The Days Count Down

goodbye, Howard

2010-01-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

we will miss you.

Piecing Together an Immigrant’s Life the U.S. Refused to See Shanise Farrar

2009-07-17T09:37:00.001-07:00

Piecing Together an Immigrant’s Life the U.S. Refused to See
Shanise Farrar

By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: July 5, 2009

When the 43-year-old man died in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2005, the very fact seemed to fall into a black hole. Although a fellow inmate scrawled a note telling immigrant advocates that the detainee’s symptoms of a heart attack had long gone unheeded, government officials would not even confirm that the dead man had existed.

In March, more than three years after the death, federal immigration authorities acknowledged that they had overlooked it, and added a name, “Ahmad, Tanveer,” to their list of fatalities in custody.

Even as the man’s death was retrieved from official oblivion, however, his life remained a mystery, The New York Times reported in an April article on the case that pointed up the secrecy and lack of accountability in the nation’s ballooning immigration detention system. Just who the man was and why he had been detained were unknown.

Yet at the end of a long trail of government documents and interviews with friends and relatives in New York, Texas and his native Pakistan, there was his name, “Ahmad, T.,” still listed last week on the tenants’ buzzer board at the Eldorado, an apartment building in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he had lived for years. And the tenant list itself — Jones, Nadler, Mahmud, Fong, Quinones — testified to the long history of American immigration that he had tried so hard to join.

Tanveer Ahmad, it turns out, was a longtime New York City cabdriver who had paid thousands of dollars in taxes and immigration application fees. Whether out of love, loneliness or the quest for a green card, he had twice married American women after entering the country on a visitor’s visa in 1993. His only trouble with the law was a $200 fine for disorderly conduct in 1997: While working at a Houston gas station, he had displayed the business’s unlicensed gun to stop a robbery.

It would come back to haunt him. For if Mr. Ahmad’s overlooked death showed how immigrants could vanish in detention, his overlooked American life shows how 9/11 changed the stakes for those caught in the nation’s tangle of immigration laws.

In the end, his body went back in a box to his native village, to be buried by his Pakistani widow and their two children, conceived on his only two trips home in a dozen years. He had always hoped to bring them all to the United States, his widow, Rafia Perveen, said in a tearful telephone interview through a translator.

“He said America is very good,” she recalled. “When it comes to the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., he had faith in the rule of law. He said, ‘In America, they don’t bother anyone just for no reason.’ ”

When immigration agents burst into Mr. Ahmad’s two-room Flatbush apartment on Aug. 2, 2005, they were looking for someone else, his friends say — a roommate suspected of violating his student visa by working. But they ordered Mr. Ahmad to report to immigration headquarters in Manhattan on Aug. 11.

He went, and was delivered in shackles to the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J. His Texas misdemeanor had popped up in the computer as an offense involving a deadly weapon — reason enough, after 9/11, for authorities to detain him pending deportation proceedings.

Like several million other residents of the United States, Mr. Ahmad occupied the complicated gray zone between illegal and legal immigration. Though he had overstayed his first visa, he had repeatedly been authorized to work while his applications for “adjustment of status” were pending. Twice before 9/11 he had been allowed back into the country after visits to Pakistan.

But the green card application sponsored by his Bronx-born wife, Shanise Farrar, had been officially denied in March 2005, leaving him without a valid visa. Although the couple could have reapplied, by the time he was arrested they had not spoken in more than a year, and Ms. Farrar, who had received a letter threatening a marriage fraud investigation, was unaware of his detention.
As she tells it, theirs was an intimate relationship ruined by 9/11. With regret, she recalled her reaction: “I was just cursing him. I was like, ‘You people come here and kill us and mess up our city.’ He was trying to convince me and prove to me that he’s a good man, not those people.”

“I loved him,” she added. “It was just, once the World Trade Center came down, I changed my mind.”

He was a natural immigrant, friends said, the fifth child in a poor but striving family, the captain of his village school’s victorious cricket team who grew into a funny and generous adult. After his family arranged his engagement to his cousin Rafia, he left to work in a brother’s store in Saudi Arabia. But once he visited New York, he had eyes only for the United States.

“His brother called him to come back,” recalled Mohammad S. Tariq, 58, a cabby whose Brooklyn apartment was Mr. Ahmad’s first home in the city. “But Tanveer did not want to go back.”

Instead he followed a job to Texas. He worked the night shift at a gas station that was robbed at gunpoint 7 times in 35 days, said the manager, Kathy Jean Lewis — who married him while she was battling thyroid cancer.

After her recovery, Mr. Ahmad made a three-month trip back to Pakistan, where he wed his cousin in 1998. His marriage to Ms. Lewis, now 53, was annulled by a Texas court in 1999.

She harbors no hard feelings. “He was emotionally supportive when I was sick,” she said, recalling how Mr. Ahmad took her to midnight dinners at her favorite restaurant when she was undergoing radiation treatment. “He just had a very big heart.”

His second American wife, Ms. Farrar, tells a similar story.

They wed at the city clerk’s office in Manhattan in July 2000, when Ms. Farrar was a single mother struggling to support her young son as a car service dispatcher, and they applied for a green card. She says she did not know he had a wife in Pakistan, and she denies that hers was “a paper marriage,” as Mr. Ahmad’s Pakistani widow put it. Ms. Farrar, 36, still speaks wistfully of family outings to Six Flags Great Adventure and the Bronx Zoo.

Then came 9/11. “Friends and family, ringing my phone — ‘You better watch it, you maybe married a terrorist,’ ” Ms. Farrar recalled, evoking a period when hundreds of Muslim immigrants in New York were swept up on the strength of vague suspicions. “I would bring it to him. He was scared anybody was going to hurt him.”

They patched things up before a November 2002 immigration interview, Ms. Farrar said. But they flunked it — the interviewing agent apparently doubted their marriage was genuine — and never appeared for the second-chance interview in 2003, Ms. Farrar said, because they had split up.

By the time Mr. Ahmad was taken in handcuffs to immigration court on Aug. 17, 2005, all he wanted was to return to Pakistan. He insisted on giving up his right to contest deportation, even though he faced a 10-year bar on returning, said Kenneth M. Schonfeld, an immigration lawyer hurriedly hired by Mr. Ahmad’s friends, all cabdrivers from Pakistan.

“He couldn’t stand the thought of having to stay in custody,” the lawyer said, and he seemed “really terrified” of the Monmouth jail. “It’s a place that would frighten or depress anyone.”

Three weeks later, Mr. Ahmad was dead. Since he had no known health problems, his friends were shocked and disbelieving. They were told that Mr. Ahmad had suffered a heart attack in the jail, and despite all efforts to revive him, had been pronounced dead in a hospital emergency room at 5:51 p.m. on Sept. 9. An autopsy cited “occlusive coronary atherosclerosis.”

His friends did not know that the jail had a history of detainee complaints of medical neglect and physical abuse, and did not allow guards to send detainees to the medical unit without prior approval. Similar complaints have been made about many detention centers, spurring the Obama administration to order a review of the system.

According to the jail’s internal investigation, Mr. Ahmad walked into the medical unit shortly after 3:50 p.m. on Sept. 9 and “was seen immediately.” But the letter scrawled by a fellow inmate contended that before he showed up there, Mr. Ahmad’s pleas for treatment had been rebuffed by a guard for an hour.

Complaints about his death were filed with the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, documents show; the matter was passed for internal inquiry to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the notation that it need not report back its findings.

By 2007, when the immigration agency compiled its first list of deaths in immigration detention, under pressure from Congress and the news media, Mr. Ahmad’s death was not on it.

Yet if his death was not counted, his arrest was — it had been added to the agency’s anti-terrorism statistics, according to government documents showing he was termed a “collateral” apprehension in Operation Secure Commute, raids seeking visa violators after the London transit bombings.

How his children will remember him is another matter. Without the money Mr. Ahmad used to send, they had to move in with relatives far from his grave in Pakistan. But his 10-year-old son clings to a souvenir, the widow said: “He keeps his father’s photograph in his pocket.”

shameless self promotion

2009-06-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Featured Indie Artist Interview with Camille of Camille Handcrafted

Posted by admin in artfire, indie, interview, tags: artfire, artists, handmade, indie, interview, jewelry

I’m going to be out of town the rest of the week (without internet access…gasp), but didn’t want to miss my favorite part of the week….meeting our featured artist.

Let’s meet today’s featured indie artist, Camille of Camille Handcrafted.

Click on any image to be taken to the product listing.

SI: Please tell us a little about yourself.
Camille: My studio is in Tucson, Arizona, in a magnificent patch of desert. The light here is incredible, and the quiet is priceless. I first came here to be with my husband, Thomas. Thomas has since left the world but not before planting in me a deep respect for and absolute love for his precious desert. The only thing more beautiful than the Sonoran sunrise is the Sonoran sunset! This is where I first started making jewelry, having taken a few classes at a local bead shop. I didn’t really stick with that, though, and I was away from it for a long time. When I started up again I tried wrapping with wire and found that I truly enjoyed the freedoms that those techniques opened up.

SI: What is the name of your business? and what do you create?
Camille: My business is called Camille Handcrafted. This was suggested by my son in law who felt that “Camille” was a perfect name that could not be improved upon. Do you think perhaps he was sucking up to his mother in law? Very possible, in my estimation, but it was done with so much earnestness that I acceded. I’ve been experimenting with my art, crafting everything from sparkling strings of beads to hang from potted plants and wind chimes with beautiful musical bells to sterling wrapped gemstone necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.

SI: What inspires you?
Camille: Tough question, that. My first instinct is to answer: “everything.” I’ve been spending more time walking in the desert here in Tucson and paying close attention to that natural landscape. I have several pieces now in process that are definitely directly influenced by those observations. I recently donated a piece for auction to the Seattle Midwifery School, a bracelet called “A Little Bit of Tucson” and it was exactly that.

SI: What is the best thing about what you do? and the worst?
Camille: Ah, it’s all the best. I particularly enjoy at times starting out with one idea, then that idea seems to wander off in it’s own direction and take me someplace completely different – and much better than where I had at first chosen to go! Of course, sometimes the route chosen by the piece isn’t something that I can completely accomplish, and that is the worst.

SI: When not creating, what do you like to do?
Camille: I don’t know that there is a time when I am not creating. The process doesn’t have a discernible beginning or ending, so it’s all part of my life. I’m a musician as well as a jewelry artist. There are times that I feel that the jewelry I design is nothing more than an extension of my music; a song in three dimensions.

SI: Any future plans you care to share with us?
Camille: I believe I will be tending more toward “free sculpting” in the future. Wire is such a simple and complex medium. It seems the possibilities are endless. I would also like to learn more about making my own beads, and metallurgy. I’d definitely love to try casting some pieces. So many ideas, so little time!

Many thanks to Camille for sharing so graciously of herself and her art. Please take a few minutes to visit Camille Handcrafted.

saving human lives = littering?

2009-06-05T06:38:00.002-07:00

Tucson Region

Conviction has crossers' water supplier defiant

By Brian J. Pedersen

Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.04.2009

A Tucson man convicted of littering on federal land said he will continue to leave out water for illegal immigrants walking through the desert, even if that means risking further citations.

"We're committed to our humanitarian efforts," said Walt Staton, 27, who was found guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court of knowingly littering on a national wildlife refuge.

"We're not asking permission from the United States to save people's lives. We never have, because we know they'd say no," Staton said.

Staton, a Web designer and volunteer with the humanitarian group No More Deaths, faces up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine when he is sentenced Aug. 11 by U.S. District Magistrate Judge Jennifer Guerin.

He was cited Dec. 4 for littering when U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted him placing unopened gallon containers of water in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Tucson.

It was one of dozens of times in his five years of volunteering with the group that he had left out water, Staton said. This time, though, Staton said a Border Patrol agent stopped his pursuit of a group of illegal immigrants to seize the water.

"I was just trying to save lives," Staton said. "I was trying to end the death and suffering in the desert. The best we can understand, the United States wants to enforce the border by making the desert itself a deterrent."

Staton's attorney, William Walker, argued during the two-day trial that leaving full, unopened water jugs out didn't constitute littering just because someone else later disposed of the empty container elsewhere.

He told the jury of four men and eight women that, based on the prosecutor's theory, if they were given a meal in the jury room and then tossed an empty wrapper on the floor, it would mean the court was guilty of littering.

"Just because something can turn into litter from someone else doesn't make it litter," Walker said. "His intent and purpose was for them to drink the water, not to litter."

Prosecutors argued it shouldn't matter what Staton's intentions were, or a person's motives for committing a crime would matter in other cases.

"Every bank robber would come in here and say they did it to save their dying grandmother," Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence Lee said.

The verdict shocked Walker, who said about one-third of the jury pool was disqualified because they'd acknowledged sympathy for Staton. He said he didn't think it would be possible for those chosen to find Staton guilty.

"What really surprised me, though, was . . . this trial must have cost the government more than $50,000," Walker said. "They say there aren't enough agents on the border, that they can't stop terrorists from coming into the country . . . and then they spend all of this time and money prosecuting a humanitarian who is putting out water to save lives."

Staton is the second No More Deaths volunteer to go to trial on a federal littering charge. Daniel Millis was found guilty at a bench trial in September, though Walker — who also handled that case — said he has appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Walker said he also plans to appeal Staton's conviction, taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed.

CHENEY SETTING IT UP?

2009-05-12T12:54:00.002-07:00

What exactly ARE those kitchen table meetings of his all about, anyway?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E3D6173CF937A15757C0A96F9C8B63

Posted May 12, 2009 | 02:44 PM (EST)

Dick Cheney's Cynical Bet

Posted May 12, 2009 | 02:44 PM (EST)

by Taylor Marsh

What motivates Dick Cheney?

It's not what people think, though Mr. Cheney should be worried about his role in U.S. torture policy, even if he'll likely never be held to account. So, it's not that. Though we may get the "holy grail" evidence Cheney keeps talking about soon. What Cheney, Dick or Liz, won't talk about is the detainee who gave false information (under Egyptian torture) that sent us to war in Iraq, and disgraced Colin Powell. Because Al-Libi just committed suicide in a Libyan prison.

If we get hit again it's going to be blamed on torture, Rush said on his show yesterday.

So why is Dick Cheney on this media tour?

Mr. Cheney wants to draw a line in the sand where Pres. Obama began dismantling the torture policies of Bush-Cheney, which Cheney postulates is making us "less safe."

"That means, in the future, we will not have the same safeguards..." - Vice President Dick Cheney

Cheney knows that we will be hit at some moment in the future, something experts have said is inevitable, whether it's before Obama is out of office or not isn't the issue. Cheney's bet is that when this happens the legacy of Bush-Cheney must be solidified as the Administration who after 9/11 "kept us safe." He wants Americans to remember the moment those policies were dismantled. It happened on the Democrats' watch.

Mr. Cheney along with his fan club, headed by Rush Limbaugh, is betting that the American people need to be reminded of who kept us safe and when those safety policies were destroyed, believing that Americans won't care about torture anymore when the next attack lands.

Nothing Dick Cheney does is by accident. This is a calculated plan to weave a narrative before it happens into the political blood stream, with the attempt of casting blame in advance. Call it preemptive marketing.

It's the same tactic with a new twist, with Cheney finding a new line of attack on the old standard that Democrats are weak on national security. Considering what Bush-Cheney has cost us internationally this takes incredible gall. But when you think of how low Dick Cheney is thought of in this country, what has he got to lose? Since the Obama administration doesn't have the stomach to do anything about what has gone before, the answer is nothing. Considering the Cheneys are the strongest advocates on TV today for a policy that should have us all hanging our heads in shame, it makes you wonder who's really in power.

So, even as Cheney draws a line that he believes will eventually lead the Republicans back to power, Cheney's cynical bet that Obama and the Democrats will be blamed is one he's more than willing to let ride.

Doctors protest exclusion of single-payer at Senate Finance Committee

2009-05-06T07:12:00.002-07:00

Doctors protest exclusion of single-payer at Senate Finance Committee

For Immediate Release
May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON - Doctors and other advocates of a national single-payer health system - also known as an improved Medicare for All - directly confronted senators at a Senate Finance Committee “roundtable” on health reform today.

One-by-one, eight single-payer advocates in the audience stood up during the opening comments of the hearing and asked why single-payer experts were being excluded from the proceedings. They each spoke out in turn until they were removed from the committee hearing room and arrested, one-by-one, by U.S. Capitol police.

The doctors and others said that a publicly funded, privately delivered single-payer system is the only solution to the crisis plaguing our nation’s non-system of health care, noting that single-payer national health insurance would guarantee coverage for everyone and contains costs.

Despite polling that shows a clear majority of public and physician support for a single-payer system, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is “off the table” of health reform.

Today’s round table, the second of three, consisted of 15 witnesses with no single-payer advocates among them. By contrast, several witnesses have direct ties to the for-profit, private health insurance industry.

The doctors and activists were dressed in black, which they said was in memory of the 22,000 people who die every year due to lack of health insurance. They represented a coalition of single-payer advocacy organizations including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Healthcare-NOW, Single Payer Action, Private Health Insurance Must Go, the Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Politics, Prosperity Agenda, and Health Care for the Homeless.

“Health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of Maryland chapter of PNHP. “The result is the suffering and death of thousands of patients for the sake of private profit. The private health insurance industry has a solid grip on patients, providers and legislators. It is time to stand up and declare that health care is a human right.”

Much to the frustration of Baucus, the multiple disruptions demanding single-payer be on the table set the tone for the second of three roundtables on Health Reform by the Senate Finance Committee.

Katie Robbins, assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, said: “The current discussion on health reform is political theater at its best. Our elected officials are hosting these events to go through the motions of what developing effective national health policy should look like. There is a big difference between getting health policy experts in the room and the witnesses here today who would profit the most from reform. That difference means our hard-earned dollars will go to further insurance industry profits, not to guarantee health care to the American people.”

“It’s a pretty spectacular display of raw political power,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “The health insurance industry demands that not one of the 15 people who testified today shall be a single-payer advocate. And the industry gets what it wants. It’s time for the American people to storm the gates and demand - put single payer on the table.”

Single payer is successfully implemented in the United States’ own Medicare system providing comprehensive care to the elderly, as well as in many of the best health care systems in the world. A single-payer system, as embodied in legislation H.R. 676 and S. 703, would provide guaranteed, quality care to all Americans with no increase in U.S. health spending.

The single-payer advocates said they will continue to use direct actions and nonviolent civil disobedience to urge the inclusion of a publicly funded, privately delivered system.

Other methods of communication with elected officials have failed in delivering the demand for single-payer national health care as evidenced by the exclusion of single-payer advocates from official hearings on health reform.

###

Healthcare-NOW! is a national grassroots advocacy organization in support of single-payer national health care with a network of activists in 42 states. More information can be found at www.healthcare-now.org

Single Payer Action is a nonprofit activist fueled organization. Find out more at www.singlepayeraction.org

Maryland Chapter Physicians for a National Health Program is a chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org), a nonprofit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance. More information can be found at www.md.pnhp.org

Prosperity Agenda includes single payer national health care as one of the policy changes needed to create an economy that benefits all Americans, not just the wealthiest. www.prosperityagenda.us. Prosperity Agenda is an economic justice project associated with The Campaign for Fresh Air & Clean Politics (www.FreshAirCleanPolitics.net).

Contact:
Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action, (202) 468-8868, russellmokhiber@gmail.com
Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW! (330) 618-6379, healthcarenow08@gmail.com
Margaret Flowers, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program - Maryland chapter, (410) 591-0892, nose1@aol.com
Kevin Zeese, ProsperityAgenda.us, (301) 996-6582, kzeese@earthlink.net
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, (312) 622-0996, mark@pnhp.org

VIDEO footage:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) reacts to protesters,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI

Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action, speaks at hearing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5vhTtxad30

Margaret Flowers, MD & Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zOShsL4UJo

Carol Paris, MD, PNHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIUcrVxGwA

Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1nl32aAh7M

Adam Schneider, Health Care for the Homeless
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I26EkvnjZuQ

Pat Salomon, MD & Kevin Zeese
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHJH7W-ZEo

MoveOn ONLINE BRIEFING 05/04/09

2009-05-01T14:51:00.005-07:00

Urgent update on health care: Next week, Congress will begin making the actual decisions about what'll be in a health care reform bill.

Meanwhile, conservative groups have launched a new assault on the president's proposal, including a million-dollar ad campaign claiming that health care will be rationed and "bureaucrats" will "decide the treatments you receive."¹

If real people like us don't get involved in this health care fight now, it could all fall apart. So we're holding an emergency online briefing on Monday night at 9 p.m. ET with Dr. Howard Dean to make sure we're all ready for the fight ahead, called "What we all need to know to win on health care this year."

If fixing our health care system is important to you, this is an event you shouldn't miss. All you need to join in is a computer with an internet connection. Can you join us?

Here are the details:

What: Emergency Online Briefing with Dr. Howard Dean (Organized by MoveOn and Democracy for America)

When: Monday, May 4, 9 p.m. ET/ 8 CT/ 7 MT/ 6 PT

Where: MoveOn.org's web site

http://democracyforamerica.com/

just do it

2009-04-30T05:22:00.001-07:00

Can the flu actually be "contained?"

A confirmed case can cause a school to be closed down for a week. All well and good, but now these children are at home - doing what? Mom or dad there with them - or at work? Ah, it's boring staying at home; let's go to the mall. Hmm. The pool of possible infection spread has just multiplied exponentially.

The entire life of this illness is about seven days, and begins [and possibly remains] with mild symptoms. How long are YOU usually sick before you see a doctor? Do YOU miss work for a cough?

Seems pretty reasonable to assume that infected persons will continue to infect other persons.

So what to do? Everybody walk around in hazmat suits?

The CDC advice is undramatic and eminently practical: WASH YOUR HANDS. STAY HOME IF YOU'RE SICK.

Since you can't know who is infected [it takes many hours for any symptoms to manifest], assume that everyone is infected.

If you are sick, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE to take measures to reduce your broadcasting of whatever it is you have to others. That means possibly wearing a mask if you're coughing/sneezing. It also means WASHING YOUR HANDS. If you use a tissue, flush it or carry a ziplock baggie to contain it. DON'T put it in your office or home wastebasket. Buy a canister of disinfectant wipes [or use 1 tablespoon of household bleach in a gallon of water in a spray bottle] and USE them on your telephone, keyboard, desk, television remote control - whatever you touch. Don't share shower poofs, towels or pillows, etc., and WASH the ones you do use frequently to reduce the population of your nasties. Keep your toothbrush separate from others. Make sure toothbrushes are COVERED in the bathroom [when you flush, particulates spray and roam - yuck!].

Easy, yes? Just do it.

Virus Brings Swine-Hearted Lobby Into Foreground

2009-04-28T18:56:00.001-07:00

Virus Brings Swine-Hearted Lobby Into Foreground
by: nezua
Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 15:20:14 PM EDT
By The Sanctuary Founding Editors:

The moment that the news of the "Swine Flu" or "North American Influenza" hit the wires, it was easy to predict what the anti-immigrant faction would have to say about it. People like Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and groups like CIS, FAIR, and NumbersUSA are so locked into their views that their voices are unnecessary in a dialogue that actually preferences truth-which by nature requires flexibility and bravery. The stances of those who most vocally oppose immigration today are so predictable that one could paint a face on a septic-tainted soccer ball and paste up word balloons and rest well, knowing that The Nativist Lobby point of view on any immigration-related topic will end in "deport them all" and "seal the borders" if not "round them up" and other tired ideas. And nobody reading now needs a reminder of how throughout time, both Latin America as well as all immigrants have been slurred and painted with the brush of disease by those resistant to changing demographics.

This reaction is nothing new. Xenophobic fearmongering has long masqueraded itself behind public health alarmism.

Fear of contagion was used to justify Chinese Exclusion laws in the 19th century, backed up by pseudo-academic papers such as "Chinese Immigration and the Physiological Causes of the Decay of the Nation" (1862) and "How the Chinese Women Are Infusing a Poison in the Anglo-Saxon Blood" (1875). The Angel Island detention facility was set up specifically to quarantine immigrants from Asia, sometimes for months or even years, while European immigrants were processed at Ellis Island in a matter of hours. It is an especially cruel irony of history that it was the Europeans who were bringing to "the New World" the deadly diseases which would claim millions of indigenous lives.

There are of course legitimate public health concerns which deserve attention and precautions; but what's noteworthy is the manner in which these concerns are discussed and imagined, what's played up and played down, what's said and unsaid, and how a racial line is drawn between the clean and the unclean.

Moreover, when the border is lined with barbed wire as it is now, it actually keeps undocumented migrants in- this is another ever-repeating mistake made throughout history, including with Italians after 1924. Before that time, they were much more likely to return home because they knew they could come back if necessary. We have repeated this again with the US Southern borders, which has interrupted the age-old migratory patterns that have brought workers in and out of the US, depending on the seasonal need for more hands. Ironically, this has forced many undocumented to put down roots here. And then the predictable complaints arise from the Nativist Lobby-that we are being "invaded" and "overrun."

How sad for them. These people are unable to simply admit that they are seized with a mental illness that has frozen their mind into a shape echoed throughout time. It is a crooked, and ugly one.

This flu will pass. Meanwhile, people are dying and suffering in México and in the US. Is hatred and fear all these well-paid pundits have to dispense in trying times? Do they see themselves as embodying something...American? We at The Sanctuary have to wonder if people like Michael Savage might best be described as terrorists cells awakening. After all, they are shouting that we should not trust our government, not trust our Health Departments, not frequent businesses that employ brown people, and they incite violence. Would not such disruption of society and our collective emotional fabric, in fact, be terrorists' goals for us?

Let us be united, then. United against fear and hateful misinformation. Together we can keep our heads, our hearts, and our health-while the crazed voices of Yesterday and the zombie-like Nativist choruses of today twist around one other in the rotted mire of irrelevance.

o what next?

2009-04-28T06:20:00.001-07:00

ARIZONA DAILY STAR 04/28/09
Tucson Region
Sheriffs: Are you in school legally?
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Some border county sheriffs want Arizona schools to start asking students whether they're in this country legally.
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik originated the idea and said millions of dollars in Arizona taxes go to teach English to children who have no legal right to be here. He also said there's a link involving illegal immigration, social problems and gangs.
Only thing is, a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision appears to make it illegal for school officials to ask. In a 5-4 decision, the justices overturned a Texas law that authorized school districts to refuse to enroll anyone who couldn't prove legal residence.
But Dupnik said it may be time for Arizona to have a test case to put the issue back before the high court — to see if the current justices agree.
Dupnik has the backing of Yuma County Sheriff Ralph Ogden and Joe Arpaio, his Maricopa County counterpart. And Gov. Jan Brewer said she sees no reason why youngsters shouldn't be asked to prove they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.
"When I grew up, when I went to school, when I moved from Nevada to California, I had to bring my birth certificate to prove I was a citizen," she said.
But Attorney General Terry Goddard said he doesn't think schools have the expertise to determine legal status. And state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said he believes the federal government should just do a better job of protecting the border.
"But as long as kids are here, they should be in school," he said. "You don't want them on the street corner."
Dupnik, however, has an answer for that: Have schools report their findings to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"They would identify the people that are here illegally by the thousands and send them back, kids and parents," he said.
The issue has financial implications: The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 60,000 to 65,000 of the 1.2 million youngsters in Arizona schools are not in this country legally.
The Department of Education figures basic state aid for students is about $6,000 a year, not counting what the state pays for school construction. That puts the price tag near $390 million — minus, of course, any taxes from illegal residents that go toward education funding.
But that doesn't count the extra $360 per student Arizona now gives to schools to help English-language learners. Assuming two-thirds of these students fit that category, that adds $15 million to the tab.
In 1982, however, the Supreme Court voided a 1975 Texas law that denied state aid to districts for children not "legally admitted" into the United States. That law also allowed districts to deny admission to those students.
Attorneys for Texas argued that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles every person to equal protection of law, doesn't apply to those not in the country legally.
"We reject this argument," Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority. "Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a 'person' in any ordinary sense of the term." And Brennan said education is the only way people can advance themselves.
Tucson-area education leaders were hardly supportive of the sheriffs' idea.
"Our function is not immigration, but to provide a quality education to kids who live in our district or who come in under open enrollment," said Nicholas Clement, superintendent of the Flowing Wells Unified School District.
He said it could invite new problems for schools, envisioning the need to hire additional staffers, order additional training and make difficult decisions on what kinds of documentation would be acceptable.
Eva Dong, a Sunnyside Unified School District board member, agreed. "The federal law given to us by the U.S. Supreme Court states that we are not, as a school entity, to be out there asking the students if they are here legally or illegally," she said.
"Let's face it: The little ones, how are they going to answer that? Even the older students may not know the answer," she said. "The sheriffs want us to go up against the law so they can get their test case. I am surprised they are asking us to go up against the law."
Not all Arizona border sheriffs support the idea.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said schools shouldn't be in the business of asking students their immigration status. And he said he sees that as a first step toward having other state and local public employees also doing the same thing, including his own officers.
"We can't afford it," he said.
The Pew report estimates there are another 100,000 to 110,000 youngsters in Arizona schools who are the children of illegal immigrants but were born in this country. That makes them citizens who would be unaffected by any reversal of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling.
Even if Arizona is successful in persuading the high court to overturn its 1982 decision, that may not end the debate.
Four years earlier, state Attorney General Jack LaSota issued a formal legal opinion saying the only inquiry school officials can make of parents who want to enroll their children is whether they are Arizona residents.

Welcome to America. We will lock you up and steal your children. The case of Encarnación Bail Romero and her two-year old son.

2009-04-24T12:59:00.002-07:00

Naomi Wolf in The Huffington Post

2009-04-22T18:33:00.002-07:00

Don't Prosecute -- and Scapegoat -- Torture Operatives; Go for the Top

Naomi Wolf

Posted April 22, 2009 | 06:26 PM (EST)

As citizens' outrage over the torture memos heats up, and Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a special prosecutor, we may be about to commit an egregious error.

Today Republicans accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would like to say that this is exactly right.

I will go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have "blood on their hands" -- but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their, and our, guilt.

Today's suddenly urgent calls by our Congressional Democratic leaders, and even by many of the American people, to prosecute CIA operatives, military men and women and contractors who were certainly involved with, colluded in or turned a blind eye to torture are not only the height of hypocrisy, they are a form of unconscionable scapegoating. The scapegoating is political on the part of Congressional leaders, and psychological on the part of many Americans who are now "shocked, shocked" at what was done in their name.

Hello, America? Hello? Were you asleep for the past seven years? The fact that the Bush administration used torture for the past seven years has been the furthest thing from a secret. When the political winds were with the last administration, which framed qualms about torture as being soft on "the war on terror," just about every Congressional Democrat fell right into line to accept it, if not cheer it on. Even Hillary Clinton supported torture, right up through her Presidential run. Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture in closed-door meetings. When activist groups and citizens called for a special prosecutor, all we heard from Congressional Democrats was that they did not wish to spend the political capital.

President Bush championed torture. Vice President Cheney gave such explicit interviews about his role in directing the policy of torture that in legal terms, were there a prosecution, they amount to a confession. Did the Congress that is now so piously calling for the investigation of rank-and-file agents and military express their horror and outrage then? With a very few exceptions, they did not. These leaders "had no idea"? Please.

Since 2003 it has been fully documented by rights organizations, and accessible to anyone listening, that direct US policy for prisoners in our custody included electrodes to genitals, suffocation, hanging prisoners from bars by the wrists, beatings, concealed murders, sexual assault threats, sexual humiliation and forced nudity, which is considered a sex crime in warfare international and domestic law. Many voices from Jane Mayer's to Michael Ratner's to Jameel Jaffer's to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch made similar documented charges. Did our leaders call for investigations? They barely even called for a moment's consideration of it. Tolerating torture ("tough tactics" or "enhanced interrogations") polled well; supporting it made them look tough in close elections. It was, overwhelmingly, okay with them.

And may we ourselves please look in the mirror, for the sake of our own moral health? How many Americans spoke up when it was chic to thrill to the sadistic soundbite of "take the gloves off"? How many watched 24 without a murmur when the mass consensus was that it was okay -- no, patriotic -- to waterboard a bit? How many of us -- as in civilized societies everywhere when a wind of barbarism is set free -- actually thrilled to the sadistic (and sometimes sexually sadistic) soundbites that came out of the Bush communications office of the "special sauce," the "belly slap," and the phrase "we have our methods"?

So now the political and cultural winds have shifted. Congress in their moral courage NOW are starting to call for investigations. Whom should they investigate? Well, in an ideal world, themselves: by knowing about and colluding with a declared and documented series of crimes, they are legally -- Pelosi especially -- accessories to those crimes. So there is an element of cover-your-blank in Congress finding its high dudgeon at last and pointing the accusing finger at subordinates in the CIA who obeyed orders that Congressional leaders themselves helped to sustain as a mockery of domestic and international law, and as daily, appalling practice.

Should we prosecute the agents who committed the torture? We should not. As a longtime advocate for prosecutions, that may sound surprising coming from me. But let us look at the Nuremberg Trials: the rank and file soldiers and operatives who committed torture and genocide were not tried -- the lawyers and political leaders who crafted and defended the policy of torture and genocide were tried (and many convicted). While I am not apologizing for the dozens or perhaps hundreds of CIA agents, military and contractors who, any investigation will show, were complicit, actively or passively, in the top-down policy of torture, I do know that these were people lower down the chain of command who have served their nation for many years -- and who were following directives declared not only legal by the President of the United States of America and the OLC, but were told they were "saving lives." To throw them into the fire for political cover is shameful.

Also, it would leave Obama with the problem from hell. So many people in the agency were involved in these practices that to prosecute them -- well, he would disembowel his own intelligence services.

So we should call for former chief judge of the army General James Cullen's solution. He has been at the forefront of calling for accountability -- but the right kind of accountability: Cullen urges us to indemnify those lower down the chain of command to get their testimonies. So they implicate the ringleaders, and then the only people who should be prosecuted are, as at Nuremberg, those who directed otherwise honorable men and women to commit crimes: the lawyers, and those who are on record having given the orders: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. The psychiatrist who reverse-engineered the SERE tactics should be prosecuted as well.

As for the dozens or hundreds of men and women who committed criminal assaults because their nation told them to -- at risk, if they refused to, of ending their careers? Protect them from prosecution. Many of them suffer trauma, nightmares -- and shame. That is more than burden enough.

Lay the guilt where it belongs: on Congress -- most particularly, legally, on the leadership that directed this policy -- and, emotionally and morally, on our complicit American selves.

2009-04-21T11:54:00.001-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

We Don't Torture

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from NPR 04/17/09

2009-04-17T06:19:00.001-07:00

CIA Officials Won't Face Charges For Waterboarding

by Ari Shapiro

Listen Now [4 min 17 sec] add to playlist

Read The Memos

Morning Edition, April 17, 2009 · The Obama administration has released four Bush-era legal memos describing "enhanced interrogation techniques" CIA interrogators were allowed to use on some terrorism detainees. As the Justice Department released the documents, Attorney General Eric Holder told CIA officials that they would not be prosecuted for having followed the legal guidance in the memos.

The memos, from 2002 and 2005, document what President Obama called "a dark and painful chapter in our history."

The documents go into more detail than had been previously revealed about tactics the Justice Department approved for CIA use against so-called high value detainees. The list includes slapping, nudity, stress positions and slamming detainees into a wall. CIA officials were told they could put one detainee who was afraid of bugs in a small box with an insect.

The controlled drowning technique known as waterboarding was described as "the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques." One memo says waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death.

But in that same memo, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that because waterboarding does not cause severe pain or suffering, "the use of these procedures would not constitute torture."

Fred Hitz, who served as CIA inspector general in the 1990s, read the memos and said, "I just don't see how in the world that kind of advice can be given as a legal opinion as if you were advising on whether a deed of trust was properly executed." He added, "These are human beings we're talking about, and it's not something that the United States — much less the Central Intelligence Agency — should be involved in."

The Justice Department has withdrawn all of these memos. Holder sent a message to CIA officials Thursday saying they would not be prosecuted for following the memos' legal guidance.

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," he said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta also sent a message to agency employees, saying that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "CIA responded, as duty requires."

In the past few weeks, top current and former CIA officials had pushed to keep the memos secret. After the Obama administration declassified the documents Thursday, former CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Associated Press that the United States is less safe now. He said agents will be more timid and foreign allies will be less likely to cooperate with American intelligence officials because "they can't keep anything secret."

Some human rights groups criticized the decision not to prosecute people for these actions. Amnesty International called it a "get out of jail free card" for people who committed torture. But Obama said in a statement, "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

The release of the memos ended a five-year court battle with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"It's legal reasoning that is ends-driven," said Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU's National Security Project. "It's legal reasoning that's meant to reach the result that the Bush administration wanted to reach."

Jaffer said he was surprised at the detail in the documents. They explain which abusive interrogation techniques can be combined, how many calories a detainee must be given when he's being deprived of food, and how many minutes detainees need to recover from being doused with cold water. The amount of time depends on the water's temperature.

One former CIA official speaking on background said that level of detail shows how carefully tailored the program was.

"I agree with that," said former CIA official Hitz, "but so were all of the experiments that were done by the Nazi doctors during the time of the Holocaust. They kept excellent records of the body temperature of the prisoner and all that stuff; it didn't make it any less torture."

Jaffer says there are more fights coming. Other documents remain classified because they refer to these memos. With these new declassifications, the ACLU plans to push for other dominoes to fall.

And, although the Obama administration has said it will not prosecute CIA officials who relied on the legal guidance in the memos, there is an ongoing investigation into the Justice Department lawyers who wrote the memos and whether they violated professional legal standards.

okay, well, we can't have the president knowing classified information, right?

2009-04-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.

Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

WATER

2009-03-23T05:41:00.001-07:00

finally!

2009-03-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

Tucson Region

US House panel to hold Arpaio hearing

By Joan Lowy

The Associated Press Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.12.2009

WASHINGTON — A House committee chairman said Wednesday that he'll hold a hearing next month on alleged civil-rights abuses by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said at a news conference that he will hold a hearing examining the conduct of Arpaio, who has been conducting sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods in the Phoenix area that have resulted in the arrests of illegal immigrants.

A spokesman for Conyers, D-Mich., said the hearing is also expected to examine other examples from around the country of alleged abuses of a program that allows local police departments to enforce federal immigration laws.

"We're not trying to persecute or take advantage of anybody," Conyers said. "Law enforcement officers have a very important and valuable function. The problem is, they can't interpret the law their own way to harass or use racial strategies to determine who they arrest."

He was joined at the press conference by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the committee's civil rights subcommittee, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Mary Rose Wilcox, the lone Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, as well as representatives from several civil-rights and Hispanic-advocacy organizations.

The Justice Department's civil-rights division said in a letter to Arpaio this week that he is under investigation for an alleged pattern of discriminatory police practices and of discrimination based on national origin.

The letter offers no specific allegations. But Arpaio said he believes the investigation was spurred by his department's often-controversial efforts to combat illegal immigration in Maricopa County.

The investigation and the congressional hearing are "saying to the country and the people of Arizona that no one is above the law," Grijalva said.

Arpaio's department has aggressively pursued investigations under Arizona's employer-sanctions law and a state anti-smuggling law.

The smuggling law was designed to help local police fight smugglers, but an interpretation by Maricopa County's top prosecutor opened the door for Arpaio's deputies to arrest people who pay smugglers and accuse them of being co-conspirators.

No other police agency or prosecutor's office in Arizona has used that legal approach in enforcing the smuggling law.

Arpaio recently began to separate illegal immigrants from other inmates in Tent City, a section of the county jail where all inmates are housed in tents.

His tactics have attracted national attention and have led some critics, including immigration activists, to accuse Arpaio's department of racial profiling.

The sheriff said he will cooperate with the Justice Department.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the prosecutor who for years has collaborated with Arpaio in cracking down on illegal immigration, said Wednesday that he wasn't aware of any racial profiling in Arpaio's crime and immigration sweeps.

"He has drawn a lot of criticism (for his immigration crackdowns) and a lot of protest because he is willing to be a leader in the fight against illegal immigration," Thomas said.

"I think that has to be recognized here."

WORRY: With this economy, will they have jobs when they get home?

2009-03-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

U.S. Withdrawing 12,000 Troops From Iraq

by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

NPR.org, March 8, 2009 · The U.S. military in Baghdad has announced it will be withdrawing 12,000 American troops in the next six months.

In a statement, the U.S. military said that two brigade combat teams who were scheduled to redeploy in the next six months along with enabling forces such as logistics, engineers and intelligence, will not be replaced.

That would reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq — currently around 140,000 — by around 12,000. A U.S. combat brigade typically has 4,000-5,000 soldiers.

The announcement is an initial step in President Obama's plan to end combat operations in Iraq by Aug. 2010. Beyond this drawdown, U.S. troop strength is not expected to be significantly reduced this year.

Iraq still has to conduct crucial national elections at the end of the year. And while violence is dramatically down, there are still daily attacks — a suicide bomber today blew himself up outside Baghdad's main police academy, killing and wounding dozens.

THE DISAPPEARED

2009-03-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

ICE Program Shifts Immigration Costs, Abuses

New America Media, Commentary, By Aarti Shahani and Judith Greene, Posted: Feb 26, 2009 Review it on NewsTrust

“We can make a person disappear,” a high-level ICE official told the audience at the 2008 Police Foundation conference. Jaws dropped. ICE is the Homeland Security agency in charge of deporting immigrants from the nation’s interior. The spokesman was alluding to ICE’s extraordinary powers under civil immigration law. Although “civil” sounds less serious than “criminal,” civil immigration law has fewer constitutional protections than criminal law. Civil immigration arrests can happen without probable cause of a crime; the arrestee faces trial without a public defender; and there’s no statute of limitations.

Through the 287(g) program, ICE is fusing civil immigration and criminal law. 287(g), a tiny law passed in 1996, enables any public servant to receive civil immigration powers. The work is purely voluntary. The statute forbids the feds to pay the locals. It also makes the feds responsible to “supervise and direct” all local activities.

In 2005, ICE began enlisting criminal law enforcement agents – from traffic cops to jail guards – into its frontlines. Early critics charged that turning police into deportation patrol would result in racial profiling, and make immigrant victims afraid to call 911. ICE justified 287(g) as an urgent public safety program. ICE is the largest investigative arm of Homeland Security. 287(g)-deputized officers would gain “necessary resources and authority to pursue investigations relating to violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling and money laundering.” ICE assured that, “The 287(g) program is not designed to allow state and local agencies to perform random street operations…It does not impact traffic offenses such as driving without a license unless the offense leads to an arrest.”

Reality tells a different story. Justice Strategies, a non-partisan criminal justice institute, investigated the 287(g) program. We found that ICE didn’t target crime hot spots. Of the 63 states and localities that ICE deputized by summer 2008, 61 percent had lower crime rates than the national average. Meanwhile 87 percent saw their Latino populations grow faster than the national average. The public safety program is more closely related to race than to crime.

The 287(g) program amounts to a state and local bailout of the federal government’s failed immigration enforcement business. This ICE program does not pay police salaries; it shifts civil detention costs to local governments. Prince William County, Virginia spent $5 million more in local tax monies than anticipated for the first year of its 287(g) program. The county had to raise property taxes and cut police and fire safety budgets to compensate. In Morris County, New Jersey, a Republican sheriff estimated that the program would cost $1.3 million and “ICE would not reimburse the county for any start up costs,” such as personnel and facility expenses. His county board rejected the program. Local officials nationwide have rejected 287(g) because it does not serve public safety or generate income, leaving the feds to partner with more zealous and politically-motivated officers.

ICE’s choice of partners is peculiar. The Missouri State Highway Patrol, deputized in 2008, is an agency whose core mandate is to enforce traffic laws. In Butler County, Ohio, ICE extended immigration arrest powers to the sheriff after he campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform.

The most famous 287(g) partner is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE gave him the largest and most powerful agreement, after his office was ordered to pay $43 million in death and abuse lawsuits. He has been nationally criticized for street sweeps of day laborers and racial profiling. He told us about the added-value of 287(g): “When we stop a car for probable cause, we take the other passengers too.” Last week, Sheriff Joe marched his 287(g) arrestees into “Tent City,” a notoriously mismanaged jail under the blazing desert sun. Yet ICE, by law required to “supervise and direct” all 287(g) activity, maintains that the sheriff has not violated the contract.

Sheriff Arpaio is not a one-man show. 287(g) set off other efforts in Arizona to crackdown on immigrants. The state legislature renamed the anti-gang taskforce into the “gang and immigration” taskforce, and pumped tax monies into local immigration enforcement.

In Phoenix, the “fusion” of civil immigration and criminal law has wreaked havoc in the criminal justice system. Under a new state law that denies bail to immigrants for most crimes, judicial officers who are neutral arbiters in the court’s criminal process have become investigators of possible immigration violations. The first state-level trafficking law in U.S. history has been perverted, as prosecutors charge the victims of trafficking as co-conspirators in the act of smuggling. The overburdened courts and jails have swelled with immigrants who are in no sense a danger to public safety.

In this moment of economic crisis, we can’t afford to let this specious public safety program continue. In 2006, Congress gave the 287(g) program its first budget line of $5 million, and continued that level of funding through fiscal year 2008. Monies were intended for ICE expenses only. Yet through 2008, ICE overspent at least $50 million in program costs. Today 287(g) is the largest Homeland Security program for state and local law enforcement.

The Obama Administration should terminate the 287(g) program. 287(g) was destined to fail, and it has failed. It was created on the faulty assumption that civil and criminal law enforcement are compatible. But just imagine if the IRS, another federal civil agency, started deputizing police to check the tax returns of every driver, and arrest anyone with an imperfect 1040. Citizens would be furious at such waste of public safety resources. Yet under 287(g), people are jailed when their civil immigration status is in question. The General Accounting Office should investigate how the program operated nationwide. 287(g) is critical data in the project of reforming ICE.

Aarti Shahani is the lead author of the report Local Democracy on Ice. Judith Greene is Justice Strategies Director of Tides Center that produced the report.

THIS ARTICLE FROM http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=463c44a3a154dc703486f8b3d3afe168&from=rss

WHY WOULD YOU RECORD SOMETHING AND THEN DESTROY THE RECORD?

2009-03-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Interrogation Videotapes

By DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Monday, March 2, 2009; 4:26 PM

WASHINGTON -- The CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other U.S. treatment of terror suspects, far more than previously acknowledged, the Obama administration said Monday as it began disclosing details of post-Sept. 11 Bush-era actions.

THIS STORY
CIA Destroyed Nearly 100 Interrogation Videotapes
From FindLaw: Letter (ACLU, et al. v. Dept. of Defense)
The interrogations were a highly contentious issue during the administration of President George W. Bush, with many Democrats and other critics saying that some methods used amounted to torture _ a contention Bush and other officials rejected. A criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

Monday's acknowledgment, however, involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking more details of the interrogation programs following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter submitted in that case by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed."

It is not clear what exactly was on the recordings. The government's letter cites interrogation videos, but the lawsuit against the Defense Department also seeks records related to treatment of detainees, any deaths of detainees and the CIA's sending of suspects overseas, known as "extraordinary rendition."

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters he hadn't spoken to the president about the report, but called the news about the videotapes "sad," and said Obama was committed to ending torture while also protecting American values.

ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.

"The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," Singh said.

CIA spokesman George Little said the agency "has certainly cooperated with the Department of Justice investigation. If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts."

The details of interrogations of terror suspects, and the existence of tapes documenting those sessions, have become the subject of long fights in a number of different court cases. In the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged after the trial was over that two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

The Dassin letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.

But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel who viewed the tapes.

"The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs," states the letter.

The separate criminal investigation includes interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader. Tapes of those interrogations were destroyed, in part, the Bush administration said, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether or not the tactics used during the interrogations were legal.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged that waterboarding _ simulated drowning _ was used on three suspects, including two whose interrogations were recorded.

John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, is leading the criminal investigation, out of Virginia, and had asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work before requests for information in the civil lawsuit were dealt with.

Durham's spokesman, Tom Carson, had no immediate comment.

___

Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess, Philip Elliott and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

2009-02-26T10:49:00.001-07:00

2009-02-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

DEATH BY DETENTION - IN THE HANDS OF ICE

2009-02-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

Death by Detention

* Posted by: William Wheeler
* on February 23, 2009 at 10:01 am

When illegal immigrants waiting to be deported die in custody, who is to blame?

Guido Newbrough was “Raised American.” That is what the tattoo on his arm says. For most of his life—growing up in Virginia, attending its public schools, and serving time in its jails—he was treated like an American. Then, one day last winter, the police came looking for him.

When officers knocked on his door of his home in Manassas, a northern Virginia town with a swelling Hispanic population, early one morning in February of last year, Jack Newbrough told them his stepson was at work. “They said to call him and tell him to come home,” he recalls. “As soon as he came in the house they put the cuffs on him and took him away.” For Guido, a 48-year-old construction worker, it wasn’t his first time in handcuffs. Five years earlier, he had struck a plea bargain—admitting no guilt, but conceding that prosecutors had enough evidence to convince a jury—on charges of molesting his girlfriend’s daughter, which landed him four months in jail, a $2,100 fine, mandatory therapy sessions, and five years probation. He thought his legal troubles were behind him. “He had no idea what it was about or anything,” says Jack. “They just had him sign the arrest documents and took him away.” That was the last time he saw his stepson alive.

Contrary to what he believed, Guido was not an American citizen. He was born in Germany and left two years later, when his mother Heidi married Jack, a U.S. Air Force sergeant stationed overseas. After a three-year tour in London, the family moved back stateside. Heidi and Guido secured green cards, placed them in a safe upstairs in the four-bedroom colonial home they bought, and simply moved on with life. “I don’t think he ever thought twice about it,” says Jack. “He graduated from high school—he thought he was an American citizen.” But Guido’s immigration status, he would learn, had flagged him in a government operation that searches probation records to find deportable sex offenders.

Taken to Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, three hours away, Guido was one of the roughly 300 immigrants indefinitely detained there, without the rights or protections he had as a criminal inmate. Jack hired an attorney. “He told us right off this is a tough one. But we kept saying to ourselves it will work out. Because why wouldn’t it work out?” he says.

When a judge ruled that Guido should be deported to Germany, Jack was baffled. “I said to the judge, ‘You mean you would send somebody all the way back there when they don’t speak the language and they don’t have any relatives there?’ She told me, ‘We do it all the time.’” To fight the deportation, Jack says he paid a $360 application fee to appeal the case and wrote to his congressman.

After several months in the jail, Guido began to complain about pain in his stomach and back. His mother told him to tell the doctors. “Yeah, I told them,” he replied. “But they don’t care.”

Guido’s symptoms worsened dramatically. Subsequent reports from other detainees described him sobbing, his pleas for medical attention unanswered, as they made hot compresses for his back and took turns staying up with him through the night. Finally, say several detainees, after Guido turned to pounding on the door in desperation and shouting for help, guards accused him of faking his illness and dragged him, shouting, into an isolation cell. (An official at the jail disputes this version of events, saying that Guido was put under medical observation.)

On Thanksgiving evening, after several worried days without word from Guido, Jack got a call from the jail saying that his son was gravely ill and had been taken to hospital. By the time the Newbroughs arrived, they found Guido unconscious with a tube in his mouth, dying of a heart infection that can be routinely treated with antibiotics.

Without medical records from the jail, it’s hard to say what, if any, attention was given to Guido’s pleas for help. If the claims made by his family and some detainees are true, the failure to provide medical care, and his continued isolation, would be considered violations of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement protocol, according to Dr. Homer D. Venters, a New York University internist and a member of an ICE advisory group who reviewed the autopsy report. What is clear, Venter writes, is that “by the time Mr. Newbrough was transported to the hospital, his heart had begun to fail and he was likely suffering from multiple organ failure.”

Two hours after his family arrived, his mother sobbing beside him, Guido’s heart stopped. “There was an officer there with a gun waiting for him to expire,” says Jack. “He couldn’t leave there until he died.”

The emerging details of Newbrough’s death are the latest in a series of scandals over the immigrant detention system, a network of some 350 county jails, federal facilities, and private prisons where nearly half a million undocumented immigrants are detained each year while a judge rules whether they should be deported. Last May, the Washington Post published an investigation into a pattern of medical neglect in the detention system, describing it as “part of the hidden human cost of increasingly strict policies in the post-Sept. 11 United States and a lack of preparation for the impact of those policies. The detainees have less access to lawyers than convicted murderers in maximum-security prisons and some have fewer comforts than al-Qaeda terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.” The investigation concluded that actions taken—or not taken—by medical staff contributed to as many as 30 deaths, out of the 83 deaths that had been reported in custody.

The swelling of the immigrant detention system, which held only a few thousand people 15 years ago, is a recent phenomenon. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, after which immigration officials were given expanded powers under the Department of Homeland Security, ICE has become the nation’s second largest enforcement agency with a $5 billion budget. A recent policy change now proscribes mandatory detention for all those picked up. Combined with highly publicized workplace raids, the effect is a larger enforcement net that is bringing an unprecedented number of people—no longer just the felons or those picked up along the border, but often people with longtime family and community ties—into the detention system. The agency now leases a fleet of 10 planes, which it uses to deport some 350,000 people a year.

The system is not without its defenders. “Without enforcement, the law is meaningless,” says Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates strict enforcement of immigration laws. “Of course, for enforcement to be effective there has to be a lot of detention that goes along with it.”

But, amid increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the media, a broad array of rights groups is calling for changes in a system that operates with little oversight and detains people indefinitely—often for months, sometimes for years— without entitlement to a lawyer, or the protections afforded criminal inmates.

Last spring, after being denied access three times to a private detention center, Jorge Bustamante, the U.N. special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, issued a stinging report that claimed the detention system violates international and human rights law. He called for an end to mandatory detention and for officials to issue codified regulations about how detainees are treated—a move long advocated by the American Bar Association. Immigration officials released a new set of “performance-based” standards that govern the conditions of detainees last fall, but have resisted the call for enforceable regulations.

“If they aren’t legally enforceable, they are not going to be initiated,” said Andrea Black of Detention Watch Network, a coalition of about 100 organizations working on immigrant detention and deportation issues. “We’ve seen that in the last ten years, which has led to inhumane conditions, abuse and the rising number of deaths.”

Cori Bassett, an ICE spokeswoman, says the agency requires all the contract facilities that hold ICE detainees to “to meet or exceed our standards,” and investigates all reports that detainees are not receiving the proper care. As an example, Bassett points to the investigation into the death of a 34-year-old Chinese computer engineer following his detention in the privately run Donald W. Wyatt detention center in Rhode Island. Hiu Lui Ng, who was picked up during his final interview for a green card, spent several months in detention while his complaints of excruciating back pain went unattended. He was eventually taken to a hospital and diagnosed with a fractured spine and late-stage cancer.

An ICE investigation found he was denied a wheelchair, as well as access to counsel and a medical appointment, says Bassett. After concluding that the facility’s staff “failed to adhere to the facility’s own use-of-force policy,” ICE canceled its contract and removed its detainees—an example, she says, of the way the agency’s standards are enforced.

But a recent revelation would seem to undermine the argument that ICE always takes the appropriate action when standards are not being met. It comes from one of the first cases that triggered calls for Congressional oversight—a death of another immigrant detainee held in the same jail, and under similar circumstances, as Guido Newbrough.

In September, 2006, a 50-year-old mechanic named Abdoulai Sall showed up for a green card interview in Fairfax, Virginia. Born in Guinea, Sall had spent the past 17 years working at Washington, D.C., taxi company, and his boss had agreed to sponsor his application. When he showed up at the interview, he was arrested on an outstanding deportation order and was transferred to the Piedmont Regional jail in Farmville.

Sall’s attorney, Paul S. Allen, wrote numerous letters to authorities warning them his client suffered a kidney disorder, that he was not getting the appropriate medication, and that his feet had begun to swell. “I don’t make assumptions that the government is going to do the right thing,” he said recently.

In December of that year, Allen learned his client was dead. Tom Jawetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, wrote to detainees at the Piedmont jail for information about Sall’s death and learned he had indeed been sick for a prolonged period and, in his final days, was seen shivering under a heater for warmth. “Everyone knew that he was requesting care,” said Jawetz. When Sall collapsed, the detainees took it upon themselves to call 911. Allen wrote the county sheriff saying the circumstances of his client’s death were “suspicious and suggested negligence,” and asking how he planned to investigate the matter.

While jails officials denied any wrongdoing and ICE defended the quality of care, an internal investigation actually concluded that “the facility has failed on multiple levels to perform basic supervisions and provide for the safety and welfare of ICE detainees.” That report, which was obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, was published last month in The New York Times.

Jawetz called the internal report “a very serious indictment” of the agency’s inability to provide oversight at its contract facilities. “There are clearly some parallels [between the deaths] that raise serious questions about what, if anything, ICE did to make sure those concerns about detainee health are mitigated.”

The issue isn’t about the debate over immigration, says California congresswoman Zoe Lofgren a co-sponsor of the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act, a bill that is under House consideration. “Wherever you stand on the issue of reforming immigration law, common decency and the Constitution require a provision of basic medical care to those in custody,” she says. “You have to feed them, supply them with water and a basic level of medical care. When you have someone in custody they can’t go down the street and get a burger at Burger King. They can’t go down the street and get their own physician. That’s true for every county jail and its true for ICE as well.”

Lofgren, a former immigration lawyer who chairs the House Subcommittee that heard inquiry on the detention system last spring, pointed to the case of Francisco Castaneda as an example of how some immigration authorities might be breaking the law. Castaneda was in a private detention center in San Diego when he developed a painful lesion on his penis. In spite of doctors’ recommendations, Castaneda’s pleas for medical attention went unanswered for 11 months. The 36-year-old man was eventually castrated and died last February of metastasized cancer. A federal court judge said the treatment Castaneda received “can be characterized by one word: nothing,” and called the case “one of the most, if not the most, egregious” violations of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment that “the court has ever encountered.”

But Lofgren and others have said that to fix some of the current problems in the detention system, administrative reforms—not legislation—would be the most efficient route. Some expect the Obama administration to make such policy reforms within the next few months. Immigration is one of seven priority issues to which the president assigned a study group, and his top domestic policy advisor recently committed not to forget its campaign promises to the immigrant community that proved decisive in his victories in several key states.

Since deaths in custody have become front-page news, said Jawetz, immigration officials have already taken some commendable actions themselves, removing detainees from several facilities. “What we need to do now is make sure they aren’t just removing detainees from a facility after they have died,” he said. “We need to make sure that the day-to-day oversight that they perform is sufficient to make sure that detainees don’t unnecessarily die in the first place.”

What that means for Farmville is unclear. A rural town in the rolling hills of central Virginia, it is home to 7,000 residents (with a median household income just over $26,000) and a withering manufacturing industry. In a clearing just off a main drag, construction is underway on a 1,040-bed facility that investors are hoping will become the largest immigrant detention facility in the mid-Atlantic. If ICE approves the site when it’s finished, the facility could generate millions of dollars in profit, as well as hundreds of thousands in taxes for city and county coffers, and new jobs for residents.

The project is not without opposition. Armed with research from Washington State University on the debilitating effects prison projects have on local economies, community organizer Jeff Winder has been speaking at town council meetings, distributing flyers at the town Christmas parade, and organizing protests, including a vigil for Abdoulai Sall and Guido Newbrough in early December.

Winder takes issue with the fact that the investors behind the new private detention facility have no experience in caring for detainees. They’ve promised to build a facility that benefits from economies of scale, offering better conditions for detainees at a lower cost to taxpayers. Neither argument has managed to dissuade Winder. “When we talk about turning over prisons to free market principles, you can see where that got Wall Street,” he said. “We’re going to have private shareholders making profit and lobbying for more criminal legislation and penalties. For them its just dollars and cents but the human cost is incredible.”

Jack Newbrough, who has filed a lawsuit for wrongful death, agrees. “That was my son. He didn’t deserve that,” he says. “Nobody in this country deserves that.”

After large-scale transfers in recent weeks, Piedmont is housing only around 60 immigrant detainees (down from 300). Immigration officials have denied that the transfers have anything to do with the investigation underway into Newbrough’s death.

I wrote ICE spokesperson Cori Bassett for an explanation as to why detainees were not removed from Piedmont jail after the investigation into Sall’s death determined that “the facility has failed on multiple levels to perform basic supervisions and provide for the safety and welfare of ICE detainees.”

She replied: “Among ICE’s highest priorities is to ensure safe, humane conditions of confinement for those in our custody. We make every effort to enforce all existing standards and, whenever possible, to improve upon them. When we find that standards are not being met, we take immediate action to correct deficiencies and when we believe that the deficiencies cannot be corrected, we take action to relocate our detainees to other facilities.”

In response to my question of whether ICE is in the process of removing all detainees or canceling its contract with the jail, she replied: “The investigation remains ongoing and it would not be appropriate to comment further until the investigation is completed.”

a rose by any other name...

2009-02-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

Blackwater had changed its name and now will provide training of killers from A to Xe.

Interesting name choice, there.
Like the element xenon.

Also "rhymes" with
xenophobe
xenocide

THIS SUCKS

2009-02-02T14:58:00.001-07:00

‘‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009’’.

1 SEC. 1114. REQUIRED PARTICIPATION IN E-VERIFY PRO2

GRAM.

3 None of the funds made available in this Act may

4 be used to enter into a contract with an entity that does

5 not participate in the E-verify program described in sec6

tion 401(b) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immi7

grant Responsibility Act of 1996 (8 U.S.C. 1324a note).

GOOD NEWS IN THE HUFFINGTON POST

2009-01-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Rep. John Murtha

Posted January 22, 2009 | 12:39 PM (EST)

Gone-tanamo Bay: the Right Decision

President Obama took the first key step in restoring America's image and credibility in the world by issuing an Executive Order to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and to prohibit the use of torture by U.S. personnel. I applaud his judgment and I wholeheartedly support this decision.

The Bush administration never understood what the Guantanamo detention facility symbolized to the rest of the world. They saw it as simply a prison, and just weeks ago, Dick Cheney commented that he thought "Guantanamo has been very well run." The problem with Guantanamo was never about its bricks and mortar. The problem with Guantanamo is that its very existence stains and defies the moral fiber of our great nation.

The Bush administration created the prison following the attacks of September 11th as a way to circumvent the rule-of-law, to legitimize the use of torture, and to justify the permanent detention of those denied the right to petition their imprisonment.

Guantanamo has cast a dark shadow over two centuries of America's moral leadership in the world.

I said over two years ago that in order to restore our international credibility, we must shut down the Guantanamo detention facility. Even President Bush and Secretary Gates agreed. But Guantanamo remained open because the Bush administration refused to provide a legitimate plan and a legal means to charge and try its detainees, and to relocate them to their respective home countries or to maximum security prisons in the United States.

Similarly, there is no circumstance, whatsoever, that justifies the use of torture. Congress passed legislation in December 2005 that banned the use of torture and limited the interrogation tactics of U.S. military personnel. The Subcommittee that I chair has also included provisions in military spending bills forcing the Defense Department to adhere to the strict interrogation guidelines set forth in the Army Field Manual. While these are the requirements for U.S. military personnel, the Bush Administration refused to hold our intelligence community to the same standards.

No longer must we wait for a U.S. President to act.

President Obama has taken the first step in correcting the mistakes of our past. He has made the right choice, and today's decision renews hope in American values and leadership around the world.

sucky things about IT and what to do about them

2009-01-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

goodbye bush

2009-01-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

History Cannot Save Him

by Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON -- As he leaves office, President Bush is passing on to his successor two wars and a growing economic debacle. What a way to go!

Because of Bush's policies, the U.S. also is complicit in the Israeli attack on the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip by providing a "made-in-America" high-tech arsenal for the assault and blocking a ceasefire for nearly two weeks, a move intended to help the Israelis consolidate their hold.

Not to worry, Bush says he isn't concerned about how history will view his militant eight years in the White House, telling ABC News that he "won't be around to read it."

Well, they say that journalism is the first draft of history. So I am going to predict that those future historians will not deal kindly with the Bush presidency.

It's true -- as Bush and company point at their proudest achievement-- there have been no new terrorist attacks on the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.

But they fail to acknowledge administration mistakes before and after that fateful day, starting with the fact that White House and security officials ignored significant early warnings of an imminent strike against the U.S.

The second half of the double 9/11 mistake was the trampling of our constitutional system and American values by the administration's infamous torture policies, illegal interrogation practices, including water boarding (simulated drowning), secret prisons abroad and U.S. run jails at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Post- 9/11 Bush strategy also nurtured a climate of fear that enabled the self-styled "decider" to lead the country into a senseless war against Iraq, a calamity still underway as he leaves office almost six years after the invasion.

Add the administration's pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and you have basis to dub Bush's eight White House years as the "Bush error."

He was to be the great "unifier" but instead he became a great polarizer.

While he remained stubbornly steadfast to his core social convictions, he did a 180-degree turn when it came to the role of government in the economy when he bailed out the collapsed giants of Wall Street.

He told CNN: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market systems." So much for all the anti-government rant of Republican conservatives.

After the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice drummed up the fiction that Iraq was linked to the al Qaida attacks and sold that fable to a naive Congress and jittery American people. During the first crisis meeting after the 9/11 attack, neo-con advisor Paul Wolfowitz, said: "Let's bomb Iraq."

There were no Iraqis involved in the attack and no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any role in planning or executing it.

Other falsehoods that these officials peddled included the tale that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Cheney told his Sunday television audiences, "We know where they are."

Official inspectors found none. The non-existent weapons were used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Bush is not about to admit that his costly inhumane attack on Iraq was a mistake. How could he tell grieving families of more than 4,000 American service members that their loved ones had died because of his error?

In addition to the flawed decision to attack Iraq, Bush and Co. used the aftermath of 9/11 to take wholesale swipes at our civil liberties, including warrantless wiretapping.

So those future historians will have a clear view of the 43rd president as they look back on the early years of the 21st century.

A list of Bush's accomplishments also should include his efforts to pay more money and political support into helping victims of AIDS and malaria in Africa. And he is proud of his controversial program "No Child Left Behind" to upgrade public school students by imposing national standards on an education system that had none.

Those future historians should also take note that Bush was hailed for his "likeability" when he came into office and was dubbed the guy you would like to share a beer with.

However, a CNN poll last year suggested that Bush had become the most unpopular president in modern American history. That CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey indicated that 71 percent of the American public disapproved of how Bush was handling his job as president.

Bush must have a sense of relief in giving up the presidential burdens.

He is confident that those future historians will vindicate him and his presidency.

But no one is expecting him to wind up on Mount Rushmore.

Washington Post

2008-12-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

Chrysler Shutting Down for One Month
With Rescue Unresolved, Other U.S. Automakers Also Plan Production Cuts

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2008; A01

Struggling U.S. automakers are launching a round of severe cutbacks as they wait for a government rescue, withChrysler saying yesterday it will idle all 30 of its U.S. factories for one month.

Chrysler's plants will furlough 46,000 workers beginning Friday, as a planned two-week holiday shutdown is extended to a month and possibly longer. The company, which has told Congress it needed $7 billion to survive the month, also told dealers that it may suspend financing for new cars in a bid to conserve cash.

"No one will return to work any earlier than Jan. 19," Chrysler spokesperson Shawn Morgan said. "I don't want to get into speculating about what may happen after that. . . . We're going to continue to monitor the situation."

"If I were a Chrysler worker, I'd be worried that the plant won't reopen," said Brian Johnson, an industry analyst at Barclays Capital.

The moves come as other U.S. and foreign automakers are announcing steep production cuts that will idle tens of thousands of other U.S. workers as the industry copes with withered demand for new cars and trucks. Ford said yesterday that it would stop production for an extra week in January at all but two of its plants because of flagging consumer demand. General Motors said Friday that it will cut production and temporarily close 20 factories.

Honda and Toyota have also announced production cuts.

A plan to issue $14 billion in loans to the U.S. automakers died in the Senate last week, but the Bush administration has indicated it would consider using some of the $700 billion financial industry rescue program to help Detroit. "It's clear that the automakers are in a very fragile financial condition, and they're taking steps to deal with it," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday. "We're aware of their financial situation and are considering possible policy options to provide assistance in an appropriate way. As we've said, a disorderly collapse of the auto industry should be avoided."

The shutdowns offer a sense of the kind of economic damage the domestic auto industry's collapse could cause. The Big Three -- GM, Chrysler and Ford -- employed about 240,000 U.S. workers at the end of 2007. Foreign automakers employed about 113,000 people in the United States.

The U.S. auto industry's suppliers employ an additional 975,000 people, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. The furloughs "are a harbinger of things to come if these loans are not secured," said Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor.

Auto plants normally shut down over the winter holiday, but the new reductions extend the usual closures. Chrysler's plants had been scheduled to stop production from Dec. 24 to Jan. 2, but now will close Friday and stay dark until at least Jan. 19.

Two factories in Toledo that make the Jeep Liberty, Jeep Wrangler and Dodge Nitro will be closed until Jan. 26, the company said. A minivan plant in Canada and a plant in Detroit that makes the Dodge Viper will remain shut until Feb. 2.

Most of the workers will receive unemployment coverage equivalent to nearly full pay during the furloughs, officials said. Asked whether the announcement might be viewed as a means of influencing politicians who are weighing a bailout, Chrysler spokeswoman Mary Beth Halprin said, "This is really a response to what we're seeing in the marketplace. . . . We run plants when we have orders. We don't run plants when we don't have orders."

While the U.S. automakers have drawn most scrutiny because of their request for government aid, the downturn has battered Detroit's foreign competitors as well.

Honda has cut its annual forecast and said it will trim global production by more than 300,000 vehicles. Toyota said earlier this week that it will halt construction of a plant to build the Prius in Mississippi as sales of the fuel-efficient gas-electric hybrids have sagged along with gas prices and the economy.

"This is not just the Big Three who are in trouble," Virag said. "This is the entire U.S. auto industry, including domestic and transplants."

The overall downturn has made consumers skittish about big purchases, and the global credit crisis has made it harder for consumers to get loans to buy cars. Chrysler said yesterday that its dealers have lost as much as 25 percent of potential sales in recent months because buyers have been unable to line up financing.

For the first 11 months of this year, Chrysler sales were down nearly 28 percent from the same period last year.

Now, Chrysler says, it is approaching the minimum level of cash it needs and will have trouble paying its bills after Jan. 1. Chrysler is owned by private-equity firmCerberus Capital Management, which bought the automaker for $7.4 billion in 2007.

Chrysler and GM warned last month that they could run out of cash by the end of the year without aid from the federal government. Chrysler expects to have only about $2.5 billion on hand by Dec. 31, the minimum needed to pay employees and suppliers and keep the company running.

The furloughs are "a grim reminder of a grim situation," Johnson said.

Staff writer William Branigin contributed to this report.

from the Huffington Post 12/03/08:

2008-12-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

Saving the Big 3 for You and Me

Friends,

I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:

My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.

More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.

And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.

But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com

MichaelMoore.com

P.S. I will be on Keith Olbermann tonight (8pm/10pm/midnight ET) to discuss this further on MSNBC.

HMMM.....

2008-11-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

STG International Hires Former CBP CHCO Bob Hosenfeld as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives

Market Wire, November, 2008

STG International, Inc. (STG), a nationwide provider of human capital management solutions, medical staffing/services, and professional consulting services to the federal government, is pleased to announce the addition of Robert 'Bob' Hosenfeld as the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. Mr. Hosenfeld comes to STG after serving as Assistant Commissioner for Human Resource Management for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

2008-11-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

STG International Awarded 5-year $84M Blanket Purchase Agreement to support DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Alexandria, VA – November 20, 2008 –

STG International, a leading provider of missioncritical and staffing services for the Federal Government, has been awarded a 5‐year, $84M Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to support the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of the Department of Homeland Security.

The scope of this effort is to supplement the Federal staff with the full range of human capital operational, consulting and advisory services pertaining to: workforce planning, information systems, position classification, employee compensation, staffing, recruitment, employee benefits, employee development, personnel security, and performance management.

“We are extremely excited to be able to support the Department of Homeland Security

in its crucial mission of securing our borders” Michelle Lee, STG President and CEO, said

of this win, “STG International is committed to providing superior support throughout

the life of this BPA in addition to supporting all of our other customers within DHS.”

About STG International:

STG International, Inc (www.stginternational.com) is a minority‐owned, woman‐owned

contracting company, proudly associated with such distinctions as Inc. 500, Fast 50, and

Future 50. STG International is dedicated to providing high‐quality professional

healthcare services to government and private sector clients. STG International offers a

diverse array of staffing and mission‐critical services, offering support in healthcare

programs, medical services, human capital management, management consulting, and

recruitment. Founded in 1997, STG International is headquartered in Alexandria, VA,

and has a workforce of 1,700 employees across 37 states.

shame

2008-11-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

In a nation that does not provide for decent health care of its citizens, what can we expect of health care provided to detainees held by us?

List of Questionable Deaths in Detention March 2003 to March 2008

Name Location of Death	Date of Death	Age	Country of Birth
Luis Dubegel-Paez Rolling Plains Detention Facility (Tex.)	3/14/08	60	Cuba
Francisco Castaneda Home after release from Otay Mesa (Calif.)	2/16/08	36	El Salvador
Juan Alejandro Guevara-Lazaro Thomason Hospital (Tex.)	8/13/07	21	Mexico
Rosa Contreras-Dominquez El Paso Service Processing Center (Tex.)	8/7/07	35	Mexico
Victor Arellano Little Company of Mary San Pedro Hospital (Calif.)	7/20/07	23	Mexico
Boubacar Bah University of Medicine (N.J.)	5/30/07	52	Guinea
Nery Romero Bergen County Jail (N.J.)	2/12/07	22	El Salvador
Jesus Cervantes-Corona Northwest Detention Center (Wash.)	11/18/06	42	Mexico
Antonio Martinez-Rivas Houston Contract Detention Facility (Tex.)	10/4/06	44	Mexico
Carlos Cortez-Raudel Mira Loma Detention Center (Calif.)	10/3/06	22	Mexico
Jose Lopez-Gregorio Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	9/29/06	32	Guatemala
Yusif Osman Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	6/27/06	34	Ghana
Miguel Rodriguez-Gonzalez San Pedro Peninsula Hospital (Calif.)	5/21/06	43	Mexico
Geovanny Garcia-Mejia Newton County Correctional Center (Tex.)	3/18/06	27	Honduras
Felipe Garcia-Sanchez Oakdale Federal Detention Center (La.)	2/10/06	21	Colombia
Juan Salazar-Gomez Eloy Federal Contract Facility (Ariz.)	12/14/05	29	Mexico
Reinaldo Prado-Arencilia Northeast Medical Center (Tex.)	10/3/05	37	Cuba
Walter Alvarez-Esquivel Laredo Medical Center (Tex.)	6/30/05	46	Guatemala
Hassiba Belbachir McHenry County Jail (Ill.)	3/17/05	27	Algeria
Sung Soo Heo Passaic County Jail (N.J.)	2/16/05	51	Korea
Ignacio Sarabia-Vallasenor Otay Mesa detention facility (Calif.)	1/4/05	32	Mexico
Joseph Dantica Jackson Memorial Hospital (Fla.)	11/3/04	81	Haiti
Simon Reyes-Altimirano Mesa Hills Specialty Hospital (Tex.)	10/12/04	25	Hondurus
Ervin Ruiz-Tabares Guaynabo Metropolitan Detention Center (P.R.)	9/25/04	24	Colombia
Sebastian Mejia Vicentes Hampton Roads Regional Jail (Va.)	8/22/04	27	Mexico
Juan Figueredo-Lopez U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners (Mo.)	5/29/04	45	Cuba
Cesar Rioz-Martinez Frio County Jail (Tex.)	2/16/04	25	Mexico
Adetunji Popoola Parkland Memorial Hospital (Tex.)	2/1/04	48	Nigeria
Bill Roy Kurt Marion San Diego Correctional Facility (Calif.)	7/31/03	?	Unknown
Kwan A. Chong San Pedro/UCLA-Harbor Hospital (Calif.)	6/10/03	?	Unknown

SOURCES: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other sources | By Justin Ferrell, Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, Julie Tate and Larry Nista, The Washington Post - May 10, 2008.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T12:01:00.001-07:00

Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving”
by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly Slapin
Revised 06/12/06

What is it about the story of “The First Thanksgiving” that makes it essential to be taught in virtually every grade from preschool through high school? What is it about the story that is so seductive? Why has it become an annual elementary school tradition to hold Thanksgiving pageants, with young children dressing up in paper-bag costumes and feather-duster headdresses and marching around the schoolyard? Why is it seen as necessary for fake “pilgrims” and fake “Indians” (portrayed by real children, many of whom are Indian) to sit down every year to a fake feast, acting out fake scenarios and reciting fake dialogue about friendship? And why do teachers all over the country continue (for the most part, unknowingly) to perpetuate this myth year after year after year?

Is it because as Americans we have a deep need to believe that the soil we live on and the country on which it is based was founded on integrity and cooperation? This belief would help contradict any feelings of guilt that could haunt us when we look at our role in more recent history in dealing with other indigenous peoples in other countries. If we dare to give up the “myth” we may have to take responsibility for our actions both concerning indigenous peoples of this land as well as those brought to this land in violation of everything that makes us human. The realization of these truths untold might crumble the foundation of what many believe is a true democracy. As good people, can we be strong enough to learn the truths of our collective past? Can we learn from our mistakes? This would be our hope.

We offer these myths and facts to assist students, parents and teachers in thinking critically about this holiday, and deconstructing what we have been taught about the history of this continent and the world. (Note: We have based our “fact” sections in large part on the research, both published and unpublished, that Abenaki scholar Margaret M. Bruchac developed in collaboration with the Wampanoag Indian Program at Plimoth Plantation. We thank Marge for her generosity. We thank Doris Seale and Lakota Harden for their support.)

Myth #1: “The First Thanksgiving” occurred in 1621.

Fact: No one knows when the “first” thanksgiving occurred. People have been giving thanks for as long as people have existed. Indigenous nations all over the world have celebrations of the harvest that come from very old traditions; for Native peoples, thanksgiving comes not once a year, but every day, for all the gifts of life. To refer to the harvest feast of 1621 as “The First Thanksgiving” disappears Indian peoples in the eyes of non-Native children.

Myth #2: The people who came across the ocean on the Mayflower were called Pilgrims.

Fact: The Plimoth settlers did not refer to themselves as “Pilgrims.” Pilgrims are people who travel for religious reasons, such as Muslims who make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of those who arrived here from England were religious dissidents who had broken away from the Church of England. They called themselves “Saints”; others called them “Separatists.” Some of the settlers were “Puritans,” dissidents but not separatists who wanted to “purify” the Church. It wasn’t until around the time of the American Revolution that the name “Pilgrims” came to be associated with the Plimoth settlers, and the “Pilgrims” became the symbol of American morality and Christian faith, fortitude, and family. (1)

Myth #3: The colonists came seeking freedom of religion in a new land.

Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plimoth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was “unimproved” was “wild” and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plimoth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves. (2)

Myth #4: When the “Pilgrims” landed, they first stepped foot on “Plymouth Rock.”

Fact: When the colonists landed, they sought out a sandy inlet in which to beach the little shallop that carried them from the Mayflower to the mainland. This shallop would have been smashed to smithereens had they docked at a rock, especially a Rock. Although the Plimoth settlers built their homes just up the hill from the Rock, William Bradford in Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, does not even mention the Rock; writing only that they “unshipped our shallop and drew her on land.” (3) The actual “rock” is a slab of Dedham granodiorite placed there by a receding glacier some 20,000 years ago. It was first referred to in a town surveying record in 1715, almost 100 years after the landing. Since then, the Rock has been moved, cracked in two, pasted together, carved up, chipped apart by tourists, cracked again, and now rests as a memorial to something that never happened. (4)

It’s quite possible that the myth about the “Pilgrims” landing on a “Rock” originated as a reference to the New Testament of the Christian bible, in which Jesus says to Peter, “And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) The appeal to these scriptures gives credence to the sanctity of colonization and the divine destiny of the dominant culture. Although the colonists were not dominant then, they behaved as though they were.

Myth #5: The Pilgrims found corn.

Fact: Just a few days after landing, a party of about 16 settlers led by Captain Myles Standish followed a Nauset trail and came upon an iron kettle and a cache of Indian corn buried in the sand. They made off with the corn and returned a few days later with reinforcements. This larger group “found” a larger store of corn, about ten bushels, and took it. They also “found” several graves, and, according to Mourt’s Relation, “brought sundry of the prettiest things away” from a child’s grave and then covered up the corpse. They also “found” two Indian dwellings and “some of the best things we took away with us.” (5) There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists’ ransacking of Indian graves. (6)

Myth #6: Samoset appeared out of nowhere, and along with Squanto became friends with the Pilgrims. Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive and joined them at “The First Thanksgiving.”

Fact: Samoset, an eastern Abenaki chief, was the first to contact the Plimoth colonists. He was investigating the settlement to gather information and report to Massasoit, the head sachem in the Wampanoag territory. In his hand, Samoset carried two arrows: one blunt and one pointed. The question to the settlers was: are you friend or foe? Samoset brought Tisquantum (Squanto), one of the few survivors of the original Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet, to meet the English and keep an eye on them. Tisquantum had been taken captive by English captains several years earlier, and both he and Samoset spoke English. Tisquantum agreed to live among the colonists and serve as a translator. Massasoit also sent Hobbamock and his family to live near the colony to keep an eye on the settlement and also to watch Tisquantum, whom Massasoit did not trust. The Wampanoag oral tradition says that Massasoit ordered Tisquantum killed after he tried to stir up the English against the Wampanoag. Massasoit himself lost face after his years of dealing with the English only led to warfare and land grabs. Tisquantum is viewed by Wampanoag people as a traitor, for his scheming against other Native people for his own gain. Massasoit is viewed as a wise and generous leader whose affection for the English may have led him to be too tolerant of their ways. (7)

Myth #7: The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate the First Thanksgiving.

Fact: According to oral accounts from the Wampanoag people, when the Native people nearby first heard the gunshots of the hunting colonists, they thought that the colonists were preparing for war and that Massasoit needed to be informed. When Massasoit showed up with 90 men and no women or children, it can be assumed that he was being cautious. When he saw there was a party going on, his men then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys. (8)

In addition, both the Wampanoag and the English settlers were long familiar with harvest celebrations. Long before the Europeans set foot on these shores, Native peoples gave thanks every day for all the gifts of life, and held thanksgiving celebrations and giveaways at certain times of the year. The Europeans also had days of thanksgiving, marked by religious services. So the coming together of two peoples to share food and company was not entirely a foreign thing for either. But the visit that by all accounts lasted three days was most likely one of a series of political meetings to discuss and secure a military alliance. Neither side totally trusted the other: The Europeans considered the Wampanoag soulless heathens and instruments of the devil, and the Wampanoag had seen the Europeans steal their seed corn and rob their graves. In any event, neither the Wampanoag nor the Europeans referred to this feast/meeting as “Thanksgiving.” (9)

Myth #8: The Pilgrims provided the food for their Indian friends.

Fact: It is known that when Massasoit showed up with 90 men and saw there was a party going on, they then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys. Though the details of this event have become clouded in secular mythology, judging by the inability of the settlers to provide for themselves at this time and Edward Winslow’s letter of 1622 (10), it is most likely that Massasoit and his people provided most of the food for this “historic” meal. (11)

Myth #9: The Pilgrims and Indians feasted on turkey, potatoes, berries, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and popcorn.

Fact: Both written and oral evidence show that what was actually consumed at the harvest festival in 1621 included venison (since Massasoit and his people brought five deer), wild fowl, and quite possibly nasaump—dried corn pounded and boiled into a thick porridge, and pompion—cooked, mashed pumpkin. Among the other food that would have been available, fresh fruits such as plums, grapes, berries and melons would have been out of season. It would have been too cold to dig for clams or fish for eels or small fish. There were no boats to fish for lobsters in rough water that was about 60 fathoms deep. There was not enough of the barley crop to make a batch of beer, nor was there a wheat crop. Potatoes and sweet potatoes didn’t get from the south up to New England until the 18th century, nor did sweet corn. Cranberries would have been too tart to eat without sugar to sweeten them, and that’s probably why they wouldn’t have had pumpkin pie, either. Since the corn of the time could not be successfully popped, there was no popcorn. (12)

Myth #10: The Pilgrims and Indians became great friends.

Fact: A mere generation later, the balance of power had shifted so enormously and the theft of land by the European settlers had become so egregious that the Wampanoag were forced into battle. In 1637, English soldiers massacred some 700 Pequot men, women and children at Mystic Fort, burning many of them alive in their homes and shooting those who fled. The colony of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of thanksgiving commemorating the massacre. By 1675, there were some 50,000 colonists in the place they had named “New England.” That year, Metacom, a son of Massasoit, one of the first whose generosity had saved the lives of the starving settlers, led a rebellion against them. By the end of the conflict known as “King Philip’s War,” most of the Indian peoples of the Northeast region had been either completely wiped out, sold into slavery, or had fled for safety into Canada. Shortly after Metacom’s death, Plimoth Colony declared a day of thanksgiving for the English victory over the Indians. (13)

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Notes
(1) Correspondence with Abenaki scholar Margaret M. Bruchac. See also Plimoth Plantation, “A Key to Historical and Museum Terms,” www.plimoth.org/education/field_trips/ft-terms.htm; “Who Were the Pilgrims?” www.plimoth.org/library/whowere.htm.

(2) See Note 1.

(3) See William Bradford’s Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, p. 19.

(4) Conversation with Douglas Frink, Archaeology Consulting Team, Inc. See also Plimoth Plantation, “The Adventures of Plimoth Rock,” www.plimoth.org/library/plymrock.htm.

(5) See William Bradford’s Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, p. 28.

(6) See “The Saints Come Sailing In,” in Dorothy W. Davids and Ruth A. Gudinas, “Thanksgiving: A New Perspective (and its Implications in the Classroom)” in Thanksgiving: A Native Perspective, pp. 70-71.

(7) Correspondence with Margaret M. Bruchac about the relationship Samoset, Tisquantum, Hobbamock, and Massasoit. See also Margaret M. Bruchac and Catherine O’Neill Grace, 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving.

(8) See Margaret M. Bruchac and Catherine O’Neill Grace, ibid.

(9) For a description of how the European settlers regarded the Wampanoag, as well as evidence of their theft of seed corn and funerary objects, see Mourt’s Relation. See also Margaret M. Bruchac and Catherine O’Neill Grace, ibid.

(10) See Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England: A True Relation of Things Very Remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in New England.

(11) See Duane Champagne, Native America: Portrait of the Peoples. Detroit: Visible Ink (1994), pp. 81-82; and Chuck Larsen, op. cit., p. 51.

(12) See Plimoth Plantation, “No Popcorn!,” www.plimoth.org/library/thanksgiving/nopopc.htm, and “A First Thanksgiving Dinner for Today,” www.plimoth.org/library/thanksgiving/afirst.htm. See also Margaret M. Bruchac and Catherine O’Neill Grace, op. cit.

(13) See “King Philip Cries Out for Revenge,” pp. 43-45; and “There Are Many Thanksgiving Stories to Tell,” pp. 49-52, in Thanksgiving: A Native Perspective. See also Margaret M. Bruchac and Catherine O’Neill Grace, op. cit.

Copyright © 2003 by Oyate.

NATIONAL DISGRACE

2008-11-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Deporting widows of Americans. Including women whose husbands have died fighting for our country.

WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE DO THIS?

Watch CBS Videos Online

2008-11-21T17:56:00.000-07:00


Posted by Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 12:29 pm

November 3rd, 2008

Immigrant Community a Boon to Nebraska

Marisa Trevino at Latina Lista wrote earlier this month on a new report out of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, entitled “Nebraska’s Immigrant Population: Economic and Fiscal Impacts.” And whaddya know, it has similar findings to countless similar reports: it finds that immigrants, far from being fiscal drain on social services, pump millions of dollars into local economies and increase the number of jobs. Marisa writes:

Looking at 2006 data, the researchers found that immigrant spending in the state resulted in an estimated $1.6 billion output to the Nebraska economy. The spending generated between 11,000 and 12,000 jobs in the state.

Immigrants in Nebraska significantly contribute to the state’s labor force with immigrants comprising 80.4 percent in meat processing — the state’s single largest industry and driving force for much of the state’s economy.

These are the indisputable facts. What the researchers uncovered about how much immigrants actually take away from state coffers will be the real source of contention and dispute.

According to the report, the immigrant population contributed in 2006 about $154 million in the form of property, income, sales and gas tax revenue. Their costs to the government from food stamps, public assistance, health and educational expenses totaled $144.78 million.

In other words, the researchers found that the state’s immigrants pay in about 7 percent more than what they use in government support. Also, if immigrants were removed from the state’s labor force in key industries like meat processing or construction, the state’s production would lose $13.5 billion.

Just the facts, everyone. More analysis here too as well.

e-verify ENCOURAGING ABUSE OF WORKERS

2008-11-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

http://wm.nmmstream.net/genasx/jwj/nomatchfinal090308hhwmv54953.asx

ICE protecting us from dangerous aliens

2008-11-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Carolina’s Story: Pre-School Criminal?

Carolina is a five-year-old girl from Honduras. When she was an infant, Carolina’s mother tried to cross with her into the United States, and both were caught and ordered deported. Several years after this initial deportation, Carolina’s mother attempted once again to join her husband in the United States. This time Carolina and her mother crossed the border separately— Carolina by bridge with a false guardian and her mother by river—a common strategy for parents of young children, who wish to protect them from drowning. Both she and her mother were apprehended in the United States and detained separately.

U.S. Immigration authorities realized that Carolina had been ordered removed in the past—as an infant. Immigration agents consider this previous order of removal to mean that Carolina is ineligible to petition for legal immigration status or release to family in the United States. Carolina was placed with the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Unaware of Carolina’s previous order of removal, they reunified the child with her family in the United States.

ICE agents referred to the incident as a “breach of national security.” Given her age and circumstances, however, Carolina was clearly unable to have willingly violated U.S. administrative code in either instance of her entering the country. To hold Carolina accountable
for immigration violations is either inconsistent with the U.S. application of the principle of mens rea, or a violation of the concept that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents.

winner and still champion

2008-11-19T06:23:00.000-07:00

laptop ordered on Tuesday, UPS tracking shows scheduled for delivery on Thursday, $20 cheaper but 1 gig more memory than the New Egg version, and $1.99 delivery.

Yeah, that's the way to do it.

customer servicing?

2008-11-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Any farmer knows what "servicing" means. It's what the bull does when you take him out to the cow pasture.

I do ALL of my shopping online. I don't go to stores for anything except as company for someone else who's shopping. All in all, online shopping has been a great experience.

Until New Egg.

I bought a laptop from New Egg last week. At least I tried to. Placed the order on Wednesday. They charged my bank account the same day, so things appeared to be moving along quite nicely.

By Thursday when I still had not recieved the confirming e-mail, I called them to inquire. They said things were all okay, and that I would be recieving an e-mail "soon." I did.

On Friday, I checked on the New Egg site and saw that the order was still not marked "shipped." I called again. Twice. Having paid an extra $35.00 for next-day shipping, I wanted to make sure I was going to get this thing fast [and having also already made arrangements for the old computer to be sent to its new home, I didn't want to be computer-less!]. I was told that they hadn't yet recieved verification from the warehouse but that the computer would definitely be here by Monday, Tuesday the latest. I balked at the Tuesday delivery, that being nearly a week after I ordered the item and the fact that it cost an extra $35.oo for "quick" shipping, and informed the representative that I wanted my $35.00 back. He assured me that he was taking care of that right away, and that he would send an e-mail as soon as possible confirming the shipment of the order and the refund of the shipping charges. Wonderful.

Today, Tuesday, still no e-mail. So I checked the New Egg site, and find that the entire order has been CANCELLED.

Oy.

Another phone call to New Egg, and now I'm told that the item is no longer available, and that's why they cancelled my order.

Without notifying me in any way. [At this point they had not only my e-mail address but my telephone number, but they didn't feel the need to contact me about the order cancellation.]

So, how soon you do think I'll be ordering again from New Egg?

o - if only!

2008-11-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.
http://www.nytimes-se.com/

2008-11-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

get moving

2008-11-11T03:57:00.001-07:00

November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.

uhm....ISN'T THIS CALLED TERRORISM???

2008-11-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

Report: Bush Authorized US Attacks Anywhere in the World

The New York Times has revealed the US military has waged nearly a dozen secret attacks inside Syria, Pakistan and other countries since 2004. The assaults were approved under a classified order signed by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and authorized by President Bush. The order authorizes US military attacks anywhere in the world if they can be linked to targeting al-Qaeda. Last month’s US attack inside Syria appears to be the latest known instance under the policy. Syria says eight civilians were killed. The attacks have often been carried out in collaboration with the CIA.

Democracy Now! 11/10/08

SIT. SPEAK.

2008-11-07T13:33:00.001-07:00

FIRST WORDS

2008-11-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in
the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of
Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.

And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright -
tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved.

Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

OUT OF THE DARK

2008-11-05T06:15:00.001-07:00

out of the dark
out of the dark
eight years and more
buried
we come out
atrophied muscles
carry us slowly
shielding our eyes
in wonderment
out of the dark

DO IT!!!

2008-11-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

suffrage (sŭf'rĭj) n. 1. a. The right or privilege of voting; franchise. b. The exercise of such a right.

2008-11-03T08:51:00.001-07:00

Blogged by Brad Friedman on 11/1/2008 8:49PM

What's the Matter with Voting in Philadelphia? Answer: Marge Tartaglione (D)

Jesus. This is what/who voters in Philadelphia are being forced to deal with, as per our Pennsylvania coverage this week (here and here), concerning the fight by the NAACP and a local Election Reform coalition to get paper ballots for citizens, so that they can be sure to cast a vote, from a Democratically-controlled state hell bent on fighting that.

Since she says in the video we should take care to spell her name right, the woman responsible for running elections in Philadelphia is Marge Tartaglione (D) and, as the video suggests, she's a horror. And not only for her indefensible statements against the distribution of paper ballots to the effect of "long lines are not a problem...Long lines are no justification for any thing but waiting...people wait in long lines overnight for baseball tickets...people wait in line all night for a new Ipod." Though I'm not aware of any 80 year olds who do either of those things, or anybody who does that in the middle of a word day, and I'm fairly sure anybody who does do that, does so by their own choice, not because they are forced to do so in hopes of exercising their right to cast a vote.

The video [click on photo above]--- by citizen journalists Danielle Ivory and Lagan Sebert (more details and context here) --- is well-worth the 4:43 minutes of your life it'll take to view it. Good luck, Philly! Looks like you're gonna need it! Again...

GETTING READY

2008-11-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

So, all of the latest polls seem to show Obama with more than 50% [and 300 electoral].

I've checked online to verify my registration. I've located my driver's license [to bring as ID].

I'm charging the camera.

I've chosen a "blank" outfit that will not disqualify me from voting.

I can only hope that when I throw the lever for Obama, it doesn't register as McCain.

And yes, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader, but things are getting too scary to take the chance that McCain might be elected. This time. c.

Republican Operative Killed in Line of Duty

2008-11-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

Horny squirrel stops people voting Friday, October 31, 2008

Show stopping squirrel

A frisky squirrel that was after another squirrel, caused havoc at a polling station when it jumped onto an electric cable and cut off the lights powering over 800 homes.

The one-and-a-half hour black-out that occurred in Florida affected a library that was being used as a voting station.

But although it slowed down the voters, they still flowed in to cast their vote for the new US president using flash lights.

The squirrel was found dead hours later

dia de los muertos

2008-10-31T15:59:00.000-07:00

What a day: I had some trouble
following the plotline; however,
the special effects were incredible.

Now this,

the dreaming, breathing body lying
right beside my own,
just think - at any given instant
it might undergo a change
so enormous that nothing is left of it
but mere object,

a thing to be taken away from me,
never to be seen again,
never.

-Franz Wright

dress for success on election day

2008-10-31T10:12:00.001-07:00

Spare The Flair from CafePress on Vimeo.

American Justice?

2008-10-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

If you're an immigrant here working long hours for low pay to try to make a life for your family, you're rounded up by ICE and carted off to jail, possibly to die there.

If you're an immigrant here hiding from prosection for murders [having been paid for by the CIA], you get to stay free and contribute to the mortgage crisis.

CIA-Backed Haitian Death Squad Leader Gets 37-Year Prison Term for Mortgage Fraud

A former US-backed Haitian death squad leader has been sentenced to thirty-seven years in prison for mortgage fraud. Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was found to have orchestrated a scheme to flip New York properties at inflated prices by selling them to so-called straw buyers. Human rights groups say Constant ordered killings and torture in Haiti before fleeing to the United States. He has evaded deportation after threatening to go public with the extent of his ties to the CIA. Constant’s attorneys say they plan to appeal. In sentencing Constant, Judge Abraham Gerges noted what he called a “truly heinous record of violence, murder, torture and intimidation.”

reminder: today's the day

2008-10-30T04:39:00.001-07:00

WEARING RED ON OCTOBER 30, 2008 TO STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Out of the Silence, We Come: A Litany

Out of the silence, we come

In the name of nuestras abuelas,

In honor of our mamas

In the spirit of our petit fils,

In tribute to ourselves

We come crying out

Documenting the torture

We come wailing

Reporting the rape

We come singing

Testifying to the abuse

We come knowing

Knowing that the silence has not protected us from

the racism

the sexism

the homophobia

the physical pain

the emotional shame

the auction block

Once immobilized by silence

We come now, mobilized by collective voice

Dancing in harmonious movement to the thick drumbeat of la lucha, the struggle

We come indicting those who claim to love us, but violate us

We come prosecuting those who are paid to protect us, but harass us

We come sentencing those who say they represent us, but render

us invisible

Out of the Silence, we come

Naming ourselves

Telling our stories

Fighting for our lives

Refusing to accept that we were never meant to survive

Thanks to Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican for the "heads up."

time for a little comic relief [thanks, George]

2008-10-29T18:23:00.001-07:00

effectively fomenting hate - is this the future of America?

2008-10-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

the possibilities

2008-10-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

What to do Before and (If Necessary) After the Election is Stolen

October 27, 2008

When I hear the fear of first-time voters like 21-year-old Bertha Barrios, I hear the voice of a generation raised beneath the specter of questions about our last two elections.

“This is my first presidential vote,” says Bertha, a Salvadoran American college student who was holding her 2-year-old son, Joshua, while we spoke. “But, sometimes, I don’t feel like voting. Last time, a lot of people voted and it was for nothing. Bush wasn’t supposed to win [in 2000]. I remember the whole Florida vote scandal … They stole that election and the news reports make it seem like they want to do it again.”

Harkening back to the stories she’s heard about elections held under the military dictatorship that ruled El Salvador in the 1980s, she said: “In El Salvador, the right wing somehow would miraculously always win, and that seems like what they want to do here.

“So, what’s the point of voting if it really doesn’t count at the end?” she asks, her voice taking on the tough tones of her Salvadoran-Watts accent.

I was at once startled and pleased at the healthy and unhealthy dose of cynical wisdom I heard coming from someone I’d known since she was an 11 year-old soccer dynamo. Her pointed question and comparison turned what was supposed to be my reported piece about youth fears of fraud and suppression into an opinion piece about something many of us are feeling increasing urgency about: the serious possibility that the presidential election may be stolen – and what to do before and (if necessary) after the election is stolen.

Recent polls showing a possible Obama landslide give Bertha and other voters some confidence. Me too. According to New York University media studies scholar Mark Crispin Miller – who is teaching a course this semester called “How to Steal an Election” – it’s harder to steal elections if there’s not a tight race.

But the flurry of reports coming out about numerous irregularities already seen in and around voting booths across the country leave open the possibility that millions of votes may not be counted in this presidential election. And John McCain and the GOP’s repeated attacks on voter-registration organization ACORN as a group that is “destroying the fabric of democracy,” seem to indicate that the diversionary BIG LIE required to cover-up and legitimate the illegitimate is in place.

A report in the New York Times found that in some states, including battleground states, for every new voter registered two other voters have been removed. Colorado, a state experiencing rapid and huge population increases, has seen more than 100,000 voters erased from its rolls. Reports from other states of suppression and fraud involving computerized voting systems, voter purges, unreasonable demands for voter documentation and other methods mean one thing: all of us must prepare to prevent and fight this.

Failure to fight voter suppression and fraud means more than just another lost election; it means that Bertha’s and other future generations may give in to the political resignation that the Salvadorization of our political system portends. And, so, given that the third strike of a questionable election will essentially institutionalize suppression and fraud, given that our inaction will communicate that we as a people are willing to accept whatever powerful interests impose on us, here are some things we must start planning—and doing—immediately:

1. Push for Major Turnout and Deliver a Historic Blowout: Experts say that large turnouts and a wide margin between candidates make fraud and suppression more difficult because of the number of votes that must be manipulated and erased. Large turnout and overwhelming victories also communicate to big political and economic interests our passionate desire to change our political system, including our maligned electoral process.

2. Monitoring on the Day of the Elections: Don’t just take your vote to the polls, take your cameras, notepads and cell phones so that you can document and report any irregularities you experience or see. Local and national election monitoring groups like Election Protection (1-866-OUR-VOTE), the country’s largest election monitoring operation, have set up systems for anyone to report irregularities.

3. Study Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004: Studying the irregularities of and responses to these two elections provide us with the best case studies of what to look for and, if necessary, how not to respond (i.e., just sit back and watch the election get stolen your TV set).

While we must work unceasingly to make sure that as many people as possible vote and that these votes are counted, we must also prepare for the possibility that irregularities seen in 2000 and 2004 (and already this year) will rear their ugly heads. Failure among all but a few of us to contest and protest the questionable results in 2000 communicated our willingness to accept not just stolen elections, but also anti-democratic behavior in the Executive Branch: the legitimation of torture, corporate and government secrecy coupled with decreased privacy and rights among the citizenry, the militarism in Iraq and, increasingly, within the borders of the country.

Given that we live in an era fraught with threats to democracy, we must, unfortunately, also prepare for the worst by responding with:

1. General Strike: History teaches us that nothing strikes fear into the hearts – and pocketbooks – of the powerful like people stopping business as usual. In the event of a stolen election, local and national work stoppages, school walkouts, protests, and other actions communicate to the government, to corporate interests, to Bertha and to the world that we will fight the decimation of democracy. If they haven’t already, labor unions, political organizers, bloggers and individuals should coordinate a global effort so that business stops, not just in the U.S., but also around the world. Even without a strong labor movement, the immigrant rights mobilization of 2006 – the largest simultaneous marches in U.S. history – proved that you can make a powerful statement simply by not showing up to work and marching instead.

2. Study the Florida Experience and Learn: We should study how, with a few notable exceptions, the Democrats allowed themselves – and our political future - to be dragged into the abyss of illegitimacy.

3. Foment Any and All Non-Violent Action: – As our country starts taking on the economic and political characteristics of El Salvador and other “Third World” countries that protested U.S. policy, our colossal crisis means we may have to start emulating their methods of protesting electoral and malfeasance: vigils, protests, hunger strikes, office takeovers (ie; government buildings), boycotts and other non-violent means.

Viewed from the historical perspective running from 2000 to the present - the view of Bertha Barrios’ generation - this election may, indeed, actually fit that clichéd slogan about this being the “most important election of our lives” not because we may elect Barack Obama, but because we must restore some semblance of integrity to our political process- and to ourselves.

thanks to: http://ofamerica.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/what-to-do-before-and-if-necessary-after-the-election-is-stolen/

and also, once again, to

for the heads up.

A FEW HEALTCARE FACTOIDS

2008-10-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

• A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings.

• Rising health care costs is the top personal pocketbook concern for Democratic voters (45%) and Republicans (35%), well ahead of higher taxes or retirement security.

• One in four Americans say their family has had a problem paying for medical care during the past year, up 7 percentage points over the past nine years. Nearly 30 percent say someone in their family has delayed medical care in the past year, a new high based on recent polling. Most say the medical condition was at least somewhat serious.

• A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent
of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses. Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.

• One half of workers in the lowest-compensation jobs and one-half of workers in mid range-compensation jobs either had problems with medical bills in a 12-month period or were paying off accrued debt. One-quarter of workers in higher-compensated positions also reported problems with medical bills or were paying off accrued debt.

• If one member of a family is uninsured and has an accident, a hospital stay, or a costly medical treatment, the resulting medical bills can affect the economic stability of the whole family.

• A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses.

• Retiring elderly couples will need $200,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage. Many experts believe that this figure is conservative and that $300,000 may be a more realistic number.

• According to a recent report, the United States has $480 billion in excess spending each year in comparison to Western European nations that have universal health insurance coverage. The costs are mainly associated with excess administrative costs and poorer quality of care. Although nearly 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens. The United States spends six times more per capita on the administration of the health care system than its peer Western European nations.

CONSTITUTIONAL QUIZ

2008-10-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

1. You can be charged as a terrorist for political protest.
True: Eight protesters and journalists were charged as terrorists at the Republican National Convention. They could face seven and a half years in prison under the Minnesota Patriot Act for the mere act of planning to exercise their right to dissent.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: You have the right to free speech.

2. The government has been copying all of your emails since 2005.
True: The NSA has over 20 copying stations inside of major Internet hubs run by Verizon, ATT and Comcast. The government has been copying all of your emails without a warrant.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: They need a warrant to search your stuff.

3. The President has the power to arrest you as an enemy combatant.
True: On his say so alone the President can arrest any American by calling you an enemy combatant. Under the Military Commissions Act you can be held for up to three years without trial.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: You have a right to a speedy trial.

4. Torture is permitted by the Geneva Conventions.
False: “Under no circumstances whatsoever” is torture permitted under the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties governing the rules of war.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: You have the right to a fair trial before a jury of your peers. In 2008, the Supreme Court recognized Habeas Corpus for Guantanamo detainees.

5. Reporters have the right to protect the confidentiality of their sources.
False: Josh Wolf went to Federal prison in 2006 for ten months for not turning over to the FBI videotape he had shot. He received the longest sentence in history of any American journalist imprisoned in the line of duty.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: No law can restrict the rights of a free press.

6. A librarian can land in hot water for not telling the government what books you read.
True: A librarian from Connecticut is fighting the FBI, which is trying to use the Patriot Act to force him — without a warrant — to tell them what books people have checked out of the library.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: The government needs a warrant to search your library records.

7. You can be detained on U.S. soil without access to a lawyer.
True: When you come back to the U.S. on an international flight, before you clear customs, you may be apprehended and held without access to a lawyer and treated as if you are not on U.S. soil.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: You have a right to a lawyer.

8. The President may not send the Army into your house to take away your guns.
True: After Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard went into people's homes and took away homeowners own weapons illegally.
BILL OF RIGHTS CHECK: You have the right to bear arms.

My America Project is a grassroots campaign that engages citizens in direct democracy with the documentary film, “The End of America.”

ya think?

2008-10-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

"The troubled insurance giant American International Group already has consumed three-quarters of a federal $123 billion rescue loan, a little more than a month after the government stepped in to save the company from bankruptcy...The news comes as the company's new chief executive warned Wednesday that the government's financial lifeline may not be enough to keep AIG afloat."

2008-10-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

2008-10-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out “Crowd Control”

Originally posted at Alternet.org

Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn’t pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing “unruly individuals,” and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the “War on Terror,” the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.

He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined “insurrection” or many other “conditions” he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus — habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial — in the event of an “insurrection.” With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters “insurgents” staging an “insurrection” is strengthened.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:

“The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”

If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat.

I interviewed Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and patriot David Antoon for clarification:

“If the President directed the First Brigade to arrest Congress, what could stop him?”

“Nothing. Their only recourse is to cut off funding. The Congress would be at the mercy of military leaders to go to them and ask them not to obey illegal orders.”

“But these orders are now legal?’”

“Correct.”

“If the President directs the First Brigade to arrest a bunch of voters, what would stop him?”

“Nothing. It would end up in courts but the action would have been taken.”

“If the President directs the First Brigade to kill civilians, what would stop him?”

“Nothing.”

“What would prevent him from sending the First Brigade to arrest the editor of the Washington Post?”

“Nothing. He could do what he did in Iraq — send a tank down a street in Washington and fire a shell into the Washington Post as they did into Al Jazeera, and claim they were firing at something else.”

“What happens to members of the First Brigade who refuse to take up arms against U.S. citizens?”

“They’d probably be treated as deserters as in Iraq: arrested, detained and facing five years in prison. In Iraq a study by Ann Wright shows that deserters — reservists who refused to go back to Iraq — got longer sentences than war criminals.”

“Does Congress have any military of their own?”

“No. Congress has no direct control of any military units. The Governors have the National Guard but they report to the President in an emergency that he declares.”

“Who can arrest the President?”

“The Attorney General can arrest the President after he leaves or after impeachment.”

[Note: Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has asserted it is possible for District Attorneys around the country to charge President Bush with murder if they represent districts where one or more military members who have been killed in Iraq formerly resided.]

“Given the danger do you advocate impeachment?”

“Yes. President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus — which has prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets — with a ’signing statement.’ He should be impeached immediately in a bipartisan process to prevent the use of military forces and mercenary forces against U.S. citizens”

“Should Americans call on senior leaders in the Military to break publicly with this action and call on their own men and women to disobey these orders?”

“Every senior military officer’s loyalty should ultimately be to the Constitution. Every officer should publicly break with any illegal order, even from the President.”

“But if these are now legal. If they say, ‘Don’t obey the Commander in Chief,’ what happens to the military?”

“Perhaps they would be arrested and prosecuted as those who refuse to participate in the current illegal war. That’s what would be considered a coup.”

“But it’s a coup already.”

“Yes.”

2008-10-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

Dear World, Please Confront America

by Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf

Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing, and alerting the nation to the Bush administration’s criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law – a story often marginalized at home. I was certain that when Americans knew what was being done in their name, they would react with horror and outrage.

Three months ago, the Bush administration still clung to its devil’s sound bite, “We don’t torture.” Now, Physicians for Human Rights has issued its report documenting American-held detainees’ traumas, and even lie detector tests confirm they have been tortured. The Red Cross report has leaked: torture and war crimes. Jane Mayer’s impeccably researched exposé The Dark Side just hit the stores: torture, crafted and directed from the top. The Washington Post gave readers actual video footage of the abusive interrogation of a Canadian minor, Omar Khadr, who was seen showing his still-bleeding abdominal wounds, weeping and pleading with his captors.

So the truth is out and freely available. And America is still napping, worrying about its weight, and hanging out at the mall.

I had thought that after so much exposure, thousands of Americans would be holding vigils on Capitol Hill, that religious leaders would be asking God’s forgiveness, and that a popular groundswell of revulsion, similar to the nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement, would emerge. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

And yet no such thing has occurred. There is no crisis in America’s churches and synagogues, no Christian and Jewish leaders crying out for justice in the name of Jesus, a tortured political prisoner, or of Yahweh, who demands righteousness. I asked a contact in the interfaith world why. He replied, “The mainstream churches don’t care, because they are Republican. And the synagogues don’t care, because the prisoners are Arabs.”

It was then that I realized that I could not be in love with my country right now. How can I care about the fate of people like that? If this is what Americans are feeling, if that is who we are, we don’t deserve our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Even America’s vaunted judicial system has failed to constrain obvious abuses. A Federal court has ruled that the military tribunals system – Star Chambers where evidence derived from torture is used against the accused – can proceed. Another recently ruled that the president may call anyone anywhere an “enemy combatant” and detain him or her indefinitely.

So Americans are colluding with a criminal regime. We have become an outlaw nation – a clear and present danger to international law and global stability – among civilized countries that have been our allies. We are – rightly – on Canada’s list of rogue nations that torture.

Europe is still high from Barack Obama’s recent visit. Many Americans, too, hope that an Obama victory in November will roll back this nightmare. But this is no time to yield to delusions. Even if Obama wins, he may well be a radically weakened president. The Bush administration has created a transnational apparatus of lawlessness that he alone, without global intervention, can neither roll back nor control.

Private security firms – for example, Blackwater – will still be operating, accountable neither to him nor to Congress, and not bound, they have argued, by international treaties. Weapons manufacturers and the telecommunications industry, with billions at stake in maintaining a hyped “war on terror” and their new global surveillance market, will deploy a lavishly financed army of lobbyists to defend their interests.

Moreover, if elected, Obama will be constrained by his own Democratic Party. America’s political parties bear little resemblance to the disciplined organizations familiar in parliamentary democracies in Europe and elsewhere. And Democrats in Congress will be even more divided after November if, as many expect, conservative members defeat Republican incumbents damaged by their association with Bush.

To be sure, some Democrats have recently launched Congressional hearings into the Bush administration’s abuses of power. Unfortunately, with virtually no media coverage, there is little pressure to broaden official investigations and ensure genuine accountability.

But, while grassroots pressure has not worked, money still talks. We need targeted government-led sanctions against the US by civilized countries, including international divestment of capital. Many studies have shown that tying investment to democracy and human rights reform is effective in the developing world. There is no reason why it can’t be effective against the world’s superpower.

We also need an internationally coordinated strategy for prosecuting war criminals at the top and further down the chain of command – individual countries pressing charges, as Italy and France have done. Although the United States is not a signatory to the statute that established the International Criminal Court, violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions are war crimes for which anyone – potentially even the US president – may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions. The whole world can hunt these criminals down.

An outlaw America is a global problem that threatens the rest of the international community. If this regime gets away with flouting international law, what is to prevent the next administration – or this administration, continuing under its secret succession plan in the event of an emergency – from going further and targeting its political opponents at home and abroad?

We Americans are either too incapable, or too dysfunctional, to help ourselves right now. Like drug addicts or the mentally ill who refuse treatment, we need our friends to intervene. So remember us as we were in our better moments, and take action to save us – and the world – from ourselves.

Maybe then I can fall in love with my country again.

Naomi Wolf, the author, most recently, of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and the forthcoming Give me Liberty: How to Become an American Revolutionary, is co-founder of the American Freedom Campaign, a US democracy movement.

BUSH AND ADMIN MUST NOT BE PARDONED

2008-10-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

The time is growing close and one of the things coming up is the traditional exiting wholesale pardoning of administration criminals.

DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

As it stands now, Bush and others are liable for prosecution in any state that can claim a dead soldier. Any state who gave up one of their own as fodder for this war built on lies. Any family whose son's or daughter's body was used as a log on the fire of Bush's fund raising party for his friends.

If Bush and his admin are not brought to justice, how will America move on?
c.

2008-10-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

2008-10-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

The news you're NOT getting at Fox.

AND SO IT BEGINS.....(Saturday morning Washington Post)

2008-10-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Thousands Face Mix-Ups In Voter Registrations
In New Databases, Many Are Wrongly Flagged as Ineligible

By Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2008; A01

Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them.

The challenges have led to a dozen lawsuits, testy arguments among state officials and escalating partisan battles. Because many voters may not know that their names have been flagged, eligibility questions could cause added confusion on Election Day, beyond the delays that may come with a huge turnout.

The scramble to verify voter registrations is happening as states switch from locally managed lists of voters to statewide databases, a change required by federal law and hailed by many as a more efficient and accurate way to keep lists up to date.

But in the transition, the systems are questioning the registrations of many voters when discrepancies surface between their registration information and other official records, often because of errors outside voters' control.

The issue made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday blocked a challenge to 200,000 Ohio voters whose registration data conflicted with other state records.

It is impossible to know how many voters are affected nationwide. There are no reports of large-scale problems in Virginia, Maryland or the District, but the trouble is cropping up in many states.

In Alabama, scores of voters are being labeled as convicted felons on the basis of incorrect lists.

Michigan must restore thousands of names it illegally removed from voter rolls over residency questions, a judge ruled this week.

Tens of thousands of voters could be affected in Wisconsin. Officials there admit that their database is wrong one out of five times when it flags voters, sometimes for data discrepancies as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date. When the six members of the state elections board -- all retired judges -- ran their registrations through the system, four were incorrectly rejected because of mismatches.

As the gateway to voting, the new registration lists have become the focus of attention from many fronts, including voting rights advocates, officials concerned about fraud and political campaigns looking for an advantage.

It is "this season's big issue," said Wendy R. Weiser, who directs voting rights projects for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law, noting that efforts to keep names off the lists are "a new trend, not in the majority of states but in the battleground states."

The changes stem from the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002 in the aftermath of the deadlocked presidential race two years earlier. The law provided millions of dollars for states to upgrade voting equipment and procedures, and to create the centralized databases, which allow voters in most states to check their registrations and polling places on the Internet.

The electronic lists have been coming online gradually, and for 31 states, this will be the first time they are used in a presidential election.

As the databases are implemented, voters' names and other information are verified against state driver's license records or Social Security records to determine their eligibility. Federal law allows each state to decide what constitutes a match -- whether it will accept nicknames, for example.

But states are not using "the best scientific knowledge known today" when they verify the information, said Herbert Lin, who is studying the issue for the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees election reforms.

By federal law, anyone whose name is flagged must be notified and given a chance to prove his or her eligibility. But voting rights experts say voters are not always alerted, and even if they are, some may decide to simply skip the election. If questions about eligibility remain on Election Day, those voters are entitled to cast a "provisional" ballot. But which of those ballots are ultimately counted depends on local and state rules.

Several of the battles over registration lists have taken on a partisan tinge, including in Montana, where a state GOP official challenged nearly 6,000 voters over apparent discrepancies in their addresses. He dropped his challenge after Democrats went to court, but not before one county sent letters to hundreds of voters informing them that their registrations were in jeopardy. Now the county is trying to let them know they are eligible to cast ballots after all.

The Republicans filed the case "with the express intent to disenfranchise voters," a federal judge said.

In light of the Supreme Court ruling yesterday, Ohio's Republican Party said it is looking at its options in state court to try again to force Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, to produce lists of voters whose registration information conflicted with driver's license data or Social Security records.

Brunner called the court challenge "another partisan lawsuit." The state Republican chairman shot back that Brunner "continues to do everything she can to help her candidate."

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who co-chairs John McCain's campaign in that state, is demanding that election officials use the database to re-verify the identities of voters who registered going back to 2006.

The elections board has refused, citing the database's error rate. The issue has gone to court, and a ruling is expected next week.

Among the errors with Wisconsin's database, which has been fully in place just since August, are incorrect ages for 95,000 voters, all of whom are listed as 108 years old. If no birth date was available when names were moved into the electronic system, it automatically assigned Jan. 1, 1900.

In court filings, Van Hollen said "tens of thousands" of ineligible voters could cast ballots, noting that Wisconsin "will be a swing state" whose 10 electoral votes "may be won by a very narrow margin."

The crush of new registrants around the country has heightened the problems, including in Colorado, where 22,000 must clear up questions about their addresses and other discrepancies before they can cast a regular ballot.

In Alabama, the centralized system triggered a new controversy over a constitutional ban on voting by people convicted of a felony crime of "moral turpitude." The governor's office in the past year issued a list of 480 crimes that meet the definition, including disrupting a funeral and conspiring to set an illegal brush fire.

Alabama's court administrator and attorney general issued a shorter list of 70 more violent and serious crimes. But Secretary of State Beth Chapman said the longer list was used to identify ineligible voters until three weeks ago.

Among those wrongly flagged by the database was former Republican governor Guy Hunt, who was driven out of office in 1993 after being convicted of a felony ethics violation for misusing inaugural funds. But Hunt, 75, received a pardon that declared him innocent a decade ago.

"Well, he's voted ever since the pardon, so he sure shouldn't be on any list now," said Hunt's son, Keith, in a telephone interview.

The former governor, who has run for office since he was pardoned, was included on a "monthly felons check" sent to a county registrar this year. The document, obtained by The Washington Post, contains 107 names of purported felons, but 41 of them committed only misdemeanors, according to the handwritten notations of a county staffer.

Chapman, a Republican, stressed that any ban can be appealed. But state Sen. Zeb Little (D), who has reviewed other cases, said, "I am certain that people will be turned away at polls in November over this for no valid reason."

In Georgia, the database has so far labeled 2,600 people as noncitizens.

That nearly cost American-born Nelson Tyler, a civilian contractor in Afghanistan, his vote. The system mistakenly tagged Tyler when a Social Security number popped up belonging to a noncitizen.

After receiving a letter from DeKalb County saying he had to prove his citizenship, Tyler protested and resubmitted his number. Within days, he got an e-mail apologizing for the mix-up. In it, a county elections official said she had told her staff not to rely solely on the database when verifying ballot requests because "we had found it was not 100% accurate."

Tyler cast his absentee ballot, but he said in an interview that the experience was unsettling. The closer the elections get, he said by e-mail, "the more these types of disqualifying tactics begin to rear their ugly heads."

2008-10-16T11:46:00.001-07:00

here is the text, readable:

America’s health care system is failing. It denies care to many in need and is expensive,error-prone and increasingly bureaucratic. Despite abundant medical resources, care is often inadequate because of the irrationality of our insurance system. Yet our political leaders seem intent on reprising failed schemes from the past, rejecting the single-payer national health insurance model that is the sole hope for affordable, comprehensive coverage.

Single payer reform could realize administrative savings of more than $300 billion annually—enough to cover the uninsured and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. It would also slow cost increases by fostering coordination and planning. The incremental changes suggested by most Democrats cannot solve our problems; further pursuit of market-based strategies, as advocated by Republicans, will exacerbate them. What needs to be changed is the system itself.

We urge our political leaders to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system.

debilitating debate

2008-10-16T04:51:00.000-07:00

I’m weary of references to Joes with surnames like Six-Pack and Plumber. I’ve had it with references to Main Street. I don’t live on Main Street. I don’t know anyone who can afford to live on Main Street.

I am exhausted by this dance, and so, so tired of hearing what is wrong with the other guy, which exercise generally only serves to underline the weaknesses of the owner of the pointing finger.

Tell me (which you have not, neither of you, though prompted many times) which of your expensive promises will be made to fall by the wayside because of the “bailout.”

Tell me if when you are elected you will pardon Bush and Cheney and the rest for their crimes. Tell me if you will revoke and disable the special powers Bush has installed for the man in the oval office.

It is called Campaign Rhetoric for a reason. Rhetoric it is, and that is all. It’s the smell of cooking coming from a secret kitchen, all full of wonderful promise. But the proof is in the eating, and we need be mindful that sometimes what is finally served at the table bears little resemblance to what was imagined, can be unpalatable and, worse, contain little to no actual nourishment.

LIE: "We don't torture."

2008-10-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

On NPR this morning:
A pair of classified memos from the Bush administration have surfaced showing the executive office endorsed the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Alex Chadwick talks to Washington Post investigative reporter Joby Warrick about the memos.

LISTEN HERE: A. Chadwick/J. Warrick

be there or be square

2008-10-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

So what can we expect tonight? Very exciting possibilities. Will McCain be flanked by bodyguards as protection against that VERY DANGEROUS guy he'll be sharing the stage with? Will Obama offer us $100 each to vote for him? Will Palin leap from the audience and sink those pitbull teeth into Obama's leg, screaming "GOT him Johnny - I GOT him! You betcha! [wink]" Will Ralph Nader show up uninvited and make all the rest of them look like the timid, dishonest, self-serving idiots that they are?

I'll be watching with my bottle of Corona. But I don't think it'll be enough.
c.

McCain Appeals to the Worst in Us

2008-10-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the vid below is a joke but - is it really? When I hear the McCain crowds cheering and jeering it sounds to me more like ringside at a boxing match. Or a hockey game. "Kill him," somebody yells - and no one replies. No one corrects. No - it is encouraged.

What next?
c.

who loses

2008-10-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR: visit http://www.votenader.org/issues/

from "DEMOCRACY NOW!"

2008-10-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

New Documents Reveal “Effort to Create a Gitmo Inside the United States”

Newly released military documents show a US Naval officer warned the Pentagon in 2002 that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a US military brig. The detainee, Yaser Hamdi, was one of two US citizens held on a Navy brig in South Carolina for years without charge after the Sept. 11 attacks. The documents show that the US military exported the brutal interrogation techniques from Guantanamo prison to the US jail housing Hamdi and Jose Padilla. The techniques included sleep and sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation and death threats. Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU said, "These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we’ve suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States.”

"CLEAN" coal??

2008-10-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

“Coal produces 50 percent of our electricity, and it will take some time to phase that out. The point is that every dollar that we invest in clean—or in coal technology, in the coal industry infrastructure, is a dollar that is better invested in solar and wind. We know—we know that the future economy has to be powered by clean energy. Why not go all in for clean energy today, rather than continuing to perpetuate our addiction to the dirtiest fuel on the planet?”

“You can go to followthecoalmoney.org and find out who are the largest recipients of coal industry cash. You can go to followtheoilmoney.org and find out who are the largest recipients of oil industry cash.

To get clean energy, we’re going to need a clean government. And we won’t be saved by either administration. And so, come January 20th, if you’re a progressive activist looking to create a clean energy future, you have to get to work. “

Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network and author of the new book Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

NOT ALLOWED TO DEBATE

2008-10-06T04:14:00.000-07:00

Video chat rooms at Ustream

Time For Something Good

2008-10-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

say what?

2008-10-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

My major impressions of last night’s debate:

Palin cannot pronounce the word “nuclear” but she can definitely pronounce “maverick,”[1] and did so - six times before I stopped counting.
Everybody’s talking about what may have gone wrong in Iraq and nobody’s talking about how we got there, on the basis of the LIE told by G. Bush that Saddam was an immediate threat to the U.S.
Biden missed a good opening when Palin was talking about her "management experience" as Mayor - considering the fact that the job was actually done by someone other than her [a full-time city administrator].

[1] Maverick: An unbranded range animal, especially a motherless calf; it can also mean a person who thinks independently; a lone dissenter; a non-conformist or rebel.

(She’s not the latter so must be referencing the former.)

CONGRESS....WHO NEEDS 'EM?

2008-10-01T10:33:00.001-07:00

Hmmm...
Sound like anyone else we know?

LIAR

2008-09-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

If you don’t give me what I want
Bad things are going to happen
The worst you can imagine
And if you can’t imagine well enough
I’ll do it for you - monsters under your bed
It’s an emergency
Whatever works

I need to go to war, kill your boys
Or bad things are going to happen
Deliver bad germs to your doorstep
See how easy they can do it
Send out some anthrax in the mail
It’s an emergency
Whatever works.

I need lots of police
Or bad things are going to happen
Blackwater in the states keep the peace
Get used to the guns
See these are the good guys
It’s an emergency
Whatever works.

I need lots of prisons
Or bad things are going to happen
Illegal immigrants take all your money and jobs.
Used to be Jews but that won’t fly any more
Doesn’t matter as long as they’re different from you.
It’s an emergency
Whatever works.
c.

The Times They Are a Changin’

2008-09-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

The $700 billion bailout of financial institutions is somewhat akin to aggressive care given to a terminal cancer patient: You can make his life a bit more comfortable for a time, perhaps even induce a rally, but the patient is still going to die of his disease. It’s going to cost a fortune. Still, you’re giving him a little distance from the inevitable; time during which he and his family and friends can begin to come to terms with the dire future.

Hopefully we’ll be using this next short period, bought at tremendous expense, to prepare for the inescapable collapse of the fundamental financial structure of the U.S., possibly the world.

The times they are a changin’. Indeed.

[photo from AP]