Jornada and Televisa all reported beatings and attempts to confiscate cameras. Photographs and film coverage of the beatings were published on the internet and shown on national television. Local and international news articles however, have not mentioned the systematic police violence against reporters." Why did this heavy-handed repression take place? It is about much more than stopping local peasants from selling their flowers where Walmart wants to be. This district is an area with a long history of militancy, where local people in 2002 stopped the building of an airport on peasant land around Atenco. This campaign reached near-uprising proportions. Moreover Atenco has symbolically declared itself an 'autonomous municipality', like the Zapatista communities in Chiapas. Local popular leaders invited Subcommandante Marcos, in nearby Mexico City for 'Other campaign' meetings, to vist Atenco as part of his tour. It was in the wake of his visit that the repression took place. During his visit, Marcos promised to align the Zapatista Army of National Liberation with Atenco's struggle. The Atenco Front, with machetes in hand, was in charge of providing security for Marcos during the May first Labor Day march to Mexico City's main plaza where the Front's leader, Ignacio Del Valle, spoke before tens of thousands gathered in the plaza. Upsidedown World reported, "Two days later riot police stormed the house where he (Ignacio del Valle) had been hiding since the attack in Texcoco. At that moment the Televisa cameraman was outside the house filming the police operation when some five police officers approached and repeatedly beat him with clubs. As a result there is no film coverage of the police raid. "Several newspaper photographers, however, photographed Del Valle's arrival to prison several hours later that night. He was carried in a headlock by a masked police officer, who, in the photographs, is pointing for the photographers to leave the area. Another masked officer walked slightly behind, grabbing Del Valle's back. "The two masked officers walk Del Valle through a gauntlet of a hundred riot police with helmets and shields. Del Valle's head is covered with a towel in the pictures, but his face, swollen and bloody is partially visible. Also visible is a blood stain the size of a fist on the groin of his jeans, evidence of repeated strikes to his testicles." Subcommandante Marcos reappeared in Atenco at a rally on Friday 5 May, holding up empty cartridge case which he said police had used live ammunition when 14-year old Javier Cortis was killed on 3 May. Marcos called on the commercial media to stop their 'smear campaign' against the people, who have been accused by TV and newspapers of supporting the EPRI Marcos also announced at a protest rally in Plaza de la Tres Culturas that the Other Campaign was being suspended and that in the light of the situation in the Texcoco valley he would remain in Mexico City 'indefinitely'. [Phil Hearse writes for Socialist Resistance in Britain. He is the editor of Marxsite (www.marxsite.com).] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:08:57 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:08:57 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The 'Cockroach Effect': Narco-Violence Spreads in Mexico Message-ID: <20070521040857.576e1750@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (Activ-l) La Opinion - May 20, 2007 http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f0b0635043 da864fb4ab1a5f1e083f04 [Editor's Note: In what is known as the "cockroach effect," the deployment of federal troops to Mexico's drug trafficking hot spots are only pushing organized crime into other areas of the country.] The 'Cockroach Effect': Narco-Violence Spreads in Mexico by Gardenia Mendoza Aguilar Translated from Spanish by Elena Shore, MEXICO CITY - On Wednesday morning, seven policemen and two businessmen from the city of Cananea in the state of Sonora, in northeast Mexico, were abducted -- kidnapped without ransom -- by an armed group of some 100 people. Four of the policemen were killed, two were beaten and the rest remain missing. On Tuesday, the Attorney General of the Mexican state of Coahuila launched an investigation following the kidnapping of the director of the state's kidnapping and organized crime investigation unit, Enrique Ruiz Arivalo. Ruiz was abducted by four armed men at a restaurant where he was having dinner in the state capital Saltillo. National newspaper Milenio reported Wednesday that a severed human head was found near the military barracks in the Mexican state of Veracruz, one day after the army arrived in the state. The message attached read: "We are going to continue, even if federal forces are here," and included a postscript that said: "Peqa Nieto" (Grandson Peqa). According to the newspaper, the message was left hours after four bodyguards of the governor of the state of Mexico, Enrique Peqa Nieto, were massacred by a group of hired assassins on May 10. The note calls into question earlier reports that the hit men had gotten the wrong target. Last year, an estimated 2,000 people died in drug trafficking related incidents, and more than 700 people have died so far this year, according local press reports. The National Commission of Human Rights estimates that this year's deaths have reached nearly 1,000. The Mexican states with the most drug trafficking, according to the Attorney General, are Guerrero, Durango, Sinaloa, Michoacan, Baja California, Chihuahua, Nuevo Lesn and Tamaulipas. Until the assassination of Mexican governor Enrique Peqa Nieto's bodyguards, the federal government had not considered Veracruz as a drug trafficking hot spot - even when the government of Veracruz asked the Secretary of State on three occasions to send federal troops in January, February, and May because of the presence of cells of the Gulf cartel. Mexican President Felipe Caldersn has deployed federal troops to several states known as drug trafficking hot spots. As a result, organized crime has moved to less closely watched areas, in what is known as the "cockroach effect." Mexico state is one of the areas affected by this new geographic drug trafficking strategy. The state of Mexico, which is governed by Peqa Nieto and neighbors the Federal District (D.F.), had not previously been a target of violence, with one exception. Several murders took place in the state to settle scores between drug traffickers who had moved from Mexico City's Tepito district to the surrounding suburbs after the intervention in the capital. In August, 2006, four people linked to the homicide of a drug dealer were found burned and tortured in the city of Ecatepec in Mexico state. The genitals and fingers of the three men were cut off and placed in their mouths. The woman was hanged. The grusome murder became the scandal of the year. Another state affected by the "cockroach effect" is Aguascalientes, previously known as the country's most economically competitive state. The World Bank once named it "Mexico's Asian Tiger," comparing it to China for its capacity to attract foreign investments. However, in past months, Aguascalientes has made headlines in international media for another reason: four policemen were killed there. Governor Luis Armando Melgar was forced to recognize that "there are elements that have been involved in criminal activity." For his part, the governor of Nayarit, Ney Gonzalez, said he was on alert for the possible migration of drug traffickers from Sinaloa. Although "we haven't seen too much of it," he said, "we will be watching the borders." Meanwhile, the governor of Morelos, Marco Antonio Adame, said that in order to avoid criminals coming from the state of Guerrero, he has implemented a special operation called Hands Working for Your Safety, that involves authorities and townspeople along the state's border. "It's better to prevent it," he said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:10:34 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:10:34 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Secret plot to kill Al-Sadr revealed Message-ID: <20070521041034.484c298b@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - May 21, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2565123.ece Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr By Patrick Cockburn In Baghdad The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official. The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying. "I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence or trust in the [US-led] coalition and made him really wild," the Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr Mowaffaq Rubai'e told The Independent in an interview. It is not known who gave the orders for the attempt on Mr Sadr but it is one of a series of ill-considered and politically explosive US actions in Iraq since the invasion. In January this year a US helicopter assault team tried to kidnap two senior Iranian security officials on an official visit to the Iraqi President. Earlier examples of highly provocative actions carried out by the US with little thought for the consequences include the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the Baath party. The attempted assassination or abduction took place two-and-a-half years ago in August 2004 when Mr Sadr and his Mehdi Army militiamen were besieged by US Marines in Najaf, south of Baghdad. Dr Rubai'e believes that his mediation efforts - about which he had given the US embassy, the American military command and the Iraqi government in Baghdad full details - were used as an elaborate set-up to entice the Shia leader to a place where he could be trapped. Mr Sadr emerged as the leader of the Sadrist movement in Baghdad at the time of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It had been founded by his father, also a cleric, who had confronted Saddam's regime in the 1990s and had been murdered by his agents in 1999. Its blend of nationalism, religion and populism proved highly attractive to Iraqi Shia, particularly to the very poor. Although Mr Sadr escaped with his life at the last moment, the incident helps explain why he disappeared from view in Iraq when President George Bush stepped up confrontation with him and his Mehdi Army militia in January. Dr Rubai'e said: "I know him very well and I think his suspicion and distrust of the coalition and any foreigner is really deep-rooted," and dates from what happened in Najaf. He notes that after it had happened Mr Sadr occupied the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf as a place of refuge. Dr Rubai'e had gone to Najaf in August 2004 to try to mediate an end to the fighting. He met Mr Sadr who agreed to a set of conditions to end the crisis. "He actually signed the agreement with his own handwriting," said Dr Rubai'e. "He wanted the inner Najaf, the old city, around the shrine to be treated like the Vatican." Having returned to Baghdad to show the draft document to Iyad Allawi, who was prime minister at the time, Dr Rubai'e went back to Najaf to make a final agreement with Mr Sadr. It was agreed that the last meeting would take place in the house in Najaf of Muqtada's father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who had been murdered by Saddam's gunmen with two of his sons five years before. Dr Rubai'e and other mediators started for the house. As they did so they saw the US Marines open up an intense bombardment of the house and US Special Forces also heading for it. But the attack was a few minutes premature. Mr Sadr was not yet in the house and managed to escape. Although Dr Rubai'e, as Iraqi National Security Adviser since 2004 and earlier a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, is closely associated with the American authorities in Baghdad, he has no doubt about what happened. He sees the negotiations as part of a charade to lure Mr Sadr, who is normally very careful about his own security, to a house where he could be eliminated. "When I came back to Baghdad I was really, really infuriated, I can tell you," Dr Rubai'e said. "I went berserk with both [the US commander General George] Casey and the ambassador [John Negroponte]." They denied that knew of a trap and said they would look into what happened but he never received any explanation from them. The US always felt deeply threatened by Mr Sadr because, unlike the other Shia parties, he opposed the occupation and demanded that it end. There were two attempts to crush his movement in 2004, neither of which was successful. The first, at the end of March, began with the closure of his newspaper and the arrest of one of his close advisers. A warrant for Mr Sadr's own arrest was issued. A US general said his only alternatives were to be killed or captured. The US authorities appeared to have little understanding of the reverence with which the Sadr family was regarded by many Iraqi Shia. The crackdown provoked a reaction for which the US was ill-prepared. The Mehdi Army, though poorly armed and untrained, took over part of Baghdad and many Shia cities and towns in southern Iraq. The US had to rush troops to embattled outposts. A second crisis began in Najaf in August and this time the US and the recently appointed government of Iyad Allawi appear to have decided to smash Mr Sadr and his movement for ever. But they dared not assault the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest Shia shrines. Other Shia parties suspected that once Mr Sadr was dealt with they would be marginalised. The crisis was finally defused when Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, after undergoing medical treatment in London, returned to Najaf and negotiated an agreement with Mr Sadr under which he withdrew but did not disarm his forces. The attempt to kill or imprison Mr Sadr was first revealed by Dr Rubai'e to Ali Allawi, the former Iraqi finance minister, who gives an account of what happened in his recent book The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the war, Losing the peace. Dr Rubai'e said this weekend in Baghdad that he stands by his account given there. He does not think the Americans were planning to kill him along with Mr Sadr because he had a senior American officer with him almost all the time. Muqtada al-Sadr is one of the most extraordinary figures to emerge during the war in Iraq,a pivotal figure leading a broad-based political movement with a powerful military wing. The appeal of the 33-year-old Shia cleric is both religious and nationalist. He is regarded with devotion by millions. He is also a survivor and an astute politician who has often out-manoeuvred his opponents. The US and Britain have repeatedly underestimated the strength of his support. The al-Sadrs are one of the great Shia religious families. His relative, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was the founder of a politically active Shia movement and was executed by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Muqtada's father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr in effect founded the Sadrist movement in the 1990s. Finding he could not control him, Saddam Hussein had him murdered with two of his sons in Najaf in 1999, provoking widespread rioting. To the surprise of all, the Sadrist movement re-emerged with Muqtada at its head during the fall of the old regime. In April 2003 it took over large parts of Shia Iraq. Its base was the vast Shia slum, renamed Sadr City, that contains a third of the population of Baghdad. The US and its Iraqi allies regarded Muqtada as a highly threatening figure. Paul Bremer, the ill-fated US viceroy in Iraq after the invasion, detested and unwisely under-rated the Sadrists. When he moved against them in April 2004 he was astonished to see them take over much of southern Shia Iraq in a few days. Muqtada took refuge in Najaf. There was a heavy fighting in August 2004 when the US made an all-out effort to eliminate Muqtada and his movement. Once again he survived, thanks to a compromise arranged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. His movement became less confrontational. It took part in the elections in 2005, winning 32 seats out of 275. The Mehdi Army was viewed by the Sunni as an organisation of sectarian death squads. The US began increasingly to confront the Sadrists. But they were an essential support of the Iraqi government, making it difficult for the US to move against them. When the reinforced US forces in Baghdad did threaten the Mehdi Army, Muqtada simply sent his militiamen home, and disappeared from view. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 04:13:48 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 04:13:48 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Marc Lynch on Iraq, the surge and Al Qaeda Message-ID: <20070521041348.003b89c2@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) Dissident Voice - May 19th, 2007 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/six-questions-for-marc-lynch-on-iraq-t he-%e2%80%9csurge%e2%80%9d-and-al-qaeda/ Six Questions for Marc Lynch on Iraq, the "Surge," and Al Qaeda by Ken Silverstein [Marc Lynch is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University and the Elliott School of International Affairs. He is the author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, and runs the influential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark. We talked by phone yesterday about recent developments in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. This article was first published at Harper's.] 1. What's your assessment of the impact thus far of the "surge"? It's going about as expected, changing the distribution of violence a bit but not making much difference in the core strategic issues. It would be easy to just look at the trends in violence, but that's not really the point. When the administration laid out its plan, it said some of the right things, like that success should not be judged on military outcomes and body counts. Their argument was that the surge would create a secure political space that would allow for political reconciliation. So far, the opposite has happened; there's been little progress towards reaching a new political compromise and if anything the distance between the sides seems to be growing. On the military side, there have been some interesting developments in Anbar province, like you've been reading about in the press lately, but that has little to do with the "surge." 2. What is going on in Anbar? There really is a palpable turn there against Al Qaeda, that isn't just the usual wishful thinking that so often takes the place of real analysis. A lot of people have interpreted this as a sign of American strength, that the Sunni tribes are shifting to the winning side. It's actually just the opposite, it's a defensive reaction by Sunnis to Al Qaeda's increasing strength and aggressiveness. Sunni resentment of Al Qaeda in Iraq really dates to last October, long before the "surge," when Al Qaeda declared the Islamic State of Iraq. A lot of us thought at the time that they did this for strictly propaganda purposes, but it developed into an aggressive bid for hegemony over the entire insurgency. The Islamic State of Iraq became very aggressive towards other insurgency groups and local Sunnis, intimidating ordinary people, declaring them to be non-Muslims, and using that as a justification for seizing property and killing leaders of other groups. This created a backlash; we're seeing an open turn against Al Qaeda not just by local tribal sheiks and ordinary people but also by the leaders of the insurgency. The insurgents are very critical of Al Qaeda, its treatment of Sunnis and its extreme interpretation of Islam, but at the same time they are deeply committed to continued resistance to the American occupation. 3. How are the tensions between the local insurgents and Al Qaeda playing out on the ground? The American media has focused on the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of tribal sheikhs that have asked the American military for help against Al Qaeda. But they really aren't that important - what matters is that the major insurgency groups have turned on the Islamic State of Iraq project. The split really got serious in early April, when the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is one of largest insurgent factions, openly broke with Al Qaeda and issued a scathing denunciation of the Islamic State in Iraq. A number of other factions joined in, and now they've formed something called the Reform and Jihad Front. There are two main issues: local grievances and some real strategic differences. The insurgents are very critical of Al Qaeda, its treatment of Sunnis and its extreme interpretation of Islam, but at the same time they are deeply committed to continued resistance to the American occupation. They want a less divided and more effective resistance, not an end to resistance. But there's also a real divide in strategy that goes beyond the local grievances, which Americans really need to understand. Al Qaeda wants the United States to stay in Iraq as long as possible. It gets tremendous benefits from having American troops close at hand to kill - Iraq is the primary source of its propaganda and recruitment, and an integral part of its global strategy. They really want to turn Iraq into a base for exporting global jihad. But these major insurgency factions are focused on driving Americans out of Iraq and creating a political system that gives Sunnis a reasonable stake in politics. The insurgents have made it pretty clear in a series of public statements and private communications that they're willing to start talking and dampen down the violence if the United States commits to withdrawing from Iraq. 4. Whatever the cause of the split, isn't it good news either way? Only if we get our strategy right and learn the right lessons. From an American point of view, if you believe that the "surge" has emboldened the Sunnis to turn against Al Qaeda than what follows is that we should stay for a long time, reassure our allies, and wipe out Al Qaeda. But if you believe, as I do, that the major insurgency groups that are turning against Al Qaeda mainly want the United States to get out and then rejoin the political system, it leads to another conclusion. If you listen to what these insurgency factions are saying, what Hareth al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Scholars is saying, they couldn't be making it more clear: make a credible commitment to withdrawing and the insurgency will dampen down and we'll take care of the Al Qaeda groups out of our own self-interest. Just to be clear, I'm not saying the mainstream insurgents are good guys. They have the most American blood on their hands, but that's precisely why we can't ignore them, it's why we've been exploring the possibility of talking to them in the past, and it's why any sustainable deal in Iraq will require bringing them in. 5. So what's the best policy choice at this point? The United States should commit to a withdrawal, not tomorrow but with a clear endpoint - benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them. The insurgents have made it pretty clear in a series of public statements and private communications that they're willing to start talking and dampen down the violence if the United States commits to withdrawing from Iraq. We're at a moment where there's actually a chance for positive developments, because we have a common interest with the insurgents in defeating Al Qaeda and they are putting out clear signals that they are willing to make a deal. But everything hinges on the United States making a commitment to withdraw - politically, they can't and won't get in the political game without that because it would destroy their credibility and because, frankly, getting the United States out really matters to them. But there's a window here that I'm afraid we're going to let close because of domestic politics. The insurgency factions turned against Al Qaeda because its Islamic State of Iraq project has been growing in strength, and if they can't show some gains soon the tide may turn against them within the Sunni community. 6. Beyond Iraq, how is Al Qaeda doing in other parts of the world? Al Qaeda is trying to spread its jihadist world view, the notion of a fundamental clash of civilizations and the idea that Islam is under threat. It's remarkable how rapidly and deeply this way of understanding the world is becoming entrenched in the Arab world. At the same time, neither Al Qaeda as an organization nor bin Laden as an individual is commanding a great deal of respect or support. When you get these attacks in Algeria and Morocco, it repels people rather than attracting them. But the paradox is that even as Al Qaeda repels people with its actions, its core ideas are becoming more widely accepted, and that's really troubling, and a real indictment of American public diplomacy. That's also why the situation in Iraq is so devastating at the wider regional and global level. Killing people in Morocco and Algeria triggers a negative reaction, but fighting Americans in Iraq resonates with a much wider part of the Arab population. The Project on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a survey of Muslim public opinion a few months ago. 91 percent of Egyptians disapproved of attacks against civilians in the United States and only 7 percent disagreed with the statement that "groups that use violence against civilians, such as Al Qaeda, are violating the principles of Islam." But 91 percent said that attacks on American troops in Iraq were legitimate, and 92 percent agreed with the goal of "getting the U.S. to withdraw forces from Islamic countries". That gives you a sense of why jihad in Iraq is so vital to Al Qaeda - it's a place where their violence is popular. [Ken Silverstein is the Washington Editor for Harper's Magazine and writes Washington Babylon for Harper's online] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:15:32 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:15:32 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Fisk: Scores dead as Lebanese army battles Islamists Message-ID: <20070521121532.44d11fac@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - May 21, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2565126.ece Scores dead as Lebanese army battles Islamists in bloodiest day since civil war by Robert Fisk Butchery was the word that came to mind. Twenty-three Lebanese soldiers and police, 17 Sunni Muslim gunmen. How long can Lebanon endure this? Just before he died, one of the armed men - Palestinians? Lebanese? - we still don't know - shot a soldier right beside me. He fell down on his back, crying with pain, and I thought he had slipped on the road until I saw the blood pumping out of his leg and the Red Cross team dragging him desperately out of the line of fire. Not since the war - yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to forget - have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a Lebanese city. And the dead. Five of the 17 gunmen were killed after paramilitary police stormed an apartment block in 200 Street in the centre of Tripoli. One lay on his back like a child, water from a broken hydrant streaming over his corpse. Another lay crumpled in a doorway amid glass and the Kalashnikov rifle he was still firing when he died. "How young they all were," a woman remarked with a kind of weariness, and I noticed the dead were also bearded, the little stubble beards al-Qaida's men like to wear. The bloody events in Lebanon yesterday passed so swiftly - and so dangerously for those of us on the streets - that I am still unsure what happened. Clearly, an al-Qaida-type group tried to ambush the Lebanese army - and succeeded all too appallingly; 23 dead soldiers and police is a fearful figure for a tiny country such as Lebanon. But was it really a Syrian plot, as Fouad Siniora's government suggested? Was this the long hand of Syria stretching out once more across Lebanon's green and pleasant land? So here are a few facts. A group of armed men tried to rob a Tripoli bank on Saturday and got cornered in an apartment block. Others holed up in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp north of the city. When I arrived yesterday, army tank fire was bursting in the camp and black-hooded policemen were preparing to storm, Iraqi-style, into the city-centre building. But the robbers were said to have stolen only $1,500. Was that worth this massacre? And is "Fatah al-Islaam" - which has existed in the shadows of the camp for months - really a 300-strong armed group? Certainly the dead gunmen were real. I found two more heaped together in Tripoli, covered in spent ammunition clips, the apartment building on fire - so hot I could not get up the stairs - but families still struggling down. One woman carried a baby. "Only four days old, he is only four," she wailed at me. One family I found huddling in their bathroom, 12 terrified Lebanese who had spent 24 hours in this tiny room as bullets swept the walls of their home. So what in God's name happened in Lebanon yesterday? Well, Mr Siniora claimed it was an attempt to destabilise Lebanon - a good guess, to put it mildly - and Saad Hariri, son of the former prime minister murdered here more than two years ago, called the armed men "evil-doers who had hijacked Islam". This is the same Saad Hariri whom at least one American reporter - I refer to Seymour Hersh - suggested was indirectly helping to funnel Saudi money to these same gunmen in a recent article in The New Yorker. The Shia Muslim Hizbollah are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario, not a Sunni group. But Tripoli is the most powerful Sunni city in Lebanon - so powerful that not a drop of alcohol wets its restaurant tables - and the men and women running in terror across Tripoli's streets yesterday were also Sunnis. So are the Syrians really concocting an "al-Qaida" in Lebanon? And who are its enemies? The Nato army of the UN force in southern Lebanon, perhaps? But surely not the Lebanese army, the very same army which bravely prevented civil war last January? Yet in 2000, an al-Qaida-type group also ambushed the Lebanese army in northern Lebanon. Was this, too, supposed to be a Syrian invention? Showers of bullets were still tracing their way over Tripoli last night and the army was said to be preparing to move into the camps. Fatah, Yasser Arafat's clapped-out organisation, announced it was on the side of the army, a wise decision after yesterday's bloodbath. "A dangerous attempt to undermine Lebanon's security," was the response of a government whose Shia cabinet ministers abandoned it last year in the hope of bringing the whole Siniora administration down. But where do we go from here? And who were the dead men I saw yesterday, perforated by bullets, partly torn open by grenades? Silent testimony is all we receive from the dead. One of them had big eyes above his fluffy beard, eyes which stared at us and at the police who jeered at his corpse. I wonder if they will not come to haunt us soon. And if we will discover what lies behind this terrible day in Lebanon. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:16:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:16:26 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iraq: Searching Troops Face Mounting Problems Message-ID: <20070521121626.6ce11a32@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 20, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_MISSING_SOLDIERS?SITE=JRC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Searching Troops Face Mounting Problems By KIM GAMEL Associated Press Writer MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq (AP) -- Sweat-drenched U.S. and Iraqi soldiers sprawled on the muddy farmhouse floor, taking a break from the grueling search for three kidnapped comrades. A report of a soldier shot by a sniper came over the radio. The platoon commander ordered his men to their feet and they dashed off to help. The sniper victim's unit had no medic, but the one taking a rest did. It was the second attack of the day: A bomb buried in a field had exploded under a foot patrol hours earlier, killing one American and wounding three others and two Iraqi soldiers. The search for the troops who went missing after a May 12 ambush is grinding down U.S. forces already strained by the push to restore calm in and around Baghdad. Firefights erupt daily as troops search a 135-square-mile area south of the capital. Roadside bombs hit armored Humvees. The troops have taken to walking but the fields are heavily mined. Still, the military insists it won't quit until it finds the missing men, or knows what happened to them. American soldiers with the Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, and their Iraqi counterparts have spent days trudging through rough terrain - muddy canal banks lined with tall reeds, parched farmland and fields of sweet-smelling wildflowers. The Iraqis took the lead in single-file lines Saturday, often halting to inspect piles of rubble and the ruins of houses strewn with childrens' clothes and sandals, the remnants of Shiite Muslim homes bombed by Sunni extremists violence in the largely Sunni area west of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The military searchers stopped to question a shepherd in a lavender gown. He was patted on the back and returned to tending his flock once the soldiers found his name was not on their list of wanted men. Capt. Aaron Bright's troops were debating how long they should rest in the two-story farm house, where they took refuge after three hours of searching, when they got the call that a soldier had been shot through the forehead by a sniper. Spc. Andrew Carbajal, a 20-year-old medic from Clinton, Iowa on his first tour in Iraq, grabbed his bag and leapt to his feet and sprinted with fellow troopers over parched fields and through a date palm grove to reach the site of the attack, 2.5 miles away. It took them 30 minutes. The wounded soldier was evacuated in serious condition to Balad air base north of Baghdad. One of his friends flew back to base carrying the wounded man's personal effects. He sat through the flight holding his buddy's blood-soaked flak jacket, looking at the floor of the clattering helicopter. But most of the wounded soldier's comrades stayed with Bright's troops, preparing to clear one more area before nightfall. Bright said most of the troops have lost weight, many as much as 12 pounds, as Iraq's weather has climbed above 100. The searchers spend hours patrolling only to return to base after the mess hall closes. Bright was forced to cancel a rest day for one platoon and send it out searching in place of the company that was hit by the roadside bomb on Saturday. "I was going to give them a break today," the 29-year-old platoon commander said, leaning on one knee and examining a map. "But we're going to do the mission and we'll be as vigilant as ever." Tips have poured in but most have ended in disappointment, with no sign of Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif., Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass. or Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich. Four other American soldiers and an Iraqi were killed in the attack. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said on CNN's "Late Edition" that the military would not abandon the search for the missing men. "We have every reason to believe at this point still that they probably are alive," he said. "There's nothing to indicate otherwise. And so we're going to continue what we're doing." An evening raid on a Sunni mosque and houses in Latifiyah late Saturday turned up a weapons cache, some bundles of money but no troopers. Some soldiers, returning from the raid to a dinner of cold peas and chicken at the forward operating base in Mahmoudiya, complained it was another wild goose chase. Still, they said they weren't ready to quit the search. "I choose to remain positive, but with each passing day with no evidence of life the likelihood of soldiers being found alive is less," Lt. Col. Randy Martin, a spokesman for troops searching for the soldiers, said in an e-mail Sunday. "We will not stop until we find our fallen comrades." ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:18:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:18:19 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Colombia: Death Squads and the man from Del Monte Message-ID: <20070521121819.2e7f0076@viola.tamara-b.org> The Guardian - May 19, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,2083366,00.html Colombian warlord says US firms paid death squads for bananas By Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent A jailed warlord has accused the US multinationals Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita of funding rightwing death squads while sourcing bananas from war-torn regions of Colombia. Salvatore Mancuso, a leader of illegal paramilitary groups, which massacred thousands of people, said each company paid his men one US cent for each box of bananas they exported. Mancuso did not explain why the payments were made but it was common practice for Colombian businesses to pay the paramilitaries a so-called "war tax" - a form of extortion as well as protection against attacks. Del Monte did not immediately respond to the allegation. A spokesman for the California-based Dole Food denied it. "Accounts implicating Dole with illegal organisations in Colombia are absolutely untrue," said Marty Ordman. In a deal with the US justice department, Chiquita recently acknowledged paying paramilitaries $1.7m (#860,000) over six years. It was fined $25m. Chiquita claimed the payments were to protect its workers but campaigners claim some money was used to finance the assassination of union leaders who lobbied for better pay and conditions. Mancuso made the allegations in testimony that was part of a deal with the Colombian authorities. Journalists were not allowed in court but the testimony was confirmed by his lawyer, Hernando Benavides, and Jeszs Vargas, a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence. The warlord also accused coal companies and two Colombian drinks firms, Postobsn and Bavaria, of paying the illegal militias for permission to operate. Ranchers and drug barons formed the paramilitaries in the 1980s to protect their land from leftwing guerrillas. The paramilitaries grew into a powerful force that trafficked drugs, stole land and slaughtered peasants. Mancuso's testimony will add Del Monte and Dole to the list of multinationals that could face congressional hearings in Washington as well as prosecution in the US and Colombia. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:20:53 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:20:53 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Brown Will Pull Brit Troops Out of Iraq Message-ID: <20070521122053.7572a4ba@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The Scotsman via Info Clearing House - May 20, 2007 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17738.htm Brown to Pull Troops Out of Iraq 05/20/07 "The Scotsman"--GORDON Brown will remove all British forces from Iraq before the next election under a plan to rebuild support among disillusioned Labour voters. Scotland on Sunday can reveal the Prime Minister elect is working on a withdrawal plan that could see troop numbers slashed from 7,000 to as few as 2,000 within 12 months. If implemented, the strategy would culminate in total withdrawal no later than spring 2010, the date by which Brown must go to the country to seek his own mandate. Policy under Tony Blair involved keeping a small force in Iraq for many years to come. But it emerged last night that President George Bush has been briefed by White House officials to expect an announcement from Downing Street within Brown's first 100 days in power. The accelerated 'troops out' plan will prove unpopular in Washington, and leaves Brown open to accusations that after supporting the Iraq war he is now leaving its people to an increasingly uncertain future. Yesterday, as Blair made his seventh and last visit as Prime Minister to Iraq, the security crisis was all too obvious. Mortars hit the British army HQ while he was there and Baghdad's Green Zone was also hit around the time of his visit. Blair reiterated that he had "no regrets" about removing former Iraqi dictator Saddam from power, but discontent over his handling of the crisis was driven home when former US President Jimmy Carter condemned his "blind" support of the war in Iraq. The Chancellor, who does not share Blair's personal commitment to the US-led operation, or his close relationship with President Bush, is now poised to seize the opportunity to open the Brown era with a "grand gesture" on Iraq. Senior ministers last night confirmed that an accelerated draw-down of troops could be "comfortably achieved" well within two years, by which time Brown is expected to be preparing for an electoral showdown with David Cameron. One senior Cabinet minister, expected to play a central role in Brown's first government, said an accelerated withdrawal from Iraq was one of the "foremost options" under consideration. He added: "We are already committed to a withdrawal of sorts. The schedule can be altered so it is comfortably done within two years." Under the blueprint for withdrawal announced by Blair in February, the 7,100 British troops currently in Iraq would be reduced to 5,000 by late summer, with an aspiration to reduce gradually over the following two years. But the military plans sparked by the looming change at the top involve cutting the British presence more rapidly: to 4,000 by late summer and perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 by the year end. The ultimate hope is to draw down to a "nominal" force within 18 months, and a virtually complete exit within two years of Brown coming to power. Michael Codner, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said declining public support and demands had raised expectations of changes in the British presence. He said: "There is a growing view that British forces in Iraq will be reduced substantially in the next 12 months, perhaps to as low as 1,500. The change of leadership is an obvious catalyst." ?2007 Scotsman.com From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:23:39 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:23:39 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Palestine: Barghouti's Solution Message-ID: <20070521122339.6d2e1d71@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - May 21, 2007 A Statement from Palestinian Leader Barghouti [Marwan Barghouti is probably the Palestinian leader best qualified to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_Barghouti Unfortunately he is one of the 10,000+ Palestinians sitting in Israeli prisons -- charged with murder and being a terrorist supporter -- charges questioned by many as being politically motivated. Ed Kent] URGENT RELEASE: A Statement from Marwan Barghouti - 17th May 2007 "The catastrophe currently afflicting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the homeland and the Diaspora must end immediately. Hundreds of innocents have already been injured, maimed and killed by the criminal operations that are being carried out around the clock in the Gaza Strip. They are a threat to the unity of the Palestinian people, their institutions and national cause, a cause for which we have expended much sweat and made many sacrifices in the past. I therefore condemn this bloody struggle for control over a besieged authority that is bereft of any jurisdiction that it initially may have had, following 7 years of Israeli obstruction and interference. A united effort to enhance and protect the Palestinian National Authority and its institutions, through a respect of the Prisoners' Document, the Mecca Agreement, the basic laws and the regulations is at present paramount. I call for President Mahmood Abbas and head of Hamas political bureau Khaled Meshal to meet without delay, with the Prime Minister and senior leaders of the two movements in attendance. This meeting will be an opportunity to engage in a strategic dialogue and to settle all unresolved issues, without exception. A time limit of 3 months must be set for the reaching of an all-encompassing strategic vision, which will regulate the relationship between the two sides and protect the higher interests of the Palestinian people. This vision should also include the re-activation and development of the PLO, with a renewed dialogue between all national and Islamic factions, in the homeland and the Diaspora. Finally, may 5th June be a day of national unity for the Palestinian people. May it serve as an opportunity to renew our commitment to our national goals and to protect all Palestinian national institutions. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:26:40 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:26:40 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Emergency Press Conf, Rally on Immigrant Justice May 22 NYC Message-ID: <20070521122640.6e8f1db6@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Andy Pollack **urgent: please fwd widely** Action Alert: Tues. 5/22/07 NYC Emergency Press Conference and Rally on Immigrant Justice Immigration "Grand Bargain" = Grand Sellout With this week's upcoming vote on the Senate's Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (resulting from the bipartisan "Grand Bargain" between Senators and the White House), immigrant communities face one of the most repressive immigration plans in decades: an enormous report-to-deport program, a punitive pseudo-legalization plan, expanded enforcement at the border and interior, a guestworker program with tougher worksite enforcement and minimal worker protections, as well as devastating cutbacks in family immigration to be replaced with merit-based requirements. Community groups in the New York metro area are coming together to challenge the Senate "Grand Bargain" on Tuesday May 22nd as part of a national coordination of press conferences (officially on Wednesday May 23rd throughout the country) with the National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights. JOIN US in front of Senator Clinton's office to URGENTLY condemn this "bargain" which compromises away our lives. What: Emergency Press Conference and rally for immigrant communities to speak out against the Senate-White House Immigration Deal and demand that our Senators not compromise immigrant lives. When: 11am on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 Where: Outside Senator Clinton's office (780 Third Ave, between 48th and 49th Streets) Who: Organized by Immigrant Communities in Action and the American Friends Service Committee. To endorse, please contact kavitha at drumnation.org kavitha pawria Legal & Policy Organizer, DRUM--Desis Rising Up and Moving | www.drumnation.org Co-ordinator, Immigrant Communities in Action | immigrantcommunitiesinaction.blogspot.com Office: 718-205-3036 | Cell: 718-216-0756 | kavitha at drumnation.org "there can be no revolution if we are not well on a personal level. revolutions made by people who are not well tend to result ultimately in chaos, or worse, in the very patterns and systems of domination being challenged." bell hooks "Spending quality time with people you love is a revolutionary act of resistance against the capitalist machinery that values production and profits over people.." SistahTime 2005 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:34:13 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:34:13 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The White House Protects Terrorists Message-ID: <20070521123413.75e7d06e@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles The White House Protects Terrorists By Noelia Tiuna AIN Special Service While terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was taken to a secret hiding place in Miami with the blessing of US authorities, the double standards of the Bush administration in its fight against terrorism were denounced in the United Nations. Posada Carriles is enjoying his freedom and has reunited with his long time associates in criminal activities after his victorious return to Miami where he was detained during a spectacular televised operation two years ago after illegally entering the US. Everything since then is history; a legal sideshow and the refusal of Washington to try the criminal for his terrorist activities which have caused the death of Cuban citizens and those of other nations. That explains the letter sent by Cuba to UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon accusing the US of practicing double standards in its alleged fight against terrorism. The letter points out that the release of Posada Carriles is a violation of international treaties and agreements signed by the White House as well as General Assembly and Security Council resolutions. This is not Havana's first international action in the case. In addition to various official declarations condemning the manoeuvres to protect the criminal, the governments of Cuba and Venezuela formally denounced the release of the confessed assassin before the Counter Terrorism Committee of the UN Security Council and demanded a decision in relation to the case as soon as possible. The Bolivarian government of Venezuela said it will propose the issue before the Organization of American States, OAS, and is analysing the possibility of also making a complaint in the Court of Justice at the Hague against Washington for its refusal to comply with its obligations in extraditing the criminal to Venezuela. The United States and Venezuela have an extradition agreement and Washington's refusal to extradite the criminal to Venezuelan justice contradicts Bush?s own doctrine of: "he who protects a terrorist will be considered as such." Nicaragua has also joined Venezuela and has requested the extradition of Posada Carriles for his participation in the dirty war against the Central American country under the orders of the CIA. The Bush administration's attitude has become an insult to the world making Posada Carriles look like a good terrorist. Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and others were recruited and trained by the CIA when George Bus Senior was head of the CIA station in Miami. Bush Senior later directed the CIA at the time of the bombing of the Cubana airliner in 1976 off the coast of Barbados when 73 innocent people died, including the Cuban youth fencing team. H. Bush pardoned Orlando Bosch also known as "pediatrician of death," the same criminal who has boasted of the loss of human life due to that horrendous crime which killed citizens from Cuba, Guyana and North Korea. For his part, W. Bush has released Posada making the family tradition of giving protection to terrorists and carrying out terrorism against Cuba from the White House a reality. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:35:41 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:35:41 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Castro's free medicine wins friends and influence Message-ID: <20070521123541.2fea7377@viola.tamara-b.org> Sent by Simon McGuinness The Irish Times - May 21, 2007 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0521/1179498487163.html Castro's free medicine wins friends and influence by Hugh O'Shaughnessy Letter from Bolivia: Cuba and Venezuela have joined in an ambitious scheme to bring health and literacy to those who want them in Latin America: to judge from the results achieved over the past year here in Bolivia it is a notable success. It is eclipsing whatever aid effort is made by the EU or the US while greatly boosting the popularity of Bolivia's leader Evo Morales, Fidel Castro and president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Here in one of the world's poorest countries and elsewhere in this region, it has created a political situation which neither the friends nor the opponents of Morales and the other two leaders can afford to ignore. Take Alexander, a Cuban doctor, who, helped by his blond wife Susi, run the Cuban hospital at El Alto, the satellite town of one million inhabitants, close to Bolivia's commercial capital La Paz. It caters for up to 1,000 patients a day with a staff of 46, of which more than half are doctors, and is one of 20 Cuban hospitals which are already in operation in one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Another 23 are to be added this year. Alexander and Susi were old hands in Cuban foreign aid: they had worked in Zambia and then in the Gambia. "That was good for my English," Alexander said, recalling the English friends they met in Africa now living in Barking, London and constant visitors to their home in Havana. A few hundred metres away was another establishment, the specialised ophthalmic hospital, a joint Cuban-Venezuelan operation financed by Venezuela and open from nine to five where Cuban surgeons carry out non-stop eye operations. It is one of a number of such centres where Cuban specialists carried out 56,144 operations last year. They include two on Bolivia's borders with Peru at Copacabana and Argentina at Villazon where more Peruvians and Argentines respectively are treated than Bolivians. All are treated on the same terms: treatment is completely free. Indeed the Cuban and Venezuelan governments have announced that they are offering eye surgery to anyone living in the western hemisphere, including the US, with an inclusive package including return journeys to Cuba for the patient and a companion, and medicines for the inclusive price of nothing. The effect of the initiative in the small islands of the Caribbean on Cuba's doorstep is reported to be immense. Bizarrely one of the reasons why there are Cuban-Venezuelan hospitals sited in Bolivia is that many patients could not scrape enough money together for a passport which would enable them to go to Cuba. In January, in his state of the nation speech, Morales reported that in the previous 12 months Cuban doctors had attended 3,217,897 patients - more than one in three of the population - saving 4,179 lives in 4,664 non-eye operations. The Cubans sent 564 tonnes of medical supplies. There are 1,766 Cuban health workers in Bolivia at the moment and another 300 doctors due to arrive later in the year. In another part of town, the Cuban and Venezuelan governments are hard at work supporting the president's literacy campaign with teacher training, television sets, cassettes and books. Some Bolivian doctors are reported to be resentful of the Cuban staff, distrustful of their competence and suspicious of their political motives, but Jaime Ribera, a prosperous Brazilian-trained urologist from Santa Cruz, who is about to build himself a new clinic in his home town, had no worries. "At first I thought the Cubans were bringing their politics and would try to make our people into communists - though that would be a difficult process as no one wants communism here. But I've seen no evidence that this is happening. I'm glad they're here," he said. It was a much needed boost to the Bolivian health service where a small proportion of the working population had union-organised health insurance, some were rich enough to buy private health cover, while the rest had to rely on the pitifully inadequate state system. Cuba, backed by the oil funds of president Chavez of Venezuela, is harvesting diplomatic rather than ideological benefits. At Alexander's hospital there was no sign of political propaganda except for a poster for the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara here in Bolivia which the Bolivians themselves are officially recalling. Alexander himself, though friendly, abstained from making much comment. "We're guests in this country, you know," he told me. There does, nevertheless, remain some resistance to Cuban aid. In his report on 2005, the president recalled that the remote northern jungle province of Pando wanted no truck with the Cubans. But when the prefect or governor of the province had an accident it was the doctors from the Caribbean who looked after him and saved his life. It is clear that the Cubans and Venezuelans are making a special aid effort for the recently installed Bolivian government but Cuba's aid effort is worldwide. Evidence of that is Alexander's own international experience and the news, for instance, that Havana signed a health deal with the Solomon Islands, the former British colony in the western Pacific, shortly before it was hit by a tsunami earlier this month. Welcoming the first Cuban ambassador in Honiara, the islands' capital, the governor general Nathaniel Waena said technical co-operation agreements would pave the way for Solomon Islanders to train in the Cuban health sector and for Cuban medical brigades to serve in the islands. The EU can count on the impending Spanish gift of 700 ambulances to Bolivia to raise its profile here. But Venezuelan and Cuban aid is much bigger. No one is happier than the Bolivians at the international competition to help them and are not worried that the Cubans and Venezuelans are winning that race. C 2007 The Irish Times From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 12:38:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:38:33 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Latin American Forum Defends Right to Information Message-ID: <20070521123833.35a7297f@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Latin American Forum Defends Right to Information Havana, May 21 (acn) Radio frequencies, managed by each nation, constitute patrimony of humankind and nobody has he right to use them as the property of a specific enterprise or a corporation, read the final declaration of the Telesur Forum, held over the weekend in Caracas, Venezuela. The meeting was organized by the Latin American Telesur TV channel and it was attended by outstanding journalists and personalities from the region, Europe, Asia and the United States. "The underdeveloped world now counts on new reasons to defend the rights of its citizens to offer information and be appropriately informed", was the slogan of the forum held in Venezuela, PL news reported. Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto warned that the information aired by the main stream media excludes the genuine culture of Latin American nations. The reports launched by such media outlets only back hegemonic interests, he said. Meanwhile, the director of Le Monde Diplomatic Ignacio Ramonet called for the development of community media that favor popular expression and he warned of an ongoing war between the public and private press. Argentinean filmmaker Fernando Pino Solanas denounced that "the huge plunder of resources taking place in the underdeveloped world finds its counterpart in what he called media dictatorships" and he called for the democratization of the media and for the ethics of solidarity." He stressed the solidarity role of Cuba by saying that "Cuba has proved that with just few resources illiteracy can be wiped out and the best medicine in the continent can be developed," said Solanas. Participants at the Telesur Forum also included the presidents of the Latin American Federation of Journalists Juan Carlos Camano, of the Latin American News Agency Frank Gonzalez and of Telesur Andres Izarra. Also attending were Belgian journalist Michel Collon, Argentinean lawmaker, author and journalist Miguel Bonasso, as well as members of the Telesur Advisory Staff, including US actor Danny Glover and Brazilian Fernando Morais. *** Thousands of Youths Have Graduated from IT Schools in Eastern Cuba Havana, May 21 (acn) The number of youths graduated from mid-level Information Technology centers in Las Tunas province, since 1973, has increased to over 50, 000 with the recent graduation of 2,628 students in 24 IT specialties. All graduates have been guaranteed a job, though 10 percent of graduates have decided to take University studies in their specialties or join pedagogical courses, said vice-director of Education in the province, Jose Luis Castro cited by Tiempo 21 newspaper. There are13 mid-level Information Technology centers in Las Tunas province, where 1,500 new students will take IT courses in 24 specialities next year. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:00:34 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:00:34 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] America: The World's Arms Pusher Message-ID: <20070521130034.0957f424@viola.tamara-b.org> The Los Angeles Times - May 21, 2007 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe berrigan21may21,1,2465404.story Op-Ed: America -- the world's arms pusher No one is paying much attention to it, but our top export is the deadliest. By Frida Berrigan THEY DON'T CALL US the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U.S. power back when he was a mere deputy secretary of Defense ? hyperpower ? still fits the bill. Consider some of the areas in which the United States is still No. 1: - First in weapons sales: Since 2001, U.S. global military sales have totaled $10 billion to $13 billion. That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion. - First in sales of surface-to-air missiles: From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles like the Sparrow and AMRAAM to nations in the developing world, 20% more than Russia, the next largest supplier. - First in sales of military ships: During that same period, the U.S. sent 10 "major surface combatants," such as aircraft carriers and destroyers, to developing nations. Collectively, the four major European weapons producers shipped 13. - First in military training: A thoughtful empire knows that it's not enough to send weapons; you have to teach people how to use them. The Pentagon plans on training the militaries of 138 nations in 2008 at a cost of nearly $90 million. No other nation comes close. Rest assured, governments around the world, often at each others' throats, will want U.S. weapons long after their people have turned up their noses at a range of once dominant American consumer goods. The "trade" publication Defense News, for instance, recently reported that Turkey and the U.S. signed a $1.78-billion deal for Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous ? Israel flies them; so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela, Oman and Portugal, among others. Buying our weaponry is one of the few ways you can actually join the American imperial project! In order to remain on top in the competitive jet field, Lockheed Martin, for example, does far more than just sell airplanes. TAI ? Turkey's aerospace corporation ? will receive a boost with this sale because Lockheed Martin is handing over responsibility for portions of production, assembly and testing to Turkish workers. The Turkish air force already has 215 F-16 fighter planes and plans to buy 100 of Lockheed Martin's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well, in a deal estimated at $10.7 billion over the next 15 years. That's $10.7 billion on fighter planes for a country that ranks 94th on the United Nations' human development index, below Lebanon, Colombia and Grenada and far below all the European nations that Ankara is courting as it seeks to join the European Union. Now that's a real American sales job for you! HERE'S THE strange thing, though: This genuine, gold-medal manufacturing-and-sales job on weapons simply never gets the attention it deserves. As a result, most Americans have no idea how proud they should be of our weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon ? essentially our global sales force. They make sure our weapons travel the planet and regularly demonstrate their value in small wars from Latin America to Central Asia. There's tons of data on the weapons trade, but who knows about any of it? I help produce one of a dozen or so sober annual (or semiannual) reports quantifying the business of war-making, so I know that these reports get desultory, obligatory media attention. Only once in a blue moon do they get the sort of full-court-press treatment that befits our No. 1 product line. Even when there is coverage, the inside-the-fold, fact-heavy, wonky news stories on the arms trade, however useful, can't possibly convey the feel of a business that has always preferred the shadows to the sun. The connection between the factory that makes a weapons system and the community where that weapon "does its duty" is invariably missing in action, as are the relationships among the companies making the weapons and the generals (on-duty and retired) and politicians making the deals, or raking in their own cuts of the profits for themselves and/or their constituencies. In other words, our most successful (and most deadly) export remains our most invisible one. Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons sales as a trade and the export of precision-guided missiles as if they were so many widgets. Maybe we need to start thinking about them in another language entirely ? the language of drugs. After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it. Arms dealers do the same thing. They suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, they'll point out, haven't you noticed that your neighbor just upgraded in jets, submarines and tanks? And didn't you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn't that make you feel insecure? And why feel insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we'll get you suited up with the latest model military, even better than what we sold them ? or you the last time around. Why do officials in Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? They don't, but Lockheed Martin, working with the Pentagon, made them think they did. We don't need stronger arms control laws, we need a global sobriety coach and some kind of 12-step program for the dealer-nation as well. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:04:00 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:04:00 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] CITGO CEO Resigns to Take Post in Europe Message-ID: <20070521130400.6d5d6c46@viola.tamara-b.org> The Wall Street Journal - May 21, 2007 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117953049916908150-search.html?KEYWORDS=venezuela&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month Citgo CEO Resigning; Chairman to Step In By Ana Campoy Citgo Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive and President F?lix Rodr?guez told company employees Friday that he will step down and Chairman Alejandro Granado will succeed him. In an internal email, Mr. Rodr?guez said the board decided to appoint Mr. Granado CEO as "part of a series of movements pertaining to key international positions with our shareholder." Houston-based Citgo is owned by Petr?leos de Venezuela SA, Venezuela's national oil company, known as PDVSA. Mr. Rodr?guez didn't specify when he will step down, saying only that he will stay long enough to "guarantee a smooth transition." In the past few months, there has been speculation that PDVSA might sell some or all of Citgo's refineries. President Hugo Ch?vez and Oil Minister Rafael Ram?rez have said they are looking to sell Citgo's refineries and divert Venezuelan oil exports now going to the U.S. to other countries, including China. Mr. Ch?vez has also said he wants to build refineries in other countries. Last year, Citgo sold its interest in a refinery it owned with Lyondell Chemical Co., and it has plans to sell two asphalt refineries. However, the company has said it isn't looking to sell any other assets. Industry experts say Citgo's refineries hold strategic value for PDVSA because they are set up to process the heavy crude that Venezuela produces. Refining crude oil into gasoline has also been a very profitable business in the past few years in the U.S. because of high gasoline prices. Mr. Granado has held various jobs within PDVSA's refining operations, including managing director of domestic and international refining, and technology manager at Citgo's Lemont, Ill., refinery. In the past seven years, Citgo has had three different CEOs, including Mr. Rodr?guez. *** Bloomberg - May 19, 2007 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHT9zppqg.U8 Citgo Chief Transferring to Europe, Ambassador Says By Joe Carroll Felix Rodriguez, chief executive officer at Citgo Petroleum Corp., the U.S. refining business of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, is being transferred to the parent company's European operations. Rodriguez will be replaced by Citgo Chairman Alejandro Granado, said Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the U.S. The change will take place in a few weeks, Alvarez said today in an interview in Chicago. ``It is a normal transfer,'' said Alvarez during the interview before delivering an address at a University of Chicago oil conference. ``He will go to Germany and learn the operations there.'' Houston-based Citgo controls about 5 percent of U.S. oil- reining capacity through four plants in Texas, Louisiana, Illinois and New Jersey, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company sold its 41 percent stake in a joint-venture refinery to partner Lyondell Chemical Co. in August for $2.1 billion. Rodriguez became chief executive at Houston-based Citgo in February 2005. Venezuela is the third-biggest foreign source of oil and fuels such as gasoline for the U.S., behind Canada and Mexico, according to the Energy Department in Washington. *** Reuters - May 21, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2128065420070521 Citgo Chief Rodriguez to become Ruhr Oel director LA JOLLA, California - Citgo Petroleum Corp. President and Chief Executive Felix Rodriguez said on Sunday he had been tapped to become director-general of Ruhr Oel, a German joint venture between Citgo's parent PDVSA and BP Plc. (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research Rodriguez said he expects to leave Citgo's Houston headquarters in about three weeks after working with Citgo Board Chairman Alejandro Granado, who has been slated to replace him. During an interview at a Latin American energy conference in La Jolla, Rodriguez reiterated that Citgo's three U.S. motor fuels refineries were not for sale. "At the moment Citgo it not selling other than what's been announced," he said. The U.S. refining and marketing subsidiary of Venezuelan national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. has two asphalt plants on the auction block. Rodriguez said the two asphalt plants should be sold in two to three months. No bids have been made on the plants, yet. Currently would-be buyers are looking over the plants in Georgia and New Jersey thoroughly. His departure after two years at the head of Citgo is part of a series of moves by PDVSA and not the result of a falling-out with Venezuelan Energy Minster Rafael Ramirez. "It's good for me," Rodriguez said of his new job. "It's a promotion." Ruhr Oel, a 50-50 joint venture between PDVSA and BP, has ownership interests in five refineries. PDVSA has about 243,000 barrels per day (bpd) of European refining capacity through the partnership. Rodriguez said he hopes he is seen as a chief executive who emphasizes a commitment to safety, the environment, helping those less fortunate and better aligning Citgo with PDVSA's needs. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:05:53 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:05:53 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Venezuela to Colombia: Stop Throwing Rocks Message-ID: <20070521130553.106f9fc2@viola.tamara-b.org> The Associated Press - May 18, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/19/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Colombia.hp Venezuela says it will not accept 'rock-throwing' by Colombian officials CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela's foreign minister canceled a visit to Colombia and warned the neighboring country that President Hugo Chavez's government will not tolerate being slighted by Colombian officials. Nicolas Maduro was responding Friday to remarks by Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who said during a recent visit to Spain that large amounts of Colombian cocaine are being smuggled through Venezuela. "What comes out constantly are statements by (Colombian) ministers against Venezuela," Maduro told reporters. "We aren't going to accept any more conduct of this sort ... It's not a game to us." Maduro canceled a visit to Colombia this week and sent a letter of protest to Colombia over Santos' remarks. Maduro said he was not satisfied with a written response from his Colombian counterpart, Fernando Araujo, which he said attempted to "justify the aberrant remarks." "We ask the Colombian government for a rectification of the repeated conduct of various ministers," Maduro said, adding that Colombian officials regularly lend support to Washington's "permanent attack" on Chavez. He denied that increased amounts of drugs are moving through Venezuela, saying rises in seizures and extraditions of drug traffickers reflect the government's strong counter-drug work. There was no immediate reaction from the Colombian government. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:09:38 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:09:38 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Chavez Calls on Pope Apologize for Indian Comments Message-ID: <20070521130938.106181fc@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted frm VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 21, 2007 [President Chavez has asked Pope Benedict XVI to apologize for saying that Native American Indians in Brazil were "purified" by Roman Catholic missionaries, comments which angered Indigenous leaders there. Reuters reports that Chavez "accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas." -VIO] Chavez demands Pope apologize for Indian comments Reuters - May 19, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1819661120070519 CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them. Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the Pope before, accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas. "With all due respect your Holiness, apologize because there was a real genocide here and, if we were to deny it, we would be denying our very selves," Chavez said at an event on freedom of expression. In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Venezuela's neighbor Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Indian leaders in the region were outraged by the comments. Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement. Chavez, who has expanded the rights of indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest to the Caribbean, said he felt he was Indian because Venezuelans are a mix of the European race and indigenous peoples. Chavez spoke only days after Venezuelan media interpreted other comments from the Pope as singling out Chavez as a danger to Latin America when he warned of autocrats in the region. Chavez, who regularly criticizes world figures such as U.S. President George W. Bush, describes himself as Christian, grew up expecting to become a priest and says his socialist policies have roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ. *** Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Calls on Pope to Apologize By Alex Kennedy Bloomberg - May 18, 2007 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5dDVXdaCFmc Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Pope Benedict XVI owes Latin America an apology for saying indigenous people weren't coerced into accepting Catholicism during the European colonization of the region. ``You're terribly mistaken, your holiness,'' Chavez said today in a televised speech in Caracas. ``I beg your holiness to offer us an apology because what happened here was genocide.'' Benedict made his comments during a visit last week to Brazil. Catholics make up 74 percent of Brazil's population of 190 million, down from 84 percent in 1991, according to government figures. Membership in Protestant denominations, including Baptist and Pentecostal churches, increased to 15 percent from 6 percent. ``Maybe the reason Catholicism is losing followers is because of comments like that,'' Chavez said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:12:56 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:12:56 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Venezuela to Finance Danny Glover Film Message-ID: <20070521131256.5d81219f@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 21, 2007 [U.S. actor Danny Glover has received financing from the Venezuelan government to produce a film about Toussaint L'Ouverture, an Haitian man who led his country out of slavery to become the world's first free Black republic around the turn of the 19th Century. -VIO] Venezuela giving Danny Glover $18m to direct film on epic slave revolt By Rory Carroll The Guardian - May 21, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,2084330,00.html Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (?9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Ch?vez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression. The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover's biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti. It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez's novel about the last days of Sim?n Bol?var, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism. Glover, 60, who starred with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and more recently with Eddie Murphy in the film DreamGirls, is a civil rights activist and supporter of Mr Ch?vez's radical leftwing policies. A document from the congress's finance commission said the culture ministry would be a partner with Glover and give $17.8m for "scripts, production costs, wardrobe, lighting, transport, makeup and the creation of the whole creative and administrative platform". The project could mark a breakthrough for Villa del Cine, a new government-funded studio outside the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, which is part of Mr Ch?vez's effort to combat what he sees as American cultural hegemony. Glover, who visited Caracas at the weekend, told the Guardian that he would direct the film, titled Toussaint. "It's so advanced that you can taste it. We've scouted locations within 75km [45 miles] of Caracas. I can do everything I need to do with this film from here." He said he had been in talks with the government, but was unaware that a decision had been made until journalists tipped him off about the congress's announcement. "That's the first I've heard of it," he said. He suggested that there was still some uncertainty over whether the venture would go ahead. "One of the major axioms in theatre is never talk about anything until the deal is signed. There's a lot of deliberation that goes on before something actually happens." It appeared that the congress timed the announcement to coincide with a media conference in Caracas hosted by the television network Telesur, a Venezuela-funded regional answer to CNN. Glover is on the board. It would not be the first declaration to run ahead of reality. Mr Ch?vez once said the director Oliver Stone planned to make a film about him, but it came to nothing. However at the president's request, Villa del Cine, which was inaugurated last year, is making a film about Francisco Miranda, who lit the fuse of South America's liberation. A lavish production with hundreds of extras and battle scenes, its costumes and sets could work for the Haiti film. Toussaint Louverture is a towering figure in the region's history. A freed slave of African descent, he led thousands of slaves in successful campaigns against British, Spanish and French troops before being betrayed, captured and exiled. He died in 1803, just before his followers succeeded in establishing the island's independence. William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet about him. Glover said he wanted to educate the US about the story. "It's been essentially wiped out of our historic memory, it's been wiped clean." The actor is chairman of the TransAfrica Forum, an advocacy group for African Americans and other members of Africa's diaspora, and a vocal critic of the Bush administration. Along with the singer Harry Belafonte, Glover is the best known celebrity supporter of Mr Ch?vez, whom he considers "remarkable". He is a regular visitor to Venezuela. Venezuela's congress, which consists entirely of Ch?vez supporters, also said it would give $1.8m to develop a screen treatment of The General in His Labyrinth, by a Venezuela-born director, Alberto Arvelo. Some rate Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez's account of the final days of Bol?var along with the Colombian writer's better known novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. To build consciousness of what Mr Ch?vez calls "21st-century socialism", the government has funded nationwide screenings of Charlie Chaplin's classic film Modern Times, about the exploitation of US factory workers during the depression. *** Chavez Government to Finance Glover Film The Associated Press - May 18, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801832.html CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's Congress says it has approved financing for two films by actor Danny Glover, a close supporter of President Hugo Chavez. The lawmaking body, which is closely allied with Chavez, said in a statement on its Web site Thursday that it approved $20 million for two Glover productions. They include "The General in His Labyrinth," which deals with the life of South American liberator Simon Bolivar. It is based on a novel by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and will be directed by Venezuela-born director Alberto Arvelo. The other is "Toussaint," which the statement said Glover plans to direct documenting the life of Haitian revolution leader Toussaint Louverture. Government officials and Glover's representatives were not immediately available for comment. The statement said that the funds will come from proceeds Venezuela obtained from a recent bond sale with Argentina. Glover is among a number of high-profile U.S. supporters of Chavez. The group also includes singer Harry Belafonte and Princeton University scholar Cornel West, who have defended the Venezuelan president against accusations of democratic abuses. Glover has met Chavez during visits to Venezuela and even appeared on his television and radio talk show, "Hello, President." *** Venezuela Helps Danny Glover Film a Revolution By Raul Gallegos The Wall Street Journal - May 18, 2007 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/05/18/venezuela-helps-danny-glover-film-a-revolution/ Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government is getting into the film business, putting $18 million into Hollywood star and political activist Danny Glover's latest project. Glover, one of the leftist leader's closest celebrity supporters, plans to direct a film "Toussaint" on the life of Haitian revolution leader Toussaint Louverture, and Venezuela plans to tap proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to help finance it. The money will help cover "the scripts, production costs, wardrobe, lighting, transport, makeup and the creation of the whole creative and administrative platform,'' according to a document from the congressional finance commission. (See the document, in Spanish.) Finance ministry officials and Glover's representatives weren't immediately available for comment. Glover is among a group of high-profile supporters, also including singer Harry Belafonte and Princeton University scholar Cornel West, who have defended the Venezuelan president against accusations of democratic abuses. Glover has met Chavez during visits to Venezuela and even appeared on his television and radio talk show, "Hello, President.'' Venezuela's government also approved an additional $1.8 million in "seed money'' to produce "The General in His Labyrinth,'' a film based on a novel by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez to be directed by Venezuela-born director Alberto Arvelo. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:15:12 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:15:12 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Venez Health Minister Resigns after Over-theTop Tobacco Comments Message-ID: <20070521131512.48c67dae@viola.tamara-b.org> VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 21, 2007 [Venezuela's Health Minister has stepped down from his position after making false statements regarding a new smoking ban to take effect later this month. The Associated Press reports that the overzealous minister told a local radio station that "not even producing tobacco nor cigarettes" would be allowed under the new regulations, a fact which is not true. -VIO] Venezuelan health minister resigns after tobacco-ban outburst The Associated Press - May 19, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/19/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Health-Minister.php CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez said that his health minister has resigned after causing a public uproar this week by saying that Venezuela was considering banning tobacco production, comments the official later retracted. "For personal reasons, ex-Minister Erick Rodriguez has resigned, and I publicly thank him," Chavez said Friday, without elaborating. Rodriguez had told a local radio station that "not even producing tobacco nor cigarettes" would be allowed under new regulations the government was contemplating, saying: "Any one who wants a cigarette should bring it from abroad." The comments took the country by surprise and were widely reported. Rodriguez said the comments had been taken out of context. Venezuela's tobacco industry generates thousands of jobs and is one of the biggest taxpayers in the country. According to industry surveys, about half of Venezuelans smoke. Chavez said Rodriguez would be replaced by Lt. Col. Jesus Mantilla Oliveros, whom he credited with rescuing Venezuela's social security institute from corruption and inefficiency. A limited smoking ban will take effect in Venezuelan bars and restaurants on May 31. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 13:18:46 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:18:46 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Much Ado in US Media about anti-Chavez TV Station Message-ID: <20070521131846.5f654fd5@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 21, 2007 [Last Friday, the Venezuelan Supreme Court upheld a decision made by the National Telecommunications Commission not to renew the broadcast license of RCTV. Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales ruled that licensing issues are strictly the jurisdiction of the Telecommunications Commission, the institutional body overseeing the use of national media as a public good in accordance with guidelines set out in the 1999 constitution. Friday's decision came despite the protests of RCTV owner and media mogul Marcel Granier, who along with allies in the political opposition, staged a large public protest of the decision on Saturday. In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post today, Helena Salcedo, Director of Venezuelan National Radio, defends the non-renewal of RCTV's broadcasting license. She writes: "The expiration of RCTV's license will not affect the Venezuelan government's commitment to freedom of expression and information. Freedom of expression is alive and well in Venezuela, and the overwhelming majority of the media remain in private hands." Salcedo also mentions the creation of new, community-based media that is part of a process of democratizing access to and ownership of the airwaves in Venezuela. The government will not hold editorial control over new channels such as the public broadcaster -- TeVen -- that is among the stations set to replace RCTV. A Wall Street Journal Op-ed makes the opposite claim, charging that freedom of expression has eroded under President Chavez. A rejection of the RCTV decision by the OAS is mentioned; however, no action has proposed nor taken against Venezuela on the issue, according to recent statements made by OAS Secretary General Jose Insulza. Food shortages are the subject of the piece, which begins with a quote praising the free-market principle of allowing consumer prices to be determined by global supply and demand. A controlled exchange rate of 2,150 Bolivars to the US dollar is cited as the main source of the alleged shortages, but all governments make strategic decisions about whether to over- or under-value their currency to produce particular economic effects -- for example, making imports cheaper. Despite accusing Chavez for rejecting international markets, the piece accuses the government of "shopping abroad with dollar reserves" to stock affordable foodstuffs at supermarkets.-VIO] The Washington Post - May 21, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052001030.html Letters to the Editor Freedom of Expression in Venezuela In his May 14 op-ed, "Dead Air in Caracas," Jackson Diehl misrepresented the circumstances of the expiration of Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV) broadcast license. As with other democracies, Venezuelan law allows the government the right to grant broadcast licenses, renew them or let them expire. In Venezuela these decisions are based on public interest standards and the provisions of the constitution of 1999. The expiration of RCTV's license will not affect the Venezuelan government's commitment to freedom of expression and information. Freedom of expression is alive and well in Venezuela, and the overwhelming majority of the media remain in private hands. Of the 81 television stations, 709 radio broadcasters and 118 newspapers throughout Venezuela, 79, 706 and 118, respectively, are privately owned and operated. The Venezuelan government is working to democratize access to and ownership of the media by helping to create community-based media outlets and by launching the country's first public service television station, whose content will be determined by independent users and producers -- not government officials. Unfortunately, RCTV has a history of ignoring its responsibilities to the Venezuelan people and their democracy. Since 1976 the broadcaster has been sanctioned on a number of occasions for violating its responsibilities to the public interest, and in 2002 its owner, Marcel Granier, actively supported a coup against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Ch?vez. In no country would such conduct be permitted by a media outlet; in fact, U.S. broadcasters have faced fines or license revocations for lesser offenses. HELENA SALCEDO Director Venezuelan National Radio Caracas *** Venezuela Court Dismisses TV Challenge By Fabiola Sanchez The Associated Press - May 18, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051802075.html CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge by an opposition-aligned television station seeking to remain on the air despite the government's decision not to renew its license. In a decision announced late Thursday, the court declared inadmissible the challenge by Radio Caracas Television and its top executive Marcel Granier. The ruling is a setback for RCTV, a channel critical of President Hugo Chavez that is due to go off the air at midnight May 27 when the government says its license expires. It was the first of a series of petitions made by Venezuela's oldest private network to remain on the air. The station broadcasts a mix of news, talk shows, sports and soap operas. The channel's supporters argue Chavez is trying to silence criticism, while the government says it will be replaced by a public-service station and that freedom of expression is being respected. Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales said in a statement that it is up to the National Telecommunications Commission to decide on the renewal and revocation of broadcast licenses. The court left open the possibility that the channel could seek redress through other legal means, and other challenges are pending before the court. RCTV's Granier said Friday he expected those challenges would succeed. "I hope that in the coming days there will be some decisions, and I wait with optimism because I believe the democratic vocation, the desire for liberty and the desire to live in dignity are very important in Venezuela," he said. Granier also said he expected the court to rule shortly on whether Chavez may have overstepped his authority in the decision, saying that only the telecommunications watchdog has the power to end RCTV's license. Chavez announced in December that the government would not renew the station's license, accusing it of supporting a failed 2002 coup against him. Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro warned that Venezuela's leftist government would not tolerate any outside interference in its decision take the station off the air. "Be sure that any international organization, country or group of countries that tries ... to interfere in the internal affairs, in the sovereign decisions ... of the Venezuelan government will receive an overwhelming response," Maduro said Friday. Chavez opponents plan a march in favor of RCTV on Saturday. *** Venezuelans March to Support TV Station By Elizabeth M. Nunez The Associated Press - May 19, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051900352.html CARACAS, Venezuela -- Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched Saturday to support a TV station aligned with opponents of President Hugo Chavez, whose government plans to kick the channel off the air next week by not renewing its license. The protesters set off from four different points of the capital, converging downtown in the biggest show of support yet for Radio Caracas de Television, or RCTV, a network that has been critical of Chavez's government. RCTV is due to go off the air at midnight May 27, when the government says its license expires. The channel and its supporters argue Chavez is trying to silence criticism, while the government says it will be replaced by a public-service station and that freedom of expression is being respected. "If (Chavez) shuts down the channel, he's crazy," said Rafael Velasquez, a 27-year-old construction worker who traveled 150 miles from the city of Puerto La Cruz to attend the protest. "I don't think it's fair. He has to ask the people whether they want it or not." The march was organized by the channel and 26 opposition political parties. In a speech to protesters, RCTV chief Marcel Granier urged the Venezuelan president to heed the words of South American independence icon and Chavez hero Simon Bolivar: "He who rules must listen; the people are speaking." The decision not to renew RCTV's license has been criticized abroad by press freedom groups, Amnesty International, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States and the Roman Catholic Church. Founded in 1953, RCTV is Venezuela's oldest private network and broadcasts a mix of news, talk shows, sports, soap operas and a version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" "RCTV is a stronghold of liberties, of democracy, of telling the truth," said Eladio Lares, host of RCTV's version of the popular game show. Chavez contests that, accusing RCTV and other opposition-aligned private media of supporting a failed 2002 coup against him by broadcasting cartoons and movies instead of covering street protests that aided his return to power. Government supporters also accuse RCTV of biased coverage that has glossed over improvements in medical care, education and other social programs introduced by the Chavez administration. Granier has said RCTV has the right to keep broadcasting until 2022 and challenged the government's decision in court. Venezuela's Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the first of a series of legal challenges by RCTV to remain on the air but left open the possibility for the channel to seek redress through other legal means. *** Venezuelans protest opposition TV channel closure By Christian Oliver Reuters - May 19, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051900457.html CARACAS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters on Saturday denounced President Hugo Chavez's plans to close an opposition television channel, accusing their leader of maiming Venezuelan democracy as he forges a socialist state. Chavez says RCTV, the country's oldest private broadcaster, supported a bungled coup against him in 2002. He has had a long-running battle with opposition television stations, calling them "horsemen of the apocalypse." "Let us defend democracy, let us defend freedom, let us defend free independent media such as RCTV," RCTV's managing director, Marcel Garnier, told demonstrators in Caracas. "Or we will allow the president to topple the country over the precipice of totalitarianism where not even his own supporters can express their opinions," he said as the crowd waved flags, applauded and blew whistles. Chavez has vowed not to renew RCTV's broadcast license when it expires on May 27. It will be replaced by a state channel showing programs that promote the values of Chavez's self-styled leftist revolution. He accuses RCTV's saucy soap operas of spreading immorality. Analysts have identified a critical media as one of the principal safeguards against the president building a Cuban-style state in the OPEC nation. Chavez, re-elected by a landslide last year, still enjoys support of about 60 percent of the public on the back of massive social spending. But a leading pollster has also found a majority of Venezuelans oppose the closure of RCTV. BELOVED SOAP OPERAS Datanalisis found almost 70 percent of Venezuelans would rather RCTV kept broadcasting, but worried more about the loss of their favorite soap operas than free speech. RCTV has been showing a nostalgic collection of clips from comedies, soap operas and Christmas specials that have been part of life in the Caribbean country since it started transmission in 1953. "It is like losing a close relative," said Renaldo Gonzalez, a student at the protest, whose family members have worked at RCTV as actors, producers and directors. During the 2002 coup against Chavez, which was led by business and military leaders, opposition channels showed cartoons and films while massive crowds of Chavez's supporters mobilized for a counterattack. Since then, Chavez has accused private television channels of manipulating the news. But on Saturday, while opposition channel Globovision showed tens of thousands of protesters swelling the streets, Venezuelan state television showed empty roads and groups of five or 10 protesters walking to the march. Housewife Maria Tintero said she was marching to support RCTV because "it tells the truth. The state channels never say what is going on in the country, about how much insecurity and poverty there is." She disagreed that it was fair to shut a channel that supported a coup against an elected leader. "The first coup, that was Chavez," she said, referring to the president's unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992. Granier told the crowd that the loss of RCTV could foreshadow a dangerous reversal of Latin American democracy. "The president has to choose between the democratic path Venezuelans want, or he can follow the terrible path where Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin showed the way," he said. *** Venezuelans rally for TV station BBC News - May 20, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6673513.stm The head of the RCTV station addressed the marchers, urging them to defend freedom and "free independent media". President Chavez has said he will not renew a licence for the RCTV network which is due to expire on 27 May. He accuses the opposition-allied TV station of supporting a failed coup against him in 2002. He has referred to opposition television stations in general as "horsemen of the apocalypse" and has blamed RCTV in particular for spreading immorality with its steamy soap operas. Mr Chavez plans to replace RCTV with a government-funded TV station. Bolivar citation Marcel Garnier, RCTV's managing director, told a crowd of cheering protesters in Caracas that Mr Chavez was trying to "topple the country over the precipice of totalitarianism where not even his own supporters can express their opinions". He said the president should pay more attention to the words of Simon Bolivar, a hero of Mr Chavez famed for leading South Americans in the fight against colonialism. "He who rules must listen, the people are speaking," Mr Garnier said, quoting Bolivar. President Chavez was re-elected by a landslide last year. His welfare spending programme has won him massive support among the poor but his opponents accuse him of turning the country into an increasingly authoritarian socialist state, modelled on Fidel Castro's Cuba. *** A Circus But No Bread By Mary Anastasia O'Grady The Wall Street Journal - May 21, 2007 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117970926052909097-search.html?KEYWORDS=venezuela&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month "The characteristic feature of the market price is that it tends to equalize supply and demand." -Ludwig von Mises, "Human Action," 1949 The Venezuelan government will seize control of Radio Caracas Television on Sunday, finally making good on a threat to silence one of the country's most important independent news sources. It is no coincidence that this is happening at a time when Venezuelans are suffering a shortage of key foodstuffs. Free-speech protections in Venezuela have been steadily eroding for the past eight years, and most other television stations already practice self-censorship. With the expropriation of RCTV, there is only one other independent voice -- Globovision -- left standing. This assault on free speech has even provoked criticism by the Organization of American States, which has been silent about President Hugo Ch?vez's many other offenses against democracy. Having built his claim to legitimacy on the spurious assertion that he presides over a democracy, you can bet that Mr. Ch?vez would not have gone after RCTV unless he deemed control of TV news vital to his survival. It may indeed be. The reason is because the economy has been so mismanaged that a crisis now appears unavoidable. How it will end, in rationing and hunger or hyperinflationary madness, is hard to say. But when the whole thing comes a cropper, the last thing the president will want is TV images of popular protests that could be contagious. >From the earliest days of his presidency, Mr. Ch?vez made it clear that he intended to vastly expand the state's economic power. In 2000 he started politicizing the state-owned oil company PdVSA and hollowing out its professional engineering and marketing staffs. Shortly thereafter he took to expropriating farms, factories and apartments. When Venezuelan money began to flee, he slapped on capital controls. More recently, he has forced international oil companies to hand over Venezuelan operations and surrender majority control. He has nationalized the largest telephone company and the most important electricity utility. He is now threatening to take over the banks. As government takings always do, these assaults on property rights have badly damaged output and investment. Yet the harm has been greatly compounded by three other pernicious policies: price controls, profligate government spending and inflation of the national currency, the bolivar. Here's how Ch?vez economics "works." As petro-dollars pour into state coffers, the government takes them to the central bank to get new bolivars printed, which are then pumped into the economy through government spending. Mr. Ch?vez has also been regularly increasing wages. The result is a consumption boom. Under free prices, too many bolivars chasing too few goods would produce inflation that would show up at the supermarket checkout counter. But price controls make that impossible. Instead, serious shortages are emerging. Free prices are to an economy what microchips are to a computer. They carry information. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained in his legendary treatise 60 years ago, it is free prices that ensure that supply will meet demand. When Mr. Ch?vez imposed price controls, he destroyed the price mechanism. And so it is that the Venezuelan egg is now a delicacy, the chicken an endangered species, toilet paper a luxury and meat an extravagance. White cheese, milk, tuna, sardines, sugar, corn oil, sunflower oil, carbonated drinks, beans, flour and rice are also in short supply. The reason is simple: Producers have no incentive to bring goods to market if they are forced to sell them at unprofitable prices. Ranchers hold back their animals from slaughter, fisherman don't cast their nets, food processors don't invest in equipment and farmers don't plant. Those who do produce find it makes more sense to take their goods across the border to Colombia or to seek out unregulated (black) markets. Importers also have little incentive to work these days even though the country needs food from abroad. Some things like wheat are not grown in Venezuela. Other products like milk, sugar and potatoes are imported to supplement local supplies. But the Ch?vez government has made it difficult to buy a dollar at the official exchange rate of 2,150 bolivars and if an importer has to buy dollars at the market rate of 4,000 bolivars it is impossible to make a profit under price controls. Even imports not subject to price controls can be difficult to find since import permits and licenses, as well as dollars, are hard to come by. This is putting a crimp in more than just the food supply. According to local press reports, some 40% of the country's air fleet has been affected by delays in getting spare parts and the automotive industry's supply chain is hampered by a lack of access to dollars. Earlier this year hospitals began complaining that the servicing of medical equipment has been delayed because spare parts are not available. Hospitals are also reporting shortages of medicines for diabetics, antibiotics and hypertension drugs. Price controls on construction materials have damaged the reliability of supply. To stock the state-owned grocery stores called Mercal, the Ch?vez government goes shopping abroad with dollar reserves. Of course, Mercal shelves are often bare as well. Moreover, some enterprising government employees seemed to have learned something about market economics: The Venezuelan media is reporting that Mercal supplies are turning up for sale just across the Colombian border, where market prices prevail. Venezuelan policy makers can't be this dumb. The intention is not to feed the country but to destroy the private sector and any political power it might still have. In this environment survival independent of good relations with Mr. Ch?vez is nearly impossible. In the revolutionary handbook, capitalist producers and importers who buy things from the imperialists will be replaced by socialists living on cooperatives that will feed the country. The only trouble is that that effort is not going well, as Jos? de Cordoba reported on the Journal's front page on Thursday. Lack of knowledge, equipment, incentives and organization have left the co-ops "mostly a bust so far." To end the shortages all Mr. Ch?vez would have to do is lift the price controls. But with inflation already running above 20%, he no doubt fears the price jump that would follow. Much safer to seize RCTV and accelerate the consolidation of the military dictatorship. When the crisis comes, the chavistas will be ready. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 14:54:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 14:54:33 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] More Ron Paul stuff: 2 Videos and a Poll Message-ID: <20070521145433.4baf5224@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Don Stacey - May 21, 2007 Here are two video clips. The first one is less than two minutes long and is superb. The second runs about 10 minutes and is a great commercial for Dr. Paul. And there is another poll. Vote now. Please send this message on to others. Don Stacey Video #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8DpKKSmaa8 Video Description During a campaign stop in Austin, TX, Presidential candidate Ron Paul stated that the "First President Bush said the New World Order was in tune-- and that's what they were working for. The U.N. is part of that government. They're working very significantly right now for a North American Union. That's why there's a lot of people in Washington right now who don't care too much about our borders. They have a philosophic belief that national sovereignty is not important. It is also the reason I've made the strong suggestion that the U.S. need not be in the U.N. for national security. Video #2: Also please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIbZ6p7LCQ8&NR=1 Another Poll.. Vote Now: http://instapundit.com/archives2/005233.php So who won the Republican debate? Results as of 11:00 am (EDT) on Saturday: Selection Votes Giuliani 23% 1,580 McCain 2% 159 Romney 9% 589 Huckabee 5% 351 Tancredo 1% 85 Hunter 1% 83 ** Paul 30% 2,097 ** Brownback 0% 13 Thompson (Tommy) 0% 16 Gilmore 0% 14 Thompson (Fred) 28% 1,906 6,893 votes total pollcode.com free polls -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Dstacey" Subject: RON PAUL: His comments on the New World Order ... video Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 11:13:31 -0500 Size: 24227 Url: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/attachments/20070521/9011e125/attachment.mht -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: nytr-request at olm.blythe-systems.com Subject: confirm 589681cbae0a4c0bbe26d3d9378116c895f29d54 Date: no date Size: 642 Url: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/attachments/20070521/9011e125/attachment-0001.mht From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 14:56:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 14:56:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Nigerian Minister Tours Scientific Facilities in Cuba Message-ID: <20070521145654.63b8e8fa@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Nigerian Minister Tours Scientific Facilities in Cuba Havana, May 21 (acn) Nigerian Minister for Science and Technology Isoun Turner began a two-day program of visits to scientific institutions of renown in Havana on Monday Monday's agenda for he and his accompanying delegation, on an official invitation until Wednesday, includes a tour of the Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the producer of Heberbiovac HB -- one of the leading vaccines in the treatment of Hepatitis Type B. Following will be a visit to Finlay Institute's research facilities where a team of experts created Va-Mengoc-BC, the first and only effective vaccine so far to treat meningococcal meningitis Type B. Third on Monday's program is the National Center for Laboratory Animals, west of Havana, followed by a meeting with the scientific adviser for the Council of State, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart. The Nigerian Minister will hold talks on Tuesday with the first deputy minister for Science, Technology and Environment, Fernando Gonzalez. On Wednesday, the official delegation will visit the Specialized Teaching Center on Nuclear Development and the National Center of Scientific Research. A contact with the Sugar Production Ministry and its research institute is also scheduled. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:01:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:01:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] More civilian deaths in Gaza Message-ID: <20070521150154.5a553bac@viola.tamara-b.org> electronic Intifada - May 21, 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6921.shtml More civilian deaths in Gaza by Rami Almeghari writing from the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 21 May 2007 Palestinian relatives and friends of the Al-Loulahi family mourn during two of the family members' funeral in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 18 May 2007. The two were killed by an Israeli air-strike on their vehicle. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages) In an isolated barely field, located just few hundred meters away from the Israel-Gaza border line in eastern Rafah city, a heap of barely lies in the middle of the field. The field is now abandoned -- why? Not because there are no farmers in the area, but rather because the Loulahi family, who had been harvesting barely, were hit by Israeli missiles. Samah, the daughter, was killed, and Ahmad, the son, killed as well. The father Sulieman was wounded, while A'isha, 19, is being treated at the nearby European Hospital after sustaining shrapnel wounds to her leg. With her pale and yellow face, while surrounded by relatives and friends, the simple Rafah farmer spoke out with a sadness and bitterness which she would have never felt unless the Israeli missiles hadn't killed her "soul." Despite her pain, A'isha spoke out: "It was 6:30 pm. We were harvesting the barely near the Sufa crossing, the sun was setting, while myself, my father and my brothers and sisters were all bending down in our field. "My father asked us to leave our brother Mohammad in the car. We left the field, then the Zannana [unmanned drone plane] fired a missile that hit us directly," Aisha says. "My father rushed to us and called for the ambulance, then another missile was fired. I kept dragging my body until I arrived at our house and asked help from the neighbors, then a third missile was hit. By then, I heard people saying, 'the car was went off' and I learned that my sister Samah and my brother Ahmad were killed, while my father was injured," A'isha recalls. "There were no gunmen near us, it's our field, we come here everyday to harvest the barely. Why did they hit us? What is our fault?" A'isha wonders, while sighing bitterly at the loss of her family. A'isha's family is not to the first and, unfortunately, probably not the last civilian causality as a result of the current Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. Just upon writing this piece, an Israeli tank fire killed three Palestinian shepherds while they were tending to their livestock in the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun. On Thursday, Israeli air forces involving F-16 jetfighters, Apache helicopters and unmanned drones as well as artillery fire, have been hitting several targets across the Gaza Strip, under what Israel termed to be a response to the Palestinian homemade shells being fired by Palestinian resistance groups into nearby Israeli towns. The attacks have so far killed 36 Palestinians and wounded scores of others, including bystanders, and caused severe damages to civilian infrastructure. The Palestinian Authority's information minister condemned the Israeli raids on Gaza, calling them "war crimes" and stated that Israel should talk peace instead of stepping up aggressive actions against the Palestinians. "War crime" is a description that was not only wielded by the Palestinian Authority, but also by the Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem, which sent an urgent letter to the Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz urging him to stop what the group called "a form of collective punishment." The group considered these attacks as an act of revenge that would not stop the homemade Qassam shells being fired at Israeli targets. Indeed, it appears the offensive won't prevent the firing of homemade shells, or at least that's what was insisted by Abu Adnan, member of the political leadership of the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip. Abu Adnan believes that the Palestinian resistance is determined to keep up resisting the occupation until it wins the battle the way the Lebanese resistance did in southern Lebanon last summer. "Israeli politics seems to be locked down in extreme darkness as Israel has so far rejected all peace offers including the Palestinian prisoner swap deal, the Palestinian willingness for direct peace talks with Israel and most recently, the Arab states' peace initiative," says Abu Adnan. "Israel also has yielded no effort to further strangulate the Palestinian people, by blocking movement, closing border crossings, attacking the West Bank and shunning all peace proposals. Amid such Israeli arrogance, what do you expect from the Palestinian people? To keep their hands cuffed?" Abu Adnan wonders aloud. Chief of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, speaking at the Amman World Economic Forum on Saturday, blamed Israel for the deteriorated situation in the Gaza Strip, saying that Israel's policy of starving the Palestinian people, leading to an unemployment rate of 70 percent, has largely contributed to the current conditions. Moussa rejected the latest offer by Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert to open direct talks between Israel and 22 Arab states, saying that Israel should first halt settlement activity in the West Bank and resume direct talks with the Palestinians and consider the Arab peace proposal, which he believes opens up a genuine chance for a lasting peace. The Israeli government rejected in late March an Arab peace proposal that calls for full Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands Israel occupied in 1967 and Israeli recognition of the Palestinian people's right to return, in exchange for normal Arab-Israeli ties. Coincidently, in recent days, the Israeli army had killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, endangering a six-month old ceasefire with the Palestinians, which halted the firing of homemade shells and put an end to last summer's deadly Israeli offensive on Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinian men, women and children and destroyed much infrastructure. In 2002, the year in which the Arabs first launched their peace initiative, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon attacked the West Bank completely within his military offensive "Defensive Shield," intended to stamp out the Palestinian resistance. Sharon then said "the initiative is not worthy of the ink on its paper." It seems that his successor Ehud Olmert has also adopted the same stance, by further striking the Palestinians with last year's "Summer Rains" offensive and now, apparently, with new rains this spring. But wait, one more civilian causality has just fallen in northern Gaza. A 15-year-old this time, but who knows who is next? [Rami Almeghari is currently contributor to several media outlets including the Palestine Chronicle, aljazeerah.info, IMEMC, The Electronic Intifada and Free Speech Radio News. Rami is also a former senior English translator at and editor in chief of the international press center of the Gaza-based Palestinian Information Service. He can be contacted at rami_almeghari at hotmail.com.] via the Freedom Archives http://www.Freedomarchives.org From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:30:58 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:30:58 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] BushDigs in Heels on Gonzo; Dismisses Plan for No-Confidence Vote Message-ID: <20070521153058.713691d2@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via Houston Chronicle - May 21, 2007 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4822678.html Bush stands by Gonzales, dismisses plan for no-confidence vote By BEN FELLER Associated Press Writer CRAWFORD, Texas ? President Bush on Monday called an upcoming Senate vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "pure political theater" and stood by his embattled friend. "He has done nothing wrong," Bush said during a news conference at his ranch. The president rapped Senate Democrats preparing a no-confidence vote on the embattled attorney general by week's end and urged them to get back to legislative business. "I frankly view what's taking place in Washington today as pure political theater," Bush said, sounding exasperated with the furor swirling around his longtime friend. "I stand by Al Gonzales and I would hope that people would be more sober in how they address these important issues." Bush did not answer a question about whether he intends to keep Gonzales in office through the end of his presidency. Meanwhile, Democrats were leading the way toward a no confidence vote on Gonzales, possibly at week's end. "The president should understand that while he has confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, very few others do," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., responded to Bush's comments. "Congress has a right ? and even an obligation to express its views when things are this serious." Gonzales, who is headed to Europe this week, scrapped a meeting with his Swiss counterpart and shelved tentative plans for a tour and a meeting in Hungary. His cancellations also come days before his former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, was to testify about her role in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year. Senate support for Gonzales is continuing to erode, with a fourth and fifth Republican calling for his resignation. On Sunday, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee predicted Gonzales would step down before senators go on record as having confidence in the attorney general, or not. "I have a sense that before the vote is taken, that Attorney General Gonzales may step down," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. said Sunday. Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the attorney general's stops in Switzerland and Budapest, Hungary, were never set in stone. He said Gonzales leaves Tuesday for meetings in Munich as part of the G-8 summit there. Roehrkasse said Gonzales had hoped to travel to the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest for a tour and a meeting that ultimately could not be scheduled. Similarly, Roehrkasse said Gonzales was too short on time to make it to Switzerland, and that no meeting there was ever confirmed. A spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry said Washington called off the meeting, which was set for Wednesday. "A first meeting was planned for Wednesday in Switzerland between Attorney General Gonzales and Justice Minister (Christoph) Blocher," said Sascha Hardegger, a spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry. "It was recently canceled by the United States." Hardegger said the meeting was set up in response to a U.S. request "in the context of Mr. Gonzales' participation in the G-8 justice ministers' meeting in Munich." Switzerland is not a member of the G-8 and Blocher will not attend the Munich meeting, Hardegger said. He downplayed the significance of the "short, informal meeting" with Gonzales, but would not say what they planned to speak about. Hardegger declined to speculate on the reasons for the cancellation, but said it's possible Gonzales and Blocher could meet shortly after the G-8 meeting or at another future date. ? 2007 The Associated Press From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:36:43 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:36:43 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Another 7 US Troops Killed in Iraq Bombing Message-ID: <20070521153643.6684c006@viola.tamara-b.org> Washington Post via Boston Globe - May 21, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/05/21/roadside_bomb_attacks_in_iraq_kill_7_us_soldiers/ Roadside bomb attacks in Iraq kill 7 US soldiers Troop boost in capital raises vulnerability By John Ward Anderson and Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post BAGHDAD -- Six US soldiers and an interpreter were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near their position in western Baghdad, the US military reported yesterday, underscoring the heightened vulnerability of US forces as they increase their presence in the capital. A roadside bomb killed a seventh US soldier Saturday in Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, the military said. Two soldiers were wounded in that attack. The deaths raise to 71 the number of US service members killed this month, according to iCasualties.org, an independent website that tracks military deaths. The rising death toll comes as thousands of additional US and Iraqi troops are engaged in a high-profile operation to improve the security situation in the capital. US officials warned when they announced the new plan in mid-February that putting as many as 25,000 additional US troops in the urban environment would raise their exposure and vulnerability, and that higher casualty rates were expected. Military deaths have been increasing since fall, and the first half of this year has been deadlier than any six-month period since the war began more than four years ago. According to iCasualties.org, 531 US service members have been killed since Dec. 1, an average of more than three deaths a day, and 3,422 have died since the war began in March 2003. The troops killed Saturday in Baghdad were part of an operation searching for weapons caches and bomb-making materials in the western part of the city over the past week "to aid in providing a more secure and safe environment for the Iraqi people," the military said in a statement. In an unrelated development, US forces on Saturday killed a man they said was the mastermind of a well-planned guerrilla assault in January in which gunmen posing as Americans drove into a government compound in the southern holy city of Karbala, killed a US soldier, then abducted four other US soldiers who were later killed. Azhar al-Dulaimi was killed in a raid on a building north of Sadr City, a large Shi'ite district in the capital, said Major General William Caldwell, the US military's top spokesman. He said Dulaimi initially appeared to surrender but was shot while trying to grab a soldier's gun and died en route to the hospital. Dulaimi was linked to the Karbala attack by fingerprints found at the scene, Caldwell said, adding that other evidence indicated that Dulaimi was trained by Iranian intelligence operatives and the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah. Dulaimi was also linked to the kidnapping of an Iraqi American soldier in October and a mass kidnapping at an Iraqi Education Ministry building last year, Caldwell said. There was no indication that the Iranian government had ordered the Karbala attack, Caldwell said. Meanwhile, more than two dozen Iraqis were reported killed by roadside bombs, suicide attacks, mortar strikes, and other violence yesterday. In addition, Iraqi national police reported finding 32 bodies : 22 in Baghdad, six in Mahmudiyah, about 15 miles south of the capital, and four in the northern city of Mosul. The US military said it killed eight insurgents and arrested 34 in operations in Karmah, a Sunni area about 20 miles west of Baghdad, and in an area southwest of the capital. ? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. *** CNN - May 21, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/20/karbala.dead/ U.S. military: Architect of U.S. troop "abductions" killed BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. forces have killed a man identified as the ringleader of the January 20 attack on U.S. troops in Karbala, Iraq, that left five Americans dead, military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." Sheikh Azhar al-Dulaymi was killed Saturday during an operation in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, according to an unclassified U.S. military presentation obtained by CNN. But Caldwell said the death occurred Friday. (Watch how the insurgent gunmen carefully orchestrated their attack on U.S. troops Video) "We've been pursuing this guy relentlessly," he said. "Anybody who kidnaps an American soldier and murders them we're going to continue to hunt down." In the January attack, a group of armed insurgents "disguised as American soldiers, driving American vehicles, speaking English" raided a military compound in Karbala, killing one U.S. soldier at the scene and kidnapping four others, who were later slain, Caldwell said. According to the military's release, al-Dulaymi -- who was armed -- was trying to hide on the roof of a building when coalition forces arrived on the scene to capture him. The release did not detail how he was wounded, but said he died as coalition forces were taking him to a military medical facility. The U.S. military has received intelligence reports that al-Dulaymi received training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, "including training on how to conduct terrorist-style kidnappings," the military release said. The release said al-Dulaymi is suspected of having been involved in a mass kidnapping at Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education building last November. As many as 80 gunmen clad in old and new Iraqi National Police uniforms kidnapped approximately 70 people at the Ministry's building in central Baghdad on November 14. All of those abducted were later released. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:48:06 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:48:06 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Chaos in Gaza: A Family's Story Message-ID: <20070521154806.08fa4ecd@viola.tamara-b.org> Al Jazeera - May 21, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/451363F0-D7C6-4726-8F82-7D137B3511AC.htm Chaos in Gaza: A family's story Life in Gaza has become intolerable for many families, as factional fighting worsens and Israel follows Palestinian rocket fire with a series of deadly air raids. Al Jazeera spoke to a Palestinian-American family about what they have faced in recent weeks, including a kidnapping and an air raid metres from their home. Shelly Smith lives in Zeytoun, a suburb of Gaza City, and works as an English teacher and in support of Palestinian refugee rights. She has seven children, of whom several remain with her in Gaza, including her son Aladean, 16, and her 13-year-old daughter, who are both pupils in local schools. Aladean, 16, student I was outside with my friends [during the recent clashes] and we were going to see another friend in Gaza City. On the way there a car came and picked us up and took us to a building. When I looked inside there was a whole bunch of guys wearing Fatah clothes but I realised they were actually Hamas. They started asking me and my friends: "Who do you work with, who are you with?" I said: "I'm not with anyone", but one guy asked me: "Why not?" Then one friend of mine, who looked at their uniforms and thought they must be Fatah, said he was with Fatah, and they started beating him up. One man asked me again, are you with Fatah? I said no again, and he told me to wait, then he went inside [another room] to talk to one of his leaders. I saw the leader look at me and say: "Go." Then the man comes back, gets his gun, puts a bullet in the chamber and says: "Run." I didn't want to run so I walked, and as soon I turned the corner I ran to a phone to call my parents. Civil war? I don't have too many problems here, as people know me - but it is a problem that I am American. Both myself and my brother - who has since left - have been kidnapped before. The [Israeli] air attacks are nerve-racking, when a rocket falls it feels like the whole house is going to fall down and the whole street is full of smoke. Yesterday one fell on the street nearby, we heard the ambulances and people were wounded. I feel like I want to get out of here. Gaza doesn't have a good future. Can we have one united government? Never, there's too much corruption. People are starving here - you go to a neighbour's home for help, but they themselves have nothing. I think it's going to be a civil war here. Every country has had one and afterwards a country can get stronger, like America. But it looks like there won't be one here as the Israelis will stop it. Shelly Smith, 42, teacher The house that the Israelis struck last night [Sunday] was simply a house - not a factory or a militant meeting place. It was a neighbour at the end of my street. Children, the parents and teenagers were injured - not militants. The [local] Shifah Hospital was packed and conditions are horrible. They appear to me to be understaffed and the sanitation of the place is extremely poor, the smell sickening. Some of the cleaning and nursing staff feel let down because salaries promised to them haven't been paid. They continue to work out of the sense of duty towards their fellow countrymen no matter which side they were on. The hospital has been lucky enough to get blood donations from friends and families of the injured. Emergency plans My 13-year-old daughter is at school - she walks there with a small group with other neighborhood girls. When things were normal they would buy an ice cream on the way home. But when I asked her what worries her most about all that is going on and she said that maybe one of us won't come home and she wouldn't know how to find us. I told her that Gaza is small and if anything happened someone would call here or her aunt ... [but] I worry about her at school now because of the bombings. Most schools are clearly identifiable from the air and ground as schools, but that didn't stop the bombing of a school in 2005. We have talked about what things we would do if something bad happened at our school, work and home and have made emergency plans. This whole week I have not been to work, hopefully tomorrow I can return. We've been staying inside, but my son keeps sneaking out to see what's going on. Kidnapping fears Before the air raids the helicopters would come and you wonder - is it our building or the next? They hover and go around the targets. If not these, you hear the jets fly over once or twice before releasing their payload. The anticipation is the worst, even though you know [it] will happen. You think - is it someone you know? My nerves are shot from this. I would like to be back in the States but have reasons for being here. I worry about kidnappings, but everyone knows me, I've been here two years, am not involved in the government and want to help people, so they leave me alone. Since we have come here the Israelis began using unmanned drones, then there was the Lebanese war ... it seems like a cycle of violence and something needs to be done. Now [Palestinians here] are fighting against their own, whether they have a red or a green flag, against their cousins and their friends. Source: Al Jazeera From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:51:20 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:51:20 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Fighting Flares in Lebanon for 2nd Day; 70 Dead Message-ID: <20070521155120.5a0af174@viola.tamara-b.org> Bloomberg - May 21, 2007 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8hECK.jncnk&refer=home Lebanese Army Clashes with Islamist Militants; 70 Die By Tarek Al-Issawi and Gregory Viscusi May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Lebanon's soldiers clashed for a second day with Islamist militants in the northern city of Tripoli as Lebanese officials accused neighboring Syria of sparking the bloodshed that may have killed 70 people. Gunfights yesterday killed about 40 people, including 27 soldiers, the state-owned National News Agency said. As well as the soldiers and militants, another 30 people may have died yesterday and today inside the Nahr el-Bared camp, which houses about 30,000 Palestinian refugees and is at the center of the fighting, the agency reported. Television footage on Arab and international channels showed smoke rising above Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, as the army aimed shells at militants from the Palestinian group Fatah al-Islam. A two-hour cease-fire was brokered today by the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate the wounded and remove bodies, the state news agency said. While all major political parties in Lebanon, including those allied with Syria, said they supported the Lebanese army and condemned Fatah al-Islam, the violence may be an attempt by Syria to keep pressure on the Lebanese government, analysts and Lebanese government members said. ``This is another attempt to blackmail Lebanon,'' Marwan Hamadeh, Lebanese minister of telecommunications, said in a telephone interview today, accusing Syria of instigating and supporting the group. ``Lebanon will not submit to this kind of pressure.'' Syria's Disclaimer Syria's ambassador to the United Nations said his government had nothing to do with the violence and that Fatah al-Islam's leaders are members of al-Qaeda who had been jailed in Syria for terrorist activities. ``They spent 3 to 4 years in jail for belonging to al- Qaeda,'' Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters at the UN in New York. ``After they were freed, we noticed that they came back to some of their terrorist practices in the field of training some new elements. Then they ran away from Syrian justice.'' The U.S. State Department's report on terrorism for 2006 describes Fatah al-Islam as linked to al-Qaeda and says the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have become ``safe havens'' for the group. The U.S. gave its support to the Lebanese army's attacks. ``It would appear that the Lebanese security forces are working in a legitimate manner'' in response to ``provocations and attacks by violent extremists who have operated out of a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington. Hariri Probe The Lebanese, U.S., and French governments want an international tribunal set up to try Syrian officials who they say were behind a series of assassinations in Lebanon, including the 2005 car-bomb killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hariri had been pressing for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the end of the country's 1975-1990 civil war. The Syrian troops left Lebanon later in 2005. Since last summer's war between Israel and the Shiite Muslim militia group Hezbollah, Shiite and Christian political parties supported by Syria have pushed for the Lebanese government to step down, saying it's too close to the U.S. ``The Syrians have a lot of interest in keeping pressure on Lebanon and taking advantage of the country's precarious situation,'' said Anne Giudicelli, a former French diplomat who founded and runs Paris-based Terrorisc, a risk analyst specializing in the Middle East. ``Obviously, it's hard to have proof.'' Human Shields The fighting erupted after security forces raided a building in Tripoli to arrest suspects in a bank robbery, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported. Alleged members of Fatah al-Islam then attacked army posts at Nahr el-Bared, the BBC said. Hamadeh said the fighting was dragging on because the militants were using the camp's population as human shields. ``The innocent Palestinians inside the camp are hostages,'' Hamadeh said. ``Our biggest fear is if this issue spreads beyond the camp.'' UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked parties to the conflict to ``exercise maximum restraint'' and said he had been on the phone with Middle East leaders to express his concern. Splinter Group Fatah al-Islam is an Islamic splinter group of the mainstream and secular Palestinian Fatah group. It has no more than a few dozen members, said Alain Flandrois, deputy director general of GEOS, another Paris-based risk analyst. The group has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, though it's unclear whether it has any operational link to Osama bin Laden's international terrorist group, Flandrois said. ``Saying you are al-Qaeda has a certain publicity and political impact that helps put pressure on the government,'' Flandrois said. ``But these groups operate with a lot of autonomy. The Lebanese are more likely to see the hand of Syria rather than al-Qaeda.'' In a statement on its official Web site, Hezbollah condemned Fatah al-Islam's attack and praised the Lebanese army. The Hezbollah statement said that its allies, the fellow Shiite Amal group as well as the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian General Michel Aoun, also condemned the attack. Hezbollah, Amal and Aoun are allied with Syria, oppose the international tribunal, and are pressuring the Lebanese government to step down. The commander of the mainstream Fatah movement in Lebanon, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, said Fatah al-Islam is a ``gang of criminals'' and condemned it for attacking the Lebanese army, the Beirut-based Daily Star said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 15:55:07 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 15:55:07 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Fire Damages Historic Clipper Ship "Cutty Sark" Message-ID: <20070521155507.61d1a824@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via Houston Chronicle - May 21, 2007 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4822752.html Fire damages historic clipper ship By D'ARCY DORAN Associated Press Writer GREENWICH, England ? Technology, rot and now fire have caught up with the Cutty Sark, the graceful clipper ship built in the 19th century to speed fresh tea from China to Britain's tables. After a quick look at the charred hull, custodians of the world's only surviving tea clipper said Monday it could still be made as good as new ? by adding millions more to a restoration project already costing $50 million. "With my naked eye, as far as I have been able to see, the structure of the ship seems to be intact," Cutty Sark Trust Chief Executive Richard Doughty said. Firefighters battled the blaze for more than two hours after responding to a 4:45 a.m. alarm at the ship's dry dock next to the National Maritime Museum. The cause of the blaze was under investigation. At midmorning, as firefighters put out the final hot spots, Ian Bell, the restoration's technical director, climbed into the ship's bulwark to assess the damage. The bow and stern were intact. Most the teak wood had been removed to give restorers access to the ship's iron frame. The iron held its shape in the fire, and in the lower decks, the few timbers that had not been removed were charred but suffered mostly superficial damage. "A lot of the original material has been saved," Bell told reporters, his cheeks covered in soot. "The initial investigation suggests it could be a lot worse." The ship's masts, saloon and most of its wood planks were safely in storage at the time of the fire. Officials responsible for the sailing ship said they were determined to carry on with the four-year restoration project. "We're going to redouble our efforts to ensure that the ship is open, available, back and running in the future," said Chris Livett, chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises. "I think when we finish with this project, she will be better than she was." Police Inspector Bruce Middlemiss said investigators were treating the fire as suspicious but "there is no evidence or intelligence to lead us to think this was an arson." Surveillance cameras showed several people in the area at the time the fire started, but there was no indication that any had been involved in igniting it. Dogs from the police arson investigation unit were taken to the site. The Cutty Sark, which inspired a popular brand of Scotch, was the world's only surviving example of an extreme clipper, regarded as the ultimate merchant sailing vessel. The ship is drydocked in Greenwich, where the River Thames widens into an estuary before joining the North Sea. It sits next to the former Royal Navy College ? now the National Maritime Museum ? and the Royal Observatory on the zero longitude line, where Britain developed the navigational technology that enabled it to rule the waves. The tea trade increased dramatically in the 19th century after Britain forced China to open its ports to Western ships through the Opium Wars in 1842 and 1858. The demand for tea was voracious, and the ship arriving with the first tea of the year made the highest profits ? fueling demand for ever-faster ships, rather than ones with enormous carrying capacity. Cutty Sark, launched in 1869, was designed to win those races for profits. It was launched the same month that the opening of the Suez Canal gave steamships the advantage over sail; the faster clipper ships had to travel around Cape Horn to take advantage of the trade winds. The Cutty Sark lost its most famous test. It made the journey from China to London in 122 days ? a week after its rival clipper ship. Still, the trip marked the birth of the ship's legendary reputation. Two weeks into the journey, the Cutty Sark's rudder broke but its captain sailed on. Measuring 280 feet long, the ship weighed 979 tons and its main mast soared 152 feet above the main deck. The ship was used for training naval cadets during World War II, and in 1951 it was moored in London for the Festival of Britain. Shortly afterward, the ship was acquired by the Cutty Sark Society. Cutty Sark had been closed to visitors since last year for the restoration, which had been due to be complete in 2009. Conservationists promised to redouble their efforts to save the ship and raise funds for its preservation. "I'm relieved," said Doughty. "I came here thinking the ship had gone on her last journey." On the Net: http://www.cuttysark.org.uk ? 2007 The Associated Press From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:18:02 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:18:02 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The Ron Paul Effect Message-ID: <20070521161802.0b7605a8@viola.tamara-b.org> Ether Zone - May 21, 2007 http://www.etherzone.com/2007/raim052107.shtml THE RON PAUL EFFECT ANTIWAR REPUBLICAN MAKES WAVES By Justin Raimondo The times, they are a changin' ? and the signs are all around us. The American people are sick unto death of the Iraq war, and this growing dissatisfaction with American foreign policy spans the political spectrum: it isn't just the Left that is singing "we ain't marchin' anymore," it's moderates and even conservatives. The recantation of Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones was the harbinger of a mounting trend, and as disaster piles on fresh disaster in the killing fields of Mesopotamia, the conservative case for the war gets harder to make ? and more prominent figures on the Right are dissenting from the Bush-neocon orthodoxy. Conservative dissent on the war question has been present from the very beginning: Pat Buchanan has been a vocal critic of the War Party since Gulf War I. The American Conservative magazine, which Buchanan co-founded with Taki Theodoracopulos and Scott McConnell, was launched to give voice to those on the Right who reject the neoconservative "liberationism" of the Bush administration as a "Jacobin" invention, as Claes Ryn, a prominent conservative professor, so trenchantly put it. Others have since joined Buchanan, Ryn, and the other conservatives and libertarians who were denounced as "unpatriotic" by David "Axis of Evil" Frum, the neocon enforcer of political correctness, in the pages of National Review ? when he announced that he and all good little movement (neo)conservatives would henceforth "turn our backs" on those perfectly awful "unpatriotic conservatives." That this now means Frum must turn his back on the founder of National Review is an irony worth contemplating. William F. Buckley Jr. has recently argued that the war is a "failure," along with the policy that spawned it, and that it is time for conservatives to reconsider their blind support. Without quite saying it, Buckley's chief concern seems to be that the GOP ship will go down with the neocons who have hijacked it, and this political consideration is precisely what motivated a group of Republican congressmen to troop to the White House the other day and bluntly declare they'd had just about enough. As even some of the neocons, such as Francis Fukuyama ? who famously proclaimed the "end of history" ? abjure their errors and the rats jump ship, "movement" conservatives are following suit. Back before the war started, Cliff Kincaid, a conservative activist and writer associated with Accuracy in Media (AIM), a longtime mainstay of "movement" conservatism, penned a piece entitled "Antiwar Conservatives?" that questioned the existence of such an exotic species. Like the unicorn and the sphinx, this creature, he averred, was only talked about yet never seen, and he specifically took me to task for allying with the "far Left" in a united front against the war. Right after the invasion was launched, I appeared with him on MSNBC to debate the war: the country, I said, was against the invasion, and an increasing number of fairly conservative Republicans ? such as Ron Paul ? were speaking out against it. For his part, Kincaid wondered aloud how in touch with the national zeitgeist it was possible to be out in San Francisco. Now that most of the rest of the nation is aligned with my fellow San Franciscans, however, Kincaid has done a turnaround: he not only acknowledges the existence of antiwar conservatives, but has also become one of their most eloquent defenders against the know-nothings of the neoconized GOP. The neocons are in a tizzy about the heresy of Ron Paul at the South Carolina Republican presidential debates, when he dared state the obvious: that al-Qaeda is "over here" because we are "over there." Rudy Giuliani's Mussolini-esque eruption and Paul's defiant-yet-reasonable refusal to recant has become the fulcrum of the right wing's agony over an issue that could sink the GOP, marginalize conservatives, and give us President Hillary Clinton. Kincaid wisely recognizes that the neocon response to Paul's speaking truth to power is intellectually dishonest. What's even more heartening, however, is Kincaid's anger over the attempted smearing of Rep. Paul: "In a desperate attempt to make Rudy Giuliani out to be the hero of Tuesday night's debate, Fox News is continuing to attack Texas Congressman Ron Paul for something he did not say. In the latest installment of this campaign, John Gibson of Fox News says that Paul 'suggested that the U.S. actually had a hand in the [9/11] terrorist attacks.' No, what he said was that U.S. foreign policy was a reason why Osama bin Laden attacked America. This is a fact. "Gibson's comment shows how Fox News has been eager to slant the news in favor of Giuliani, who claimed in his famous response to Paul that the congressman had said that the U.S. 'invited' the 9/11 attacks. That was false, too." The outright lie that Paul is part of the "9/11 Truth" movement, which holds that the U.S. government itself pulled off the biggest terrorist attack in American history, is the latest edition of the smear-Ron-Paul campaign that has taken off since the showdown with America's Mafioso Mayor. The canard that Paul justifies terrorism is eagerly spread by the smarmy Gibson and the ridiculous Michelle Malkin, a cocoa Coulterite who, like the original white-bread version, makes an art out of self-caricature. Even after the complete falsehood of her charge against Paul was pointed out, and acknowledged by her, Malkin still did her best to wriggle out of it by trying to weave a very tenuous connection between Paul and the Truthers. The woman has zero integrity and even less credibility, but the smear campaign rolls on. As Kincaid put it: "Ron Paul is being viciously attacked over this issue because some people don't want to consider the implications, which Paul is honest enough from his perspective to spell out. These implications are that the U.S. should withdraw from the region, supposedly to spare the U.S. from any further attacks. That is the Ron Paul approach, and he claims it is what President Reagan would do. It may be na?ve to some, but he cites Reagan's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Lebanon after 241 of them were murdered in a suicide bombing. He thinks no good can come from U.S. involvement in such an irrational part of the world." Kincaid probably doesn't agree with Paul's analysis in its entirety, but he is honest enough to call a foul when he sees it. Chances are he is fairly typical of conservative activists in the GOP, not the bought-and-sold "leadership" but the rank-and-file, and therein lies a golden opportunity for Paul ? and the antiwar movement. Rudy, for his part, continues to display his utter ignorance and determination to demagogue his way to the White House by touting his confrontation with Paul. Speaking in New York with Sen. John McCain, he claimed that the six Albanians recently busted for plotting to attack Fort Dix and kill American soldiers proves that he, not Paul, is right about Why They Hate Us: "Why [did they want to kill our soldiers]?" he asked his audience, according to Stephen Spruiell of National Review. "Because we had some attacks on Iraq in the 1990s? I don't think so." Think again, Rudy: according to news accounts of the case, one of the defendants, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying, "In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad." This sounds very much like the same litany of complaints that OBL and his gang have used to recruit an ever-growing army of terrorists to their banner: America's war on Iraq, they say, is part of its general war on Islam itself. Furthermore, there is every indication that most if not all of the Fort Dix terrorists were trained by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was aided by the U.S. in its fight against the Serbs ? and for whose sake we initiated a bombing campaign that ended in the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the fall of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic. Here the parallels with al-Qaeda ? nurtured in the bosom of the U.S.-funded-and-supported Afghan insurgency against the Soviets in the 1980s ? are even clearer. Once again, "blowback" has blown back in our faces. We armed these guys, we trained them, we funded and encouraged them in waging yet another war of "liberation" ? and today we are fending them off as they try to blow up military installations in the U.S. Now there's gratitude for you! Although Spruiell doesn't agree with Paul's conclusions, he is clearly appalled by the blatant disregard for logic and plain old common sense displayed by Paul's enemies in the GOP: "Excuse this interruption of presidential politics for a quick moment with a reality check: What's the big deal with admitting that our pre-invasion policies toward Iraq ? the sanctions, the no-fly zones, the bases to protect Saudi Arabia from Saddam's lunatic aggression ? were used to justify mass slaughter in Osama bin Laden's various fatwas against America? That doesn't make him right. It just identifies one dynamic at work in the evil worldview of a madman." A reality check is precisely what the neocons who control the Republican political machine fear the most. That's because they don't acknowledge any version of reality other than their own, and they can't afford to, either ? or else the whole fabric of their elaborate fantasy of the U.S. as the noble "liberator" of Iraq will start to come apart at the seams. As journalist Ron Suskind recounted a discussion with a top White House official: "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality ? judiciously, as you will ? we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ? and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" Up until now, the GOP has been living in a bubble, along with the president, denying that we were losing, and that we got ourselves into an awful mess: the "good news," they claimed, wasn't being reported, on account of the media's alleged "antiwar bias." That, at least, is what Kincaid seemed to sincerely believe when we debated on MSNBC two years ago. Today, however, he seems ready to acknowledge that there is a problem and that the fault isn't to be found with the media, or with someone like Ron Paul who dares to say that the emperor has no clothes, but with his fellow conservatives. This is progress, and Paul's candidacy is the catalyst. Of course, Ron has a lot of obstacles to overcome, not the least of which is the liberal bias of "mainstream" media ? yes, Cliff, I agree with you on that one! Anyone who votes against government programs as a matter of high principle and who insists on taking the letter of the Constitution seriously, as Rep. Paul consistently does, is going to have to endure much from skeptical journalists ? such as CNN's John King Sunday, who, during an interview with Paul, scoffed at his low poll numbers. Of course, the polls don't mean much six months before the first primary. It is foolish to write off Paul's potential appeal at this stage ? especially to New Hampshire voters, who will set the tone for the race. Remember, Pat Buchanan took New Hampshire in 1991, and Rep. Paul has a lot in common with the Buchanan Brigades, who may turn out in full pitchfork mode for the conservative-libertarian congressman from Texas. The smug assurances from both establishment liberals and the folks over at Fox News that Paul is a meaningless blip in the online polls ? supposedly "manipulated" by Paul's online Machiavellis ? could be very short-lived. No, online polls aren't an accurate measure of a candidate's popular support ? but they do measure something, and that is the degree of support among his or her followers. And this can translate into a measure of future support, given the candidate's ability to attract attention and build on this enthusiastic base. Rudy's rudeness has backfired. In response to the effort to paint Paul as a Republican John Walker Lindh who must be waterboarded until he confesses all, Ron has attracted some prominent defenders: Bill Maher, Andrew Sullivan, and others who might not agree with all of Paul's message but who are nevertheless outraged at this brazen attempt to intimidate him and drive him out of the GOP. Six months from now, as the war gets even worse and the "surge" hasn't amounted to a hill of beans, what Paul is saying will be the emerging conventional wisdom, so much so that even the Republican leadership will have to acknowledge it. Provided he continues to do well in fundraising, Paul's poll numbers could spiral rapidly upward as the Iraqi occupation and the sock-puppet "government" of Iraq plunges downward into oblivion. Which brings to mind a famous saying of Gandhi's: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." They don't dare ignore him, and ridicule isn't working: now they're engaging him, but it is already too late for that. In raising the issue of our failed foreign policy in the very arena that the War Party has always counted as its exclusive domain, Ron Paul has already won. The neocons may be able to retain control of the GOP until next November, but Iraq really is their Waterloo. The blame for the coming defeat of the GOP will fall squarely on their shoulders ? and then it won't be Ron Paul who will be driven out of the party. [Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of AntiWar.Com. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:40:32 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:40:32 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Pfizer CEO Resigns after Whistleblower Revelations Message-ID: <20070521164032.6b3d1ded@viola.tamara-b.org> Counterpunch - May 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/rost05212007.html Fallout from Whistleblower's Revelations: Pfizer CFO Resigns By PETER ROST, MD Pfizer's CFO Alan Levin's resignation was hastily announced 9:25 PM on Sunday evening in a BusinessWire news release. Mr. Levin, 45, took over as the chief of finance in 2005 as Mr. Shedlarz's was promoted. Mr. Levin's resignation comes after three days of disclosures of corruption in Pfizer's finance department, revealed by former Pfizer finance executive Mr. Ashok S. Idnani, on the Question Authority with Dr. Peter Rost blog. Brandweek wrote that "Rost this week has devoted his blog to an astonishing series of posts which allegedly describe how Pfizer execs in India took kickbacks in connection with the sale of a Pfizer building for far less than it was worth; how Pfizer hires private detectives to spy on rival executives and pay bribes, and how Pfizer India kept a "gift" list for certain Indian government officials." Pfizer in the press release wrote that "Chief Financial Officer Alan Levin has resigned to pursue career opportunities outside Pfizer." Clearly, Mr. Levin doesn't appear to have a new job lined up just yet, which indicates this was not a voluntary separation from Pfizer. And while it is impossible to know if the latest whistleblower revelations contributed to his exit, the timing should result in some serious questions about what precipitated the decision to get rid of the 45-year old CFO who'd only held the job for two years. At a minimum the timing means it is impossible to avoid that question, which Pfizer must have been well aware of. Mr. Levin's "resignation" was announced on a weekend, after three days of sordid proof that Pfizer fired a finance executive who repeatedly warned Pfizer that the company hired detectives who paid bribes, used corporate spies, pretexting, and payid off competitor's employees to leak confidential information, and used other potentially illegal means of obtaining information for the company. Both Pfizer's corporate audit and legal compliance departments were involved in the investigation of this affair, which also included allegations of a dodgy sale of a manufacturing plant at a fraction of its real value, intimations of kickbacks, and a list of bribes to government officials by name. The documents the whistleblower provided show that high level Pfizer executives in India and the company's New York headquarters, including Jeff Kindler, had been made aware of the allegations before the whistleblower, who'd been with Pfizer for 28 years, was fired. [Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Vice President of Pfizer. He became well known in 2004 when he emerged as the first drug company executive to speak out in favor of reimportation of drugs. He is the author of "The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman." See: http://the-whistleblower-by-peter-rost.blogspot.com/ ] *** AHRP Comments: - May 21, 2007 ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com Thanks to Dr. Peter Rost's hard hitting three day expose of corrupt practices by the Pfizer financial division , its chief financial officer, Alan Levin, resigned hastily--last night at 9:25 PM. As Brandweek acknowledged: "Rost this week has devoted his blog to an astonishing series of posts which allegedly describe how Pfizer execs in India took kickbacks in connection with the sale of a Pfizer building for far less than it was worth; how Pfizer hires private detectives to spy on rival executives and pay bribes, and how Pfizer India kept a "gift" list for certain Indian government officials." So, while the national press--New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press, et al--can't recognize a major pharmaceutical scandal when it's offered on a silver platter, the blog community--including Pharmalot, PharmaMarketing, CafePharma--is on the alert, finely tuned, and rapidly becoming the place to look for breaking news about this corrupt industry. Dr. Rost reports that both Pfizer's corporate audit and legal compliance departments were involved in the investigation of this affair. So more heads are likely to roll... For full story of Pfizer's financial whistleblower see: 1. Pfizer Finance Executive Blows the Whistle - Part One http://peterrost.blogspot.com/2007/05/pfizer-finance-executive-blows-whistle.html 2. Pfizer Finance Executive Blows the Whistle - Part Two http://peterrost.blogspot.com/2007/05/pfizer-finance-executive-blows-whistle_6858.html 3. Pfizer Finance Executive Blows the Whistle - Part Three http://peterrost.blogspot.com/2007/05/pfizer-finance-executive-blows-whistle_18.html From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:45:00 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:45:00 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Shooting for the Top: Mexico's Drug Gangs Take Aim at Calderon Message-ID: <20070521164500.2f89fd6a@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - May 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/ross05212007.html Shooting for the Top: Mexico's Drug Gangs Take Aim at Calderon By JOHN ROSS The assassination of a top government drug fighter outside his southern Mexico City offices first thing last Monday morning (May 14), has sent tremors ratcheting through the highest echelons of security agencies on both sides of the border. In an unusual display of bi-lateral concern, both U.S. Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff and beleaguered attorney general Alberto Gonzalez tendered their heartfelt condolences to Mexican president Felipe Calderon for the killing of Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, second in command of the National Center for Planning and Analysis (CENAPI), a nerve center in Mexico's war on its multiple drug cartels, and U.S. ambassador Tony Garza eulogized Lugo as "a tireless fighter" and lamented "the latest functionary to fall fighting the criminals who profit by the destruction of our society." The gangland-style hit --gunman opened up on Lugo as he parked his car on a narrow alley in the sleepy Coyoacaan neighborhood--came as President Calderon marked the sixth month of his war on the nation's murderous drug cartels and may actually have been aimed even higher--at Lugo's boss General Ardelio Vargas, a Calderon loyalist who at the start-up of his disputed presidency, headed both the militarized Federal Preventative Police (PFP) and the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), an unprecedented concentration of power, before moving on to direct the CENAPI. General Vargas and Nemesio Lugo were longtime colleagues. Both had spent a decade at the highly secretive CISEN, the nation's top national security agency. The General also commanded security operations during the "pacification" of Oaxaca in November and December before being tagged for Calderon's drug war. Both Vargas and Lugo arrived early each morning at the CENAPI offices and both reportedly traveled alone--some top security officials eschew bodyguards who are often suspected of setting them up for the drug gangs. In explicit testimony to the tenseness of the times after six months of low- (but sometimes very high) intensity warfare with the cartels, Calderon was not in Mexico City on the morning Lugo was gunned down. Rather, he had been helicoptered under heavy security to Veracruz state to pay homage to four bodyguards of Mexico state governor Enrique Pena Nieto, an important political ally. The "guaruras" who had been assigned to protect Pena Nieto's children while they vacationed on Caribbean beaches, were cut down May 10th in a furious fusillade that actually tore one of the victims in half. "Zeta-10", one of many drug gangs battling for control of Veracruz, had brazenly posted warnings on YouTube directed at both Pena Nieto, whose own state is a battleground in the drug war, and Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera. Reportedly counseled by the elite presidential guard or "Estado Mayor" to forego Lugo's funeral for security reasons, Calderon was a prominent no-show at the ceremony. In a ploy to bolster his own tainted legitimacy after he was awarded the fraud-marred July 2nd 2006 presidential election, Calderon went on the warpath against the cartels soon after his December 1st swearing in. The oath-taking, a private ceremony at which he was surrounded by generals and admirals and which was broadcast live by the nation's two-headed television monopoly Televisa and its junior partner TV Azteca, proved instructive as to how the new president intended to rule--with the military in one hand and the media in the other. A week after the ceremony, Calderon dispatched 30,000 troops, about a sixth of the Mexican military, into the hot lands of his native Michoacan and seven other states where the narco cartels had commited wholesale mayhem during the six year reign of Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox (an estimated 6000 dead.) With Televisa and TV Azteca maximizing the moment, the new president was given ample space to display his "firm hand" ("mano firme") on national screens. Much as when he was campaigning for the office, Calderon's handlers produced "public service" spots that were repeatedly aired by the TV giants, extolling the military campaign--the new "Commander-in-Chief" even donned an outsized army field jacket at one event--and the media campaign helped to consolidate a modicum of authority for the dubiously elected president. Nonetheless, the results of the military offensive have been less than spectacular--a few hundred tons of bailed marijuana but virtually no cocaine, the key to U.S. drug fighters' hearts. The "capos", tipped off by the media ballyhoo, went to ground and no major arrests were made. To compensate, Calderon cracked down on urban street traffickers. The Mexican president's war on drugs seemed designed to impress the Bush administration with his loyalty to the Washington Consensus--which he cemented by promptly extraditing a handful of aging drug barons whom U.S. authorities had thirsted after for years. But the military offensive has been a badly-calculated quick fix that has redistributed drug markets, stirred counter-attacks, and turned relatively quiet states like Veracruz and Aguascalientes into killing floors as multi-sided internecine warfare between drug gangs, local, state, and federal police, and the military spreads throughout the country. May has been a particularly bloody month in Calderon's drug war with Baghdad-like numbers showing up from coast to coast and border to border--27 were cut down May 16th with many of the corpses trussed up and bearing marks of torture. much as in Iraq's homicidal sectarian fratracide. On the morning pistoleros took out Nemesio Lugo (who had an international reputation for breaking up cross-border prostitution rings and was a nephew of the late screen goddess Maria Felix), a commander of the Federal Investigation Agency was found shot and strangled in Tijuana. The day before (May 13th) an army captain was cut down in Guerrero. Since Calderon launched his offensive, the daily El Universal counts a thousand dead (the more conservative Reforma puts the numbers at 768), both estimates well ahead of the murderous pace of the Fox years. Meanwhile, the military has come under increasing fire, not only from the drug gangs (four soldiers were fatally ambushed in Aguascalientes in February, and five killed in Michoacan in April) but also from human rights advocates for alleged violations commited during assaults on small towns in Michoacan, Sinaloa, and other drug front states. National Commission for Human Rights ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes lists 52 accusations of abuses of individual guarantees in Michoacan alone, including the rape of five young women (four of them underage) by occupying troops, arbitrary arrests, home invasions, warrant less searches, and torture. The military has been stung by accusations of rape in recent months--a dozen soldiers were alleged to have gang-raped women in a Coahuila tavern while guarding ballots during the July election and troops stand accused of the rape-murder of a Nahua Indian grandmother, Ernestina Asencion, in the Zongolica Sierra of Veracruz. Southern Michoacan's "tierra caliente" is on the hot seat. Following the ambush of a military convoy in April, troops descended on the provincial city of Apatzingan where the entire police force had been arrested just last year, and opened fire on an alleged local drug lord's headquarters with bazookas and heavy artillery, killing all the occupants and sending neighbors, some of whom were brutally arrested, scurrying for cover. Because of such spectacles, the CNDH's Soberanes urges Calderon to order the military back to barracks--"it is not the army's function to be patrolling the streets." Instead, the ombudsman opts for a better-trained police. Back in the pre 9/11 '90s, when the U.S. still certified Mexico each year for its performance in Washington's War on Drugs, warriors like White House drug advisor General Barry McCaffery, discouraged by rampant corruption in Mexico's state and federal police agencies, urged presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo to entrust drug war responsibilities to the Mexican military. Within five years, a dozen generals were in prison for protecting narco lords including the general who headed up the Mexican branch of Washington's War on Drugs, Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, now doing 40 years for shielding a capo celebrated in song and story as "the Lord of the Skies", Amado Carrillo. Perhaps the most egregious example of the narco-corruption of the military was the defection of dozens of crack troops trained as drug fighters by the U.S. at the Center for Special Forces in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the Gulf Cartel where they become the most feared enforcers in the country, held accountable for multiple beheadings under the tutelage of their legendary leader "Tony Tormenta." But the ex-soldiers who dubbed themselves the "Zetas" or "Zs", have split into murderous territorial factions such as "La Familia" ("the Family") which distributed five heads on an Uruapan Michoacan dance floor last July or the "Zeta-10s" who last week deposited the severed head of an alleged informer outside a Veracruz military base. Perhaps the most colorful victim of narco violence during the bloody month of May may have been an unidentified cadaver that turned up in Tijuana wrapped in Christmas paper. The Lugo assassination in the heart of the capitol has inspired Calderon's supporters in the right-wing PAN party and the once-ruling PRI to clamor for sending the military into the streets of Mexico City, a bastion of the opposition left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and a move that would meet with "hard resistance" editorialized the national daily La Jornada in a masterstroke of understatement. After the July election was stolen from former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, millions marched and blocked the streets of the capitol for nearly two months. "Calderon is heading into dangerous waters," reflects author and analyst Carlos Montemayor, "he has picked a war he cannot win." Montemayor is a vocal advocate for decriminalization to take the profit out of drugs. "This is what motivates the violence." The new president's military offensive has been bad for the media which so lionizes it. Televisa correspondent Amado Ramirez was gunned down in Acapulco in April and two TV Azteca reporters were disappeared after covering Mother's Day festivities in the northern city of Monterrey. 20 Mexican reporters were murdered or disappeared during Fox's bloody six years in office, most of them taken down by the narco gangs. The escalating carnage south of the border gives U.S. officials reason to fret. Indeed, it must have dawned on security agencies on both sides of the border by now that the Lugo hit suggests the cartels have set their sights high. How safe Calderon is in his security bubble surrounded by thousands of bodyguards that are potentially corruptible by the cartels is crucial. The sense that the President's life is on the line strikes a dramatic chord down below. "It's like a big 'telenovela' (soap opera)--very diverting--but if I were Felipillo, I'd hire a double," comments Oscar Garcia, a street musician in the old quarter of the capital. If Calderon were to be taken out much as was Luis Donaldo Colosio, Salinas's heir apparent in Tijuana in 1994, political chaos would surely erupt here. There is no vice president and selection would be thrown to the congress where last July's election is still an open wound. The free-for-all for power would soon spread into widespread street violence and put the border on red alert. Indeed, one scenario, as detailed by former Pentagon boss Casper Weinberger in a long-ago volume "The Next War", would have Washington urging the Mexican military to take command or alternatively sending its own troops across the border to restore law and order. [John Ross is the author of Murdered By Capitalism and ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006. After 104 days on the road, Ross is back in Mexico tracking the late Brad Will through Oaxaca. Write him with any info you may have at johnross at igc.org] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:47:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:47:33 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Hyping another "terrorist Threat" - The Fort Dix Pizza Plot Message-ID: <20070521164733.0c5c5288@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - May 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/colson05212007.html Hyping Another Terrorist Threat Much Ado About the Fort Dix Pizza Plot By NICOLE COLSON To listen to government officials and the mainstream media, the six New Jersey men arrested for allegedly plotting an attack on the Fort Dix military base were well organized and nearly "ready to strike." But like all of the government's claimed victories in "fighting terrorism," there are disturbing holes in the story that should raise questions about scapegoating and scaremongering. The U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey announced May 8 that five men--Jordanian-born U.S. citizen Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer; Turkish-born legal U.S. resident Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia who were reportedly in the U.S. illegally--had been charged with "plotting to kill as many soldiers as possible in an armed assault at the Fort Dix Army base." A sixth defendant, Agron Abdullahu, a legal resident also from the former Yugoslavia, is charged with illegally holding weapons for the others. The FBI says it learned of the supposed plot when the men went to a Circuit City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of themselves onto a DVD. They were arrested after allegedly attempting to purchase weapons from an undercover FBI agent. According to the government, the men had conducted surveillance on Fort Dix, obtained computerized ballistic simulations and stolen a map of Fort Dix from a pizza shop located near the base in order to help plan their attack. But the extent of their supposed military-style "training" appears to be trips to a firing range in the Poconos and playing paintball in the woods. According to the Washington Post, the indictment against the men "indicates that the group had no rigorous military training and did not appear close to being able to pull off an attack." Nor do court papers indicate that the suspects themselves were convinced of their own supposed plan. At one point, for example, they express doubt at the thought of obtaining automatic weapons--noting that they are, after all, illegal. The media's reports on the arrests immediately deemed the six as "Muslim fanatics" and "Jersey jihadists." But some of the men were known to be not particularly religious. In fact, according to the New York Times, investigators have quietly admitted that "there is little indication that they were devout--or even practicing--Muslims." Perhaps most troubling, however, is the FBI's use of two paid "informants" in the case. One of the informants, according to the Times, "railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades." That begs the question: how far would the supposed "plot" have gone had the FBI not been there to push it forward? In fact, in November, Tatar himself contacted police in Philadelphia, telling a sergeant he had been approached by a man who "pressured him to acquire maps of Fort Dix." He even told the sergeant he was worried that that "the incident was terrorist-related." The Feds claim that Tatar was simply trying to throw off suspicion and determine if the first informer was a plant. But the fact that one of the defendants in a supposed terrorist cell actually called police to report possible terrorist activity raises serious questions about the truth of the government's claims. * * * Over-hyped declarations about terrorism prosecutions are nothing new for Bush administration. It has announced one high-profile terrorism case after another, but few have ever been substantiated, and many more have been riddled with racism, entrapment and abuses. Last fall, for example, several men of Middle Eastern descent were arrested in separate incidents in Ohio and Michigan on terrorism charges. They had aroused suspicion by buying too many cell phones--and, in one case, taking pictures of a bridge. Charges were later quietly dropped, but not until after the government smeared the men in the media as potential terrorists. A similar pattern has played out in the case of seven men of Haitian descent arrested in Florida last year on charges that they were plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. Though the charges are still pending, the case against the men rests on little more than the fact that they allegedly gave an FBI informant lists of shoe sizes in order to purchase military boots for them. Even the FBI was forced to admit that the plan was more "aspirational than operational." As a recent editorial in the Palm Beach Post commented, "[A]nyone heard lately about the so-called 'Miami 7'? The Justice Department with much ballyhoo last year claimed the five U.S. citizens, one legal permanent resident and one Haitian national had conspired with al-Qaeda 'to levy war against the United States'...But Justice may face an uphill climb to show how the men were anything other than poor, unsophisticated street vendors and easy dupes when the government's agent came casting suggestion." Then there is so-called "dirty-bomber" Jose Padilla, who spent more than three years in solitary confinement in a military brig as an officially designated enemy combatant for allegedly plotting to take part in an al-Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive bomb inside the U.S. When the Bush administration suddenly announced in November 2005 that federal criminal charges had been filed against Padilla, the indictment made no mention of the dirty bomb plot or most of the other original charges. Today, Padilla's lawyers say he has been so psychologically damaged by the physical and psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of the government that he can no longer participate in his own defense. Likewise, former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian remains in prison today despite the fact that a jury acquitted him of the most serious terrorism charges against him and deadlocked on several lesser counts. To end his imprisonment and be reunited with his family, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of supporting the nonviolent activities of a Palestinian charity. Yet his release date has come and gone, and he remains behind bars--because federal prosecutors now claim he is a "material witness" to other trumped-up terrorism prosecutions, and want to force him to testify. Despite government assertions, the truth is that Al-Arian has been prosecuted for his political beliefs and defense of Palestinian rights--not for any "terrorism." * * * A closer look at the government's own records show that the "war on terror" has yielded few convictions. Late last year, a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that in the first eight months of 2006, the Justice Department prosecuted 46 international terrorism cases--but declined to bring charges in 209 cases that the FBI or other agencies had referred, frequently because of a lack of real evidence. "It is clear that the prosecutors are deciding that a lot of the investigations being recommended do not cut the mustard and do not meet their standards," David Burnham, the co-director of TRAC, told the New York Times. In all, the study found that in nearly 6,500 cases treated as "terrorism" investigations by the Justice Department since September 11, only about one in five defendants have been convicted. And the average sentence for those convicted in "international terrorism" cases was just 20 to 28 days, and many received no jail time at all, the study found. The reason: Many of these cases involve lesser charges like immigration violations or fraud. In other words, the prosecutions that the government labels as being about "terrorism" are almost never actually about terrorism. In fact, a February audit released by the Justice Department's inspector general found that the department usually "could not provide support for the numbers reported or could not identify the terrorism link used to classify statistics as terrorism-related." Convictions for immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking were counted as "terrorism convictions" by the Justice Department. Such cases included: charges brought against a marriage-broker for being paid to arrange six fraudulent marriages between Tunisians and U.S. citizens; the prosecution of a Mexican citizen who falsely identified himself as another person in a passport application; and the case of a suspect charged with dealing firearms without a license. As one anonymous former prosecutor recently told Truthout.org's William Fisher, "U.S. attorneys are well aware of their bosses' priorities. Since 9/11, all of them have been under pressure to bring terrorism prosecutions. "In many cases, that has led them and their superiors, as well as prominent politicians, to call high-profile press conferences where they announce terrorism charges against people, but when they show up in court, there are no actual terrorism charges." [Nicole Colson writes for the Socialist Worker.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:48:47 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:48:47 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bush's immigration deal faces battle in Congress Message-ID: <20070521164847.012e650f@viola.tamara-b.org> FP - May 21, 2007 http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070521134253.mqx44i8r.html Bush's immigration deal faces battle in Congress WASHINGTON (AFP) - Battle lines were drawn Monday as US lawmakers girded for debate on a sweeping immigration overhaul that President George W. Bush hopes will compete with Iraq to shape his legacy. After marathon talks, Bush on Thursday won support from key senators for a bill to legalize as many as 12 million undocumented workers now in the United States. Senators backing the bill are hoping to hustle it through a debate in Congress from Monday, with all aware that delays could see it fall victim to the upcoming national election cycle, as it did last year. But the bill has already run into hostility, forcing Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to insist that it does not amount to an "amnesty" for the millions now in the country unlawfully. To gain legal status, they would have to pay fines and undergo a criminal background check, he said on CNN Sunday. "I have the impression that perhaps for some people, the only thing that would not be amnesty is mass deportation," added Gutierrez, whose family fled to the United States from Cuba when he was a child. "We don't think that is practical. We don't think that's logical. We don't think that's humane. And that would hurt our economy." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stressed that the bill also contains ramped-up security including a fence, radar towers, aerial surveillance and 18,000 more patrol agents along the Mexican border. Senators who crafted the compromise, like veteran Democrat Edward Kennedy, are pushing their hefty bill to a procedural vote on Monday that critics argue would short-circuit debate. Chertoff urged critics to come forward with a better solution. "But if all people want to do is complain and say, well, this isn't good enough, that's the Goldilocks solution, where it's always too hot or too cold," he said on CNN. "I think the public has lost patience with that and they want us to fix the problem." The bipartisan compromise establishes a temporary worker program, under which illegal aliens could apply for a renewable "Z" visa and pay a 1,000-dollar fine. Participants could eventually seek permanent residency and citizenship, but only after returning to their countries of origin and paying an additional 4,000-dollar fine. Bush, his popularity slumping over the war in Iraq, hopes the bill will earn him an enduring policy success towards the end of a second term that has been short on domestic legislative breakthroughs. In Bush's first term, with Congress under Republican control, his immigration reforms succeeded in the Senate but were blocked by the House of Representatives ahead of last November's elections. In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush said the reform will "restore respect for the law, and meet the legitimate needs of our economy." But Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives who is considering a 2008 White House run, called the bill "a big-government fantasy with no hope of becoming reality." Republican Representative Tom Tancredo, a long-shot presidential candidate, called the plan "a slap in the face" of hard-working Americans. His colleague from New York, Peter King, took a dim view of the fine immigrants seeking legal status will have to pay. "Basically, you're buying your way into the country for 5,000 dollars," King said. But Senator Mel Martinez, another Cuban-born Republican, said the bill "could be the saving of the Republican party." "I hope we can move the bill through the Senate this week," he told CNN. Liberal Democrats objected that the plan would limit the right of legal immigrants to be joined by their families, instead favoring applicants with higher education and skills. In an ABC News interview broadcast Sunday, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill was correct to address the growing backlog of foreign aliens waiting for US papers. "But the family unification principles which had been fundamental to American immigration are disrupted by what is there now," she said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:50:09 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:50:09 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Smithsonian alters climate change exhibit in fear of Bush Message-ID: <20070521165009.0cecbc64@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 21, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SMITHSONIAN_CLIMATE_CHANGE?SITE=ININS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Smithsonian accused of altering exhibit By BRETT ZONGKER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum. Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year's exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Also, officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered "to show that global warming could go either way," Sullivan said. "It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down," said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after 16 years at the museum. He said he left after higher-ups tried to reassign him. Smithsonian officials denied that political concerns influenced the exhibit, saying the changes were made for reasons of objectivity. And some scientists who consulted on the project said nothing major was omitted. Sullivan said that to his knowledge, no one in the Bush administration pressured the Smithsonian, whose $1.1 billion budget is mostly taxpayer-funded. Rather, he said, Smithsonian leaders acted on their own. "The obsession with getting the next allocation and appropriation was so intense that anything that might upset the Congress or the White House was being looked at very carefully," he said. White House spokeswoman Kristen Hellmer said Monday: "The White House had no role in this exhibit." In recent months, the White House has been accused of trying to muzzle scientists researching global warming at NASA and other agencies. The exhibit, "Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely," based partly on a report by federal scientists, opened in April 2006 - six months late, because of the Smithsonian's review - and closed in November, but its content remains available online. Among other things, it highlighted the Arctic's shrinking ice and snow and concerns about the effect on people and wildlife. This is not the first time the Smithsonian has been accused of taking politics into consideration. The congressionally chartered institution scaled down a 1995 exhibit of the restored Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans complained it focused too much on the damage and deaths. Amid the oil-drilling debate in 2003, a photo exhibit of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was moved to a less prominent space. Sullivan said the changes in the climate-change exhibit were requested by executives who included then-museum Director Cristian Samper and his boss, former Undersecretary for Science David Evans. He said several scientists whose work was used in the exhibit objected to the changes. Samper, now acting Smithsonian secretary, said he was not aware of scientists' objections, and he emphasized there was no political pressure to change the script. "Our role as a museum is to present the facts but not advocate a particular point of view," Samper said in an e-mail. Evans refused to comment. Randall Kremer, a spokesman for the natural history museum, said atmospheric science was outside the Smithsonian's expertise, so the museum avoided the issue of what is causing the Arctic changes. Many leading scientists have come to believe that human activity is contributing to warming of the planet. "I see it in some ways as similar to the sort-of debate that has taken place with regard to the science of evolution," said Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. "Just as I would hope that the Smithsonian would stand firmly behind the science of evolution, it would also be my hope that they would stand firmly behind the science that supports influence on climate. Politically, they may be controversial, but scientifically they are not." Some curators and scientists involved in the project said they believed nothing important was omitted. But they also said it was apparent that science was not the only concern. "I remember them telling me there was an attempt to make sure there was nothing in there that would be upsetting to any politicians," said John Calder, a lead climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who consulted on the project. "They're not stupid. They don't want to upset the people who pay them." One consultant, University of Maryland scientist Louis Codispoti, said he would have been less cautious. "I've been going to the Arctic since 1963, and I find some of the changes alarming," he said. On the Net: Smithsonian Forces of Change Arctic Exhibit: http://forces.si.edu ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:51:36 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:51:36 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Taliban attacks kill 14 Afghan police Message-ID: <20070521165136.0ad73b6f@viola.tamara-b.org> AFP - May 21, 2007 http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070521164209.fn3bvd0m.html Taliban attacks kill 14 Afghan police KABUL (AFP) - New Taliban attacks killed 14 Afghan policemen, police announced Monday, as the US-led coalition said its warplanes had bombed rebel compounds in hours of intense fighting that left 25 militants dead. Most of the deaths were part of a weekend of bloodshed, with two Taliban suicide blasts killing nearly 20 people, including three German soldiers, and military strikes in the east said to have killed more than 100 insurgents. The bodies of 11 of the policemen were recovered on Sunday, a day after they were killed by Taliban fighters in the southern province of Helmand, a police commander told AFP on condition of anonymity. News of the killings was brought by a sole surviving policeman who made it to the town of Gereshk a day after the bloody incident, the official added. The Taliban said it was responsible. Three more policemen, including a district counter-criminal chief, were killed in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Monday by a remote-controlled bomb similar to those regularly used by the Taliban, a police spokesman said. "Seven other policemen were injured. It was the work of the Taliban," provincial police spokesman Abdul Ghafoor told AFP. The US-led coalition said meanwhile soldiers fought militants for 14 hours Sunday in Helmand's district of Sangin, where the extremist militia's top commander Mullah Dadullah was found dead 10 days ago. There were "several confirmed enemy deaths," the coalition said in a statement. The Afghan defence ministry said separately "during this operation 25 of our enemies were killed." The fighting started when a patrol was attacked three kilometres (two miles) from the Sangin district centre, which was brought under government control in early April after being in Taliban hands. Attackers were reinforced by about 50 men who arrived on foot and in small boats down the Helmand River, the coalition said. Air support was called in and bombed seven compounds. The warplanes were also directed against fighters spotted repositioning for an ambush, it said. The US-led coalition helped to topple the extremist Taliban from government in late 2001 and is now focused on hunting down Taliban militants and their allies in Al-Qaeda. The force works alongside a separate and larger NATO-led deployment that is also battling rebels, with the larger aim of securing areas to allow for development. NATO's International Security Assistance Force launched a major operation more than two months ago to secure lawless Helmand but the province still appears largely out of government control. In another report of casualties to Taliban fighters, the provincial governor of Khost said he had "credible information" that 20 were killed in return fire after they attacked a police checkpost in a remote border town early Monday. The rebels were however able to remove the bodies, the governor Arsala Jamal told AFP. A Taliban spokesman confirmed the fighting but denied the casualties. Insurgency-linked violence has intensified across Afghanistan this year with more than 1,500 people, most of them rebels, estimated to have been killed. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:52:21 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:52:21 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bush, NATO chief deplore Afghan civilian losses Message-ID: <20070521165221.387ef9f8@viola.tamara-b.org> AFP - May 21, 2007 http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070521190018.w6dfrp9l.html Bush, NATO chief deplore Afghan civilian losses CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush and visiting NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Monday deplored Afghan civilian deaths in alliance air strikes but blamed the losses on Taliban tactics. After talks at Bush's Texas ranch, the two leaders also insisted on the need for NATO unity in the face of the Islamist militia's resurgence, while Bush pushed allies to share more of the burdens of battle. Amid painful Russia-NATO tensions, the US president also promised to reach out to persuade Moscow that a planned US missile defense system is aimed at "other nations" that could target Europe. But Afghan anger at NATO strikes that have killed civilians and demolished homes loomed large over the meeting, amid complaints from Kabul and worries in Washington that such attacks may carry a high price in public support. "To Afghans who have lost innocent civilians, we grieve with you. To the Afghani families that have been affected by the Taliban using them as shields, you know, we have great sympathy," said the president. "We do not have sympathy, however, for the tactics of the Taliban," Bush added, amid the anger in Afghanistan at NATO strikes that UN and Afghan investigations found have killed civilians, including women and children. "Let me tell you one thing: We are not in the same moral category as our opponents, as the Taliban in Afghanistan," Scheffer said, stressing that NATO forces "still have the support of the large majority of the Afghan people." "Every innocent civilian fatality, death, is one too many. But in a conflict, it is, from time to time, unavoidable," he said. "We still have very much the hearts and minds of the Afghan people." Bush signaled that he would keep pushing other North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to provide more manpower and lift restrictions some impose on their troops engaging in battle. "I pledged to the secretary general we'll work with our NATO allies to convince them that they must share more of the burden and must all share the risks in meeting our goal," said the US president. "Afghanistan is still one of the front lines in our fight against terrorism, and it is my strong conviction that that front line should not become a fault line," said Scheffer. "And that is why it's so important that all 26 NATO allies are committed to Afghanistan, and that the whole international community, for the longer term, stays committed to that nation," the NATO secretary general said. About 37,000 NATO-led troops are in Afghanistan, including 15,000 US soldiers. Another 12,000 US soldiers operate separately under their own command. On missile defense, Bush promised: "I will continue to reach out to Russia." Bush noted that he had recently sent US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides "that this missile shield is not directed at them, but, in fact, directed at other nations that could conceivably affect the peace of Europe." The two leaders also discussed the final status of Kosovo, where NATO has about 16,000 troops, as well as issues related to the alliance's eastward expansion -- both sore points in relations with Russia. "I pledged to the secretary general that I'll work with nations that are interested in becoming a part of NATO over the next year to make sure they meet the requirements necessary for a country to be accepted into NATO," said Bush. "The nations who are knocking on NATO's door need encouragement, but they also need to perform further reforms so that we can have a successful summit in the spring of next year," said Scheffer. NATO hopefuls include Albania, Croatia and Macedonia. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:53:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:53:19 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] 7 Killed on Bus in Iraq; Parliament Hit Message-ID: <20070521165319.70e9f004@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 21, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=MOSPL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT 7 Killed on Bus in Iraq; Parliament Hit By RAVI NESSMAN Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD (AP) -- Gunmen in two cars attacked a minibus heading to Baghdad from a Shiite town north of the capital Monday, killing seven passengers, including a child, police said. A mortar shell hit the roof of the parliament building inside the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad, but no one was injured, a lawmaker said. Thousands of soldiers, meanwhile, continued combing through fields and questioning suspects as the search for three missing U.S. soldiers continued following a May 12 ambush south of Baghdad that killed four other soldiers and their interpreter. The minibus, which left the town of Khalis, was driving near the violence-wracked city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, when it was ambushed outside the town of Hibhib, police said. The attack underscored the sectarian violence and instability that continues to plague Diyala province north of Baghdad despite the three-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding areas. In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a group of Iraqi soldiers patrolling the Sunni-dominated Adil neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing three of the soldiers and injuring two. In the confusion of the attack, the soldiers fired near the office of Adnan al-Dulaimi, the leader of parliament's largest Sunni Arab bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, according to his office. No one was injured. The stepped-up U.S. and Iraqi patrols of the capital during the crackdown have left the troops more vulnerable to attack by insurgents, military officials say. The U.S. military reported Sunday that six U.S. soldiers on patrol in Baghdad were killed in a roadside bombing along with their interpreter on Saturday. A seventh soldier died in a blast Saturday in Diwaniya, a mostly Shiite city 80 miles south of the capital, where radical Shiite militias operate. Those deaths brought the number of American troops killed in Iraq since Friday to at least 15 - eight of them in Baghdad. So far, at least 71 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month - most of them from bombs. Meanwhile, President Bush spoke Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to mark the one-year anniversary of al-Maliki's inauguration. "The president reaffirmed his confidence in the prime minister and noted the courage that he has shown in a challenging and difficult year," Bush spokesman Tony Fratto said. The leaders discussed political progress in Iraq, and al-Maliki gave Bush updates on oil-sharing legislation and efforts to reform the country's constitution. Fratto said it is hard to pin down when the Iraqi government will deliver on its promises of political reconciliation. "Obviously we want the Iraqis and the Iraqi parliament to move as quickly as possible," Fratto said. "Progress on advancing these initiatives is not moving as quickly as anyone wants - and I think that includes Prime Minister Maliki and many members of parliament." The mortar shell that hit the parliament building landed almost above the office of the parliament speaker and caused only minor damage, said lawmaker Sabah al-Saadi, who was at a committee meeting inside at the time. A few hours later, several more mortar rounds were fired. Some of them landed in the Green Zone, but there were no reports of casualties, the U.S. Embassy said. An April 12 suicide bombing in the parliament's dining hall killed one lawmaker. The blast was part of a sharp increase in recent weeks of mortar attacks on the Green Zone, which also houses other Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. The compound, on the banks of the Tigris River, is surrounded by cement walls and patrolled by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, as well as private security guards. Amid the almost daily mortar barrages, people living inside have questioned whether it is truly safe to remain there. Journalists have also been targeted by the violence, and the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported Monday that one of its reporters, Ali Khalil, 22, was kidnapped while leaving a relative's house in the increasingly volatile Baiyaa neighborhood of Baghdad and found dead several hours later. Khalil was survived by his wife and 1-week-old baby, the newspaper said. The attack came three days after two Iraqi journalists working for ABC News were ambushed and killed on their way home from work. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said 104 journalists - not including Khalil - have been killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. About 80 percent of the journalists killed were Iraqi, according to CPJ. In other violence Monday, two gunmen killed two police officers as they walked by the police station in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Insurgents also fired mortar rounds into a bank in Baqouba as customers were waiting in line to collect their pensions, killing two people, police said. Violence also hit the southern city of Basra, with gunmen killing one police officer and wounding another in an attack on their patrol, police said. Police also reported that the chief of customs in Basra, Col. Khalaf al-Badran, escaped injury when a roadside bomb struck his convoy as it left the airport. And a fuel tanker was damaged when it was hit by a roadside bomb, police said. Two Republican senators said Sunday at an international conference hosted by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum in Jordan that the U.S. has evidence Iran sent weapons and trainers to instruct militants in Iraq to carry out terror attacks. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told a panel discussion on Iraq's future that during a trip last week to Iraq, he saw "evidence that Iran was supplying weapons and bomb-making components to Iraqi terrorists." A former Iranian government official, who was on the same panel, denied the claims. "Iraq is already so full of arms that it doesn't need arms from Iran," said hard-liner Mohammed J.A. Larijani, a former deputy foreign minister and brother to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. But Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., told the panel he saw "confiscated Iranian weapons" and captured Iranians who confessed to a mission to train Iraqi extremists. ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:54:39 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:54:39 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] IRAQ: Where Nobody Is Accountable Message-ID: <20070521165439.0e8cd086@viola.tamara-b.org> InterPress Servce - May 21, 2007 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37814 IRAQ: Where Nobody Is Accountable by Ali al-Fadhily BAGHDAD, May 21 (IPS) - Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of education - the list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong. It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say. "It is good of these people to discuss accountability for theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi blood," Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS. The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by July 2006, 655,000 people had died as "a consequence of the war." It has reported that the risk of death among civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. "By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason, and many millions disabled or badly injured just because of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington," Ahmed said. "We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them even if takes us a lifetime." But Iraqis have no means to take action against occupiers. The United States has not accepted jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which has the power to investigate complaints of genocide. The United States took the view that the court could conduct "politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel." U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of its closest allies. But Iraqis have found no way to proceed against these either. With no doors of justice open to them, many Iraqis are now taking to unlawful ways to hit back at occupation forces and government targets. "The only way to do it is at gunpoint," 32-year-old Ali Aziz from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS. "They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous to talk about any other way of getting back what belongs to us." Aziz said he had lost several friends in attacks by U.S. soldiers. "The whole world is dealing with this in a hypocritical way, and there is only us to claim our rights the way we find proper." The human rights group al-Raya filed a case in a local court in Fallujah against U.S. forces in 2004, following a massive military crackdown. About three-quarters of all buildings in the city were destroyed or heavily damaged during the U.S. assault in November 2004. But U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces have hit out at the human rights group. "The secretary-general for the organisation has now been arrested by Fallujah police for reasons that we are not aware of, and the organisation is not functioning any more," a member of the board, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS in Baghdad. "It is not the right time to talk about accountability when daily killings by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are still ongoing. God knows if it will ever be possible." A case for accountability could well be made. A judge from the United States wrote at the time of the trial of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg in Germany in 1946: "To initiate a war of aggression?is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was judged by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Sep. 16, 2004 as "an illegal act that contravened the UN charter." The lack of accountability appears now to be leading to greater support for armed resistance against occupation forces. "What accountability are you talking about, sir," said Abu Jassim from Fallujah, who lost four members of his family when a U.S. bomb destroyed his home during the first U.S. offensive in the city in April 2004. "Americans are criminals, and the whole world is covering up for their crimes." They will be held accountable, he said, by "Allah" and by "the heroes of the Iraqi resistance." Iraqis are also angry over destruction of their civilian infrastructure, for which no one has been held responsible. "The U.S. crime of deliberately crushing Iraqi infrastructure must be looked at as a crime against humanity," chief engineer Jalal Abdulla at Baghdad's Ministry of Electricity told IPS. "They did not have to do this to support their military effort, but they did it just to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths for no reason but cruelty." Others vent their frustration against what they see as an impotent United Nations. "The UN should be the place for asking those Americans why they committed so many crimes in Iraq," said Baghdad resident Malik Hammad. [Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region] (END/2007) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:55:55 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:55:55 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Lebanese Army Shells Refugee Camp Message-ID: <20070521165555.3ece14e0@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 21, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LEBANON_VIOLENCE?SITE=MOSPL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Lebanese Army Shells Refugee Camp By BASSEM MROUE Associated Press Writer TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) -- Lebanese troops pounded a Palestinian refugee camp with artillery and tank fire for a second day Monday, raising huge columns of smoke as they battled a militant group suspected of ties to al-Qaida in the worst violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. Nearly 50 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting Sunday, but it was not known how many civilians have been killed inside the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli. Palestinian officials in the camp reported at least nine civilians were killed Monday, along with 40 wounded. The figures could not be confirmed because emergency workers or security officials have not been able to get in. The White House said it supports Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's efforts to deal with fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a "legitimate manner" against "provocations by violent extremists" operating in the camp. Black smoke filled the sky over Nahr el-Bared as fires raged for hours and heavy gunfire and explosions rang out constantly. Shells could be seen thudding into buildings in the seaside camp. Fighting paused briefly in the afternoon to allow the evacuation of 18 wounded civilians, according to Saleh Badran of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. But the fighting quickly resumed. Ambulances raced through the streets of nearby Tripoli, where many shops were closed and many residents stayed inside. "There are many wounded. We're under siege. There is a shortage of bread, medicine and electricity. There are children under the rubble," Sana Abu Faraj, a refugee, told Al-Jazeera television by cell phone from the camp. Late Monday, residents reported an explosion in a Muslim neighborhood of Beirut, the capital. The Future TV station said the blast occurred in the Verdun shopping area, while Hezbollah's Al-Manar television said it took place in a parking lot in the posh district. Television footage showed a burning car and at least one injured man. On Sunday night, a bomb near a mall in the Christian sector of the capital killed a woman and wounded 12 other people. Lebanon was already in the midst of its worst political crisis between the Western-backed government and Hezbollah-led opposition since the end of the civil war. The battle was an unprecedented showdown between the Lebanese army and militant groups that have arisen in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps, which are home to tens of thousands of people living amid poverty and crime and which Lebanese troops are not allowed to enter. The troops were fighting a group called Fatah Islam, whose leader has said he is inspired by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and was training militants for attacks in other countries. Lebanese officials have also accused Syria of using Fatah Islam to stir up trouble in Lebanon, a charge Damascus has denied. Lebanese officials said one of the men killed Sunday was a suspect in a failed German train bombing - another indication the camp had become a refuge for Fatah Islam militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon. In the past, others affiliated with the group in the camp have said they were aiming to send trained fighters into Iraq and the group's leader has been linked to al-Qaida in Iraq. Hundreds of Lebanese troops, backed by tanks and armored carriers, surrounded the refugee camp Monday. M-48 battle tanks unleashed their cannon fire on the camp, home to 30,000 Palestinian refugees. The militants fired mortars toward the troops at daybreak. An army officer at the front line said troops directed concentrated fire at buildings known to house militants. He said troops also had orders to strike hard at any target that returned fire. "Everything we know that they were present in has been targeted," he told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. A spokesman for Fatah Islam, Abu Salim, warned that if the army bombardment did not stop, the militants would step up attacks by rockets and artillery "and would take the battle outside Tripoli." He did not elaborate. "It is a life-or-death battle. Their aim is to wipe out Fatah Islam. We will respond and we know how to respond," he told the AP. Earlier in the day, another refugee camp, Ein el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon, was tense after Lebanese troops surrounded it and armed militants went on alert. At least 27 soldiers and 20 militants were killed Sunday, Lebanese security officials said. But they did not know how many civilians had been killed in the camp because it is off-limits to their authority. Lebanon says it has no authority to enter the camps under understandings with the Palestinians that give the PLO the authority in the camps. But Lebanon also is believed to be leery of entering for fear that any such actions would cause widespread unrest, be very costly and could spark pan-Arab sympathy for the Palestinian refugees that would trigger a backlash against the country. The clashes were triggered Sunday when police raided suspected Fatah Islam hideouts in several buildings in Tripoli, searching for men wanted in a recent bank robbery. A gunbattle erupted at one of the buildings between the group's fighters, and troops were called in to help the police. Militants then burst out of the nearby refugee camp, seizing Lebanese army positions, capturing two armored vehicles and ambushing troops. Lebanese troops later laid siege to the camp, where Fatah Islam militants were believed to be hiding. Fatah Islam is led by a Palestinian named Shaker al-Absi, who is wanted in three countries. He is believed to have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. He told The New York Times in March that he was trying to spread al-Qaida's ideology and was training fighters inside the camp for attacks on other countries. He would not specify which countries but expressed anger toward the United States. And he was sentenced to death earlier in absentia along with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed last summer by U.S. forces in Iraq, for the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan. In a news conference in March, al-Absi denied he was sending fighters to Iraq. "Fighting in our homeland (Palestine) is more important," he said then. "We have no connection with any regime or organization on this earth. Our connection is with 'There is no God but God' (the slogan of Islam). We have come to raise it over the skies of Jerusalem." Al-Absi had been in custody in Syria until last fall but was released and set up his group in the camp, where he apparently found recruits, Lebanese officials said. Lebanon's national police commander, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, said Damascus was using Fatah Islam as a covert way to wreak havoc in the country. He denied Fatah Islam's al-Qaida links, saying it was a Syrian-bred group. "Perhaps there are some deluded people among them but they are not al-Qaida. This is imitation al-Qaida, a 'Made in Syria' one," he told the AP. Lebanese security officials said Fatah Islam has up to 100 members who come from Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Syria, as well as local sympathizers who belong to the conservative Salafi branch of Islam. The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. TV station reported the dead militants included men from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab countries. Some wore explosive belts, security officials said. Officials identified the suspect in the failed German train bombing as Saddam El-Hajdib, the fourth-highest ranking official in the Fatah Islam group, an official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. El-Hajdib had been on trial in absentia in Lebanon in the failed German plot. It was unclear whether Lebanese authorities had known the whereabouts of El-Hajdib or al-Absi before the gunbattle first broke Sunday out in Tripoli. White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said the Bush administration is concerned about the fighting. "We believe the parties should take a step back from violence," he said. The State Department gave its support to the Lebanese army's battle with Fatah Islam. "This is a group that has been involved in violence to achieve whatever their stated objective may be," spokesman Sean McCormack said. McCormack declined to discuss whether the group may be tied to al-Qaida or other groups outside Lebanon. Asked about a possible Syrian link, McCormack said, "At this point I wouldn't draw that connection." In Monday's fighting, a driver for the AP, working with journalists at the scene, was injured when he was hit in the thigh by a bullet or shrapnel. He was being treated at a hospital and was expected to recover. Ahmed Methqal, a Muslim cleric in the camp, told Al-Jazeera that five civilians had been killed. "You can say there is a massacre going on in the camp of children and women who have nothing to do with Fatah Islam," he said. "They are targeting buildings, with people in them." Lebanon has struggled to defeat armed groups that control pockets of the country - especially inside the 12 Palestinian refugee camps housing 350,000 people. Some camps have become havens for Islamic militants accused of carrying out attacks in the country and of sending recruits to fight U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq. Palestinian officials from the moderate Fatah faction in the West Bank sought to distance themselves from Fatah Islam and urged Palestinian refugees in the camp to isolate the militant group. Khaled Mashaal, exiled political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, asked Saniora to take "necessary procedures" to ensure refugees in the camp are not harmed. [Associated Press Writer Hussein Dakroub in Beirut contributed.] ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:57:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:57:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Wolfowitz: Werewolf of Washington Message-ID: <20070521165735.4e4ae0f9@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - May 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/fleischman05212007.html Werewolf of Washington: Wolfowitz Comes Full Circle By STEPHEN FLEISCHMAN >From under what rock did he emerge that made it necessary to drag him kicking and screaming out of two capitalist entities, the US Department of Defense and the World Bank? Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is no run-of-the-mill political bureaucrat. He's a neo-con with teeth. His last rampage of destruction at the World Bank, a supposedly goody-goody organization of banks, dispenses loans to third world countries thereby putting them into debt. This is nothing but an ingenious way of impoverishing them further, an imperialist tactic, making it easier to control their regimes and steal their resources. The United States contributes most of the funds so they have most of the clout in running the Bank. Making Wolfowitz president of the World Bank Group was an example of that clout. When he got the job, in 2005, he was criticized for keeping aid from reaching places where it was needed. He promised to fight government corruption, but charges of nepotism hanging over him gave Wolfowitz an aura of hypocrisy, and skepticism about his anti-corruption promises was widespread. The way he ran the Bank, primarily with the interest of the United States in mind, raised the hackles of some of the other countries that had an interest in how the Bank dispensed its cash. Other capitalist nations wanted their fair share of the pie. Wolfowitz shot himself in the foot when he promoted his girl friend, an employee at the World Bank, giving her a whopping raise. That must have been the last straw for a majority of participating banks; the wedge used to get him out. After some pawing of the ground, backing and filling, a compromise was reached. Wolfowitz threw in the towel. Part of the deal, it seems, was that the United States will be able, again, to pick the replacement. The World Bank, apparently, is the place where discredited US Secretaries of Defense go to die. Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense in the Lyndon Johnson and Nixon Administrations, wound up in that job after the ignominious defeat in Vietnam. Iraq looks like d?j? vu all over again. But Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, under Donald Rumsfeld, isn't dead yet. As Neo-con in Chief, he did a yeoman job helping to engineering the Iraq war in 2003. His claim to fame was his ability to make the intelligence fit the policy. Wolfowitz was widely seen as one of the most hawkish of the neo-cons in the Republican Party. In the fourth year of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is left, with the rest of us, contemplating the catastrophe that he, and the Bush Administration has concocted. He must have seen the handwriting on the wall and beat a hasty retreat with a little shove from his friends, leaving his neo-conservative colleagues there to pick up the pieces or look for another place to start a war, like Iran, perhaps. So what will Wolfowitz's next adventure be? We can only surmise from his past history. One example of where Wolfowitz was coming from--his appointment as Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia from 1986-89 while General Suharto was its president, a period of turmoil when East Timor was trying to free itself from Indonesian rule. Joseph Nevins, an assistant professor at Vassar College and author of a book on East Timor, says of Wolfowitz during that period: "He consistently argued against East Timorese self-determination, a position he maintained through 1999. While he sometimes criticized the Indonesian military's more high-profile atrocities, his opposition to any talk favoring an Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor--as demanded by the United Nations--lent credibility to Indonesia's presence in East Timor, facilitating the very atrocities he occasionally decried." ABC News reported that "thousands of leftists detained after the 1965 US- backed military coup that brought Suharto to power were still languishing in jail without trial." ABC News reported further that "tens of thousands of people in East Timor, a country Suharto's troops occupied in 1975, died during the 1980s in a series of army anti-insurgency offensives." "Wolfowitz went to East Timor and saw abuses going on, but kept quiet," said Binny Buchori of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development. In 1989, Paul Wolfowitz joined the administration of George Bush, 41, as Under-Secretary for Defense Policy which happened to be under then Secretary of Defense Dick Chaney, who is now Vice President Dick Chaney in the administration of George Bush, 43. So Paul Dundes Wolfowitz has come full circle. [Stephen Fleischman, television writer-director-producer, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC, starting in 1953. In 1959, he participated in the formation of the renowned Murrow-Friendly "CBS Reports" series. In 1983, Fleischman won the prestigious Columbia University-DuPont Television Journalism Award. In 2004, he wrote his memoir. See: http://www.ARedintheHouse.com/, E-mail: stevefl at ca.rr.com ] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 16:59:40 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:59:40 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Calif AG Jerry Brown Slams Bush on Environment Message-ID: <20070521165940.15f82397@viola.tamara-b.org> Newsweek - May 21, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18783412/site/newsweek/?from=rss Jerry Brown Slams Bush on Environment He?s already filed one lawsuit against the Bush administration over its environmental policies. As California?s colorful attorney general arrives in Washington, he?s threatening another. By Karen Breslau Newsweek May 21, 2007 - Time hasn?t mellowed Jerry Brown much. It has been 30 years since he arrived on the political scene in California as a young governor and Democratic presidential candidate. Since then, he?s studied Buddhism, tended to the sick alongside Mother Theresa, held forth as a radio talk-show host and run the city of Oakland. Throughout, he?s been a firebrand on environmental issues?and he?s continued that crusade in his current job as California?s attorney general. Since the Supreme Court ruled last month that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants subject to regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, individual states?led by California?have been pushing the federal government to restrict greenhouse gases emitted by cars, known as ?tailpipe emissions.? On Tuesday, Brown will ask the EPA to allow California and 12 other states to impose their own stricter standards on tailpipe emissions?or else, he says, California will sue the federal government. Although Brown took office only four months ago, this is not his first environmental battle with the Bush administration: last week, California sued the administration in federal court, arguing that Washington?s fuel-economy standards for SUVs are too lax [the Bush administration believes the fleet average is sufficient?and points out that the president has ordered tougher standards for the future]. With his black Labrador Dharma at his side, Brown spoke with NEWSWEEK?s Karen Breslau in San Francisco. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: You're taking the feds to task for what? Jerry Brown: For not doing anything. [Last week], we were in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals here in San Francisco arguing that the Bush administration's standards for SUV mileage were pathetic. I'd even say scandalous. They are calling for an increase of one mile a gallon. One. They haven't really taken a real step at fuel efficiency and reducing global warming. The point is, we have a crisis in terms of our oil dependency, unstable Middle East, rising gas prices and worsening climate change. The president recently said virtually the same thing about the need to reduce the country's oil addiction. Then why hasn't he done it? Why didn't he [raise fuel-economy standards] by 10 miles a gallon, or why didn't he say it five years ago? No, Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney are oil people. They think like oil people, they act like oil people. Oil people want to sell oil. They love the high price, which is caused by the scarcity, which is caused by the excess consumption. If cars in America were dramatically more efficient, the price of oil would be lower today. That's the facts. I mean we have an oil administration. That's in part why they went into Iraq; it's all tied together. It's profit; it's real money to real people. And that's what's at stake here. So you are going after the federal government on two fronts: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and increasing vehicle fuel-efficiency standards? The very day Bush is in the Rose Garden talking about a plan to reduce fuel consumption, he has his own lawyers in San Francisco defending a fuel-efficiency standard for light trucks that calls for an increase of 1.3 miles per gallon. It's not serious?relative to the magnitude of the problem, relative to the climate change, to our oil dependency, to terrorism. [America] ridiculed [former president Jimmy] Carter, but he warned us. Congress first passed [fuel-economy] standards in 1975. The auto standards haven't increased since 1985. What we have here is a White House that is engaging in an elaborate smoke dance to cover their do-nothing approach. It's dangerous, it's scandalous, and I'm doing everything I can to expose it. If Bush wants to do anything, he can tell his EPA to grant California its waiver, and then California and 12 other states that have signed on can reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles. And cutting greenhouse gases is California's way of ordering an increase in fuel efficiency at the same time? That's certainly one way to do it. Under the Clean Air Act, California historically has been granted the permission to set its own stricter standards. Once the Supreme Court says that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, California can say under the Clean Air Act ?Cut your CO2.? The automobile companies need to figure out how to do that. One of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of gasoline they burn. And the practical effect is that they'll have to be more efficient, or get us electric cars, get us a new engine. But they killed the electric car too. [The auto industry] is fighting; their survival as they see it depends on doing virtually nothing about either oil dependency or CO2. What are you basing that on? They've rigged the [fuel-efficiency] standards in a way to encourage bigger cars. The car companies spend more money on bigger cars. The bigger the car, the bigger the profit. The bigger the car, the bigger the pollution, the bigger the gas consumption. The auto industry can make some good cars; but they make more money on big trucks. They have to sacrifice climate stability and people's health for their profit. That?s not right, and the only way they can be corrected is to be given assistance by government intervention. When I was governor [from 1975-1983], the fight was over reducing nitrous oxide. We managed to do it dramatically. We finally met with Henry Ford, and he found a way to do it, but the other companies were fighting us, and they fought on seatbelts, they fought on airbags, catalytic converters. They always have fought California on standards. So California is returning to its role as a forcer of technology? That?s the whole point, we?ve always forced the federal government, and that?s the function of the waiver. And that waiver was created by Richard Nixon, and that waiver was first granted by Ronald Reagan ... Nixon and Reagan have given us a framework that George Bush is sabotaging. Do you and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger see eye to eye on this? Yes, yes we do. So, when you say that Bush is ?perpetrating a fraud ...? Well, no, he might not say that about that. Is that what you are going to tell the EPA? No, I'm going to make the best case I can, with due respect toward our authority. But ? the history of this thing, the story of global warming is getting more ominous by the year. We're seeing more ice melt from Greenland, from Antarctica. Glaciers. This is happening. Asthma, hay fever, there is a lowering in the quality of life. And because we are talking about global pollution you can?t turn around overnight. And every year we wait, it makes it that much more expensive and that much more difficult to stabilize the climate. So, you?d like the EPA to tell California, "Go ahead and set your own standards for cars," and have the other states follow? California is ready for action, and we have a Republican governor who's very popular. Given the declining fortunes of the GOP, I would think that [Bush] would listen to one of its biggest stars. ? 2007 MSNBC.com From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:02:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:02:14 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Disaster Training Drill Ends Successfully in Cuba Message-ID: <20070521170214.55e899c5@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Disaster Training Drill Ends Successfully in Cuba The successful completion of the Meteoro 2007 Training Drill over the weekend showed the readiness of the command and guidance posts at all levels of Cuba's Civil Defence system in order to cope with any disasters. The drills once again showed Cuba's fast and effective response capability to save lives, property, to diminish vulnerabilities and to repair damage. The exercise in Havana included simulating the evacuation of people living in high risk areas facing the possibility of coastal flooding; and rescuing others trapped inside the rubble of a destroyed building by using advanced techniques. Firemen simulated the putting out of a fire at a large apartment building as well, Granma Daily reported. In the easternmost province of Guantanamo, the civil defence issued instructions to deal with the escape of toxic substances into the atmosphere. Pinar del Rio, one of the Cuban provinces more frequently hit by hurricanes (13 in the last 8 years), carried out tree trimming to protect electric and telephone lines and cleaning of the sewage system. They also conducted a complete evacuation of the coastal town of La Coloma, a fishing port. The drill at the Abel Santamaria International Airport in Santa Clara was implemented as if an aircraft with a failed hydraulic system was coming in for an emergency landing. This exercise had the participation of the Cuban Red Cross, and the Ministries of the Interior and Public Health. The heavy rains that fell during hours prior to the Meteoro 2007 emergency drill in Ciego de Avila province provided an even greater motivation to the participants. At the Mabuya Popular Council (a district of a municipality) located to the Northeast of the province, the total rainfall during two days reached 250 millimetres (around 10 inches). Those weather conditions required that the Civil Defence be activated not for a simulation but to deal with an actual real life emergency. In Guantanamo, rescue and recovery operations took place after a simulated earthquake followed by a fire and the massive reception of wounded people at the hospitals. Meteoro 2007 took place throughout the Cuban archipelago less than two weeks before the June 1-Novembrer 30th hurricane season begins. In two days of drills, command systems were activated to give a timely response to any natural, technological or health disaster. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:04:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:04:26 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Gulf Arabs pursue nuclear plans with Riyadh talks Message-ID: <20070521170426.78ca401d@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters 0 May 21, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2161545820070521?feedType=RSS Gulf Arabs pursue nuclear plans with Riyadh talks RIYADH (Reuters) - Gulf Arab states began working on feasibility studies for a joint nuclear program on Monday and a leading Gulf official said they were set on pursuing atomic energy for peaceful purposes only. "The promising future of nuclear energy in electricity generation and desalination can make it a source for meeting increasing needs," Gulf Cooperation Council head Abdul-Rahman al-Attiya told the first meeting of Gulf nuclear experts. The GCC, a major energy producing group that includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, agreed with the U.N. atomic watchdog in February to cooperate in early preparations for atomic energy. But their program has raised concerns in the West about a regional arms race with Iran, which is in a standoff with the West over its own nuclear program. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries share Western concerns that Iran's nuclear energy program will lead to it acquiring atomic bombs, a claim Tehran denies. While not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons and is seen as more of a threat than Iran by most Arabs. Reiterating GCC claims in December that their program would be peaceful and transparent, Attiya said it aimed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the Gulf region. "A large part of Gulf Cooperation Council oil and gas products can be used for export in light of expected high prices and demand," Attiya said. "It will also help to limit the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the Gulf region." ? Reuters 2006. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:07:03 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:07:03 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iraqi military drawing up contingency plans Message-ID: <20070521170703.26376ddf@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via USA Today - May 21, 2007 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-05-21-iraq-plans_N.htm?csp=34 Iraqi military drawing up contingency plans BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraq's military is drawing up plans on how to cope if U.S.-led forces leave the country quickly, the defense minister said Monday. The statement by Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi marked the first time a senior Iraqi official has spoken publicly about the possibility of a quick end to the U.S.-led mission. It was unclear if the remarks were more than routine contingency planning. "The army plans on the basis of a worst case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum," al-Obeidi said. "There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout." The White House is negotiating with Democratic leaders in Congress over a war-spending bill for Iraq. President Bush vetoed the first version because it set timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said senators in both parties are frustrated with the Iraqi government's lack of progress in meeting political goals and reconciling the country's religious and ethnic groups. However, Bush expressed confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a telephone call from his ranch in Texas, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The president reaffirmed his confidence in the prime minister and noted the courage that he has shown in a challenging and difficult year," Fratto said. "Obviously we want the Iraqis and the Iraqi parliament to move as quickly as possible," Fratto said. "Progress on advancing these initiatives is not moving as quickly as anyone wants ? and I think that includes Prime Minister Maliki and many members of parliament." Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:08:36 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:08:36 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Baghdad's Theater of War Message-ID: <20070521170836.010e5f13@viola.tamara-b.org> The Washington Post - May 21, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052001610_pf.html Baghdad's Theater of War Actors Present 'a Miniature of Our Reality,' with Its Pains and Perils By Ernesto Londo?o Washington Post Staff Writer BAGHDAD The curtain rose on a barren stage. An actor lying with his back to the audience snored loudly. Stage right, a skinny young woman in a floral print dress used her hands to drag her crippled body forward. "Mother, mother, I am sick," she said in a low, hoarse voice. "Call me the doctor, quickly quick." A car bomb, the audience would soon discover, had blown her legs to shreds. "Mother, mother, I am sick," she continued, progressively louder, uttering the play's only English lines. "Call me the doctor, quickly quick." A cast of rowdy, histrionic characters soon joined her onstage for another matinee at Baghdad's renowned National Theater -- the nucleus of Iraq's rebounding theater community and one of the few spots in this inhospitable capital where the prevailing mood is jovial, the rules of fashion are lax and creative ideas flourish. A few feet outside the building's metal fence, inset with gold-painted masks, soldiers man checkpoints ringed with concertina wire. "The Intensive Care Unit," a one-act play, satirizes the country's ruined state. Cast members -- university students and recent graduates -- also portray a broken-hearted lover, a poet without a muse, an actor with no stage and a man hunched over from frantically searching for his lost ID. There's also a sweeper, a theater director, an Iraqi who wants to be a Westerner, a bully and The Authority, a stoic man in a long black coat to whom they all turn for guidance. The cast includes Sunnis, Shiites and a Christian. The actors are unpaid and most are unemployed. Performances are held only during the day, because the city turns into a ghost town after dark. There is no entrance fee. Audience members, most of whom are fellow actors or friends of cast members, are frisked for weapons and explosives as they enter. Despite the long odds and perils, the actors say, there's nowhere they'd rather be than onstage. "What we have is love of theater," the play's director, Kahil Khalid, said one day, standing in the darkened and dusty lobby of the once-grand theater. "If we wanted money, we would go looting." The company this year received a small stipend from the Iraqi government, but that didn't even cover the cost of taking cabs to rehearsals, the actors said. Their wardrobe is simple, drawn mostly from their own closets. Their only props: debris collected at the scene of a car bombing -- a burned tire, a shredded shoe, school supplies -- piled in the lobby. "Our play is a miniature of our reality," said Rita Casber, 24, the only woman in the cast. "It conveys the reality the people in Iraq are subjected to." The cast lost two actors after rehearsals began several months ago. One man, a Sunni, was displaced from his neighborhood by Shiite militia members. The woman first cast in the role of the crippled girl backed out after opening night because she received an anonymous threat for wearing a tank top onstage. Like many stage actors in Iraq, cast members of "The Intensive Care Unit" have reported almost daily to the National Theater since the war began. Most days they wander around the lobby, chatting, laughing, catching up and discussing projects that never come to fruition. Iraq had three main forms of theater before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Comedies appealed to large audiences and were put on merely to entertain. Propaganda plays typically hailed Saddam Hussein's government and disparaged Iran and the United States. And experimental theater catered to small, elite audiences and was one of the few vehicles used to take discreet stabs at the country's rulers. A government committee vetted all theater productions before opening night. But renegade companies either veiled their criticism or kept it out of performances viewed by the committee. Khalid was among those who relished in the subtle swipes. As a theater student, he was once investigated merely for introducing the date Aug. 8 -- which marked the end of the widely unpopular Iran-Iraq war -- into a production of "Othello." "We passed things through symbolism," he said. "It was a struggle. There was censorship, ideological monitoring." While that form of censorship has ended, the theater community in Iraq has never felt more besieged, actors say. Fearing the wrath of religious fundamentalists who in recent years have targeted intellectuals, many actors have gone abroad, a few with job offers, many simply to get away. The thought has crossed Bushra Ismail's mind. The actress, legendary in Iraq for her poignant performances on screen and stage, says leaving would entail accepting defeat. "They've asked me: Why don't I go abroad?" she said on a recent morning in the National Theater's lobby, where a few dozen actors had convened to mourn the slaying of yet another colleague. "Because I have seen not only the targeting of actors, but all thinkers, college professors." It's not clear who's targeting the theater community or why. Khalid's best friend, a fellow actor, was slain in August 2005 after returning from a brief trip to North Carolina. "They're uneducated people," Khalid said. "Just because he went to America they thought he was a spy." These days, funerals bring the community together more often than plays. At least 14 actors have been killed since the war began. The fall of Hussein in theory liberated Iraq's artistic community. But freedom has been, at best, a mixed blessing for stage actors. "Yes, now we perform what we want," said Hatem Aoudah, a veteran director. "But this freedom is soaked in blood." As showtime for "The Intensive Care Unit" approached, the angst and indignities of producing a play in a war zone appeared to dissipate. The actors scuttled in and out of a tiny dressing room, where more than half of the light bulbs were out and the mirrors were stained. The men stripped down to their boxer shorts in the presence of the lone female actor as they changed into their costumes. Hair spray filled the air. "Prisons during Saddam's time used to look like this," joked Haider Jumaa, who plays the lover, as he stepped out of the packed changing room. Backstage, standing next to a dilapidated piano and a handful of broken chairs, the actors waited. Some paced back and forth. Others smoked. Large spotlights shone as the curtain rose. Both were powered by a generator. Only the first few rows of the theater were filled. The production unfolded flawlessly, with repeated outbursts of laughter and applause. In the last scene, cast members surround Uday Sadoun, the actor who plays The Authority, beseeching him for direction. "If you want us to sleep, we will sleep," they say in unison. "If you want us to cry, we will cry. If you want us to fly, we will fly. We're all waiting for you." The Authority stands motionless and says nothing. The curtain dropped. [Special correspondent Saad al-Izzi contributed to this report.] ? 2007 The Washington Post From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:09:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:09:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Defining "Progress" in Iraq Message-ID: <20070521170930.6a175f48@viola.tamara-b.org> The Nation - May 21, 2007 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=196706 Defining "Progress" in Iraq Three months into the job, General David Petraeus says it is difficult to predict, before the full number of troops arrive, if the surge in Baghdad will succeed. And he now says he will not have a definitive answer about prospects for progress by September, when he is to report back to Congress. But how to define "progress"in Iraq? (And why should the US have the right to decide what progress in Iraq means? Shouldn't we, instead, be given the task of measuring the destruction we have caused and held to account for repairing the human and physical damage we have helped inflict?) But if one does engage in this defining-progress project, here are some early measurements to consider: *Iraqis have already defined progress with their feet -- consider that some two million have left or fled their country. And the outflow continues. In Syria, there are estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees; another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside that country's borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean approximately 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes. *The Iraqi Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT) with the support of UNDP released statistics this week showing a key indicator of progress trending in the wrong direction. Insurgent death squads dumped 234 bodies around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May, a 70.8 percent increase from the 137 bodies dumped around the capital during the first 11 days of April. *Some 88 violent deaths were reported across Iraq on Wednesday, including 32 people who died the night before when a car bomb exploded near a market in the Shiite area of Abu Saydah northeast of Baghdad. *A leading British think-tank, Chatham House, reported on Thursday that the surge has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have shifted their acts outside Baghdad. *UN agencies working in Iraq warned that a chronic shortage of drinking water may increase diarrhea rates, particularly among children. Diarrhea is already the second highest single cause of child illness and death in Iraq. *The survey by the Central Statistical Bureau reports that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty" and another 11 percent of them live in "abject poverty." *The Iraqi parliament has proposed a bill, signed by a majority of members, demanding American troop withdrawal and an end to the occupation. (For those in our Congress who have placed so much stock in the idea of democracy, isn't it time to drop the neo-colonial paternalism and listen to your Iraqi counterparts. As Senator John Kerry put it today, "There are some people who would send our troops to fight and die for democracy and then not honor it.") But the reality is that for many legislators who refuse to support a timeline for withdrawal, especially Republicans who continue to support their bunkered-in President, the question of how to measure progress in Iraq will not be answered by how many Iraqi children are dying or refugees fleeing. The answer will be the polls in their districts. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:10:32 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:10:32 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iran and Belarus forge 'strategic partnership' Message-ID: <20070521171032.5fbb7e9e@viola.tamara-b.org> International Herald Tribune - May 21, 2007 http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=5810021 Iran and Belarus forge 'strategic partnership' By Judy Dempsey BERLIN: Belarus and Iran, two countries isolated by the United States and the European Union, agreed Monday to forge closer economic, trade and political ties, strengthening what the Belarus president termed "a strategic partnership." The special relationship was highlighted Monday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, which is saddled with United Nations sanctions for failing to halt its uranium enrichment program, began a two-day visit to Belarus at the invitation of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose country is shunned by the European Union because of its human rights record. "Tehran-Minsk ties are growing in all fields," Ahmadinejad said after arriving Monday. "The two countries enjoy close cooperation in various areas of transportation, energy, industry, economy and trade." The Belarus presidential press service said Lukashenko had told Ahmadinejad that relations between Belarus and Iran had reached the level of "strategic partnership." Analysts say the two countries, which share an antipathy to the United States in particular and the West in general, have been moving closer together as a way as to prove they can survive without either the United States or the European Union. "Both countries gain advantages from the relationship," said Steven Main, an expert on Belarus at the Conflict Studies Research Center in Britain. He said both countries wanted to show that they could survive without the United States or European Union. It is Ahmadinejad's first visit to Belarus, a country sandwiched between the EU and its big neighbor, Russia, on whom it is completely dependent for its gas and oil supplies. For Lukashenko, the visit offers the opportunity to diversify his country's energy imports by buying oil from Iran. This has become more urgent after Russia's giant state-owned energy monopoly, Gazprom, last December raised the price of its gas to Belarus threefold and obtained a 50 percent stake in Belarus's gas monopoly. Lukashenko said Monday that Belarus had clinched a deal with Tehran on extracting oil from the southern Jofeir deposit in Iran. "It would be a big boost for Lukashenko if he could diversify his energy imports away from Russia," said Gregorz Gromadzke, security analyst at the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw. But if he obtains oil from Iran, he added, "it would almost certainly have to pass over Russian territory. The dependence would not go away. Russia would control the transit of the oil." For its part, Iran has already obtained from Belarus access to advanced technology and specialists to help develop its civilian nuclear power program, according to the Conflict Studies Research Center, which does research for the Defense Ministry. The United States says that such a program will have a military application, which Iran has denied. Belarus said last year that it would not support Iran's nuclear and ballistic program. Military cooperation between the two countries has also been increased. In January, the Belarussian defense minister, Leonid Maltsev, agreed with his Iranian counterpart, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, to exchange technology in the military sector. Analysts acknowledged Monday that the military cooperation between Iran and Belarus remained opaque, particularly over the role played by Russian arms companies, which analysts say may be using Belarus as a base to sell equipment to Iran. So sensitive is this issue that Russian and Belarussian officials rushed to deny reports last year that Belarus had re-exported Russian S-300PS surface-to-air missiles to Iran. "The problem is that we do not know the full extent of the military cooperation between Belarus and Iran," Gromadzke said. "It is very hard to pin down exactly what goes on." Belarus's trade ties with Iran have yielded concrete results. When Lukashenko came to power in 1994, trade between both countries was valued at $89,000, according to the Conflict Studies Research Center. After Lukashenko's second visit there in 2006, the total value of the contracts signed between the two countries was $350 million. Ahmadinejad said this was just a step toward achieving a trade turnover of $1 billion. "We think that the first cornerstone for the powerful, long-term cooperation of Belarus and Iran has been laid," he said. This increase in trade matters hugely for Lukashenko. By finding new export markets, he is seeking to reduce Russia's influence on the country's economy. So far, Iran has proved a lucrative market for machinery, tractors and trucks imported from Belarus, analysts said. Lukashenko has already visited Iran twice, in 2001 and 2006, but has not visited any EU country recently. The EU has introduced a travel ban on Lukashenko and other top Belarussian officials for quashing independent political parties, arresting opposition leaders and muzzling the media. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:28:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:28:19 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] UK Stop the War Demonstration: "Troops Out of Iraq Now!" - June 24: 2007 Message-ID: <20070521172819.2a487a3a@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart U.K Stop the War Demonstration: "Troops Out of Iraq Now!" - June 24 2007 STOP THE WAR COALITION NEWSLETTER No. 1007 21 May 2007 Email office at stopwar.org.uk T: 020 7278 6694 Web: www.stopwar.org.uk IN THIS NEWSLETTER: 1) JUNE 24 IRAQ DEMONSTRATION 2) SIGN OPEN LETTER TO GORDON BROWN 3) HUSTINGS FOR LABOUR DEPUTY LEADER 4) ENOUGH! DEMONSTRATION: 9 JUNE 5) TOM MORELLO STOP THE WAR BENEFIT 6) JOHN PILGER BOOK LAUNCH: 31 MAY 7) G8 PROTESTS GERMANY, 2/3 JUNE 8) TROOPS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS 9) SPECIAL OFFER ?1 FOR BLIAR T-SHIRTS *************************************** 1) JUNE 24 IRAQ DEMONSTRATION Outgoing leader Tony Blair insisted on his recent visit to Iraq that a change of Labour Party leader will not mean a change in Britain's Iraq policy. It is essential that Gordon Brown is left in no doubt that this will be unacceptable to the British people, who have made clear in poll after poll that they want all British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. Stop the War is planning to ensure that the voice of the vast majority in this country will be heard on Sunday 24 June, the day of Gordon Brown's coronation as Labour leader. This takes place at a special Labour conference in Manchester for which Stop the War has called a TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ NOW demonstration. The plan is to organise coaches from around the country to bring the message that it's not just a change of leader that's needed, but a change of policy: i.e. British troops must be withdrawn from Iraq now, any attack on Iran must be opposed and a break must be made with the warmongering foreign policy of the US administration. Labour also plans to holds nine hustings meetings around the country in the next four weeks, at which the six candidates for the deputy Labour leadership and Gordon Brown will be speaking. Stop the War intends to make sure that there will be an anti-war presence at every one (see below). The first hustings meeting in Coventry on 20 May became the big news story of the day when the Stop the War lobby and a protestor in the hall made sure that Iraq was the main issue, despite Labour's intention to exclude it from the discussion. SEE http://tinyurl.com/34fulp. * CHANGE THE POLICY -- NOT JUST THE LEADER * TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ NOW! *DEMONSTRATE SUNDAY 24 JUNE 2007 AT THE LABOUR PARTY MANCHESTER SPECIAL LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE Full details to be published shortly: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ ******************************** 2) SIGN OPEN LETTER TO GORDON BROWN The top item in Gordon Brown's in-tray when he becomes prime minister must be to end immediately the disastrous participation in the war which has made Iraq one of the most devastated countries on earth, with latest figures showing that one in seven Iraqis -- four million people -- have now been displaced in the past four years. A number of public figures and representatives from the world of the arts have signed an open letter from Stop the War to Gordon Brown (see below), including: Dianne Abbott MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Walter Wolfgang (Labour NEC), Bob Wareing MP, Harold Pinter, David Edgar, Iain Banks, John Pilger, Andy De Le Tour, Arthur Smith, Ken Loach, David Gentleman, Yvonne Ridley, Mike Rosen, Mark Thomas, Rose Gentle, Moazzam Begg, Ken Coates and many more. The letter, which will be delivered to Gordon Brown when he becomes prime minister, states: Dear Gordon Brown, There is no issue more important, and no question on which the British people are more anxious to see a change of policy by the next prime minister, than the Iraq war. We urge you on behalf of millions of British voters to: 1) Withdraw British troops from Iraq no later than October 2007. 2) Declare that this country will not participate in any attack against Iran. 3) Pursue a foreign policy independent of the US administration. Yours, Tony Benn (President StWC) Lindsey German (National Convenor) Andrew Murray (National Chair) TO ADD YOUR NAME TO THE OPEN LETTER, SEND AN EMAIL TO office at stopwar.org.uk WITH "GORDON BROWN" IN THE SUBJECT HEADING AND YOUR NAME IN THE MESSAGE. ******************************* 3) HUSTINGS FOR LABOUR DEPUTY LEADER Labour is holding a series of hustings around the country for Gordon Brown and the six candidates for the Labour deputy leadership. Stop the War groups are organising lobbies at all of the remaining hustings, demanding that Iraq is discussed and that Gordon Brown's first announcement will be that all British troops will be brought home from Iraq now, in keeping with the view held by the majority of British people. As noted above, at the first meeting in Coventry on 20 May, a Stop the War protest outside and inside the hall was the big news story of the day. The remaining hustings will take place in BRISTOL (26 May), SHEFFIELD (27 May), LEICESTER (30 May), GLASGOW (2 June), NEWCASTLE (3 June), LONDON (6 June), CARDIFF (9 June), OXFORD (10 June), LONDON (16 June). It is important that these protests are as large as possible. If you would like to participate, please contact the Stop the War office for details of venue and time for the meeting in your area. Tel 020 7278 6694 or email office at stopwar.org.uk ******************************* 4) ENOUGH! DEMONSTRATION SATURDAY 9 JUNE : 1.30PM END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE Saturday 9 June 2007 is the international day of action to mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War and Israel's military occupation of Palestine. The London demonstration has been organised by the ENOUGH! coalition of charities, trade unions, faith and other campaign groups, including Stop the War Coalition, who have come together in the cause of peace in Palestine. (See participating organisations here: http://tinyurl.com/2sydmq). The demonstration will call for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and for justice for Palestinians. ASSEMBLE AT LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS AT 1.30PM FOR THE MARCH TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE. FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.enoughoccupation.org STEWARDS NEEDED: If you would be interested in helping to steward the demonstration, please contact: 020 7278 6694 or email office at stopwar.org.uk ********************************* 5) TOM MORELLO STOP THE WAR BENEFIT - MONDAY 04 JUNE 2007, SCALA, KINGS CROSS BOOK NOW: http://tinyurl.com/2huf7l Rage Against the Machine's guitarist and political and social activist, Tom Morello, performs for the Bring The Troops Home gig. Supported by * Ed Harcourt http://www.edharcourt.com * Susheela Raman http://www.susheelaraman.com * Frank Turner http://www.frank-turner.com * With comedian Mark Steel as MC. TOM MORELLO'S NEW ALBUM 'ONE MAN REVOLUTION' is an urgent portrait of a world in turmoil. The Grammy Award-winning guitarist of Rage Against the Machine compares war zones in the US and Iraq: http://www.nightwatchmanmusic.com/) TICKETS ARE SELLING VERY FAST. BOOK NOW: http://tinyurl.com/2huf7l **************************** 6) JOHN PILGER BOOK LAUNCH: 31 MAY, 6.30PM - BLOOMSBURY THEATRE, GORDON STREET, EUSTON, LONDON John Pilger will speak on 31 May at the launch meeting for his new book, titled FREEDOM NEXT TIME. The meeting will be introduced by Lindsey German, StWC's national convenor, and is co-organised by Stop the War and Waterstone's Bookshop. TICKETS: ?4 from 020 7636 1577 or from Waterstone's Bookshop, Gower Street. LEAFLET: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/new/events/johnpilger.pdf.pdf *************************************** 7) G8 PROTESTS GERMANY, 2/3 JUNE - BUSH AND THE G8 IN EUROPE, ROSTOCK, GERMANY. Following the massive protests in Edinburgh two years ago the international anti-war movement is calling on activists to join this protest. The German organising committee is expecting a very big united demonstration in the Baltic port of Rostock on Saturday 2 June, against war, privatisation and climate chaos. Anti-war activists are organising a Troops Out rally on the afternoon of Sunday 3 June. There are further protests taking place throughout the week. Stop the War is organising a delegation. Please e-mail us if you would like to join us: office at stopwar.org.uk ******************************** 8) 'TROOPS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS - TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ' LAUNCH MEETING THURSDAY 24 MAY 7PM Khalili lecture Theatre, SOAS. Nearest tube, Russell Square. Speakers include: * George Solomou (Military Families Against the War) * Chris Nineham (Stop the War Coalition) * Amiar Kamal (School Students Against War) * Sitara Amin Tilly (School Students Against War) * Clare Solomon (President SOAS Student Union) This launch meeting is to demand that no military force should be allowed into any school at any time. If you would like further information please contact: SCHOOL STUDENTS AGAINST THE WAR: Email: london at ssaw.org.uk Tel: 07947460945 Web: http://www.ssaw.org.uk ******************************* 9) SPECIAL OFFER: ?1 FOR BLIAR T-SHIRTS Tony Blair may be leaving office but the consequences of his lies continue. To "celebrate" the war criminal's exit, Stop the War is offering it's legendary BLIAR t-shirts for just ?1 each plus postage. We have just a few left. To place an order, contact the StWC national office on 020 7278 6694. ********************************* From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:36:36 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:36:36 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] HEADS UP ON NOW-RATIFIED EXTRADITION TREATY! Message-ID: <20070521173636.0bf80886@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Francis Boyle - May 21, 2007 HEADS UP ON NOW-RATIFIED EXTRADITION TREATY! Baroness Scotland:"The ratification of this treaty will allow us to ensure that criminals in hiding in the US, who have been wanted by this country for some time, are returned here to face justice." This sounds ominous for Irish in America, if not Irish Americans as well. If carried out, it will directly contradict self-styled, misleading and ambiguous assurances that the UK Government gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to assure passage of the Treaty. I dealt with this issue in my 15 September 2006 Letter to all Members of the US Senate against the Treaty, attached below, as follows: 5. The first "proviso" approves correspondence between the United States and the United Kingdom, copies of which are attached to the Resolution, wherein the U.K. government confirms that it will pursue the extradition of Irish American citizens for any alleged activities after the 19 9 8 Good Friday Agreement that it does not approve of; and that the U.K. government reserves the right to pursue the extradition of Irish American citizens for any activities before the 19 9 8 Good Friday Agreement that it does not approve of. It will make no difference that such alleged activity by Irish American citizens were and still are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which will be, as a practical matter, retroactively and permanently repealed for Irish American citizens engaged in peaceful and non-violent campaigns for peace and justice in Ireland. PERFIDIOUS ALBION ONCE AGAIN! fab. Uk/US Extradition Treaty ratified Date: 2007-04-27 You are viewing a printer friendly version. If you want to view the original release please click the link below: Original Article: http://media-newswire.com/release_1048540.html Distributed by: Media-Newswire.com Published by: http://www.gnn.gov.uk The treaty will modernise and extend the arrangements for extradition between the US and the UK and for the first time allow for the extradition of individuals accused of twenty-first century crimes, such as child internet pornography, which were not extraditable offences under the old arrangements. ________________________________ (Media-Newswire.com) - The United Kingdom and United States have today ratified a bilateral extradition treaty to ensure more effective arrangements to bring offenders from either state to justice. The treaty will modernise and extend the arrangements for extradition between the US and the UK and for the first time allow for the extradition of individuals accused of twenty-first century crimes, such as child internet pornography, which were not extraditable offences under the old arrangements. At a ceremony in Central London today the Instruments of Ratification were exchanged by Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland and US Ambassador to the UK Mr Robert H Tuttle. This enables the 2003 bilateral extradition treaty to enter into force under international treaty protocol. The treaty's new provisions include: * Defining an extraditable offence as one punishable by a 12 month or longer sentence in both states. This will replace the list of extradition offences in the 1972 treaty. Offences not on the 1972 list, for example child internet pornography, will in future be classed as extraditable offences if they are punishable by a year or more imprisonment in both states. * Removing US statute of limitations issues. Extradition to the UK could currently be barred if the offence is not prosecutable in the US due to the lapse of time since it was committed. This will no longer be applicable to extraditions to the UK. * Introducing a measure to allow for the temporary surrender of persons serving a prison sentence in the requested state. Temporary surrender means the victim does not have to wait until the suspect has served his sentence in the US for justice to be done in the UK and vice versa. * Permitting the waiver of the rule of speciality. This will enable the prosecution of the extradited person for an offence for which he was not extradited, providing the state from which he was extradited consents. The treaty, and the Extradition Act 2003, have also redressed the unequal balance that existed under the terms of the 1972 Treaty in which the UK required more from the US than they asked of the UK. The US was required to demonstrate a prima facie evidential case in support of extradition requests made to the UK, whereas the UK merely had to demonstrate 'probable cause'. The 'probable cause' test is broadly comparable to the requirement for 'information which would justify the issue of a warrant for the arrest of a person' that the UK will now require of the US. Home Office Minister, Baroness Scotland, said: "This Government is committed to ensuring that we rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of victims and bring offenders to book wherever they may be. The ratification of this treaty is a key example of how we are working with our international partners to achieve these goals "The ratification of this treaty will allow us to ensure that criminals in hiding in the US, who have been wanted by this country for some time, are returned here to face justice. "At the same time it will provide full and effective safeguards for the rights of requested persons from the UK." US Ambassador, Robert Tuttle, said: "I am very pleased that the United States and the United Kingdom have taken the steps to bring this important treaty into force. "The implementation of this treaty benefits both our countries. It's a practical measure that grows out of the excellent law enforcement cooperation we share." Notes to Editors: 1. The Treaty was signed on 31 March 2003 by then Home Secretary David Blunkett and US Attorney General John Ashcroft. 2. Certain provisions in the Treaty were given effect in the UK by the entry into force of the Extradition Act 2003 on 1 January 2004. 3. The 2003 Treaty was formally approved by the US Senate on 29 September 2006 and the US Treaty Approval Document was signed by President Bush on 6 December 2006. 4. The previous extradition arrangements between the US and the UK were those in the 1972 Treaty, as amended by a supplementary Treaty in 1985. Client ref 075/2007 GNN ref 146562P Background: Legal Inadequacies of US-UK Extradition Treaty (Sept 15, 2006) http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20060911/045963.html Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (Voice) 217-244-1478 (Fax) From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:38:44 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:38:44 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Communist Party of Canada - Statement on the Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles Message-ID: <20070521173844.78056b67@viola.tamara-b.org> Forward from mart - May 21, 2007 PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY Communist Party of Canada Statement Regarding the Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles ============================== The Communist Party of Canada http://www.communist-party.ca inter at cpc-pcc.ca May 16, 2007 Statement of the Communist Party of Canada on Recent Developments Regarding the Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. The May 8, 2007 decision of a Texas court to summarily drop all outstanding charges against Luis Posada Carriles for various immigration violations is but the latest indignity in this pitiful charade of justice. There is a mountain of evidence proving that Posada Carriles has committed the following crimes, among many others: . he was the chief organizer of the 1976 bombing of an Air Cubana flight which killed 73 crew and passengers; . he served as the CIA's front man responsible for running guns to the Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980s counter-revolutionary war which killed thousands of innocent civilians; . he was the architect of the 1997 hotel bombings in Havana which killed Montreal resident Fabio Di Celmo; and . he was a co-conspirator in plotting the failed assassination attempt of President Fidel Castro Ruiz in Panama in 2000. And yet despite extensive evidence pointing to his guilt, the U.S. government refused to pursue charges against Posada for international terrorism; nor would it agree to extradite him to Venezuela to face trial for his crimes. Instead, Washington chose to protect Posada while giving a semblance of judicial action against him. The fact that this monster is openly shielded from prosecution by the U.S. government and is now 'free' to continue his terrorist activities with his gang of thugs in Miami is a shameless affront to all humanity. This sordid affair, taken together with the conviction and imprisonment of the "Cuban Five" - the five Cuban heroes whose only "crime" was to monitor and report the conspiratorial plans of anti-Cuban terrorist groups operating in Southern Florida in order to prevent future attacks on the Cuban people - pulls away the thin veil of lies behind Washington's so-called "war on terror". It is not simply a question of inconsistency in applying its anti-terrorism policy, or even a matter of crass hypocrisy on the part of the Bush Administration. The Posada affair proves that the entire "war on terror" is a sham, a public-relations pretext to justify the aggressive pursuit of U.S. imperialism's self-serving interests at home and around the world. The Canadian people also have every right to be incensed by the complete silence of the Harper government on this fiasco, given the likely guilt of Posada in the murder of Canadian resident Di Celmo in 1997. This silence, while Ottawa persecutes Canadian residents of suspected 'terrorist activities' on the basis of far less evidence (or none whatsoever), is surely another sign of the Harper government s' sniveling subservience to, and collusion with, the Bush Whitehouse. The Communist Party joins with the Cuban people and millions of democratic voices around the world in demanding that Posada Carriles be brought to justice for his crimes, and in calling for freedom for the imprisoned Cuban Five. Issued by the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada May 16, 2007 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:42:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:42:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] US Imperial Ambitions Thwart Iraqis' Peace Plans Message-ID: <20070521174230.221288af@viola.tamara-b.org> Alternet - May 21, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/52135/ U.S. Imperial Ambitions Thwart Iraqis' Peace Plans By Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar Last week, a majority of Iraqi lawmakers demanded a timetable for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave their country [ http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/ ]. The very next day, the Al Fadhila party, a Shi'ite party considered moderate by the (often arbitrary) standards of the commercial media, held a press conference, in which they offered a 23-point plan for stabilizing Iraq. The plan addressed not only the current situation in Iraq -- acknowledging the legitimacy of Iraqi resistance, setting a timetable for a complete withdrawal of occupation troops and rebuilding the Iraqi government and security forces in a non-sectarian fashion -- but also the challenging mission of post-occupation peace-building and national reconciliation. It included provisions for disbanding militias, protecting Iraq's unity, managing Iraq's natural resources, building relationships with other countries based on mutual interest and the principle of non-intervention in domestic issues, and healing the wounds of more than 30 years of dictatorship, war, sanctions, and foreign occupation. An online search shows that the peace plan was largely ignored by the Western commercial media. That's par for the course. While every nuance of every spending bill that passes the U.S. Congress is analyzed in minute detail, the Iraqis -- remember them? -- have proposed a series of comprehensive peace deals that might unite the country's ethnic and sectarian groups and result in an outcome American officials of all stripes say they want to achieve: a stable, self-governing Iraq that is strong enough to keep groups like al Qaeda from establishing training camps and other infrastructure within its borders. Al Fadhila's peace plan was not the first one offered by Iraqi actors, nor the first to be ignored by the Anglo-American Coalition. More significant even than proposals made by Iraqi political parties are those put forth by the country's armed resistance groups --- the very groups that have the ability to bring a halt to the cycle of violence. Comprehensive plans have been offered by the Baath party that ruled Iraq for three generations, The Islamic Army in Iraq and other major armed resistance groups and coalitions. The plans vary on a number of points, but all of them shared a few items in common: the occupation forces must recognize them as legitimate resistance groups and negotiate with them, and the U.S. must agree to set a timetable for a complete withdrawal from Iraq. That's the key issue, but Iraq's nationalists see it only as the first step in the long path to achieving national reconstruction and reconciliation. But these plans are unacceptable to the Coalition because they A) affirm the legitimacy of Iraq's armed resistance groups and acknowledge that the U.S.-led coalition is, in fact, an occupying army, and B) return Iraq to the Iraqis, which means no permanent bases, no oil law that gives foreign firms super-sweet deals and no radical restructuring of the Iraqi economy. U.S. lawmakers have been and continue to be faced with a choice between Iraqi stability and American Empire, and continue to choose the latter, even as the results of those choices are splashed in bloody Technicolor across our TV screens every evening. Last year, a comprehensive, 28-point proposal for stabilizing Iraq was offered by the nascent Iraqi government itself after long meetings with different Iraqi groups. According to local polls and political leaders, most Iraqis believed it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel -- the plan was attractive to the vast majority of the public, even those Iraqis affiliated with violent resistance groups. But the plan wasn't acceptable to Washington, and was watered down so as to be unrecognizable under U.S. pressure [ http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2006/07/four-missing-points.html ]. Many Americans -- quite understandably -- believe that only wild-eyed, RPG-toting crazies who, in the words of George W. Bush, "hate and fear democracy," oppose a U.S.-led occupation that would otherwise be embraced -- or at least tolerated -- by a majority of "good" or "moderate" Iraqis. Peaceful Protest Suppressed But while the commercial press focuses on the bloody scenes created by those who have taken up arms against the occupation and the fledgling Iraqi government, the reality is that there has been a significant opposition expressed in non-violent means; as in regular demonstrations on the streets of Baghdad and other cities, petitions signed by Iraqis, strikes organized by Iraqi unions, through parliamentarian work to create binding legislations, and on the opinion-pages of the dozens of Iraqi newspapers that have proliferated since the invasion. This non-violent demonstration of Iraqis' anti-occupation sentiment reflects large majorities of all of Iraq's major ethnic and sectarian groups -- more than eight out of ten, according to many polls [ http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=10797 ]. As early as 2005, the University of Michigan's Juan Cole reported [ http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/sunnis-demonstrate-in-baghdad-as.html ] that the Sadrist movement -- named after the father of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- had gathered a million signatures on a petition demanding a timetable for occupation forces to withdraw. More recently, the Arabic press reported that as many as a million Iraqis -- a million Shia and Sunni working together -- had protested the continuing occupation in Najaf on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad last month. The same dynamic is also playing out in the parliament, where a bloc of vocal Iraqi nationalists [ http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51624/ ]-- one that draws from all of Iraq's major ethno-sectarian groups -- is emerging to challenge the occupation, keep Iraq from being partitioned into weak, semi-autonomous states and oppose Anglo-American carpet bagging around the country's vast energy resources. One of the few laws left on the books from the Saddam Hussein era is one that severely limits the rights of Iraqi workers to organize [ http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/1203liveon.htm ]. As journalist David Bacon reported [ http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/121003_us_arrests_iraqi_union_leaders.htm ] in the winter of 2003, coalition forces "escalated their efforts to paralyze Iraq's new labor unions with a series of arrests" that left one of the few surviving segments of Iraq's once-vibrant secular civil society toothless. In addition, Iraqi newspapers and T.V. stations have been repeatedly targeted. The major clashes between U.S. forces and the Mehdi Army in 2004 were sparked by the closure of the Sadrists' official newspaper and a number of broadcast stations have been shut down because of their anti-occupation stands. 82 Iraqi journalists have been killed since 2003. The unreported -- or at least under-reported -- story is that Iraqi nationalists are not just "insurgents"; there are many who still believe in political solutions and non-violent resistance. They continue to work against the occupation through diplomacy and non-violent opposition, but the Al-Maliki regime, which is dominated by Iraqi separatists, has joined the White House, the Pentagon and the bulk of the U.S. Congress in marginalizing their voices. It is the latest in a long series of examples of American officials backing only the worst horses in Iraq -- a theme that began with the embrace of proven fraudsters like Ahmed Chalabi. Much of the violence in Iraq has been fueled by this systematic disregard for non-violent means of opposing the occupation. Before they sink down the memory-hole, let's recall what just a few of the headlines from the very early days of the occupation were saying: * "U.S. Soldiers Kill 13 at Iraq Protest Rally, Hospital Reports," Associated Press, 29 April 2003. * "At Least 10 Dead as U.S. Soldiers Fire on School Protest," Independent (UK), 30 April 2003. * "Two more die during protest at US killings: Mayor wants troops to leave town where 14 were shot dead day before," Guardian, 1 May 2003 * "More protesters fall to U.S. guns in Falluja; commander says Americans will remain," Associated Press, 1 May 2003. * "[During a demonstration] US Soldiers Are Said to Kill Iraqi Policemen by Mistake", New York Times, 12 September 2003 Non-violent resistance in Iraq continues to be met with violence today. Iraqi nationalists have faced repeated attacks by both Coalition forces and Iraqi separatists -- from the bombing of the National Dialogue Front's headquarters in Baghdad [ http://www.counterpunch.org/jarrar01042007.html ], to attacks by Shia separatists like SCIRI on Sadr loyalists [ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9492236 ]. At the same time, U.S. officials have heaped praise on -- and the White House has feted -- Iraqi separatists while dismissing Iraq's nationalists as "extremists" or members of "anti-government forces." [ http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/04/bushs_meeting_with_a_murderer.php ] That truly sovereign Iraqis would ever permit the U.S. to build large permanent bases in Iraq or re-write Iraq's constitution (in violation of international law) so that the country could serve as a lab for radical neoliberal economic theories without coercion -- much less fall into lockstep with the U.S. on other matters of regional concern, like the Israel-Palestinian conflict -- was always a grand delusion. In that sense, Washington's choice after the invasion was always clear: the administration could have given the Iraqis a chance to build a sovereign and independent state for themselves -- one without the meddling of outside forces, be they Qaeda, Iranian or American -- and take its chances with the outcome. But it chose instead to use the invasion as a means of securing a toe-hold in the region for the U.S. military and an unprecedented and an extreme form of "business-friendly" legal structures for international investors. The situation in Iraq today is not a result of a lack of options; it's due to constantly choosing the wrong one. The American strategic class faces the same choice today; they can continue to refuse to offer a timetable for leaving, continue supporting Iraq separatists and pro-Iranian groups and push a disastrous oil law that will tear the country apart, or they can return the country to the Iraqis and let them try to put theior country back together. Continuing to ignore Iraqis' non-violent resistance to the U.S. occupation can achieve nothing other than pushing the country towards more violence. [Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. Raed Jarrar is Iraq Consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. He blogs at Raed in the Middle.] ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:43:56 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:43:56 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Why Working Less is Better for the Globe Message-ID: <20070521174356.7d2faa81@viola.tamara-b.org> Alternet - May 21, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/52077 Why Working Less is Better for the Globe By Dara Colwell, AlterNet Americans are working harder than ever before. The dogged pursuit of the paycheck coupled with a 24/7 economy has thrust many of us onto a never-ending treadmill. But of workaholism's growing wounded, its greatest casualty has been practically ignored -- the planet. "We now seem more determined than ever to work harder and produce more stuff, which creates a bizarre paradox: We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet," says Conrad Schmidt, an internationally known social activist and founder of the Work Less Party, a Vancouver-based initiative aimed at moving to a 32-hour work week -- a radical departure from the in early, out late cycle we've grown accustomed to. "Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue no one's talking about." A backlash against overwork fatigue, the Work Less Party is one of a growing number of initiatives aimed at cutting work hours while tackling unemployment, environmentally unfriendly behavior and boosting leisure time. According to Schmidt, author of "Workers of the World RELAX," which examines the economics of reduced industrial work, working less would allow us to produce less, consume less, pollute less and -- no complaints here -- live more. "As a society, we're working exponentially hard to decrease sustainability and it's making us miserable -- just look at how antidepressants are on the rise," he says. "In order to reduce our ecological footprint, we have to take working less very seriously." Americans work more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations' International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage figure in to the 40-plus workweek? Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high annual growth to match productivity, there's unemployment. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution. Unsurprisingly, the United States is the world's largest polluter. Housing a mere 5 percent of the world's population, it accounts for 22 percent of its fossil fuel consumption, 50 percent of its solid waste, and, on average, each citizen consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China, according to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club. When people work longer hours, they rely increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable diapers, or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence has become standard business practice -- just throw it away and make more -- leaving mountainous landfills in its wake. "Earning more often means spending money in ways that are environmentally detrimental. We're finding that to compensate for lack of time, you actually need more money to work those extra hours," says Monique Tilford, acting executive director of the Centre for a New American Dream, a Maryland group promoting environmentally and socially responsible consumption. "When people are time-starved they don't have enough time to be conscious consumers. The overarching theme of our organization is to remind Americans that every single dollar they spend has a carbon impact, to make the connection." If the world started clocking American hours, then it would be detrimental to its environmental health. According to a paper issued by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C., if Europe moved towards a U.S.-based economic model, it would consume 15-30 percent more energy by 2050. This would impact fuel prices worldwide and boost carbon emissions, resulting in additional global warming of 1-2 degrees Celsius. Any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made through conservation, cleaner fuels or green technology would be overwhelmed by increased industrial output. "Productivity normally increases every year, but we haven't seen massive productivity gains reflected in our working hours," says Mark Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director, who also authored the study "Are Shorter Work Hours Good for the Environment?" "Because there's no limit to what we can consume, a change of values has to take place if the planet stands a chance of survival." The problem is, France has already begun following America's lead by increasing the workload. In 2005, France effectively abolished its 35-hour workweek to counter high unemployment -- the highest in the European Union, hovering at roughly 10 percent -- though a subsequent International Monetary Fund paper examining the impact concluded there was no significant increase. And this May, the new French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, whose campaign to "work more, earn more" helped win him the presidential seat, promised to make overtime largely tax-exempt. His goal: strengthen consumer purchasing power and galvanize the economy. Only if Weisbrot's research is correct, France's increased productivity would create even larger problems, especially considering France's current productivity is greater than America's, with a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per hour of $37.01 versus $33.77. Today's push towards a heavier workload is in many ways a historical precedent. In both the United States and Europe, work hours declined steadily from the beginning of the industrial revolution until World War II, when labor unions were key in fighting for shorter hours. After the war, the 40-hour workweek was legally in place, and governments promoted economic growth in order to match it. But since the 1970s, with the advent of technological advances and increased automation, most European governments have continued shortening work hours whereas the United States has opted instead to let wages fall. In the late 1960s futurists predicted an Age of Leisure, hypothesizing that the largest issue facing the country at the end of the century would be too much leisure. "It was the kind of problem I thought I could deal with -- in fact, I was looking forward to it," says John de Graaf, producer of the groundbreaking 1997 PBS documentary "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic" and a frequent speaker on issues of overwork and overconsumption. "Of course, I didn't reason we'd put all our productivity gains into more stuff." Quoting data from his current campaign, "What's the Economy for Anyway?" which examines America's economic policies in light of quality of life issues, de Graaf says the evidence proves we're not better off. "It's staggering. The USA has declined relative to all other industrial countries in virtually every quality of life measured -- health, equality, savings, sustainability -- though that's not so with the GDP and certainly not with the number of billionaires," he says. "Yet we're still constantly being told we're better off." Yet suggest alternatives to the status quo of GDP worship, like shortening the work week, and resistance is great. "Here, the business community fiercely opposes any mandates relating to time," says de Graaf, noting that by controlling or regulating time, they maintain the upper hand. "What's happened in Europe is people have discovered it's nice to have some time in their lives, and in getting some, they've wanted more. Whereas here, business has kept that door completely shut." But even many overburdened Americans fear change will signal further sacrifice -- mostly to their paychecks. "But the fact is, we're already sacrificing our time and our lives right now," says de Graaf. De Graaf is also the national coordinator of "Take Back Your Time Day," an annual event scheduled for Oct. 24, the date on which the 40-hour workweek was first inaugurated in the United States. A national organization with 10,000 members, Take Back Your Time has launched a campaign calling for national legislation guaranteeing a minimum of three weeks of paid vacation, an issue it hopes to make part of the 2008 presidential campaign. As it stands, America is the only industrial nation that offers no legal protection for vacations. The average vacation in the United States is now only a long weekend, and 25 percent of American workers have no paid vacation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compare that to Sweden, which mandates 32 vacation days per year. President Bush, however, does know the value of vacation time. In 2005, he took five weeks off to visit his Texas ranch, taking the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years. "We see overwork as a social, legal problem that needs political legislation," says de Graaf. "We are utterly unique in our dismissal of the need for time and the environmental costs; not to mention, the costs to our health and our families have been enormous." But by shelving time, we continue to suffer from overload, debt, and anxiety, and are stuck in a fatalistic rat race generated by heightened consumerism. So what fuels this need to accumulate in the face of time deprivation? Devoting his career to what drives materialism, Tim Kasser, associate professor of psychology at Knox College and author of "The High Price of Materialism," has sought scientific explanations, examining the relationship between materialism and psychological well-being. "Materialism is driven by an underlying sense of insecurity," says Kasser, who conducted a study where subjects were randomly assigned writing about death or writing about listening to music. The former experience an increased desire for consumption and were "greedier," according to Kasser. "Death is the ultimate end of time; it's interpreted as that feeling of not having enough time. In the last decade politicians have played off that insecurity. It keeps getting people elected, but it also drives us to think we need to work harder and harder," he says, noting the signs of insecurity around us are numerous: We don't know our neighbors and suffer from high divorce rates; our social safety nets have been dismantled; we have no mandatory overtime laws and minimal vacation. "All these work to create an underlying sense of insecurity, and we need to break out of that cycle," he says. Interestingly, Kasser conducted an empirical study comparing 200 adherents of Voluntary Simplicity to a control group of 200 mainstream Americans and found the Voluntary Simplicity group was "simultaneously happier while using fewer resources," and that their happiness was derived from "less materialistic, intrinsic goals, such as personal growth, family and community." While the Voluntary Simplicity group was "still awfully far from having a sustainable ecological footprint," Kasser feels it's a positive start. "The correlation between the VS group being happy was due to those no-consumeristic, intrinsic values, and the reason they're living in a more ecologically sustainable fashion is also due to those values." It's just those kind of values Schmidt has tried to encourage in his Work Less Party. Schmidt, a former computer programmer, started by getting rid of his car and cycling to work, then took advantage of the savings by reducing his workweek, which allowed him enough time to write his book, make two documentaries, and organize a community theater group -- all in the last three years. "People spend so many hours working they have no idea of how much creative potential they have, but you get a taste of mental freedom you want more of it. It's an explosion of creativity." says Schmidt, quickly adding, "I'm a workaholic, but it's the type of work that's the problem. Our society is focused on work that makes stuff that goes directly into landfills. Essential work such as art, music, creativity, community, the kind necessary to create a healthy society and planet, is being negated in favor of that." If there's any solution to increasing our well-being, as well as the planet's, Schmidt's advice flies counter to our driven consumerism. "If you want to protect the environment, you have to consume less, which means you have to produce less, and you have to work less. We have to keep the message positive -- our standard of living will improve hugely. I think people are starting to make the connection." [Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Amsterdam.] ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:47:44 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:47:44 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Tom Cruise's Church of Hate Tried to Destroy Me Message-ID: <20070521174744.44633b5c@viola.tamara-b.org> Daily Mail via Alternet - May 21, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/52121 'Tom Cruise's Church of Hate Tried to Destroy Me' By Paul Bracchi The Daily Mail The voice at the end of the line was trembling. "Is that Mr Bracchi?" "Yes, it is," I replied. The caller could not have been more relieved. I was supposed to be dead. Someone had started a rumour that I had been killed in a fire. The same people who had tried to obtain my exdirectory phone number, handed out pamphlets attacking me, and dispatched an American private detective - an ex-Los Angeles police officer - to Britain to frighten and smear the source who had helped me expose their activities. Almost daily threatening letters arrived by fax and post at the newspaper where I used to work. Messages were left on the answer machine at the home of the managing director. Strangers turned up in his village asking questions about him. And the culprits behind this campaign of intimidation? Step forward the Church of Scientology. This week the Mail exposed disturbing apparent links between the "church" and the City of London Police. Our report was followed by a Panorama programme in which reporter John Sweeney was seen losing his temper with a scientologist, claiming afterwards that he had been driven over the edge by a concerted campaign of harassment by the group. I, more than anyone, could understand why. Sweeney spent six months investigating this socalled religion. I had spent more than a year doing so when stories of my "unfortunate demise" began circulating. By the time you read this article, the Church of Scientology will no doubt be unleashing their attack dogs - sorry, officials from the Office of Special Affairs - on me again. The founder of the "religion" - science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard - himself issued directives on how "to handle the press", including tips on how to get a reporter "fired and discredited". Well, they have tried and failed with me once already. My first report - The Secrets of Saint Hill - was published more than ten years ago. Saint Hill is the castle in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where the UK headquarters of Scientology is based. The backlash was swift. The first principle of Scientology, you see, is "shoot the messenger". Critics who had contributed to the articles were also targeted. Some of them found Eugene Ingram - who had been branded an "insidious individual" in a court case in the U.S. - on their doorstep. He "visited" the 77-year-old mother of one of my sources as well as his parents' former home in Staffordshire, and his wife's family. Ingram knew, of course, that the man's relatives would not "dish the dirt" on my source. That was not the point. He just wanted to let me - and everyone else who had helped me - know that he was in town. In the parlance of Scientology, this is called a "noisy investigation". It has only one purpose: to intimidate. The real victims of Scientology, of course, are not journalists but the parents who have lost sons or daughters to these deluded fanatics. Their harrowing stories - of which more below - help explain why, in Britain, Scientology is recognised neither as a church nor a charity. It is, in fact, a cult. Scientologists do not like that word, so let me repeat it - CULT. Hubbard, the man who created Scientology in 1952, has an unusual CV for a religious and spiritual leader. As well as being a writer, he was a congenital liar: quite simply a "charlatan". That was the view of a High Court judge in 1984, who said Hubbard's theories were "corrupt, sinister and dangerous". If nothing else, the movement's survival is proof that with money - Scientology is worth billions worldwide - you can make some people, even intelligent people, believe almost anything. Stars such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta have given Scientology a profile and showbusiness gloss it simply does not deserve. Indeed, those who are not familiar with its tactics and history regard Scientologists - who are convinced we are all descended from a race of aliens called thetans - as weird, not wicked. This ignorance has been ruthlessly exploited in Britain. In October, a ?24 million Scientology centre opened in the heart of London's Square Mile, and is now one of 30 "missions" in the country. Narconon, a Scientology group which claims it can get people off drugs, has been invited into schools and colleges. How many teachers and parents know of Narconon's links to the cult? "Community Volunteers" from Saint Hill - could there be a more ironic name for the HQ of a cult? - have been enthusiastically lobbying politicians, police officers, and businesses in the City. The recruitment drive was part of Hubbard's "master plan". It is spelled out in Scientology documents: namely to infiltrate and convert key institutions in society. The process, so the thinking goes, will eventually lead to a Scientology Government. And the "church" has succeeded in cultivating contacts. Up to 20 officers in the City of London Police - from constables to superintendents - have accepted hospitality worth thousands from Scientologists. This included free invitations to a ?500-a-head charity dinner where the guest of honour was Tom Cruise; he is now reported to have bought a home near Saint Hill. One senior police officer appeared in a Church of Scientology video and another, Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley, spoke at the opening of the new "mission" near St Paul's Cathedral, saying the cult was "raising the spiritual wealth of society". Here's a question for Chief Superintendent Hurley. What kind of church, back in the Seventies, implemented a series of covert operations in America which culminated in the bugging of the U.S. Justice Department? His ringing endorsement was a triumph for the spin doctors of Saint Hill. The "church's" cramped, old London base in Tottenham Court Road could not be more different from its magnificent new home in EC4. Could there be a better place to woo influential new friends? Among them is Sebastien Sainsbury, one of the heirs to the Sainsbury dynasty, and European executive director at Lakeshore Capital, which has nearly $1 billion under management. Scientologists with brochures and leaflets, have also descended on investment bank Bridgewell Group, law firms Eversheds, Dechert Llp, Shadbolt and Co, and PR consultants Merlin. The organisation is believed to have a huge expense account to wine and dine contacts, but then it can afford to be generous. Scientology is worth millions in the UK alone, and much of its wealth is derived from members paying for courses. The Scientologists, it now emerges, secured relief of ?281,344 on the full rates of ?351,680 on their London base - a discount of 80 per cent. The City of London Corporation said the group had been entitled to the huge reduction because it carried out "charitable works". A member of the Corporation, Alderman Ian Luder, a partner with leading City accounting and consultancy firm Grant Thornton, spoke at the building's grand opening of the "effective" help Scientology provided for drug users. In 2003, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint by the Church of England over unsubstantiated claims that the Scientologists' Narconon programme, a combination of vigorous exercise, vitamin therapy, counselling, and sauna sessions to sweat out toxins, had saved "250,000 people from drug abuse". Scientology's promotional drive is said to be spearheaded by the group's Office of Special Affairs. Officially, this department is responsible for public relations and legal matters. But OSA operatives are also, it is claimed, Scientology's secret service. Those who undermine the mores and beliefs of Scientology - including journalists - must be ruthlessly dealt with. Hubbard said they were "Fair Game" and could be "tricked, sued or lied to, or destroyed". That policy, the cult claims, no longer exists. The following account reveals a different story. A woman, who we shall call Sarah, claims she and her husband, who briefly joined the "church" a few years ago, received death threats after he was wrongly suspected of stealing Scientology documents from Saint Hill. "One day two well-built men in dark suits from Saint Hill arrived at my door," she said. "I told them my husband wasn't in but they forced their way in and started riffling through the bookshelves. When my husband returned they bundled him into the car. "Finally he came back shaking from head to toe. He told me they'd threatened to kill him if he didn't tell him the whereabouts of some stolen documents." Later, a typed note arrived in the post branding him a "Suppressive Person" (an enemy of Scientology) and informing him he was now Fair Game. Other notes followed. "For months after, we had anonymous notes delivered in the post almost daily," said Sarah. "They said, 'You Bastard', 'You're Dead', 'Nothing will save you' - it was terribly frightening. After three months we moved and didn't tell anyone where we were going." Where does the organisation get the money to hire these goons? Well, organised religions can be very lucrative - as L. Ron Hubbard himself recognised. Giant photographs of Hubbard adorn the new London headquarters, and his many pronouncements (such as "Man is basically good and it is this basic goodness we want to set free") are stencilled on walls. A comment you won't find displayed, though, is the one Hubbard made to an author's convention before he invented Scientology. "Writing for a penny a word," he said, "is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars he should start his own religion." Basic introductory sessions for Scientology cost up to ?80. Then there is another course which costs ?300, then another? Indeed, passing all the stages to Scientology "enlightenment" - the so-called Bridge to Total Freedom - can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and has left some people with inheritances frittered away, re-mortgaged homes, and debt. One elderly couple "lost" their daughter Emily when she married a Scientologist in 2002. Her father said: "My wife noticed it straight away but I tried to dismiss it. But it became obvious that she wasn't the loving, caring daughter we had nurtured. "We sat her down and tried to discuss my findings and what I saw shocked me to the core. After a few minutes of talking rationally and reasonably to her, Emily erupted: 'How dare you question my religion? What you have read is all lies; if you raise this issue one more time I will never contact you'. "I think to say she had been brainwashed would be too simplistic. This was mind manipulation at the highest level. "If she chooses to come back to us we would welcome her with open arms, but I can't just live with it. I can't bear the thought of that happening to my beautiful daughter." What was the phrase Chief Superintendent Hurley used to describe his new neighbours in the City? Ah yes, they were "raising the spiritual wealth of society". For those, like me, who have faced the wrath of this cult, they are words which ring as hollow as the baloney on which the Church of Scientology itself is founded. ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:51:05 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:51:05 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Workers of the World Unite Against Starbucks Message-ID: <20070521175105.44c4966c@viola.tamara-b.org> The Nation via Alternet - May 21, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/52146/ Workers of the World Unite Against Starbucks By Liza Featherstone The Nation Last week Starbucks faced legal and political trouble from its own workers. On the third anniversary of the founding of the IWW Starbucks Union, baristas in Chicago marched into a shop and told the manager they were signing up. (Starbucks workers have chosen to organize without government-mediated elections, through an interesting model called "solidarity unionism.") Meanwhile, baristas in Grand Rapids, Michigan announced that they were filing a legal complaint against the company for violating their organizing rights through unlawful surveillance and other questionable tactics. All over the world -- Austria, England, Spain and Australia, as well as the United States -- Starbucks workers demonstrated in front of stores to protest the company's union-busting practices. When you pay $4 for a cup of coffee-flavored foamy milk at Starbucks, part of what you're buying is an illusion of corporate social responsibility. The store exudes a warm glow of righteousness, from the recycled paper napkins to the empathetic messages about sustainable trade and ecological practices (Our farmers are happy! Buy a better lightbulb! Have some more foamy milk!). The workers behind the counter are hoping the public will look beyond all the greenwashing and support their campaign, which has succeeded in raising wages and improving conditions for some workers. The baristas are asking for better wages (some make as little as $8.75 an hour even in costly Manhattan), guaranteed hours with the option to work full-time and more affordable health insurance. (Despite widely-believed corporate spin to the contrary, Starbucks insures a smaller percentage of its workforce than Wal-Mart.) In New York, the National Labor Relations Board (that bastion of radical left-wingers) has accusedStarbucks of violating workers' freedom of association in about thirty different ways, including illegally firing, threatening and disciplining workers for supporting the union. Managers forbade workers from talking about the union -- even when off-duty -- or wearing union buttons. The trial is in June. I'll be attending, and covering it, so stay tuned. [Liza Featherstone is a New York City-based journalist. She is the author, most recently, of "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart" (Basic)] ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 17:55:20 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:55:20 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Dems set war bill without Iraq timeline Message-ID: <20070521175520.4e79becf@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via Yahoo - May 21, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070521/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq By DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) - In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday. The legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added. While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Democrats in both houses are expected to seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush's handling of the unpopular conflict. Democratic officials stressed the legislation was subject to change. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss provisions before a planned presentation to members of the party's rank and file later in the day. Democrats in Congress have insisted for months they would not give Bush a blank check for his war policies, and officials said the legislation is expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society. Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress. Several officials said it was possible that Democrats would attempt to draft a second bill, to include much of the domestic spending that Bush and congressional Republicans have said they oppose. Either way, Democratic leaders have said they hope to clear a war spending bill through both houses of Congress and send it to Bush's desk by week's end. They added the intention was to avoid a veto. Bush vetoed one bill this spring after Democrats included a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Republicans in the House upheld his rejection of the measure. The House then passed legislation to provide war funds in two 60-day installments. Bush threatened a veto, and the measure was sidetracked in the Senate in favor of a non-controversial bill that merely pledged to give the troops the resources they need. That set the stage for the current House-Senate negotiations on a measure to send to Bush. The Democrats' attempt to draft war funding legislation occurred after an inconclusive meeting on Friday involving White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress. Democrats criticized the administration for rejecting calls for a troop withdrawal timetable even if Bush has the power to waive it. For his part, Bolten criticized Democrats for persisting with an approach that had already sparked one veto. He noted the president had already said he was willing to consider legislation that included so-called benchmarks for the Iraqi government. Both the House and Senate have approved legislation raising the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour in three separate 70-cent increases over 26 months. The measures both included modest tax breaks, mainly aimed at helping businesses that hire low-skilled or handicapped workers. White House officials have said Bush is amenable to accepting an increase in the minimum wage, although they and key GOP lawmakers favor larger tax cuts to accompany the measure. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon May 21 18:35:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:35:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Evidence Confirms Warnings About Diabetes Drug Avandia Message-ID: <20070521183530.1ade3049@viola.tamara-b.org> Public Citizen - May 21, 2007 Evidence Confirms Public Citizen's Warnings About the Risks of Popular Diabetes Drug Avandia Statement by Sidney Wolfe, MD, Director of Health Research Group at Public Citizen The New England Journal of Medicine study just released showing a 43 percent increase in heart attacks in people using Avandia should come as no surprise either to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or to Glaxo. In animal studies done prior to its approval, one of the most constant findings was damage to the heart, and within the first six years of approval there have been 689 cases of heart failure reported to the FDA in patients using the drug. In addition, there have been reports of anemia which, along with heart failure, increases the risk for a heart attack. We have warned readers of WorstPills.org since the end of 2004 that they should not use this drug. More recently, there have been numerous reports of visual abnormalities in the form of macular edema (swelling of part of the retina) and increases in several kinds of fractures in women. Despite prior knowledge of serious cardiac problems, the FDA has failed to require Glaxo to adequately warn about the dangers of this drug that should be, at best, a last-choice treatment for Type II diabetes. In addition to the accumulating evidence of its risks, it is not even as effective as other diabetes drugs in lowering blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C, a measure of glucose control. Because of inadequate warnings about Avandia and massive advertising campaigns, its popularity has grown so that 11 million prescriptions were filled for the drug in the United States in 2006 alone. We strongly urge patients - as we have for almost two and a half years - not to use this drug. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 01:16:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 01:16:25 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Ed Koch: Gonzales is a Dead Man Walking Message-ID: <20070522011625.3b14b0f0@viola.tamara-b.org> RealClear Politics - May 22, 2007 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/gonzales_is_a_deadman_walking.html Gonzales Is a Dead-Man Walking By Ed Koch U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may not realize it, but he is a dead man walking. That's the term used to describe a prisoner on death row. Gonzales now fits the description, having lost the support of the U.S. Congress, including that of many republican Senators. Arlen Specter (R-PA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary committee, after Gonzales' testimony before his committee, said, "The attorney general's testimony was very, very damaging to his own credibility. It has been damaging to the administration. No doubt, it is bad for the Department of Justice. It is harmful. There has been a very substantial decrease in morale." There is now pending in the Congress a non-binding resolution expressing no confidence in the attorney general which may be voted on before the end of the week. What has put the final nail in Gonzales' coffin is the testimony provided before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2007 by James Comey, former deputy U.S. attorney general under attorney general John Ashcroft. Comey's powerful testimony is riveting in exposing Gonzales for the villain he is. It is annexed. The testimony relates to an incident that occurred in March 2004. Shortly before Attorney General Ashcroft was taken to George Washington hospital with acute pancreatitis, he was briefed by Comey, his deputy, on a matter concerning the National Security Agency which had requested renewal of authorization by the Department of Justice to continue with a program so secret that Comey would not discuss it when testifying three years later before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The NSA is the number one U.S. security agency and engages in large part in monitoring the air waves and phone calls taking place overseas. Comey and the Department of Justice lawyers had concluded that the program as conducted violated U.S. laws and declined to authorize its continuation. Ashcroft agreed with Comey's recommendation. When a seriously ill Ashcroft went to the hospital, he designated Comey as Acting U.S. Attorney General. On the evening of March 10, 2004, a telephone call from Mrs. Ashcroft alerted Comey that Alberto Gonzales, then the president's counsel, and Andrew Card, then the President's Chief of Staff, were coming to the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft. Comey testified he feared "given how ill I knew the Attorney General was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me, when he was in no condition to do that." Comey raced to get to Ashcroft's bedside before Gonzales and Card arrived, and he was successful, using lights and sirens and racing up the stairs to the fifth floor. He was going to a crime scene to prevent a crime from being committed. The hospital room meeting between Comey and Ashcroft convinced Ashcroft to continue to support the objections to the program raised by Comey. Their meeting was followed by the entrance of Card and Gonzales. Comey testified, "And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there -- to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was -- which I will not do. And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me -- drawn from the hour-long meeting we'd had a week earlier -- and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general' and he pointed to me. The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room. And within just a few moments after that Director Mueller arrived. I told him quickly what had happened. He had a brief -- a memorable brief exchange with the attorney general and then we went outside in the hallway." So we have Gonzales, pledged to support the U.S. laws and constitution, seeking to get the Attorney General to overrule his own staff who believed the NSA program to be illegal. Isn't it awesome that Ashcroft, a very conservative lawyer and former U.S. Senator, hated by the liberals, in effect, thwarted an attempt by the President's Counsel and Chief of Staff to subvert the law? Ashcroft is now in the private sector in Washington, D.C., having recovered from his illness. Comey is also in the private sector. Comey testified, "The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th." Comey did not resign that day and explained why. He was called by attorney general Ashcroft's chief of staff and, as he testified, "I ended up agreeing -- Mr. Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me. He was very concerned that Mr. Ashcroft was not well enough to understand fully what was going on. And he begged me to wait until -- this was Thursday that I was making this decision -- to wait [un]til Monday to give him the weekend to get oriented enough so that I wouldn't leave him behind, was his concern. I agreed to wait. I said that what I would do is -- that Friday would be [my] last day. And Monday morning I would resign. I went to the Oval Office -- as I did every morning as acting attorney general -- with Director Mueller to brief the president and the vice president on what was going on in Justice Department's counterterrorism work. We had the briefing. And as I was leaving, the president asked to speak to me, took me in his study and we had a one-on-one meeting for about 15 minutes -- again, which I will not go into the substance of. It was a very full exchange. And at the end of that meeting, at my urging, he met with Director Mueller, who was waiting for me downstairs. He met with Director Mueller again privately, just the two of them. And then after those two sessions, we had his direction to do the right thing, to do what we believed, what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality." Why do I repeat this story which appeared in the media? Many people who watched the Republican presidential candidates, who debated twice recently, and read the follow-up comments in the media, came away with a sense of despair, thinking, can't the G.O.P. do better? Isn't our great country entitled to a better choice for those voting Republican in the next election? Don't worry, I will discuss the Democratic candidates with equal frankness in a later commentary. Why don't Republican opinion-makers and leaders consider a draft of James Comey for President? A movie might be made called "Mr. Comey Goes To The White House," with Comey played by Leonardo DiCaprio. No, too short; Comey is well over six feet tall. I know, because I had lunch with him a couple of years ago at Forlini's in Manhattan. Mr. President, you are surrounded by incompetents and rapscallions. Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:04:38 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:04:38 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] New Column by Fidel Urges "Health, Not Arms" Message-ID: <20070522150438.2387e4b3@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Fidel Castro for Health, not Arms Havana, May 22 (Prensa Latina) In a new reflection on the dangers currently gripping humanity, Cuban President Fidel Castro called for governments of the world to invest in public health and not arms. The non-profit exercise of medicine is capable of gaining any noble heart, stated statesman in his recent article broadcast Tuesday by the island s mass media. In his feature, Fidel Castro condemned the construction of a "wonderful submarine" in Great Britain, which can shoot down lethal Tomahawk missiles at a distance of 1.4 miles. "This ship," he said, "will undermine what little prestige is left for Great Britain." "The holocaust of the species is precisely the destination of that sophisticated ship," noted the Cuba head of State in his article entitled "The English submarine." The president criticizes the investment of billions on this device, which can sail without refueling for 25 years. The statesman stresses that with the $7.5 billion to be used to build this warship, that country could train nearly 75,000 physicians, care for 150 million people and build 3,000 clinics with new technologies, as Cuba does in other countries. According to the statesman, the English submarine illustrates the sophisticated weapons with which that country aspires to maintain the unsustainable development order by the US imperial system. sus iff yp mf PL-8 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:07:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:07:45 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Fidel Castro: The English Submarine - May 21, 2007 Message-ID: <20070522150745.22a70785@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana - May 22, 2007 http://www.plenglish.com Reflections by the Commander in Chief THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE by Fidel Castro Ruz The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class, the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than two decades. "A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxigen and drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface," was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the shipyards. "It's a mean looking beast", says another. "Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it are 3 nuclear-powered submarines at different stages of construction," assures yet another. Someone says that "it can observe the movements of cruisers in New York Harbor right from the English Channel, drawing close to the coast without being detected and listen to conversations on cell phones". "In addition, it can transport special troops in mini-subs that, at the same time, will be able to fire lethal Tomahawk missiles for distances of 1,400 miles", a fourth person declares. El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper, emphatically spreads the news. The UK Royal Navy declares that it will be one of the most advanced in the world. The first of them will be launched on June 8 and will go into service in January of 2009. It can transport up to 38 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes, capable of destroying a large warship. It will possess a permanent crew of 98 sailors who will even be able to watch movies on giant plasma screens. The new Astute will carry the latest generation of Block 4 Tomahawk torpedoes which can be reprogrammed in flight. It will be the first one not having a system of conventional periscopes and, instead, will be using fibre optics, infrared waves and thermal imaging. "BAE Systems, the armaments manufacturer, will build two other submarines of the same class," AP reported. The total cost of the three submarines, according to calculations that will certainly be below the mark, is 7.5 billion dollars. What a feat for the British! The intelligent and tenacious people of that nation will surely not feel any sense of pride. What is most amazing is that with such an amount of money, 75 thousand doctors could be trained to care for 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States. You could build 3 thousand polyclinics, outfitted with sophisticated equipment, ten times what our country possesses. Cuba is currently training thousands of young people from other countries as medical doctors. In any remote African village, a Cuban doctor can impart medical knowledge to any youth from the village or from the surrounding municipality who has the equivalent of a grade twelve education, using videos and computers energized by a small solar panel; the youth does not even have to leave his hometown, nor does he need to be contaminated with the consumer habits of a large city. The important thing is the patients who are suffering from malaria or any other of the typical and unmistakable diseases that the student will be seeing together the doctor. The method has been tested with surprising results. The knowledge and practical experience accumulated for years have no possible comparison. The non-lucrative practice of medicine is capable of winning over all noble hearts. Since the beginning of the Revolution, Cuba has been engaged in training doctors, teachers and other professionals; with a population of less than 12 million inhabitants, today we have more Comprehensive General Medicine specialists than all the doctors in sub-Saharan Africa where the population exceeds 700 million people. We must bow our heads in awe after reading the news about the English submarine. It teaches us, among other things, about the sophisticated weapons that are needed to maintain the untenable order developed by the United States imperial system. We cannot forget that for centuries, and until recently, England was called the Queen of the Seas. Today, what remains of that privileged position is merely a fraction of the hegemonic power of her ally and leader, the United States. Churchill said: Sink the Bismarck! Today Blair says: Sink whatever remains of Great Britain's prestige! For that purpose, or for the holocaust of the species, is what his "marvellous submarine" will be good for. Havana, May 21, 2007, 5:00 p.m. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:11:02 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:11:02 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba is the best place to live - Michael Moore Message-ID: <20070522151102.72e4baf8@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness [Extracted form a long review of the Cannes Film Festival and the various movies shown so far which ends with a review of "Sicko" by Michael Moore. -SMcG] The Irish Times News - May 22, 2007 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2007/0522/1179498562820.html A heart of darkness at Cannes It has often been remarked that the people who return suntanned from the Festival de Cannes are those who didn't do any work. This year, however, the sun has been so strong every day and the queues for most screenings are so long that we are all getting sunburned just standing in line. How we suffer for our art. Once inside the festival cinemas, it's a very different story, as the mood darkens time after time. After dishing up an opening film in My Blueberry Nights that proved more slight and insubstantial than an amuse-bouche, Cannes has presented a menu heavy on serious issues, encompassing abortion, suicide, adultery, domestic abuse, and diverse forms of graphic violence - all in the first five days. [...] Michael Moore ladles out the humour in equal measure with the message in Sicko, his first documentary since Fahrenheit 9/11, the 2004 Palme d'Or winner at Cannes. His target this time is the US health-care system, and adhering to his now familiar formula, he draws on statistical data and human experience - his website request, "Send Me Your Health Care Horror Stories", yielded over 25,000 such stories within a week of being posted. >From the evidence he presents, it is hard to disagree with his depiction of the US health-insurance industry as callous and avaricious, of the pharmaceutical companies as exploiters grossly overcharging for medication, and of the political establishment as being in their well-lined pockets. Moore is as selective as ever as he loads his case in this polemic-as-entertainment, but some of the biggest laughs from the Cannes audience came when he uncritically extolled the British National Health Service and the French 35-hour working week, with all its associated benefits, as templates the US should adopt. Nevertheless, the best place to live, he concludes at the end of his global tour, is Cuba - although there's no sign of him moving there. More from Michael Dwyer on Cannes in The Ticket on Friday C 2007 The Irish Times From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:13:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:13:49 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuban AIDS Incidence Lowest in the Americas Message-ID: <20070522151349.06af2ab6@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Cuban AIDS Rate Lowest in the Americas United Nations, May 22 (Prensa Latina) Cuba reiterated its commitment to confront HIV/AIDS and affirmed that, after 20 years, prevalence in the 15 to 49-year-old bracket fell to 0.1 percent, which is the lowest in the Americas. Speaking at the General Assembly, Ambassador Ileana Nunez informed that Cuba has demonstrated its political commitment to confront HIV/AIDS and is an example of what a country can do with its own resources. The diplomat spoke before the follow-up session after the 26th extraordinary session on a declaration to fight HIV/AIDS. "HIV/AIDS incidence in Cuba is the lowest in the Americas and one of the lowest in the world," Nunez explained, recalling that since 2001 antiretroviral treatment has been available to all at no cost. Since then, she went on to add, death by AIDS gradually reduced in Cuba and by 2003 there was a decrease of the number of patients. She explained that her country develops a National Program of Prevention that has four parts: surveillance, epidemiology, education and investigations, and care. She pointed to the control of the pandemic despite the "strong economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the United States government, which tries to block access to about 50 percent of new drugs produced in the world." The official noted the internationalist concept of the Cuban people by sharing what it has without asking anything in return. sus/ir/avp/mf From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:16:09 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:16:09 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba's Culture Minister Heads Delegation to Social Forum Message-ID: <20070522151609.561d1627@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Culture Minister Heads Delegation to Social Forum Havana, May 22 (acn) Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto is heading the island's delegation to the 5th Meeting of the Network in Defense of Humankind, underway since Tuesday in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba. Bolivia's Culture Minister Pablo Groux explained that the social changes taking place in his country as well as the crucial role of the Bolivian Constituent Assembly are high on the meeting's agenda. Under the slogan "In Defense of the Truth and against Media Manipulation," the two-day forum is being attended by scholars and artists from 25 nations. The role of the media in the Americas is also on the focus of discussions by professionals from Germany, Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, the U.S.A., Haiti, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, France, Spain, Per?, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:17:17 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:17:17 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Ready to Assist Angola in Energy Sector Message-ID: <20070522151717.0f99869c@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba Ready to Assist Angola in Energy Sector Havana, May 22 (acn) Cuba is ready to offer Angola its experience in energy saving, said Cuban ambassador to Angola Pedro Ross Leal. In recent statements to the Angolan press, the Cuban ambassador said that his country has implemented a national energy program, known as the Energy Revolution, which has allowed improving the island's power-supply network, replacing old and high-consuming electrical appliances, like fridges, and countless incandescent electric bulbs with energy-saving ones. Another aspect included in the Cuban Energy Revolution is the use of renewable energy sources, like the sun, the wind and ocean waves in order to lower oil consumption, the ambassador said. Ross Leal explained that the Cuban experiences could be shared with Angolan authorities if they required it, given the good bilateral relations between both countries. He added that bilateral cooperation is increasing in several fields, such as public health and construction. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:18:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:18:27 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] National Forum on IT Technologies Opens in Havana Message-ID: <20070522151827.285473c4@viola.tamara-b.org> National Forum on IT Technologies Opens in Havana Havana, May 22 (acn) InfoClub 2007 --a national information technology forum organized by Cuba's Youth Computer Club movement-- kicks off Wednesday at the Central Computation Hall in Havana. Some 150 of 1,700 works that were entered in local competitions across the island last year will be competing for the grand prize, while other smaller awards will be given in various categories such as educational software and websites design. Seminars on multimedia communication, videogame software, information technology (IT) access for people with disabilities and seniors will be included on the agenda of the biennial event occurring for the ninth time. The forum, which concludes Thursday, will also feature works by 16 children, a group actively encouraged to participate in IT development in Cuba. According to the Youth Computer Club National Director Raul Van Troi Navarro Martinez, this event will also commemorate the 20th anniversary of island IT institutions, which have graduated close to 1.2 million people in basic courses since their creation in 1987. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:20:32 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:20:32 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Caribbean Filmmakers Get a Boost from Traveling Festival Message-ID: <20070522152032.24e171c0@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Traveling Caribbean Film Festival Now in Santa Lucia Havana, May 22 (acn) A traveling exhibition of Caribbean films sponsored by Cuba will be attracting the attention of the media and cinema lovers on the Caribbean island of Santa Lucia until Friday May 25. Local communities, schools and cultural centers outside the capital of Castries are hosting the screening of documentaries such as "Hidden Treasures" (Santa Lucia), short fiction films like "Banana Robbery" (Trinidad and Tobago), and "Roble de Olor" directed by Cuban film maker and event coordinator Rigoberto Lopez. In statements to acn, sources from the Cuban embassy in that country said the event has been widely covered by the media and is encouraging for Caribbean film makers. The exhibition already has toured several countries of the region and will visit up to 20 nations in total before concluding in Cuba as part of the fifth Congress on Culture and Development, scheduled for June 11 to 14 at Havana's Convention Center. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:22:55 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:22:55 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Exposes US Trade Tricks to WTO Message-ID: <20070522152255.675b7ddd@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Cuba Exposes US Trade Tricks to WTO Geneva, May 22 (Prensa Latina) Cuba exposed US open schemes to perpetuate illegal unilateral measures harming Cuban free trade and development, as well as the US business community. Jorge Ferrer, member of the Cuban Permanent Mission to the UN, denounced before the WTO arbitrator that Washington repeats the same speech every month. President George W. Bush said he will veto any attempt to flexibilize or lift anti-Cuba illegal measures, and supports Bacardi's suit to annul Cuban rights on Havana Club trademark. Ferrer said that rising world sales of Havana Club rum in association with the French company Pernod-Ricard has displaced Bacardi, which now tries to breach trademark laws with US Federal support. But the Court of Appeals of Madrid ruled that Havana Club brand belongs to Havana Club Holding company from the French Pernod Picard association and overruled Bacardi's appeal. sus emw ft mf PL-16 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:24:22 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:24:22 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Nicaragua Takes on Oil Transnationals Message-ID: <20070522152422.27a46d2e@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Nicaragua Takes on Oil Transnats Managua, May 22 (Prensa Latina) The National Assembly Infrastructure and Public Services Commission will subpoena oil transnationals operating in Nicaragua. Current international companies operating in Nicaragua are Esso, Texaco, Shell and the state-run Petronic, currently leased to a foreign company. Liberal Eliseo Nunez, leader of the commission, said the goal is to learn of their guidelines establish gas prices, profit margin, viability and distribution capacity. Fuels climbed this week again, with special and regular gasoline over one dollar and on the Caribbean Coast even more from transportation fees. The Local Energy Institute, that acts as regulator, admitted a few days ago that it is powerless to establish price limits since they respond to supply and demand. sus emw nm mf PL-29 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:26:57 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:26:57 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Colombia Should Compensate Ecuadoran Spray Victims: Official Message-ID: <20070522152657.1bfbfb57@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Colombia Should Comp Spray Victims Quito, May 22 (Prensa Latina) Ecuadorian chancellor, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, asked Colombia for "sensitivity" to compensate for damages it caused to border inhabitants due to aerial spraying with glyphosphate. "I am sure that the Colombian government will have sensitivity and responsibility to accept the damages caused by the aerial spaying of border regions," Espinosa told the national press. She recalled that the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Health, Paul Hunt, asked Bogota to suspend indefinitely fumigations until the toxicity of the herbicide is tested. Hunt also requested compensation for those affected by spraying with this substance that crosses the border borne by the winds. Colombia should suspend "indefinitely aerial spraying as a precaution to guarantee the rights and health of the people so that they can live in a healthy environment for both our Ecuadorian and Colombian brothers, Espinosa added. She declared that the government has the right to accuse its northern neighbor at The Hague court for spraying with a toxic substance allegedly to eradicate coca plantations. In addition to eradicating these crops the herbicide destroys legal crops and causes diseases among the inhabitants of the border regions. sus lgo avp mf PL-1 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:30:24 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:30:24 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Latin Americans Reclaiming Their Mass Media Message-ID: <20070522153024.7d91a87c@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Latin America Media, New Essence Caracas, May 22 (Prensa Latina) A new focus on the essence of mass media and property of radio and TV frequencies is growing in Latin America, according to an advisory council of the multinational channel, Telesur. In its final declaration at the International Conferences of Communications sponsored by this television station, the consulting institution approved a manifest that defines transmission frequencies as heritage of humanity controlled by national governments. Consequently, "States have the right of concession, revocation or renovation of said concessions according to their Constitutions, national laws and criteria of the UN on human rights and collective interest, as has been assumed by several Latin American sovereign countries," the document states. The document points out that this has no relationship whatsoever with the freedom of the press or of expression clearly ratifying the fundamental rights of citizens. Guaranteeing this heritage shall be the reality of humanity supported by the necessary democratization of the radio-electric frequencies of Latin America. The forum applauded the political decisions of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay to take a stand to rescue those public spaces. In the specific case of Venezuela the document specifies that the non-renewal of Radio Caracas Television is a sovereign decision and is in no way arbitrary or illegal. At the same time the text denounces the campaigns of manipulation and destabilization campaigns that are applied to mass media of the democratic governments of Bolivia and Ecuador. sus leg fgn avp mf PL-3 *** Bolivia Forum Demystifies Media Cochabamba, Bolivia, May 22 (Prensa Latina) The 5th Meeting of Academics and Artists in Defense of Humanity begins Tuesday in this city, with the participation of culture ministers from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and delegations from 50 countries. # Latin America Media, New Essence With the Slogan "In defense of truth and against media manipulation," the forum starts activities with the presence of President Evo Morales at the Santibanez House, located in central Cochabamba. Over 100 reporters will debate until Wednesday the role of media on this continent, the process of change in Bolivia and the decisive role of that country s Constituent Assembly. Professionals will also debate urgent issues like social responsibility of journalists, communication companies and the media situation in Bolivia and Venezuela. Also on the list is communication, capitalism and socialism, communication and policy, the right of media and people to be truly informed, and the use of the radio-electrical space. Conclusions will be presented by the Republic s President Evo Morales at the Quemado Palace in La Paz. sus iff ga mf PL-6 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:32:34 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:32:34 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Opposition to U.S. immigration bill intensifies Message-ID: <20070522153234.5e781323@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - May 22, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2136726020070522?feedType=RSS Opposition to U.S. immigration bill intensifies By Donna Smith WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opposition to a compromise immigration overhaul grew on Monday, with labor unions and Hispanic groups saying the deal brokered by leading U.S. senators and the White House was bad for workers, families and employers. The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the country's oldest and largest Hispanic groups, said it opposed the plan's limits on family-based immigration. A labor union and another Hispanic group said they would work to change the proposed law as it moves through Congress. The opposition emerged as the Senate began debating the compromise plan, brokered in closed-door talks between White House officials and about a dozen Republican and Democratic senators. President George W. Bush, said in an interview with Reuters he would ask that opponents actually read the bill before offering opinions on its content. "There's no question this is an emotional debate. But people have to realize that in order to have border security, you must have a comprehensive approach to immigration reform," Bush said. He said the compromise "was a very serious effort to bridge a wide gulf that had existed in the Senate." The measure would combine tough new border security and workplace enforcement measures with a temporary worker program and a plan to legalize an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country before January 2007. In addition to limits on family-based immigration, the citizens league said it also opposed the temporary worker program because it would require laborers to return home for a year after each two-year work period. Temporary workers would be allowed a total of three two-year visas. "This bill will dehumanize workers, short-change employers and lead to widespread undocumented immigration as many workers inevitably overstay their visas rather than return home," the group's president, Rosa Rosales, said in a statement. The AFL-CIO plans a news conference on Tuesday with civil rights and Hispanic groups to outline their concerns about the guest worker program, new limits on family-based immigration and a proposed new merit-based system for future immigrants. REDUCING TEMPORARY WORKERS The Service Employees International Union plans to join that news conference, but officials said they hoped to work with lawmakers to change the bill as it moves through the Senate and eventually the House of Representatives. Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the SEIU, said requiring immigrants to return home to apply for permanent residence was unworkable. The union, which has about 1.8 million members, also wants more labor protections for guest workers and a path to citizenship. "We are going to be evaluating every step of the way and at some point we will see what the final package looks like," he said in an interview. National Council of La Raza Vice President Cecilia Munoz said her group would try to reshape the bill. "It is important that we get a good bill over the finish line," she said. Dozens of amendments are expected and it is unclear whether the compromise will remain intact as it works its way through the Senate. One of the first amendments will be aimed at reducing the number of visas available for temporary workers each year from 400,000 to 200,000. The amendment is being offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat. The bill also faces stiff opposition from conservative Republicans who see it as an amnesty that rewards illegal immigrants who broke U.S. laws. "This bill is compromising to the country's economy, national security and very foundation of a democracy rooted in the rule of law," said Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican. "Each low-skilled immigrant household that gets amnesty costs the American taxpayers nearly $20,000 each year if we consider only the illegal aliens given amnesty," he said. ? Reuters 2006. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:36:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:36:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Mexican families face difficult choice Message-ID: <20070522153630.5f0f1097@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) AP - May 19, 2007 Mexican families face difficult choice By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer Since they joined their deported parents in Mexico, 7-year-old Adriana has stopped screaming "Papa!" in her sleep and 10-year-old Yadira's asthma has eased. Pedro, 15, doesn't break into tears anymore, and Adrian, 12, thinks of his new life as an adventure. For now, these American children are trying to ignore the wrenching decision they have to make by the end of summer: Stay with their parents in this bone-dry village where they bathe in a canal and use an outhouse, or return alone to some of America's best schools in Palo Alto, Calif. Tens of thousands of families are facing similar choices, and even more soon could if Congress goes ahead with an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws. About 3 million U.S.-born children have a parent who is living illegally in America, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and since 2004 the government has been deporting illegal immigrants at a record rate. The Senate is expected to begin debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. The bill would limit the importance of family ties, capping visas for parents of U.S. citizens at 40,000 a year and changing a preference system that for four decades has favored such ties. Pedro Ramirez Sr., 38, was banking on that system to give him and his wife a path to citizenship once their eldest son turns 18 in two years. Now he's not so sure: The new proposal would place more emphasis on potential immigrants' skills and education, and his deportation may rule him out anyway. Ramirez never went to school. He sneaked across the border as a 16-year-old boy, learning English as he worked his way up from a minimum-wage factory job to night supervisor at an Albertson's supermarket. His promotion ? and the jump in salary from $6 to $16 an hour ? allowed him to move his family from the rough streets of East Palo Alto to quiet, suburban Palo Alto, home to Stanford University. He and his wife also applied for residency, but were denied after their lawyer was disbarred. Immigration officials say they evaded notices to appear in court. Back in Mexico, the family has spent their savings of nearly $10,000 unsuccessfully fighting for residency. Friends, parents and teachers from Pedro Jr.'s Gunn High School ? No. 79 in the country last year, according to a Newsweek ranking ? have raised $2,000 for the family. Before his father was deported in February, Pedro's biggest problems were how to get into UCLA law school and persuading his football coach to let him be quarterback. Now, he says he might have to get used to the family's two-room shack and bathing in a canal to keep the family together. "If I go, I want to go with everybody," he said. His mother, Isabel, said she'll let her children decide what they want to do. If they return to California, the boys would live with an aunt in Newark, Calif., and the girls with their fifth-grade teacher in Palo Alto. She said the past few months have been traumatic enough. After Ramirez was deported in February, Pedro Jr. broke into tears in his math class and couldn't concentrate. He was appalled by his mother's monitoring ankle bracelet, saying: "You're not a criminal!" "I feel betrayed," by the U.S. government, Pedro Jr. said. Isabel, 36, tries to make life in Mexico as normal as possible for the children. She bought a cushioned toilet seat for the outhouse, but it slides off the wooden bench. She incessantly sweeps the dirt floor of the shack where she cooks and splashes bleach on the ground to keep away the flies. But it's a losing battle. Cancita has no running water and no telephone service. It's also in the middle of one of Mexico's most violent regions ? the western state of Michoacan. Earlier this month, a half-dozen military helicopters swooped into Cancita after gunmen in a nearby town killed five soldiers in a midday shootout. The troops frisked Pedro Jr. and his father as they went house-to-house looking for drugs and weapons. "I was a little nervous," Pedro Jr. admitted sheepishly. But his main fear is for what will happen to his parents. If they stay in Cancita, there is no work. If they try to return to the U.S., they'll have to go illegally through the dangerous desert. If the children stay in Cancita, they'll have to learn to read and write in Spanish. Adrian, a seventh grader, is struggling with "Los Tres Cerditos" ? "The Three Little Pigs." Pedro Jr. spends his days burning rap songs on his dust-covered computer and transferring them to his MP3 player, which the neighbors think is a cell phone. Yadira said when she explained the device could play songs from the Internet, they asked: "What's the Internet?" "I don't want to go to school here. It's no good. There's nowhere to play," she said. But she added: "I don't want to go back and leave my parents." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:39:55 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:39:55 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Another Farm Worker dead from heat illness Message-ID: <20070522153955.41abcf2f@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven Robinson (activ-l) - May 22, 2007 United Farmworkers http://www.ufwaction.org/campaign/heatdeath507/nahbiej7k? Another Farm Worker dead from heat illness Summer has not even begun and a farm worker has already died of heat illness. We need your help. UFWAction.Org We need your immediate help. Despite the implementation of permanent heat regulations last year, another farm worker, 54-year old Eladio Hernandez died due to heat related illness. He was working for the farm labor contractor (FLC) YNT Harvesting at Hillside Orchards on May 9. The orchard is located just outside of Kettleman City in California's San Joaquin Valley. Eladio's story is especially horrendous as he got sick at around 1 pm and the company waited for almost 3 hours before calling for medical assistance. We need you to send a message to Cal OSHA immediately and tell them to conduct a full criminal investigation of this death and prosecute to the full extent of the law. We first heard about this situation when we got an anonymous e-mail from a farm worker. It took time to follow up because workers were afraid. After a week of investigation this is what we learned. According to workers, on the afternoon of May 9th at about 1pm, Eladio Hernandez complained about being sick, but was ignored by his foreman and told to get back to work. As Eladio started to climb up the ladder to continue picking peaches, he fell. He was told to go and sit under a tree. The foreman went over and yelled at him, "Get it up. Don't be lazy, you son of a bitch" and told Eladio that he was faking. At around 3pm several workers told the foreman that he needed to do something about Eladio. That he was not getting better. At around 3:30 the foreman Manuel Gomez took Eladio and dropped him off near the sorting facility where workers were sorting the fruit that the harvesting crews were picking. He just left him there and went back to his crew. Eladio walked over to the workers. He looked visibly sick. His lips were white, parched and dry and he had had blue and purple markings around his eyes. Several workers went up to him and asked him if he was okay. He said no, he felt really sick. Workers attempted to fan him with cardboard to give him fresh air and wiped water on his mouth. Eladio started to shake and have convulsions. Co-worker Rodrigio Gonzalez told us Eladio told them "I don't want to die." The workers got scared and someone finally called 911. Eladio lost consciousness while waiting for the ambulance and sorter Alma Andrete told us a co-worker gave him CPR and revived him twice. When the ambulance got there at approximately 4:20 they continued to try to revive him again, but it was too late. Worker Rodrigio Gonzalez told us "I thought his life could have been saved, but nobody did anything and just left him there waiting to die." Sorter Alma Andrete added, "I could not believe that all of the upper management were just letting this worker die in front of us". We need your help to make sure the people responsible for this shocking death are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Please e-mail the responsible agency, Cal-OSHA and demand they take immediate action. Go to the United FarmWorker's website to E-Mail Cal-Osha. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:57:47 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:57:47 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Former Venez VP Adcuses Colombian Official in Violent Plot Message-ID: <20070522155747.5ee4c95d@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via International Herald Tribune - May 21, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/21/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Colombia.php Chavez ally: Colombian defense minister may be linked to Venezuela plot The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela: Former Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said Colombia's defense minister is suspected of involvement in a plot that allegedly contemplated sending Colombian troops into Venezuela undercover to carry out assassinations. Rangel said during his Sunday TV program that security agencies uncovered a plot "that presumably involves the Colombian defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos." According to a statement citing his remarks during the program, Rangel said the plan involves "infiltrating a dozen Colombian soldiers belonging to elite units into the (Venezuelan) national territory, among them expert snipers." Rangel, who served under President Hugo Chavez and remains close with him, said the plan aims to "unleash destabilizing actions, assassinating government and opposition leaders." He did not offer details or other evidence, saying the plot is being investigated. Santos did not immediately respond to the accusations. He is also under scrutiny at home, where a paramilitary warlord, Salvatore Mancuso, has accused him of conspiring with the far-right militias. Rangel also said he had reports that the Colombian government is preparing a "new trick" against Venezuela that involves Colombian agents slipping into Venezuela to arrest a wanted drug trafficker, Wilber Varela, who would tell the media "he had been protected by Venezuelan authorities and try to implicate President Chavez himself and other high-ranking government officials." Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo told the Colombian TV channel RCN on Monday that rumors of a Colombian-backed plot to destabilize Venezuela are "unfounded" and said the government of U.S.-allied President Alvaro Uribe maintains the utmost respect for Chavez. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 15:58:55 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:58:55 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Venezuela: Local Activists Halt Gold Mining Operation Message-ID: <20070522155855.7e602956@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - May 21, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2137159520070522 Hecla halts gold production at Venezuelan mine; sees impact NEW YORK - Hecla Mining Co. said on Monday it has halted gold mining at Mina Isidora in Venezuela as local residents have blocked access to the mine. Hecla said in a statement it anticipated the temporary closure would have a negligible impact on its gross profit for the year, and a 10 percent effect on gold production. Second-quarter results could be negatively impacted by about 12,000 ounces of gold, Hecla added. The company said protesting residents were asking it to address issues, such as community infrastructure and unemployment in the rural area around the mine. Hecla claimed to have the majority support of the area's communities and its own employees. It said it had decided not to send workers through a protest roadblock, resulting in the temporary halt to operations. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:13:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:13:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Venez Media Row Continues; Some RCTV Supporters Found Heavily Armed Message-ID: <20070522161335.6f631c3c@viola.tamara-b.org> [During the US CIA's wars on Jamaica's Michael Manley, heavy use was made of the "Jamaica Gleaner" in their psychological warfare campaign to foment violence, fear and ultimately to oust Manley. It worked. Similarly, after the Sandinista revolution, the newspaper "La Prensa" was a willing ally of the CIA in their propaganda campaign against Ortega and the Sandinistas. Both Manley and Ortega allowed this to continue, fearing the public opinion backlash, domestic and foreign, against what might be seen as restricting "freedom of the press." Hugo Chavez has not made that mistake. The media outlets that have already demonstrated their agendas to support the US and the Venezuelan oligarchy (during the failed coup of April, 2002 and since) are losing their licenses. Chavez has learned from Manley's and Ortega's failures, and from the successful use of the media in Cuba to protect their revolution. -NY Transfer] excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 22, 2007 [RCTV's non-renewal continued to bring protesters out in Caracas yesterday, the Associated Press reports. AFP reports today that three RCTV supporters were arrested in possession of three submachine guns, a handgun and shotguns during protests last Thursday. The men were detained on charges of conspiracy. Also in attendance was Manuel Rosales, the opposition presidential candidate defeated by President Chavez last December. Rosales is quoted in El Universal today as having called Chavez a "big liar" who is "ruining" Venezuela in comments he made on a television program in Panama. RCTV's signal will expire next Monday and be taken over by the public broadcaster TeVes on Venezuela's open-access airwaves. The board of the new channel was sworn in yesterday, and will be headed by Lili Rodriguez, a well-known journalist. Finally, the nationalization of the telecommunications company CANTV in Caracas has been finalized, the Associated Press reports. A new board of directors for the company has been appointed, and will be headed by Socorro Hernandez, who has a background in the oil industry. The Venezuelan government paid $1.3 billion to take control of 86.2% of shares of CANTV earlier this month, according to the Miami Herald. -VIO] AP via The Washington Post - May 21, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101379.html Protesters Decry Loss of Venezuela TV By Christopher Toothaker The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela -- Thousands of protesters carried a blocks-long "SOS" banner through Venezuela's capital on Monday, condemning threats to freedom of expression days before the country is set to lose one of its few remaining opposition-aligned TV stations. Shouting "We Want Freedom!" and waving Venezuelan flags, demonstrators warned that President Hugo Chavez's plan to replace Radio Caracas Television with a public-service station is part of a broad effort to silence criticism. The banner that snaked through the streets read "Freedom of Expression, SOS" in 10 different languages. "Threats to freedom of expression affect all citizens equally; it doesn't matter if you are pro-government or against the government," said Rafael Fuenmayor, a reporter from the Globovision 24-hour news channel, who helped organize the protest along with other local journalists. Globovision is the only other major opposition-aligned channel, though it does not reach all parts of the country. Two other channels that used to be staunchly anti-Chavez recently toned down their coverage. RCTV is due to go off the air Monday, after Sunday's final day of programming, when the government says its license expires. Officials deny any threat to media freedom, arguing that a new station called TVES will offer diverse programming while avoiding pro-Chavez propaganda aired on other state-run channels. A board of directors for the new channel was sworn in Monday. Protesters ended their march outside the mission of the Organization of American States, where they urged the body to take a closer look at the state of press freedoms under Chavez. OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza has warned that failing to allow RCTV to continue broadcasting "would be seen as a form of censorship against freedom of expression." Countries including Honduras, Guatemala and Chile have expressed support for Insulza's position. Founded in 1953, RCTV is Venezuela's oldest private network and broadcasts a mix of talk shows, soap operas and a version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" RCTV frequently airs complaints of corruption, crime and inefficiency from both opposition and government supporters, whose grievances are rarely broadcast on state-run TV channels. RCTV's general manager, Marcel Granier, said the network has the right to continue broadcasting until 2022 and challenged the government's decision in court. Venezuela's Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the first of a series of legal challenges by RCTV, but more are pending. Information Minister Willian Lara said the state's right not to renew RCTV's license was "inarguable," and predicted on Sunday that Venezuela's highest court would uphold the measure. "We have reason to believe the upcoming decisions from the Supreme Court of Justice will fall in line with law and justice," Lara said. Chavez accuses RCTV and other opposition-aligned private media of supporting a failed 2002 coup against him by broadcasting cartoons and movies rather than covering street protests that aided his return to power. RCTV's journalists counter that violent protests staged by "Chavistas" outside the channel's headquarters prevented them from reporting the news. Venezuela still has a broad mix of newspapers, including many that are critical of the government. *** AFP and France 24 - May 21, 2007 http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/news/world/20070522-Venezuela-tv-channel-closure.html Three detained with guns as Venezuela closes TV CARACAS - Two men were arrested on Thursday outside Caracas for "conspiracy" with three submachine guns, a handgun and shotguns, minister Pedro Carreno said. Carreno said another man was arrested also on Thursday "for a presumed crime to attack the national security." Rifles, shotguns, pistols and power scopes were confiscated. He did not reveal any further details of the alleged plot. The arrests came amid street protests over President Hugo Chavez's announced plans not to renew a 20-year concession for the RCTV station, which ends on May 27. He plans to grant the frequency to a new public-service channel. Chavez accuses the channel of having participated in an April 2002 coup, which removed him from power for two days. The private-sector news media have lined up against Chavez's far-reaching "revolution" to create a "socialism for the 21st century." Thousands of protesters marched through Caracas on Saturday in support of the private channel and accusing Chavez of stifling freedom of expression. Protesters in four parts of the city carried signs saying "Don't Close RCTV" and converged on the Chacaito neighborhood, where actors and opposition politicians spoke. The channel has one of the largest audiences in Venezuela and is one of the strongest opposition voices as well. Former presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, who was defeated by Chavez in December's election, attended the protest. The government plans to replace RCTV with Teves, backed by four million dollars in start-up money, to begin broadcasting on Friday. With the creation of Teves, the government will control two of the four channels with national reach in Venezuela *** BBC News - May 22, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6679243.stm Protests mount over Venezuela TV Staff and supporters of a Venezuelan TV station that is due to be taken off air have unveiled a kilometre-long banner in Caracas in support of press freedom. Protesters carried the banner, which read "S-O-S, freedom of expression" in 10 languages through the streets. Opposition-allied RCTV is due to have its licence revoked on 27 May, being replaced by a state-sponsored station. President Hugo Chavez has accused RCTV of plotting against him and supporting a coup attempt in 2002. The demonstration in support of RCTV snaked through the Venezuelan capital to the office of the Organisation of American States (OAS) where protesters handed in a letter detailing their concerns. "Threats to freedom of expression affect all citizens equally. It doesn't matter if you are pro-government or against the government," said Rafael Fuenmayor, a journalist with another opposition-aligned station, Globovision. RCTV - Venezuela's oldest private broadcaster - is due to go off air at midnight on Sunday when the government says its licence will expire and not be renewed. Its frequency is set to be taken over by a new government-funded channel called TVES or Televisora Venezolana Social. Officials deny that there is any threat to media freedom and that TVES will have diverse programmes. On Monday, the government swore in the new channel's board, headed by a journalist Lili Rodriguez, a well-known journalist. "We hope our station will perform a social service, a public service, that it will inform and entertain," she said. Further demonstrations, both for and against the decision to deny RCTV a broadcasting licence, are expected throughout the week. President Chavez was re-elected by a landslide last year. His welfare spending programme has won him massive support among the poor but his opponents accuse him of turning the country into an increasingly authoritarian socialist state, modelled on Fidel Castro's Cuba. *** AP via International Herald Tribune - May 21, 2007 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/21/business/LA-FIN-Venezuela-Nationalization.php Venezuela completes nationalization of telecommunications company CANTV The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez's government assumed operational control of the Venezuela's largest telecommunications company on Monday, completing its nationalization by appointing a new board of directors. Telecommunications Minister Jesse Chacon said the takeover of CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela is part of a march toward a "new socialist state." Electric companies and oil fields also have been affected by the nationalization drive. The government said earlier this month that it had raised its ownership stake in CANTV to 86.2 percent, in part by paying US$572 million (?422.6 million) to New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. for its 28.5 percent stake. CANTV said the government appointed Socorro Hernandez, who has worked in Venezuela's oil industry, as president of CANTV's new board on Monday. Other board members include representatives of workers as well as various government ministries. CANTV, which had been privatized in 1991, has nearly 13,000 employees and provides phone service to 3.2 million fixed-line customers as well as 6.7 million cellular customers through its affiliate Movilnet. The company also provides Internet service. Chacon predicted that "Venezuelans are going to feel an increase in quality, an increase in coverage." *** The Miami Herald - May 22, 2007 http://www.miamiherald.com/127/story/114436.html Venezuela: Government Names Board Members to CANTV CARACAS -- The government appointed Deputy Finance Minister Rafael Isea and seven other people to the board of directors of Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, the telephone company it nationalized this year. Among the board there will be army generals, government officials and workers representing the defense ministry, the oil ministry and company's trade unions among other institutions, Caracas-based Cantv, as the company is known, said in a statement distributed by e-mail. On May 18 Chavez named Socorro Hernandez president of Cantv. The government is assuming full control of the company's operations as of Monday, Chavez said. The government paid $1.3 billion to take control of 86.2 percent of the outstanding shares of the company. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:17:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:17:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bashing Chavez by Claiming Financial Mismanagement Message-ID: <20070522161730.05096a26@viola.tamara-b.org> excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - May 22, 2007 [A [Moonie-owned] Washington Times editorial yesterday takes a critical view of land reform in Venezuela. Predicting that President Chavez's redistribution program will fail, the editorial misguidedly compares it with the vague example of farming collectives in Cuba that had little success. Large landholders, it is suggested, should be protected. Though the claim is made that Chavez "has done little to reduce poverty in Venezuela," research shows the opposite; the poverty rate in Venezuela has dropped by nearly nine percentage points since Chavez took office in 1999. Canada's Financial Post compares the policies of President Chavez and Brazil's Lula da Silva, emphasizing the greater sustainability of Brazil's current economic model. An employee of Goldman Sachs in New York is quoted as an expert on the Venezuelan economy, and predictably characterizes social spending -- up 48% last year -- as "handouts." Both countries recently paid off their loans with major international international financial institutions the World Bank and the IMF. -VIO] The [Moonie-owned] Washington Times - May 21, 2007 http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070520-094056-6295r.htm Editorial Chavez's destructive agenda "We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it," said Venezuela's strongman president, Hugo Chavez, in a televised address in January. Mr. Chavez had won re-election the month before after a campaign in which he promised to more aggressively advance socialism in Venezuela. Included in this push is what Mr. Chavez calls land reform: the redistribution of Venezuela's arable land from large farms to cooperatives, often nothing more than squatter homesteads. The Chavez government encourages the practice by offering loans de facto grants, as they are regularly not repaid to co-ops. Mr. Chavez argues for land redistribution in his usual Marxist rhetoric of social equality and class struggle, but the Venezuelan government also hails the practice as an essential step toward agricultural self-sufficiency. The irony, if history is any guide, is that this kind of land reform promises to make Venezuela even more dependent on imported food. Mr. Chavez's brand of land reform is a proven failure, and in some cases, has led to disaster. One example that the Venezuelan leader is quite familiar with is Cuba, where the collective farming that Fidel Castro introduced proved ruinous. Land redistribution has been ongoing since 2005, and the results are starting to emerge already. By some estimates, Venezuelan farmers produced 8 percent less food in 2006 than in 2005. Sugar cane production in particular is down, in one northwestern state by 40 percent. Landowners are trying to sell their property, knowing that if the land is taken over by one of the cooperatives financed by the Chavez government, they will not be compensated. Also for fear of losing their property, large landowners are no longer investing any more than they need to in their farms. Even if they wanted to, farmers who own more than 100 acres are categorically denied loans by Venezuela's state banks, according to one farmer interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Last year, the Chavez government began "renegotiating" its contracts with foreign oil companies in order to hand a greater share of ownership in lucrative oil fields over to the state-controlled oil company, promising to kick out any firm that refused. This year he nationalized electrical and telecommunications companies, and promised to do the same to banks. Mr. Chavez may think that oil revenue will buoy his social agenda, as it does his diplomatic one. Despite high oil prices, however, Mr. Chavez has done little to reduce poverty in Venezuela. Land redistribution will be yet another failed policy, and a reminder that Latin American's retrograde Marxist left stubbornly refuses to learn from past mistakes. *** The Financial Post - May 22, 2007 http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/printedition/story.html?id=b933e559-6697-4d8a-a270-51b9a1e7be56 Chavez and Silva a study in contrasts; As news for Brazil keeps improving, Venezuela slides By Jacqueline Thorpe In honour of exam season, how about some compare and contrast ? One country in Latin America is growing at a "modest" rate of 4% but has just had its credit ratings raised by Standard & Poor's, its stock market shatters records daily and its currency has blasted to a six-year high. Inflation is under 4% despite soaring metal and agricultural prices, which would have in the past sparked a government spending binge and upward price spiral. Another country is growing at a blockbuster 8%, unemployment is falling and income levels are rising, but government spending has stoked inflation to a Latin American-high of 20% while simultaneously causing its foreign reserves to drop 20%. Imports soared 47% in the first quarter as price controls gave domestic producers little reason to come to work. Its stock market is down 22% year-to-date in U.S. dollar terms, and oh yeah, it has threatened to pull out of the IMF, a move that may trigger a debt default. Which model looks most sustainable? As the news gets better and better for Brazil, Venezuela's model of "21st century Socialism" is looking more and more like a runaway train about to careen off the rails. That classic sign of socialist inefficiency -- bare supermarket shelves and food lines --has now become a staple of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, as shoppers snap up food before the next price hike, Reuters reported last week. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, seems to have finally put his economy on the right track after a record US$30-billion bail-out from the IMF staved off a debt default in 2002. To be sure, the global commodities boom couldn't have come at a better time for Brazil, a massive exporter of everything from base metals to coffee to orange juice to steel and pulp and paper. But this time, it is not frittering its windfall away. "It's the notion of taking advantage of the global position," Lisa Schineller, an analyst at S&P, said in an interview from Sao Paulo. "The balance of payments has been incredibly favourable but both the government and the private sector have used that to run down their external debt." S&P raised Brazil's long-term sovereign debt ratings last week to one notch below the coveted investment grade rating, citing a decline in external indebtedness to 28% of current account receipts, less than one-fifth of 2000-2002 levels. Brazil has also become a lot smarter in the kind of debt it is issuing, eschewing cheaper but more volatile foreign-denominated debt in favour of more stable --and loyal--domestic debt. Ms. Schineller said government debt is still much too high at 43% of GDP but there is now a recognizable commitment to fiscal probity. "There is a policy commitment now across a spectrum of parties," Ms. Schineller said. "It's pragmatic, there's an overall bias towards bringing down Brazil's fiscal vulnerabilities and external vulnerabilities." The private sector has responded heartily. Local equity markets are providing a key new foundation for capital investment with more than 20 IPOs so far in 2007 after about 26 last year and foreign money is pouring in. This has prompted privately held companies to also reorganize and strengthen governance. The combination has boosted investment, growth and tax receipts -- the beginnings of a classic virtuous circle. What a different story it is for Brazil's neighbour to the north, which has also benefitted from the commodities boom, this time for oil. "Venezuela is definitely an investment- grade country with a junk-bond policy mix," said Alberto Ramos, an economist at Goldman Sachs in New York. "They are very, very far away from capitalizing on the unique opportunities they have benefitted from in the last two or three years." Mr. Chavez's spending program --government spending rose 48% last year -- may have increased income for the poor and boosted employment but at the same time price and exchange controls to try to control inflation has sapped domestic production and investment or forced it underground. "We have the counter argument he is really redistributing a lot of income to the poor," Mr. Ramos said. "But the economy is on steroids and there are many other imbalances that will not help the poor, not on a permanent basis. He's not giving them opportunities, he's giving them handouts." Mr. Ramos, who was recently in Venezuela, said the mood on the street is still supportive of Mr. Chavez but he does not believe its policymakers have come up with the magic formula to make socialist economics work. Whether those food lines will turn into riots in the months to come remains to be seen. High oil prices could indeed keep the goodies flowing. "There are many different paths it could go down," Mr. Ramos said. "The classic case is this will end up with a major blowup with an inflation spiral and the government will change. But given that the administration now has control over the key institutions in the country we can envisage a path like Cuba with 30, 40 years of no regime change. He controls the army, he controls the supreme court, he controls Congress so there is no constitutional legal way to replace the government." In that case he foresees middleclass flight and a slow, grinding impoverishment of the economy. The two models would be excellent case studies for economics students if real human beings weren't involved. *** El Universal - May 21, 2007 http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/05/21/en_pol_art_rosales-accuses-chav_21A871951.shtml Ch?vez "Ruining Venezuela," says Losing Presidential Candidate Manuel Rosales, governor of northwestern Zulia state and former presidential candidate Monday in Panama labeled President Hugo Ch?vez as "narcissist," "hypocrite," and "big liar," and blamed the Venezuelan ruler of "ruining" the country and endangering its future, DPA reported. Rosales, who arrived in Panama to meet with local opposition politicians and businesspeople, Monday took part in a TV show and rebutted Ch?vez' social and economic policies. According to Rosales, when Ch?vez took office, in 1999, Venezuelan public debt (both domestic and foreign) was USD 23 billion. Now, it exceeds USD 76 billion because of a project he called "Castro-Chavezism" being implemented in Latin America by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela. Upon his arrival in Panama, Rosales rejected Venezuelan State control over the media and called for international support to avoid closure of private television station RCTV, the broadcast license of which expires next May 27 and which the Venezuelan Government has refused to renew. *** Bloomberg - May 21, 2007 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8AW0o0Q6hpc Venezuela State Homeless Program Overstretched, Nacional Says By Theresa Bradley Venezuela is failing to meet rising demand for homeless services due to insufficient infrastructure and capacity, El Nacional reported, citing Joel Botinni, who directs the state's homeless program in Caracas. The so-called Negra Hipolita program, founded as one of President Hugo Chavez's social ``missions'' in January 2006, has used its 180 billion bolivar ($84 million) budget to help 12,000 homeless people, overtaxing its resources as poor people pour into the capital from the countryside, the newspaper said, citing Yuoarary Carrizales, who runs the program's main shelter. Carrizales's is the only one of four Caracas homeless shelters now open, accepting about 60 people a day to shower and eat, but not to stay overnight, the newspaper said. Less than one percent of homeless Venezuelans are successfully ``reintegrated'' into society, casting doubt on former Social Development Minister Luis Garcia Carneiro's promise that the program would end homelessness in the country this year, Nacional said. The Ministry begins a formal census of the nation's homeless population this week, the newspaper said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:24:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:24:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] African Liberation Day 2007 - May 25-26, Wash, DC Message-ID: <20070522162435.3d44cc15@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by A-APRP (GC)" - May 22, 2007 African Liberation Day (ALD) 2007 Diplomatic Reception! Friday, May 25, 2007 7:00 PM to Midnight Josephine Butler Cntr 2437 15th Street NW Washington, DC 20009 Admission by RSVP - ****** PROGRAM & INVITED PARTICIPANTS 7:00 PM DOORS OPEN! 7:30 PM WELCOME By the A-APRP (GC) 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM AWARDS PRESENTED To HE Evo Morales To HE Hugo Chavez To HE Robert Mugabe To HE Raul Castro To HE Fidel Castro 9:00 PM - 10:30 PM DINNER & CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS Lucy Murphy Dr. Tony Martin Afro-Columbian Percusionists, Singing and Dancing 10:30 PM - 11:00 PM AWARDS PRESENTED To Kwame Ture To Sekou Toure To Gamal Abdel Nasser To Kwame Nkrumah 11:00 PM - Midnight CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS! Amafujo's Moodswings Others! DANCING! Admission Free! Donations Accepted! http://cmpgnr.com/r.html?c=967650&r=966874&t=1044195676&l=1&d=88357703&u=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2enicanet%2eorg%2fdonate%5fafgj%2ehtm&g=0&f=88357705 --------------- ALD 2007 RALLY! Saturday May 26, 2007 Noon - 6:00 PM Malcolm X Park (Lower Level) 16th & W Street NW Washingington, DC ****** PROGRAM & INVITED PARTICIPANTS Noon - 12:30 PM CALL OF THE SPIRITS & DRUMS (To Be Announced!) 12:30 PM 1:00 PM WELCOME TO ALD! A-APRP (GC) AIM (GGC) NCA 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS (To Be Announced!) 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CONTINUES! A-APRP (GC) Free the Panther 8! Free Mumia abu-Jamal! Free Jamil al-Amin! Free the PAC POWs Free the Cuba Five! African Awareness Association IFCO/Pastors 4 Peace Venceremos Brigade Others 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS Rays of Hope Rahnda Rise Sun Star da Rebel 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION INTENSIFIES! A-APRP (GC) FMLN of El Salvador Haitian Movement Friends of Congo Iraqi Resistance Movement AZAPO Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania MATAH Network N'Cobra UNIA Nation of Islam New Black Panther Party Others 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS (To Be Announced!) 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM STRUGGLE FOR PAN-AFRICANISM, SOCIALISM & PEACE ACCELERATES! A-APRP (GC) Award to Evo Morales Bolivian Community Award to Gamal Nass'r Award to Hugo Chavez Venezuela Solidarity Award to Robert Mugabe Award to Raul Castro Award to Fidel Castro No War on Cuba! Award to Kwame Ture Award to Sekou Toure Award to Kwame Nkrumah Closing Statement 5:30 PM - 6:00 PM CULTURAL PRESENTATIONS (To Be Announced!) SEE YOU AT ALD 2008! The All-African People's Revolutionary Party (GC), The American Indian Movement (GGC), and The National Council of Arab Americans are pleased to invite you to attend African Liberation Day 2007 Ghana at Fifty! - Long Live Nkrumahism! Kwame Nkrumah with Sekou Toure Kwame Nkrumah with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Others Kwame Nkrumah with Shirley Graham and WEB DuBois Kwame Nkrumah with Martin Luther King Kwame Nkrumah with Kwame Ture ALD: A Brief History . African Liberation Day (ALD) was founded by Kwame Nkrumah, April 15, 1958, on the occasion of the First Conference of Independent African States held in Accra, Ghana. Eight independent African States, Liberia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Ghana, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Republic/Egypt attended it. The 15th of April 1958 was declared Africa Freedom Day, to "mark each year the onward progress of the liberation movement in Africa, and to symbolize the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation." ALD was therefore born as a manifestation of resistance to capitalism, imperialism, zionism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, and neo-colonialism. A non-governmental conference, the All-African People's Conference, held in Accra, Ghana, in December of that same year reaffirmed the revolutionary integrity of Africa Freedom Day and quicken the pace of the African independence movement. Dr. WEB DuBois correctly stated, in his Message to the A-APC, that this was the 6th Pan-African Congress, and that it marked a new stage in the Pan-African Movement worldwide. Further advances against imperialism were also being made in Asia and the Caribbean. On May 25, 1963, spearheaded by Kwame Nkrumah, thirty-one African Heads of State convened a summit meeting to found the Organization of African Unity (OAU). They reaffirmed the revolutionary integrity of Africa Freedom Day, renamed it African Liberation Day and changed its date of celebration to May 25th. As the OAU was to act as a framework towards the political unification of all African states, ALD was again reaffirmed as an institution in the African Revolution to be honored and celebrated in Africa, in every corner of the African Diaspora, and the world. The Heads of State in attendance reaffirmed, Nkrumah's independence day proclamation, that the independence of any one state was meaningless without the total liberation and unification of the African continent. Since its founding ALD has been organized in every corner of the world by revolutionary and progressive parties, governments and peoples of all nationalities. Following in this revolutionary tradition and demonstrating the unbreakable bonds of unity between all oppressed yet struggling peoples of the world against a common enemy, and for the liberation, unity, and dignity of our peoples', the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (Guinea, Conakry), Le Parti Populaire Revolutionnaire Africain de Guinee (PRPAG), the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council (AIM) and the National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) are co-organizing African Liberation Day 2007 in Washington, D.C. Click here to send this to a friend! : http://cmpgnr.com/r.html?c=967650&r=966874&t=1044195676&l=4&=0&f=88357705 Kwame Nkrumah: A Pan-Africanist Revolutionary African Liberation Day 2007, marks fifty years of Ghana's Independence. It is dedicated to and honors the life work and study, struggles and sacrifices of the revolutionary socialist and Pan-Africanist Osagefyo Kwame Nkrumah, the Convention People's Party (CPP) in Nkrumah's time, and the Ghanaian masses. "The independence of Ghana in 1957 opened wide the floodgates of African freedom. Within four years eighteen other African countries achieved independence." (Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite.) By 1963, five additional countries in Africa had been liberated, and twenty-one were still under colonial rule. The de-colonization process and the struggle for black empowerment were also achieving unprecedented victories through out the African Diaspora, especially in the Caribbean. Kwame Nkrumah was a tireless and uncompromising revolutionary who offered to African people and world humanity a revolutionary legacy to be emulated that includes: (1) A revolutionary ideology for Africa and the African revolution Nkrumahism/philosophical consciencism, (2) An analysis of the strategy and operations of the enemy, imperialism, in Africa and the world, (3) A strategy, Positive Action, for the defeat of imperialism in Africa and the world and the achievement of Pan-Africanism, (4) The vehicle or organization of the African revolution, the Mass Party, (5) an uncompromising principled position of the necessity to defeat and destroy capitalism and imperialism in Africa and throughout the world, (6) An independent and revolutionary Ghana, a liberated zone, which became the base, the fountainhead as Malcolm X called in 1964, of the worldwide struggle for Pan-Africanism, and (7) An unquestioned love for the masses of African People and all Oppressed Humanity. What we have identified only highlights a few of the innumerable revolutionary contributions that Kwame Nkrumah made to the struggle for national liberation, Pan-Africanism, scientific socialism, and peace. It was the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, a defeat to western imperialism, that provided the Pan-Africanist movement the opportunity to root itself in its only true home, Africa. Ghana, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah became a haven and home for African revolutionaries in Africa and from throughout the world. Malcolm X, Shirley Graham and W.E.B. DuBois made their way to Ghana. Freedom Fighters from throughout the African continent and the Caribbean were welcomed and sustained in Ghana. Numerous governmental, people's conferences and meetings were convened to advance and coordinate the African Revolution. Solidarity with the international movement, those fighting against imperialism, found expression in what Nkrumah defined as the African "Personality" in international affairs. The impact of this historic process and moment on the African revolution and the international struggle for socialism and peace can not be overstated. Following the coup de'tat in Ghana organized by imperialism and its neo-colonialist puppets, as a member of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) in Sekou Toure's time and co-President of Guinea, Nkrumah continued to struggle for the political unification of Africa. It was in Guinea that Kwame Ture met Nkrumah, thanks to Shirley Graham DuBois, which would become his home. It was in Guinea that Nkrumah founded the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which Kwame Ture joined, and dedicated his life to help build! Kwame lived, studied, worked and struggled in Guinea for 31 years, and restes there for eternity. Guinea continues to be the base of the A-APRP (GC) today. Nkrumah never relinquished his position as the Head of State of Ghana, even while serving as the co-Head of the State of Guinea, and sought to return to Ghana to continue socialist reconstruction and to intensify the revolutionary process that he had helped launch in Ghana. Unfortunately, Nkrumah did not live long enough to return to Ghana. His role and contribution to Africa and to World Humanity however are sterling, and continue today, and thus, the theme for ALD 2007 is Ghana at 50! Long Live Nkrumahism! African Liberation Day 2007 We, the co-organizers of ALD 2007, in Washington, DC continue with the tradition of ALD being organized as a revolutionary Pan-African and International mass based manifestation. ALD 2007 is our collective unwavering principled reaffirmation and commitment to African people and all Oppressed Humanity that we will work, struggle, and sacrifice in ever corner of the world where Africans live, until Africa is free, united, and socialist. ALD 2007 is our collective unwavering principled reaffirmation and commitment to the heroic Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere who suffer from setter-colonialism and the Palestinian masses who are viciously oppressed and exploited by fascist zionist occupation that we will work, struggle and sacrifice until victory is claimed and their national aspirations realized. We are encouraging all progressive and revolutionary African and International movements, organizations, and political parties to organize ALD manifestations in every corner of the world. The A-APRP (GC) - PRPAG will collect and disseminate information about ALDs to the African and International community. We ask you to help us build a worldwide effort to institutionalize ALD as a revolutionary Pan-African and International day of celebration and rededication to eliminate all forms of oppression and exploitation. Join us on May 26, 2007 at Malcolm X Park in Washington DC for ALD 2007. If you can not come to DC, please email us a brief message of solidarity and support: Dinner & Dance ALD 2007 Fundraising Dinner & Dance Saturday May 26, 2007 7:00 Pm - Until Cafe Nema 1334 U Street NW Washington, DC Organized by One Common Unity! A-APRP (GC) Spoken Word! Hip Hop! DJ! Dancing! Great Food! Cash Bar! Admission Free! Donations accepted! ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE! BUILD THE A-APRP (GC)! SEE YOU AT AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY 2008! From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:26:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:26:18 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] California Nurses Association Joins AFL-CIO Message-ID: <20070522162618.6fb2961f@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) [There are mergers aplenty, but are there any new workers being organized? (The CNA joining the AFL-CIO is not surprizing, given the departure of their arch-rival, the SEIU, from the federation. Consolidation is certainly called for, at least among look at all the unions that have organized RNs! -SR] California Nurses Association Joins AFL-CIO by Mike Hall AFL-CIO Weblog May 21, 2007 The 75,000-strong California Nurses Association (CNA) is the newest member of the AFL-CIO. The registered nurses union-with members in 50 states-and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC), join another 250,000 nurses in the AFL-CIO's RN's Working Together Industry Coordinating Committee. Says CNA/NNOC President Deborah Burger, RN: We look forward to engaging in collective work with AFL-CIO unions. "We believe that the strength of the labor movement, coupled with the nurses' commitment to guaranteeing comprehensive health care coverage through H.R. 676, will provide the foundation necessary for genuine reform." H.R. 676 is one of several approaches under consideration in Congress to achieve quality, affordable universal health care. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney: "Nobody understands better than nurses that health care in our country cries out for reform. CNA has led the drive for reform in California; working together in the AFL-CIO, we have the power to build a broad new national movement that can win change." Along with its newest members, RN's Working Together is made up of nurses represented by AFGE, AFSCME, AFT, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), Operating Engineers (IUOE), Office and Professional Employees, (OPEIU), UAW, United American Nurses (UAN) and the Steelworkers (USW). Says Burger: "We look forward to being a part of a federation that has distinguished itself as the national voice of working people in the U.S. and is the leading national champion for all Americans on a broad range of critical issues, including jobs, retirement security, economic opportunity, workplace safety, civil rights, civil liberties and public safety." The CNA/NNOC affiliation is the latest in a series of AFL-CIO affiliations and partnerships that have significantly strengthened the labor movement. Last December, nearly 50,000 mail handlers with the National Postal Mail Handlers Union returned to the AFL-CIO after having left the federation along with its parent union, the Laborers. The 60,000 members of the United Transportation Union (UTU) also affiliated with the AFL-CIO late last year. Four National Education Association (NEA) groups have taken advantage of the unique national NEA/AFL-CIO partnership opportunity. The groups are the Rialto (Calif.)Education Association, the Seattle Education Association, the Beloit (Wis.) Education Association (Wis.) and the University of the District of Columbia Faculty Association. Two more unions have recently affiliated directly with the national AFL-CIO under the new Unity Partnership program: the Monarch Electric Blue Collar Union (Ohio) and the Dade County School Maintenance Employee Committee (Fla.). In addition, the AFL-CIO has forged innovative new partnerships with the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), the nation's largest day laborer association, and Interfaith Worker Justice, a national coalition of faith-based worker rights groups. http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/05/21/california-nurses-association-joins-afl-ci o/ From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:32:47 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:32:47 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Omnicide - the killing of everything Message-ID: <20070522163247.6fcd4d06@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Harry Saloor - May 22, 2007 MSRB http://www.restorative-business.org/ Omnicide - the killing of everything We may never ascertain with any degree of certainty whether Mars was once a living planet, teeming with life like her 'sister' planet, Earth. If indeed there was life on Mars, how did it end? By how long, if any, did the most aggressive group within her dominant species outlast all others before they became extinct? How did the last 10 years on Mars unfold? Make no mistake: The 'Marsification' of our planet Earth is well underway. As we work our way towards omnicide, we pull the manmade mask of death unceremoniously over her face. The look on her face would probably be not unlike the cold, silent glare of her lifeless sister, Mars. The famous French riddle for children symbolizes the collapse: We have a pond on which water lilies grow doubling in number everyday. It takes 30 days for the lilies to cover the pond completely and suffocate all aquatic life forms in the water. On what day do we forfeit our last chance to react? The answer, of course, is the 29th day. The following day, 30th day, the lilies completely cover the pond. Exponential systems do not allow much reaction time. The problem may not seem strikingly obvious for a long time. As late as the 24th day the lilies cover only 1/64th of the pond and on the 25th day 1/32nd, a seemingly insignificant portion of the pond. Even on the 29th day one-half of the pond looks deceptively safe. We have now reached the final hour in the '29th day.' Our exponentially growing ecological footprints have pushed at least 15 of the 24 ecosystems (about 2/3 of all ecosystems) vital for supporting life to the verge of collapse including fresh water, fisheries, air and water purification systems, and the systems that regulate climate, natural hazards, and pests. [See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis, http://tinyurl.com/23wr2x or http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP131/fall2006/MA+General+Synthesis+-+Final+Draft.pdf ] As of March 2007, MSRB Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN), an index for calculating the full impact of human consumption and activities on the Earth's life support systems, stood at a terminally high level of 171.40. This means the total human impact including their ecological footprint and the damage inflicted on the living environment because of their activities for the 12 months preceding March 2007 was 71.4 percent higher than the planet in its current state can manage. According to HIoN projections, by as early as 2015, our cities and population centers could become mostly unsustainable. Below are some of the mechanisms for the wholesale destruction of life on Earth: [For more information visit http://www.restorative-business.org/stop_burning_earth.htm] 1. Destroying the atmosphere. Human activity is responsible for ozone depletion (ozone holes). Ozone depletion is exposing the biosphere to higher levels of UV radiation (UVA and UVB) that reach the Earth?s surface and pose the biggest threat to life-support mechanism, the already collapsing ecosystems. [Worst affected areas: New Zealand, Australia, tip of S. America; and by 2009 Canada, northeast US, northern Europe, northeast China and northern Japan.) 2. Consuming excessive energy. All human activities require the conversion and consumption of energy. The rate of conversion/consumption of energy is directly proportional to the poisoning of our biosphere. The more energy converted and consumed, the more toxic substances released into the biosphere. In most cases where the damage to life support systems is already extensive, the destruction of ecosystems increases exponentially against any linear increase in human activity. 3. Polluting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil we eat. Pumping toxic substances (industrial, agricultural and municipal) including NOX, SOX, heavy metals, chemicals, petrochemicals, biological and radionuclide poisons other synthetic poisons, pollutants, and heat into the biosphere is creating a terminal toxic syndrome on Earth. 4. Depleting the supplies of fresh water. Humans are interfering with the hydro cycle by squandering large quantities of freshwater, depleting the water supplies and preventing aquifers from recharging. Water that naturally seeps through the ground to restore the aquifers is instead diverted through roads, roofs, ducts and canals causing flash floods and surface run-off. 5. Transforming our planet into a desert (Desertification). Human activities are causing desertification or the degradation of land in vast areas of our planet causing loss of biodiversity and loss of productive capacity. The demand to grow more crops and graze more animals is increasing the rate of desertification exponentially. Each year desertification claims about six million hectares of productive land, an area nearly the size of West Virginia. Land degradation affects about 2 billion hectares of land in more than 110 countries, with arable land being lost at 30-40 times the historic rate. 6. Producing acid rain. Acid rain is a serious environmental problem that affects most of the industrialized world, as well as other regions. Acid rain contributes to acidification of rivers, streams and lakes killing fish and other marine creatures. Acid rain also causes forest damage, accelerates weathering in carbonate rocks and hastens building weathering. 7. Depleting the natural resources. Human consumption of natural resources already exceeds the planet's productive capacity depleting the Earth's natural capital rapidly [see HIoN, above.] Increasingly, more lives would be lost due to food, water and energy scarcity. 8. Heating the earth (releasing excessive greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere). Large volumes of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses and pollutants released from the excessive consumption of fossil fuels are cooking our planet melting glaciers and ice contributing to the rise in sea levels. 9. Increasing the size, numbers, and intensity of dead zones. The application of vast quantities of fertilizers to agricultural land each year corresponds to the increase of dead zones in the coastal waters killing off fish, other marine creatures and aquatic living systems. [Worst affected areas: seas of Europe, east coast of the United States and large areas off the coasts of New Zealand, Australia, China and elsewhere.] 10. Driving the ecosystems to the verge of collapse. Our exponentially growing ecological footprint has pushed at least 15 of the 24 ecosystems (about 2/3 of all ecosystems) vital for supporting life to the verge of collapse including fresh water, fisheries, air and water purification systems, and the systems that regulate climate, natural hazards, and pests. 11. Interfering with the nature's reproductive cycles. It is becoming increasingly evident that the genetic engineering technology is intrinsically unsafe and unreliable both in agriculture and in medicine. From the purely social and political viewpoints, the dangers of genetic engineering include increased economic inequality and totalitarian control over the populace via large-scale eugenic programs. 12. Promoting the spread of virulent disease pandemics. The weakened ecosystems are increasingly less effective in preventing disease. Unstoppable disease pandemics (both natural and manmade) would be a serious threat to humans and other animals. 13. Contributing to the extremes of climatic conditions. Exacerbated by Global Heating and failing ecosystems, hurricanes, droughts, extreme rain events... will pose serious threat to the safety of humans and other life forms. 14. Clear cutting our forests (deforestation). About 13 million hectares of the world's forests are lost due to deforestation each year. Although, the net rate of forest loss is reduced by plantation of new forests natural expansion of existing forests, this comes as no consolation to possibly as many as 27,000 species that inhabit the "old" forests. The global net loss of forest cover (natural forests and plantations) was about 125.5 million hectares between 1990 to 2005 an area 3 times the size of California. This represents an average net loss of about 8.4 million hectares each year during the reported period. 15. Transforming planet Earth into a gigantic landfill. Each year we are converting about 60 trillion pounds of materials to garbage. As we continue to stuff our planet with more garbage, the landfills rapidly engulf us. Meanwhile, the human and wildlife habitats keep on shrinking. 16. Manufacturing weapons. The so-called Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and the ?Big Money? racketeers that own or control them are the largest and the most powerful terrorist organization in the world. In the last two generations alone, their nefarious weapons have killed more people than were ever slaughtered in the previous 5,700 years of recorded history. 17. Waging wars. The psychopathology of predatory mutant humanoids (see HIVE below) is geared on the annihilation of most life forms on Earth, even at the cost of wholesale destruction of the planet?s ecosystem. This creates ideal opportunities for the arms trade. The war racketeers profit from selling arms and by waging wars. People pay the ultimate price by sacrificing their old and young. 18. "Profiting" from a predatory economic system. Billions for the banker debt slavery for the people. Capitalism, the cannibalistic system of economy, has transformed Earth from a life base to a ticking time bomb!] 19. Creating social conflicts. Increasingly, social conflicts caused by inequality and uneven distribution of resources would play a major role in undermining the security of the population centers throughout the world. 20. Conducting and condoning unethical behavior. Unsustainable lifestyles, population mobility, overconsumption, and human possessions are overwhelming and destroying the ecosystems. 21. All of the above mechanisms combined! [HIVE: The Homo Ignarus Vulgus Exitiabilis. The HIVE genus are the ignorant, destructive mobs comprising mainly of psychopathic men and women. See http://www.restorative-business.org/stop_burning_earth.htm] There is no polite way of saying that we are devouring our children. To prevent omnicide on Earth, humans must decrease their energy consumption by at least 89 percent of its currently unsustainable [read terminal] levels of about 481 billion billion joules (4.81e+20 joules) to below 44 billion billion joules (4.37e+19joules) each year. [Note: A 100-watt light bulb uses 100 joules of energy each second when ?on,? or 360,000joules each hour. However to supply the bulb with electricity for an hour, up to four time as much primary energy would be converted, or 1,440,000joules (1.44 megajoules), depending on the fuel type, generator, and distance from the power plant. ] Let us give life a chance. Let us start restoring the dying ecosystems where possible. Perhaps we could save a segment of the future for a small number of our children instead of devouring all of the future generations. Compiled from MSRB resourced by Liz Garrett Programs Advisor MSRB http://www.restorative-business.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stop the Merchants of Mass Murder! Please take a few moments to endorse the Petition, forward widely and post on your network. War is Just a Racket: Take a Stand; Dismantle the War Machine! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/774011915 Without your consent, be it explicit or implied, the Merchants of Mass Murder cannot profit from killing our children! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:34:00 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:34:00 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] House Democrats Must Now Eat Crow Message-ID: <20070522163400.0f7bfe42@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 22, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ?SITE=ORROS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT House Democrats Have to Sell Iraq Plan By ANNE FLAHERTY Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- After weeks of refusing to back down to President Bush on setting a timetable on the Iraq war, House Democratic leaders soon will be in the awkward position of explaining to members why they feel they must. Party officials said Monday the next war spending bill most likely will fund military operations and not demand a timeline to bring troops home, although it will contain other restrictions on Bush's Iraq policies. On May 1, Bush vetoed a $124.2 billion bill that would have paid for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan through September as Bush requested, but demanded that troops start coming home this fall. Democrats say they hope to send Bush a new bill by the end of the week he will sign, and troops in combat will get the resources they need without disruption. "I'm frustrated" with the war, said Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., a member of the Blue Dog coalition, a group of conservative Democrats. "But we realize too we have a responsibility to fund our troops and make sure they have the right equipment." But Democratic leaders first will have to sway a large number of Democrats who want to end the war immediately - or pick up enough Republican votes to make up for the losses. Earlier this month, 171 House members voted to order the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq within nine months. The details of the Democrats' new bill remained in flux late Monday, as Rep. David Obey was tasked with negotiating with the Senate and White House. Obey, D-Wis., is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Officials said the legislation was expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society. Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said softening such a restriction might not be necessary to get the president's support. "I think at some juncture, the American people are going to say 'Mr. President, you made your point. Now sign the bill,'" said Hoyer, D-Md. The bill also was expected to insist that U.S. troops meet certain standards before being sent into battle, out of concern from Democrats that some troops were going to Iraq without proper training. But the measure likely would give the president authority to waive this restriction. Even if deadlines for troop withdrawals are dropped as expected, Democratic leaders are claiming victory in the high-profile fight with Bush. For weeks, the president demanded Congress send him a "clean" bill without any restrictions on the war. Last week, a top aide told Democrats the president would accept legislation drafted by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that would restrict U.S. aid for Iraq if Baghdad does not make progress on political and security reforms. That proposal, however, included a presidential waiver that would have allowed Bush to ignore the restriction. The Democrats' new bill also was expected to include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January. White House officials have said Bush was amenable to accepting an increase in the minimum wage, although they and key GOP lawmakers favor larger tax cuts to accompany the measure. On the Net: House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:35:16 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:35:16 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] US festival in Paris axed after threats Message-ID: <20070522163516.7bd014d1@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - 22 May 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2567976.ece US festival in Paris axed after threats By Jen Wainwright in Paris An American country music festival in Paris has been postponed after the organisers received several anti-American threats. The festival, called Three Days in America, was supposed to take place next weekend in the Parc St Cloud, in a suburb to the west of Paris. An international event, which last year drew more than 15,000 people, the festival celebrates the American lifestyle with a mixture of live gospel and country music, line-dancing, tributes to Elvis Presley, exhibitions of American cars and spectacular fireworks. Chantal Tenot, a spokeswoman for the event, said: "We don't know who is behind it, and we can't be sure of a motive but it could just as much be an expression against [President Nicolas] Sarkozy as against America. Some people think that if you like America you must also like Sarkozy. "Our chief concern is to not let security issues ruin this great event. The letter contained threats to the families of the organisers, we couldn't ignore it." The threats came as a surprise to many Americans living in France, such as Clare Pickett. She said: "I'm really surprised and saddened by this. When I studied here in 2004 I found there was a really palpable anti-American feeling. Of course, the war in Iraq really stirred people up, but I thought it had died down." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:41:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:41:18 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Herbert: The Great Divide, The Bus Riders at the Bottom Message-ID: <20070522164118.5bab9fba@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The New York Times - May 22, 2007 http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22herbert.html American Cities and the Great Divide By BOB HERBERT A public high school teacher in Brooklyn told me recently about a student who didn't believe that a restaurant tab for four people could come to more than $500. The student shook his head, as if resisting the very idea. He just couldn't fathom it. "How much can you eat?" the student asked. When I asked a teacher in a second school to mention the same issue, one of the responses was, "Is this a true story?" A lot of New Yorkers are doing awfully well. There are 8 million residents of New York City, and roughly 700,000 are worth a million dollars or more. The average price of a Manhattan apartment is $1.3 million. The annual earnings of the average hedge fund manager is $363 million. The estimated worth of the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, ranges from $5.5 billion to upwards of $20 billion. You want a gilded age? This is it. The elite of the Roaring Twenties would be stunned by the wealth of the current era. Now the flip side, which is the side those public school students are on. One of the city's five counties, the Bronx, is the poorest urban county in the nation. The number of families in the city's homeless shelters is the highest it has been in a quarter of a century. Twenty-five percent of all families with children in New York City - that's 1.5 million New Yorkers - are trying to make it on incomes that are below the poverty threshold established by the federal government. The streets that are paved with gold for some are covered with ash for many others. There are few better illustrations of the increasingly disturbing divide between rich and poor than New York City. "I get to walk in both worlds," said Larry Mandell, the president of the United Way of New York City. "In a given day I might be in a soup kitchen and also in the halls of Fortune 500 companies dealing with the senior executives. I've become acutely aware that the lives of those who are well off are not touched at all by contact with the poor. It's not that people don't care or don't want to help. It's that they have very little awareness of poverty." I'd always thought of the United Way as a charitable outfit. But Mr. Mandell has committed his organization to the important task of raising the awareness of Americans and their political leaders to the pressing needs of America's cities, and especially the long-neglected, poverty-stricken neighborhoods of the inner cities. It's a measure of how low the bar has been set for success in America's cities that New York is thought to be doing well, even though 185,000 of its children ages 5 or younger are poor, and 18,000 are consigned to homeless shelters each night. More than a million New Yorkers get food stamps, and another 700,000 are eligible but not receiving them. That's a long, long way from a $500 restaurant tab. Only 50 percent of the city's high school students graduate in four years. And if you talk to the kids in the poorer neighborhoods, they will tell you that they don't feel safe. They are worried about violence and gang activity, which in their view is getting worse, not better. This is what's going on in the nation's most successful big city. Mr. Mandell is upset that urban issues, which in so many cases are related to poverty, have played such a minuscule role in the presidential campaign so far. "People need to become more aware of the issue of poverty," he said. "It's discouraging, frankly, to have it barely mentioned at all in the debates. "It's true that John Edwards is the one candidate who seems concerned about it, but to actually have the issue come up just briefly in the debates, and not at all in the Republican debate - well, my view is that we have to change that." The United Way of New York has issued a white paper on "America's Urban Agenda" that says, "The greatest single challenge most American cities face lies in the increasing divide between the haves and have-nots." There was a time, some decades ago, when urban issues and poverty were important components of presidential campaigns. Now the poor are kept out of sight, which makes it easier to leave them farther and farther behind. We've apparently reached a point in our politics when they aren't even worth mentioning. *** [Note from Ed: In the Op-Ed below, Mann and Criollo predict the poison-pill strategy which Mayor Villaraigosa pefectly proposes in today's LA Times. Don't fail to read both. -Ed] sent by Labor/Community Strategy Center The Los Angeles Times opinion article, below, was written by Eric Mann and Manuel Criollo of the Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union and describes the huge bus fare hikes Los Angeles MTA is threatening and how this fits into a long history of MTA's policies of transit racism. If you are outraged at the injustice of MTA's proposed fare hikes, we need your participation in the following ways: 1) Attend the Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM at the MTA Headquarters (Vignes and Cesar Chavez) 2) Contact the MTA Board member that you know or in whose district you live to urge them to reject MTA's fare increase 3) Donate much needed funds to the Stop MTA's Racist Fare Increase Campaign call us at 213.387.2800 4) Contact us with ideas on how to move the votes of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilperson Bernard Parks, Supervisors Zev Yaroslavasky, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Gloria Molina and other MTA Board members. Please contact BRU lead organizer Manuel Criollo, Francisca Porchas or Damon Azali at 213.387.2800 Los Angeles Times - May 7, 2007 Op-Ed "MTA's Road to Ruination" by Eric Mann and Manuel Criollo Huge fare increases and disproportionate rail subsidies are reminiscent of the MTA's mid-1990s racially discriminatory ways. By Eric Mann and Manuel Criollo ON THE MORNING of May 24, the Los Angeles MTA board will hold a public hearing to consider a series of draconian fare increases - raising the $3 daily pass to $5 and then $8, the $52 monthly pass to $75 and then $120 - rates put forth as a trial balloon by its employee, Chief Executive Roger Snoble. It's all a calculated ruse. The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority hopes that when, under massive pressure, it tries to make only unbearable increases rather than excruciating ones, a naive and servile public will thank the board for its mercy. In fact, any fare increases would be a disaster for Los Angeles, reducing transit ridership, increasing pollution and hurting the city's poorest residents. Bus riders, in particular, cannot afford a fare increase. The core of the MTA's 500,000 public transit riders are the black and Latino working class who use public transportation every day. The majority can hardly afford the current $3 daily pass ($90 a month) or the $52 monthly pass. Say the MTA tries to raise the monthly pass price $10. That would mean $50 a month for a family of five, $600 more a year, and an annual family transit bill of $3,720. We have been down this road before. In 1994, the MTA almost destroyed its bus system in order to subsidize contractor-friendly rail projects that were racially discriminatory. Light rail costs $150 million a mile and subways $280 million - and to pay for construction overruns and operations, the MTA raided the bus funds. At the same time, the MTA announced its plan to raise fares to $1.35 from $1.10 and eliminate monthly passes. The Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, rushed into federal court to charge that the MTA was violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids the government from allocating money in a racially discriminatory manner. The court issued a temporary restraining order and forced the MTA to re-institute the monthly pass. Among those who testified in support of the Bus Riders Union was Antonio Villaraigosa, then deputy to MTA board member Gloria Molina. Out of that litigation, the center and the Bus Riders Union signed a 10-year consent decree with the MTA, which agreed to dramatically improve the bus system. The consent decree secured a $42 monthly pass and an $11 weekly pass (though pass fares went up $10 at the start of 2004). The MTA replaced 2,000 dilapidated diesel buses with 2,500 natural gas buses and now boasts that it has "the largest clean-fuel bus fleet in the U.S." The not-so-secret story is that the MTA refused to buy those buses, appealed every court ruling and buckled only after the Supreme Court refused to hear its hollow appeals. The federal District Court reduced its oversight of the MTA in October, 2006 (which we are appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals), and only seven months later the MTA is regressing to its race- and class-biased policies - cutting bus service and threatening to raise fares. The MTA is back to creating a separate and unequal public transit system, giving massive subsidies to the significantly whiter rail ridership while complaining that it cannot afford what are truly tiny subsidies to bus riders, who are 60% female, 85% black, Latino or Asian and many of whom have family incomes under $15,000. Buses are the only viable alternative to cars for a county of 10 million people spread over 4,000 square miles. Just four miles of subway drilling cost $1.2 billion; for the same price the MTA could buy 2,600 clean-air buses and double the size of the existing fleet. By contrast, service cuts and fare increases will depress ridership, leading to more cars on the road and dramatically increased pollution. (In L.A. County, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are from cars and trucks.) Any attempt to raise fares should require an environmental impact report. High-speed bus-only lanes - combined with prohibiting cars altogether in auto-free zones and during auto-free days - are the only ways to reverse the rise in respiratory illness and global warming. The MTA, claiming a $100-million operating deficit, wants us to believe that punishing its riders is its only choice. But it continues to subsidize rail projects at absurd levels. About $57 million is spent on operations for Metrolink - a subsidy of about $5 a rider - which serves the whitest, most affluent suburban transit users. For the Gold Line, weekday ridership is 19,000 at an operating subsidy for each passenger of almost $7. The three Wilshire/Whittier bus lines, the most heavily utilized and effective in the nation, carry 90,000 daily passengers at a subsidy of 79 cents each. The 13-member MTA board needs a two-thirds majority to raise fares, so five "no" votes would kill any fare hike. If Villaraigosa and his three appointees (Bernard Parks, Richard Katz and David Fleming) vote against it, then just one more "no" vote - maybe from Molina or one of the other county supervisors - would stop this attack on passengers and put the MTA's rail addiction back in permanent rehab. ERIC MANN is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center. MANUEL CRIOLLO is the lead organizer of the Bus Riders Union. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:45:20 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:45:20 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] My life is in politicians' hands: Ireland is SICKO too. Message-ID: <20070522164520.60839b5a@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness [A person in need of medical care decries the inadequacies of the Irish Health care System. "SiCKO" does not just apply to the USA. Ireland is the fifth richest country in the world, it has a per capita income 16 times greater than Cuba, yet it lacks the political will to provide health care to its citizens. Yet again, in the general election to be held this week the politician who promises to cut taxes will be elected to form the government and wealthy Irish people will die prematurely. That is how we benefit from our particular form of democracy. -SMcG] TThe Irish Times - May 22, 2007 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2007/0522/1179498568439.html [Orla Tinsley (20) is studying at university despite her cystic fibrosis. The average life expectancy for an Irish person with CF is 21, less than half what it is in the US. She wants political action. Whoever is the next taoiseach, Orla Tinsley wants the best shot at life she can get, her illness notwithstanding. This is her impassioned appeal to the government we are about to elect] Op-Ed My life is in politicians' hands by Orla Tinsle I watched the Ahern v Kenny TV debate unfold. I was particularly interested because I am still unsure as to where my vote will go. Being a teenager in the throes of exams I am bombarded with calls to "rock the vote". It is easy to spurn such rocking, particularly when voting is on a Thursday, in the middle of university exams. However, I have a very personal interest in this election, a selfish one at that. It concerns my life and the lives of many of my peers, so I've taken time away from study to write this. I needed treatment in hospital last April for my cystic fibrosis. I have had this illness since I was three days old. Ireland has the highest incidence of CF in the world and yet we have the poorest facilities. In their debate, Bertie Ahern made light of the fact when Enda Kenny said that a 30-year-old machine was in use in a brand new hospital. The Taoiseach quipped under his breath that it was impossible as it was a new hospital. But he doesn't understand. Machines are exchanged, underfunded and overused. Just like the nurses, doctors and patients who are shovelled through the relentless system. The last time I went into hospital I left after 10 days. I am usually pretty level-headed about my illness. It doesn't control my life; it's an extension of it. I've learnt to deal with it to a certain degree. However, there are certain things my mind cannot deal with; lack of sleep is one of those. I left hospital a week early. I would like to tell the Taoiseach and Enda Kenny why. They might not be aware that elderly, senile patients are forced to share rooms with CF patients in a way that poses a threat to us both. In this environment, I have to get used to being cursed at continually. My crimes include opening windows, running taps and pulling my curtain to change in privacy. I have laughed nervously as psychiatric patients have sat on my bed trying to convince me that the world was going to explode. I have met people who have wandered into the six-bed room where I sleep and attempted to convince me they could heal me if I only let them touch my arm. I've seen beautifully glamorous elderly ladies urinate on the floor through no fault of their own. I've maintained my composure as other friends with CF are attacked by elderly people or family members for being too loud or for having the gall to have the window open. Sleep is not possible at night and with breakfast at 7am, cleaners at 8am and a barrage of doctors, blood-tests, physio and medical students to occupy, it's not possible in the day. iPods are a handy way to try and escape unless they go for a walk, like mine did the last time I was there. That theft, along with nine consecutive sleepless nights, instigated my decision to leave. Checking myself out had fortuitous consequences - a much sicker friend, who had been in a different six-bed room, was moved into a cubicle. A week later I found out that my friend had passed away. I took a small comfort that her last few days were in the privacy of that room with her family, and not with five other people and theirs. I have often observed old and young people dying in the room I sleep in. The unspoken rule is, if you can walk out, you leave or if you can't, you put on your headphones and pretend. You pretend you cannot see the silhouettes through the curtains, bending down to give one last kiss. You pretend that you do not feel guilty for being there, guilty about your hacking coughs which interrupt their final moments. Going home, you pretend you have never seen the big blue body trolleys rush by. The old lady across from you, cursing ferociously when you open a window and praying out loud for hours on end at night, does not bother you. At least that's what you pretend. There is a constant fear of infection when we come through A&E. My latest jaunt there was over two days, where I was exposed to infection and left coughing on a plastic chair. At 3pm I got a drug line inserted, whilst awake, into my arm. I watched it all on the big screen in fascination, then returned to my plastic chair in the waiting room. I waited again before being transferred to the actual A&E bed area, where I waited on a larger plastic chair. I then spent the next 10 minutes waving furiously at a porter I recognised. Half an hour later he emerged with a trolley. He worked hard to get it. When I returned from the bathroom the pillow he also worked hard to get was gone. With a respiratory disease and gloopy, mucus-filled lungs, lying flat is not acceptable. Without a pillow my trolley was useless as I had to sit up anyway. This situation is unfathomable. People with CF are sick of hearing the statistics. We are sick repeating the same line: "We have the highest instance of CF in the world with Third World facilities." We are sick of hearing that money is coming, that somebody somewhere just has to sign something. We are sick of waiting and I am sick of watching my friends die while we wait. Recently a newspaper printed an article about another pal who passed away a month before the friend I mentioned earlier. This young woman came up with the slogan "Sick Waiting" because she felt it encapsulated the mood of people with CF in Ireland. The general consensus is, she was dead right. My friend wrote a letter, which was published in The Irish Times . She was left in A&E in agony for hours without an X-ray, painkillers or a chest drain. Her lung had collapsed and this agony was prolonged. To add insult and torture to an already appalling case my dear friend had her chest drain lifted incorrectly which messed up the gravity and blew her lung out for the second time. She never recovered from that infection. Outside of hospital, my friend worked selflessly editing a CF magazine and gathering extensive knowledge on treatments and funny anecdotes regarding the disease. She also completed an MA, fell madly in love and won the Young Scientist of the Year exhibition. Her team won the European Scientist of the year too. She fought every inch of the way for her life. Nobody wants to be a victim. This is something I personally loathe. The idea that someone is poor, fragile, incapable and not in control of their destiny, terrifies me. Yet right here, in this shambles of a health system, the reality is that what we fight so hard not to become has become us, uncontrollably so. When not in hospital we fight to stay alive. We also fight for our healthcare. Daily we take our drugs, nebulisers and 50 or so tablets. There are also, for some CF patients, enemas, needles, insulin, and bags of diluted feed fed through naso-gastric tubes. We do it because we are lifers. We have the illness, we deal with it in different ways. Yet most of us work hard at keeping well because we are determined to have the best quality of life possible, because we, like everyone else, deserve it. Every time we enter a hospital this idea is undermined. Our hard work to stay on this journey called life is destroyed by the broken promises, by the bloody politics of it all. The money was there for staffing but the number of staff was capped. The plans were there and six months later we still "just need someone to sign off" on them. There is no more time for planning; the time for action is now. I am 20. The average life expectancy for a person with cystic fibrosis in Ireland is 21. In Northern Ireland it's 33. In Britain, we live longer again, reaching up to late 40s in the US. I am in first year in college, have missed 10 weeks of this school year but I intend to do my exams and do well. I will then go on to write, act and live my life the way I want, alongside CF, as I have always expected to. I am not ready to be stopped yet. Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, our lives are quite literally in your hands. We want an honest shot at it. Even if we have a few limitations the system should not accentuate them. It should work in favour of its long-term patients. Allow us to recuperate with sufficient sleep and without fear of infection. Enable us to leave hospital without having to take two extra weeks off to sleep, or spend time weaning ourselves off the sleeping tablets. Bertie, Enda, give us a chance at life and I assure you, as the youth of today who have truly experienced both the ugliness and the miracle of life, we will not let you, or ourselves, down. C 2007 The Irish Times From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:47:06 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:47:06 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Lithuania bans EU-sponsored gay rights parade Message-ID: <20070522164706.604c6336@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness [The Achilles heel of the US sponsored governments in eastern Europe is their hard-wired homophobia. These governments, who are the first to condemn fictitious human rights abuses in Cuba, are happy to encourage the trampling of human rights in their own countries. But there is a big train coming down the line, the train of European Court of Human Rights. All EU citizens discriminated against by their governments are entitled to receive recompense. It may take some years for the decisions of the court to be handed down, as national legal procedures have to be exhausted first, but their rights will be vindicated by Europe eventually. -SMcG] EU Observer - May 22, 2007 http://euobserver.com/9/24104/?rk=1 Lithuania bans EU-sponsored gay rights parade By Helena Spongenberg Lithuanian officials in Vilnius have rejected an EU-sponsored tolerance campaign rally over fears that the event could spark unrest in the Baltic country known for its anti-gay sentiments. The decision - taken unanimously by the city council - was based on information suggesting that anti-gay protestors could attempt to violate public order, said the director of the city's public order unit, Gintaras Tamosiunas, according to Baltic News Service BNS. The rally was due to take place on Friday (25 May) and is a campaign - named "For Diversity - Against Discrimination" - organised in cooperation with the European Union, aimed at promoting tolerance towards minority groups, including gays and lesbians. One of the highlights of the event was to have been the arrival of a so-called "anti-discrimination" bus, which is touring 19 EU member states and designed to inform citizens of their rights under EU and national anti-discrimination legislation. The move makes Vilnius the first capital in Europe to reject the travelling campaign, which is now into its fourth season. The EU on Monday said it "regrets the decision to cancel the planned event" in Vilnius, AFP reports. "The decision by the city authorities shows how much still needs to be done to change behaviour and attitudes towards discriminated groups and to promote awareness of diversity," the European Commission said in a statement. The ban comes after Trolleybus drivers in Vilnius and Kaunas earlier this month refused to drive vehicles carrying advertisements calling for sexual tolerance. Sweden's ambassador to Lithuania Malin Karre spoke to the Lithuanian parliament last week calling for the rights of gay and lesbian people to be upheld. The comments angered anti-gay activists, who protested outside the Swedish embassy in Vilnius with anti-gay activist Vaidas Vysniauskas saying that the speech of the ambassador "hurt [the] religious feelings of faithful Lithuanian citizens." "We are worried that the representative of a foreign country does not understand that maybe the virtues possibly acceptable for Swedish are not acceptable for Lithuanians," Mr Vysniauskas said, according to the Baltic Times. Thousands of people marched last weekend in the Polish capital, Warsaw's annual gay-rights parade, days after the country's education minister called for a ban on the "propagation of homosexuality" in Poland's schools. Gay rights activists from across Europe together with MEPs and Swedish Europe minister Cecilia Malmstrom attended the rally in Poland. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:49:06 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:49:06 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] udicial crisis [still] grips Pakistan Message-ID: <20070522164906.67c5da6e@viola.tamara-b.org> NDTV.Com - May 21, 2007 (Islamabad) http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070012766 Judicial crisis grips Pakistan by Munizae Jehangir The sacking of Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhury has literally polarised the country into two camps. The country has been divided into those who are against the sacking and those who support President Pervez Musharraf. The irony is hard to miss - the same judge, who took a fresh oath of office under a military ruler when several of his colleagues resigned in protest, is now the face of a movement against the President. The Chief Justice has been demanding an end to dictatorship and a return to civilian rule. And as the pressure on him mounts, a beleaguered President has launched his own defense. ''He was seen to use his influence in a belated manner to seek promotion of his son to a grade 18 post, which of course was neither warranted nor permissible,'' said Dr Khalid Ranjha, prosecuting lawyer for the government. Independent decisions The consensus among Musharraf's opponents is that the judge's independence angered the government. He ruled against the privatization of steel mills, after the opposition accused the Musharraf government of corruption. He took a very hard line against the Pakistani intelligence for illegally detaining hundreds of people under the anti terrorism act, and failing to produce them in court. They also suggest that Musharraf's real aim is to try and amend the Constitution that allows him to retain two posts - that of army chief and president - only until the elections this year. ''This is a very sensitive year for Musharraf because his term is supposed to come to an end on the 15th of November and he desperately wants to get another five years. There will be very serious Constitutional questions, which will be raised this year,'' argues Hamid Khan, Defense lawyer for Chaudhury. United stand The fight between the legal community and the executive has taken the shape of a national movement for democracy. Opposition parties previously divided over many issues, have come together under one umbrella to fight against military rule. >From recent reports, it seems clear that the pressure on Musharraf to >give up his uniform and fight the presidential election as a civilian, if he wants to stay in power, is at boiling point. And demands for Pakistan's exiled politicians Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to get back in time for the elections are growing more urgent. But both the leaders have reacted by saying they will be back in time for the elections. To make things worse for Musharraf, Bhutto has said that she can't even think of a deal with the military government after last week's violence in Karachi, ending speculation of a possible alliance between Musharraf and her for now. But Musharraf's growing unpopularity means he is likely to be under pressure from his political allies to work something out and the only real option is with Bhutto's PPP. ''I think he is trying to hold out an olive branch to Bhutto. In return he probably wants to be re-elected for five years in uniform as Chief Of Army Staff. Bhutto wanted her cases withdrawn, that the government has not agreed to. ''He has agreed not to prosecute them, but I think the government has not agreed to withdraw the cases and therefore deal as such is probably not happening. But I think both need each other,'' said Rashid Rehman, Editor, The Post. Edmund Burke once said in politics there are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests. In the last few years, Benazir and Nawaz - the two arch rivals - have come together under one umbrella. The course of action that the PPP will take in the next few months, will define the course of politics in Pakistan for years to come. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:49:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:49:51 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Afghan MP expelled for calling parliament 'worse than a zoo' Message-ID: <20070522164951.6e87a0fb@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - May 22, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2567969.ece Afghan MP expelled for calling parliament 'worse than a zoo' By Kim Sengupta The most outspoken female MP in Afghanistan has been expelled from parliament after saying proceedings had descended to a level "worse than a zoo". The views of Malalai Joya, in a television interview, outraged fellow parliamentarians, who immediately voted to suspend her from the house for the rest of her five-year term. Some even demanded that she should be brought before a court for defamation and stripped of the right to stand again as a candidate. This was not the first time that 28-year-old Ms Joya, a fervent advocate of women's rights, has angered male MPs with her criticisms. Some have thrown water bottles at her while she spoke in debates and others have threatened her with rape. She has also survived assassination attempts and has to regularly change her address after receiving death threats from Islamist groups. Ms Joya's suspension yesterday came after a tape of her interview with Tolo TV, an independent station which has faced official wrath over some of its investigative reports, was shown to MPs. Describing what was happening in parliament, she had said: "A stable or a zoo is better, at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk. This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo." A letter sent by the speaker of the upper house to the speaker of the lower house, Yunus Qanooni, accused Ms Joya of humiliating the institution of parliament. The letter said: "If the lower house does not take a decision about her, we will take a decision." Mr Qanooni said that Ms Joya should be brought before a court. When asked on what grounds, he responded: "The court will explain this." Several of Afghanistan's MPs are former warlords. One of the last clashes Ms Joya had with them was earlier this year when she opposed legislation granting an amnesty against charges of war crimes during Afghanistan's last 25 years of conflict. The National Reconciliation Bill declared that the "defenders" of the jihad "must be treated with respect and be defended against any kind of offence". Ms Joya said the bill was "unjust and went against the will of the people. Those guilty must be tried. In fact, they have already been tried in the minds and hearts of the people and they should be tried officially." In response, she was called "a traitor who should be severely punished". During a street rally thousands of supporters of the warlords turned MPs chanted "death to Malalai Joya". Most of Ms Joya's campaigning has been about women's rights, which have been severely eroded after initial gains made with the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Women activists, including the highest-ranking official dealing with female empowerment, Safia Amajan, have been murdered. Ms Joya said: "Talking about women's rights in Afghanistan is a joke. There really have not been any fundamental changes, the Taliban were driven off by the Americans and the British but then they were allowed to be replaced by warlords who also simply cannot see women as equals." She added: "Those of us who speak up are targets. My friends and colleagues have been assassinated. They have tried to kill me four times, the last attack was in Kabul which is the capital of this country which is supposed to be secure and democratic. And then if you try to speak up in parliament their first reaction is to try to gag you." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:50:42 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:50:42 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bomb in Turkish capital kills 5; 80 hurt Message-ID: <20070522165042.0a59f76e@viola.tamara-b.org> AP - May 22, 2007 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TURKEY_EXPLOSION?SITE=NCAGW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Bomb in Turkish capital kills 5; 80 hurt By SELCAN HACAOGLU Associated Press Writer ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- A bomb exploded Tuesday in one of the Turkish capital's busiest commercial centers, killing five people and wounding about 80, authorities said. The blast outside one of the oldest shopping malls in Ankara hurled glass and other debris over a wide area. A body, covered in a white sheet, lay outside the building. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said four Turks and one Pakistani were killed in the blast, and that authorities were still investigating the type of bomb used. "Is it a suicide bomber or a parcel bomb? Technical teams are working on this," Erdogan told reporters after visiting the scene. Pakistani Embassy spokesman Abdul Majeed Niazi said eight Pakistanis were injured, but that there was no Pakistani fatality. It was unclear why his account conflicted with that of the prime minister. Health Minister Recep Akdag said around 80 people were wounded, most of them only slightly. Private NTV television, quoting police sources, said the bomb was made of plastic explosives, the type favored by separatist Kurdish rebels. Militant leftists and Islamic extremists also operate in Turkey. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Television video shortly after the blast showed medics tending to the wounded, who were bloodied and with some of their clothes torn away, and carrying them to ambulances on stretchers. "We were cleaning the windows when the pressure from the blast pushed us to the ground," said Murat Coskun, who owns a nearby shop that sells cell phones. "Everything was covered in dust. I could only hear people screaming." Forensic teams collected evidence. "The scene here is horrific," Mayor Melih Gokcek said. The Ulus neighborhood where the blast occurred is the oldest part of Ankara. It is near museums and the old parliament house. The shopping mall that was damaged is called Anafartalar and sells mostly clothing and textiles. The explosion occurred as the city hosted an international defense industry fair, with some 400 companies from dozens of countries displaying their goods. In recent weeks, Turkey has endured political turmoil pitting the Islamic-leaning government against the military-backed secular opposition, which staged huge anti-government rallies. The ruling party's presidential candidate was forced to abandon his bid for the office, and early general elections were called for July 22. In 2003, al-Qaida-linked suicide truck bombers in the Turkish city of Istanbul attacked two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank, killing 58 people. In September, suspected Kurdish rebels set off a bomb at a bus stop in Turkey's largest majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, killing 10 people. A month earlier, a hard-line Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for a bus bombing in the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris that injured 20 people, including 10 Britons. There is growing impatience in Turkey over how to deal with Kurdish rebels, and the government has not ruled out military operations aimed at their bases in northern Iraq. The United States opposes Turkish military action in Iraq, fearing it would complicate U.S. efforts to restore stability there. ? 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:52:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:52:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] New details Emerge on Lebanese Jihadist Group Message-ID: <20070522165254.58116ca9@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven Robinson (activ-l) [At 100 or so members the "Fatah Islam" does not seem particularly large, but it certainly has succeeded in grabbing the headlines. As always the Lebanese authorities (along with the US Government) blame Syria for the rise of this new outfit - ignoring the fact that the leadership of the Syrian Government is bitterly opposed to Islamists, having a history of brutally repressing it's own native Islamist movement in the early 1980s. SR] AP via The LA Times - May 21, 2007 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-lebanon-fatah-isla m,1,5656039.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines New Details Emerge on Fatah Islam Group By Scheherezade Faramarzi and Zeina Karam The Associated Press Tripoli, Lebanon -- The fugitive leader of the shadowy militant organization Fatah Islam openly embraces Osama bin Laden and has recruited Arab fighters to carry out attacks around the region. The little known about Shaker al-Absi has raised concerns that he is building an al-Qaida-style branch in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared -- a potentially explosive new element in already volatile Lebanon. So far, he has not gained the reach or strength of militants like former al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Western intelligence and local officials. The Lebanese military has been bombarding Nahr el-Bared the past two days, seeking to crush Fatah Islam after clashes with its fighters Sunday in the nearby city of Tripoli. Lebanese security officials see another cause behind the rise of Fatah Islam. They accuse Syria of backing it to stir up trouble in Lebanon, which Damascus long controlled until forced to leave in 2005. Syria denies the claim, saying it considers the group a dangerous terrorist organization. Al-Absi set up shop in the refugee camp last fall after arriving from Syria, where he spent a number of years, some of them in prison. In Nahr el-Bared -- safe from Lebanese authorities, who cannot enter Palestinian refugee camps -- he built up his organization. Lebanese officials have said they believe he has about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries. One of his followers, killed in fighting Sunday, was suspected in a foiled plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, Lebanese officials said. Al-Absi has denied in media interviews that he has direct links to al-Qaida and insisted his movement's aim was to "liberate Palestine." "There is no organizational relationship with al-Qaida, but we are in agreement to fight the infidels. This is the ambition and doctrine of every Muslim -- to fight the enemies," he told Al-Jazeera television earlier this year. "The only way to achieve our rights is by force," he said in a recent interview with The New York Times. "This is the way America deals with us. So when the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave." But unlike traditional Palestinian militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, al-Absi has for years been interwoven with the al-Qaida-linked underground, reportedly visiting Iraq and Afghanistan and associating with the late al-Zarqawi, one of al-Qaida's most brutal leaders. Al-Absi is wanted in three Mideast countries -- Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Jordan convicted al-Absi in absentia in 2004 for involvement in a plot that led to the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. Al-Zarqawi was also convicted in absentia in the plot, and both were sentenced to death. Details from the Jordanian indictment paint a picture of al-Absi's links. According to Jordanian prosecutors, the plot began in 1999, when al-Absi met with Libyan militant Salem bin Suweid in Syria. The two men and a Syrian, Mohammed Tayyoura, allegedly agreed to carry out military attacks on Americans and Jews living in Jordan. Over the next few years, the three began preparing the attacks, with al-Zarqawi mapping out plans and providing financing to buy weapons, the indictment said. Al-Absi sent money to bin Suweid and arranged weapons and explosives training in Syria for the other suspects, it said. When Foley was gunned down in the Jordanian capital in October 2002, al-Absi was being held in a Syrian prison after authorities there arrested him for allegedly plotting terror attacks in Syria against U.S. and other Western targets, a Jordanian security official said. Al-Absi dropped from view after being let go by Syria in 2005 then resurfaced in Lebanon last fall, the Jordanian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to the press. His time in Syria has fueled Lebanese accusations that Damascus is behind Fatah Islam. But Syria insists the group is a danger to it as well. Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari, said Monday that Fatah Islam leaders were jailed in Syria for several years. He said that after they were released, Syria discovered they were still involved in terror activities and tried to re-arrest them, but they escaped. A U.S. counterterrorism official called al-Absi a double threat from his past in Syria and his al-Qaida connections. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said al-Absi had not yet shown an ability to mount major terror operations, but added that it would be dangerous to wait for the group to prove itself. "That is too late," the official said. [Associated Press writers Jamal Halaby in Amman and Katherine Shrader in Washington contributed to this report.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue May 22 16:59:13 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:59:13 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] WAR AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ-: THE MURDER OF A SOCIETY Message-ID: <20070522165913.2b211896@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) World Socialist Website - May 19, 22, 2007 Parts 1-3: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m19.shtml http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/irq2-m21.shtml http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m22.shtml THE US WAR AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ: THE MURDER OF A SOCIETY By Bill van Auken PART ONE While official politics and the media in the United States are focused largely on competing plans for salvaging the American occupation from the debacle it confronts in Iraq, little serious consideration is given to the historic catastrophe that has been inflicted upon Iraqi society itself. Although no definitive figures can be given on the total number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the US war and occupation--including those killed in the invasion and subsequent armed violence and those whose lives have been cut short by disease and hunger, particularly among the young and old--every serious estimate places the excess death toll between several hundred thousands and one million human beings. Iraq, once among the most advanced countries of the region, has been reduced, in terms of basic economic and social indices, to the level of the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa. What is involved is the systematic destruction of an entire society through the unleashing of violence and criminality on a scale not seen since Hitler's armies ravaged Europe in the Second World War. American society itself is suffering deadly consequences from this war. The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has topped 3,400, with every indication that the casualty rate is climbing as the Bush administration's "surge" sends combat troops into the densely populated and overwhelmingly hostile neighborhoods of Baghdad. Another 30,000 American military personnel have been wounded or injured, many of them grievously. Undoubtedly, hundreds of thousands more will suffer the psychological effects of having participated in a dirty colonial war. The war's daily drain on the US economy is estimated at over $300 million, with predictions that its total cost could top $2 trillion. There is an even greater cost, however, in terms of the damage done by this criminal war to the political, social and, indeed, moral health of American society. The Iraq war--all of the tired propaganda about the "war on terrorism," the struggle for "democracy" and the "liberation" of the Iraqi people notwithstanding--is a failed attempt by America's financial elite to further enrich itself and secure its continued global hegemony through the naked theft of Iraq's oil wealth. Every section of the US political and corporate establishment, all branches and levels of government, both major political parties, and the mass media are all implicated in massive war crimes. Criminality on such a grand scale cannot go unpunished without grave implications for the future of the American people and, indeed, all of humanity. Taken together, US operations in Iraq have amounted to sociocide--the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society. A series of recent reports have pointed to the scale of death, destruction and oppression that have been wrought by the US occupation, now in its fifth year. AN OCCUPATION ARMY ENGAGED IN SLAUGHTER AND ABUSE First, as a telling indicator of the violence that the US occupation has unleashed against the Iraqi people, there is the report released by the Pentagon earlier this month on the mental state of American occupation troops. The document presents a chilling portrait of an army suffering from growing demoralization and mental and emotional dysfunction, which find expression, in part, in callous indifference, if not outright hatred, towards Iraq's civilian population. The survey found that a majority of troops believed that Iraqi civilians have no right to be treated "with dignity and respect," and that approximately 10 percent of them admitted to having inflicted gratuitous violence on Iraqis in the form of beatings or destruction of personal property. Perhaps the most significant finding was that 14 percent of US soldiers and Marines said they were directly responsible for the death of an "enemy combatant." Given that some 170,000 US troops are currently in Iraq--and over 650,000 have been deployed there at one time or another since 2003--this would indicate a massive death toll inflicted directly by US forces. Many of these troops, of course, are in Iraq for second and third tours of duty, and the data does not account for incidents in which more than one person is killed, much less air strikes or artillery bombardments that can claim scores of victims. Nor does it include those killed by the tens of thousands of armed mercenary contractors, who are answerable neither to Iraqi law nor the military code of justice. A further indication of the universal character of the deadly violence that has been inflicted upon the country came in the poll conducted earlier this year by ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD German television, which found that fully 53 percent of Iraqis reported having a close friend or immediate relative either killed or wounded. Along with the rising death toll has come a marked increase in the number of disappeared, which has far outstripped the horrors that this word came to symbolize in the worst years of dictatorship in countries like Argentina and Chile. Iraqi human rights organizations estimate that 15,000 or more Iraqis are missing, with between 40 and 60 more people joining the ranks of the disappeared daily--in other words, as many as 20,000 people on an annual basis. Many, no doubt, have been exterminated by death squads, while others have joined the country's burgeoning population of detainees, who are imprisoned without charges and subject to unlimited periods of pre-trial detention and often torture. The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights reported in March that the regime was holding nearly 38,000 detainees and prisoners, while the US military admits to 19,000 detainees jailed in its two main detention camps--Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca. This total amounts to nearly six times the number of prisoners held by the Saddam Hussein regime before the US invasion to "liberate" the Iraqi people. No doubt, it will rise substantially as the US military's "surge" continues to sweep up large numbers of Iraqi civilians. THE DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE OF MILLIONS OF IRAQIS In addition to the hundreds of thousands of deaths that the occupation has inflicted upon the Iraqi population, an equally telling indicator of its catastrophic implications for Iraqi society is the massive population of refugees and internally displaced persons. It is estimated that 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland, the vast majority of them seeking refuge in Syria and Jordan. Another 1.9 million Iraqis have been reduced to the status of displaced persons inside the country. In sum, fully 15 percent of the country's population has been driven from their homes. The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that between 40,000 and 50,000 more Iraqis are being displaced every week, many of them forced to sleep in tents or out in the open with no means of support. "We left Baghdad because the situation is very difficult. We were threatened with death and they took our houses and also our shops," a man who recently came with his family to Syria told UNHCR. "You see what the situation is there--just destruction and death." The United States, which unleashed this destruction and death, has since 2003 admitted only 701 Iraqi refugees. Syria is currently hosting some 1.2 million. Washington has sought to obscure this massive refugee crisis--let alone take any responsibility for it--because it is such a damning indictment of the social catastrophe it has created in Iraq. The vast flow of internal refugees has created increasingly desperate and volatile conditions in the country's south, where an estimated 700,000 have fled, joining some 200,000 locally displaced people within Najaf, Kerbala and Basra provinces. Local governments and relief agencies are overwhelmed, unable to provide this vast population with housing, food or medical care. The central government in Baghdad has proven unable and unwilling to provide basic support. "There are dozens of families arriving every day at camps for the displaced, causing a lack of essential needs such as food and health care," Ali Fakhouri, a spokesman for the Najaf provincial council told IRIN, the news agency of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in March. "The past two months were the worst for those families. For security reasons, the delivery of aid has decreased considerably and because of a lack of medicines in the region's hospitals and inaccessibility to hospitals, children are more vulnerable to diseases. Diarrhea is common among children in the displaced groups in the south." IRAQ'S RECORD RISE IN INFANT MORTALITY Perhaps most startling of the recent reports is that issued by the children's advocacy group Save the Children documenting worldwide trends in infant mortality rates, universally accepted as one of the most fundamental indices of social progress. According to this report, Iraq recorded a staggering 150 percent increase in the rate of infant deaths between 1990 and 2005. In raw figures, 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005, half of them newborn babies. The rate was 125 deaths of children under five for every 1,000 live births, compared to 50 in 1990. According to the Iraqi health ministry, conditions have only worsened since, with the ratio climbing to 130 deaths for every 1,000 births in 2006. The years selected by Save the Children in conducting its international survey had particular relevance for Iraq, beginning in 1990 with the initiation of the punishing US-backed economic sanctions and ending in 2005, two years after the invasion. As with most of the essential indices of social devastation in Iraq, the infant mortality figures reflect both the country's relentless economic strangulation--punctuated by periodic military attacks--over the course of more than a decade, and the violent destruction of the invasion and occupation which followed. The vast rise in infant mortality in Iraq is unprecedented. Even sub-Saharan African countries that have suffered the worst ravages of AIDS have not approached such a terrible retrogression. No doubt a significant share of these infant deaths can be attributed to US military operations. Virtually every air strike and bombardment carried out against populated areas claims children among their victims. Far more important, however, is the overall disintegration of Iraq's water, electricity and sewage systems, as well as its healthcare network, which together have created conditions in which the principal killers of children--diarrhea, malnutrition and preventable diseases like typhoid and hepatitis--go unchecked and untreated. The United Nations has reported a stunning 70 percent increase in diarrhea among Iraqi children just since January 2006, with the highest rates in Anbar province, a center of resistance to the occupation that has been continuously under siege by US forces. Fully 60 percent of the people in the province have access only to polluted river water for drinking. Less than a third of the population nationwide has access to clean drinking water, and just 19 percent have a functioning sewage system. Both the water and sewage systems were damaged heavily by US bombardments in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion. After toppling the Iraqi government, US forces did nothing to stop looters from stripping water treatment and pumping stations of essential equipment. "Reconstruction" here, as elsewhere, has proven catastrophically inadequate. On average, Iraqis receive only eight hours of electricity a day, with even worse conditions in Baghdad, where most of the capital's seven million people get only six hours or less of service daily. PART TWO DESPERATE PLIGHT OF IRAQ'S CHILDREN Iraq's Ministry of Health estimates that fully half of the country's children suffer from some form of malnutrition. According to a recent study by UNICEF, 10 percent of Iraqi children under five are acutely malnourished, while another 20 percent are chronically malnourished. With the heat of Iraq's summer coming on, medical authorities fear a sharp rise in child deaths from dehydration, cholera and infections, and they warn that the shattered Iraqi medical system is virtually powerless to stop it. The desperate plight of Iraqi children and their families was summed up by one Iraqi mother. "Last year I lost my daughter and my mother because of dehydration," Zahra Muhammad, 35, told the UN news agency IRIN. She said that the family had been forced from their home last May. "We couldn't afford cooling systems in our tent. My daughter was only four years old and couldn't stand the hard living conditions in addition to the very hot weather," she continued. "I have two more children and they are already sick because of malnutrition. The doctors have told me that without proper cooling and drinkable water, I should expect serious consequences in the coming months. If I lose another child for lack of electricity and clean water, then I would prefer to die with them." As many as 260,000 children have died since the March 2003 invasion, according to one estimate reported by the British daily The Independent in January. For those children who do live to see their fifth birthday, Iraq has become a hostile and often deadly environment. Less than a third of Iraq's children now attend school, compared to 100 percent attendance before the March 2003 invasion. The principal reason students are staying out of the classrooms is fear of the endemic violence that makes a trip to school a deadly risk their families are unwilling to take. At the same time, the relentless killing has left countless thousands of Iraqi children orphans, who have become a new and tragic fixture of life in Baghdad and other major cities, sleeping and begging in the streets. As the UN's IRIN news agency reports: "Thousands of homeless children throughout Iraq...survive by begging, stealing or scavenging garbage for food. Only four years ago, the vast majority of these children were living at home with their families." The desperate conditions confronting Iraqi children led a group of 100 prominent British physicians to address an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair in January expressing their extreme concern over the impact of the occupation. "We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medications or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated." There are fears that this last issue--the wholesale traumatization of an entire young generation--may have the most far-reaching and devastating effect upon Iraqi society. "Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity," the Association of Psychologists of Iraq declared. Based on a survey of 1,000 school children, it found that 92 percent had learning impediments caused by the climate of violence and fear. "The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation," Maruan Abdullah, spokesman for the association told reporters. The hellish conditions that have been imposed upon Iraqi children constitute a war crime. As the occupying power, the United States is enjoined by the Geneva Conventions to ensure "preferential measures in regards to food, medical care and protection" in favor of children under 15 years, expectant mothers, and mothers of children under seven, and to "maintain all institutions devoted to the care and education of children." A CATASTROPHIC DECLINE IN THE STATUS OF WOMEN The US war and occupation have driven Iraqi women back generations, condemning millions to statutory second-class citizenship and nightmarish conditions in which they are virtually prisoners in their homes. This development is closely bound up with the record rise in infant mortality and is just as vital an indicator of social progress--or retrogression. It was Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist, who wrote 155 years ago, in a passage cited by Marx and Engels: "Social progress and changes of a period are accompanied by the progress of women towards freedom, while the decay of the social system brings with it a reduction of the freedoms enjoyed by women." He concluded: "Extension of the rights of women is the basic principle of all social progress." A report released in April by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on human rights in the country recorded 40 cases of "honor killings" of women over a three-month period in the governorates of Erbit, Duhok, Sulaimaniya and Salahuddin. These women were murdered by their own family members, in some cases burned alive, for alleged "immoral" conduct. A report by the Iraqi news agency Awena indicates that this hideous practice is even more widespread. Basing itself on data obtained from the Duhok criminal court and the Duchok Azadi Hospital, Awena reported last January that in this governorate there were 289 burning cases resulting in 46 deaths of women in 2005, and 366 burning cases resulting in 66 deaths in 2006. Meanwhile, the Emergency Management Center in Erbil cited 576 burning cases resulting in 358 deaths in that governorate since 2003. Also in Erbil, the UN report found that the number of reported rapes quadrupled between 2003 and 2006. The Iraqi constitution, drafted under US supervision, declares Islam the official state religion and establishes that no law may be enacted that "contradicts the immutable rulings of Islam." This principal sets the stage for the overturning of Iraq's more liberal civil laws governing divorce, family property and child custody, substituting in their place sharia law, which denies women most rights. Already, these principles are being imposed in the streets by armed militias of the Islamist parties, which have killed women for daring to hold professional positions as professors or doctors or to play a visible directing role in a business. Vigilantes have also forced the use of Islamic dress, including the hijab, or veil, backed by the threat of violence. Such groups in some areas have also demanded that women not leave their houses after midday, not drive automobiles or walk outside without a male relative. A report issued by the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq on the fourth anniversary of the US invasion declared: "Women of Iraq have gradually let go of most of their 20th century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation. Iraq turned from a modern country of educated and working women into a divided land of Islamic and ethnic warlords who compete in canceling women from the social realm. Millions of women's destinies are wasted between the destructive US war machine and different kinds of Islamic rule which have turned women into helpless black objects of no will or worth." The report cited growing violence against women, including gang rapes of female detainees and assaults on women by militias of other sects as an instrument of sectarian warfare. Kidnappings of women have also become rampant. A report issued by the group in March of last year found that the crime, virtually unknown under the regime of Saddam Hussein, claimed 2,000 female victims in the first three years after the US invasion, many of whom were raped or tortured. Such incidents, together with all other forms of violence, have escalated markedly over the last year. Four women are on Iraq's death row, waiting to be hanged, two of them imprisoned together with their young children. THE ERADICATION OF IRAQ'S MINORITIES Also a telling sign of the social disintegration in Iraq is the status of minorities. A report issued this month by Minority Rights Group International warns that minority communities in Iraq are being systematically eradicated. It ranks Iraq as the second-worst country in the world in terms of the threat posed to minorities--better only than Somalia and worse than Darfur. The report, entitled "Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's Minority Communities Since 2003," tracks the situation confronting Iraq's Armenian and Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Bahais, Faili Kurds, Jews, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabaks, Turkomans and Yazidis, who together make up 10 percent of the country's total population. "Iraq continues to see targeted killings of people from minority groups, including Christians, Yezidis and Mandaeans. Other minority groups in Iraq face daily violence, torture and political assimilation, which has led to an exodus of these communities from the country," the report states. Last year, Iraq ranked the worst in the world. Its decline to the second worst is a reflection of the marked deterioration of the situation in Somalia, where a US-engineered intervention has unleashed rampant violence. Some of Iraq's minorities predate the Arabs in terms of their presence in the country, which dates back to ancient Mesopotamia. Now, victims of violence and intimidation, they are disappearing from Iraq, many killed and the rest fleeing into exile. The report's authors blame the US occupation for this disaster. They write: "Following the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the coalition authorities established an Iraqi Governing Council in which membership was strictly apportioned along ethnic and sectarian lines. Political patronage ensured that whole ministries became dominated by officials from the minister's own sect or group, and sectarian politics quickly became the defining feature of the new Iraqi state." As a result, minority populations were excluded and subsequently repressed. THE DECIMATION OF IRAQ'S MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS The murderous violence in Iraq and the flight of millions of refugees have decimated the ranks of key professions who are indispensable for the maintenance of society. The British non-governmental organization Medact, citing the official figures of the Iraqi Medical Association, reported in March of last year that 18,000 of Iraq's 34,000 doctors have left the country. Another 2,000 have been murdered and at least 250 have been reported kidnapped. In his article on the exodus of refugees from Iraq in the May 13 New York Times Magazine, Nir Rosen interviewed one such doctor, a family medicine specialist, who had fled to Damascus with her five children. She left after her husband, a thoracic surgeon and a medical school professor, was dragged from his car by armed men, abducted and later found murdered. She told Rosen that when she asked the Iraqi police to investigate, they said, "He is a doctor, he has a degree and he is a Sunni, so he couldn't stay in Iraq. That's why he was killed." Both the police and the Ministry of Health are controlled by Shiite Islamist factions. She was subsequently ordered by letter to leave her neighborhood. The lack of trained medical staff, together with the shortage of basic supplies and the overwhelming burden of mass casualties, has left Iraq's healthcare system in a shambles. In an article published last October in the British Medical Journal, three doctors from the Diwaniyah College of Medicine in Iraq estimated that nearly half of the hundreds of thousands who have been killed since the 2003 US invasion could have survived if they had received adequate medical care. "The reality is we cannot provide any treatment for many of the victims," they wrote. "Emergency departments are staffed by doctors who do not have the proper experience or skills to manage emergency cases. Medical staff...admit that more than half of those killed could have been saved if trained and experienced staff were available." The article added: "Our experience has taught us that poor emergency medicine services are more disastrous than the disaster itself. But despite the daily violence that is crushing Iraq, the international medical community is doing little more than looking on." It is not just the international medical community. The state of the Iraqi healthcare system constitutes a US war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention demands that an occupying power "[e]nsure the effective operation of medical services, including hospitals and public health programs, with special focus on preventing the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics, and allow medical personnel to carry out their duties." The Geneva Conventions also require that an occupying power guarantee the neutrality of hospitals, protecting them from attack and ensuring that all are able to seek medical care. Yet US occupation troops have repeatedly attacked hospitals. Moreover, militias have been given free rein in the medical facilities, often dragging away patients of other sects for execution. The killing and kidnapping of doctors and their wholesale flight from the country are phenomena common to virtually every profession in Iraq. The Iraq Index, maintained by the Brookings Institution in Washington, estimates that 40 percent of Iraq's "professional class," including doctors, professors, pharmacists and other university-trained personnel, have left the country since 2003. PART THREE THE ASSAULT ON HIGHER EDUCATION Estimates of the number of university professors killed since 2003 range between 250 and 1,000. These educators have been targeted by Islamist militias because they are seen as proponents of secularism and a national identity that cuts across religious-ethnic divides. Attacks on universities have also driven away students. The first two months of this year saw two bombing attacks on Al Mustansiriya University that claimed a total of 111 lives. The entire higher educational system--once considered one of the best in the region--is in a state of collapse. Classes are being taught by untrained graduate students and undergraduates. "Violence and lack of resources have undermined the education sector in Iraq," Professor Fua'ad Abdel-Razak of Baghdad University told the IRIN news agency. "No student will graduate this year with sufficient competence to perform his or her job, and pupils will end the year with less than 60 percent of the knowledge that was supposed to be imparted to them." He added that medical graduates in particular are leaving the university without the knowledge or confidence to provide care. "There is a really huge difference between now and the times of Saddam Hussein, when medical graduates left college with the competence to treat any patient," he said. DESTRUCTION OF THE ECONOMY AND GROWTH OF MASS POVERTY At the base of society, the Iraqi economy has ground to a halt. The official unemployment rate is reported by the Iraqi Ministry of Social Affairs to be 48 percent. However, when one adds the hundreds of thousands of former employees of now closed state enterprises, who still receive 40 percent of their old salaries, the figure climbs to 70 percent. The inflation rate for 2006 climbed to 50 percent, the second highest in the world. Increased prices for basic necessities, including food, have dramatically affected the living standards for the vast majority of Iraqis. Within the space of just the last two years, the price of fuel has increased five-fold. The report released in April by the UN aid mission in Iraq found that 54 percent of the population is barely surviving on less than US$1 a day, while 15 percent must endure extreme poverty, with less than 50 US cents a day. The Iraqi regime's Central Statistical Bureau echoed these findings, saying that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty," lacking the necessary food, clothing or shelter to survive. The International Monetary Fund has estimated the country's per capita Gross Domestic Product at $1,687, less than half the figure reported 25 years ago. Even oil production--the principal concern of the American occupiers--has yet to be restored to the severely depressed pre-invasion levels, with sabotage curtailing operations and much of what is produced apparently being stolen. On top of the armed violence and sabotage, decisions imposed by the US occupation authorities have deepened the economic crisis and the agony it has created for millions of Iraqis. Driven by the profit interests of US-based corpo