The Teacher

Say It’s True “Z”!!!–Americans will begin to be more discriminating in Middle Eastern Hyperbole

2012-01-24T16:07:00.001+03:00

Say It’s True “Z”!!!–Americans will begin to be more discriminating in Middle Eastern Hyperbole

Zbig: Israelis “bought influence” and outmaneuvered Obama
The president “should have stuck to his guns” on Mideast peace, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NSC advisor

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s new book, “Strategic Vision,” imagines a world without American power. He envisions profound instability, faltering international cooperation and weak states falling prey to their more dominant neighbors. Describing the dystopia that would emerge if America goes under is a trick British historian Niall Ferguson pioneered. Unlike the jingoistic Ferguson, however, Brzezinski is able to envision China replacing America as the stabilizing force in world affairs. “I don’t think liberal states are more restrained or stabilizing,” he says. “The United States’ actions in the last 20 years, especially with the war in Iraq, do not give reassurance on that score.”

Such unorthodox thinking has made the Polish-born Brzezinski arguably the greatest living scholar-practitioner in Democratic Party ranks. As a scholar, he was erratic but he also foresaw the Soviet Union’s crack-up long before it occurred. As Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, he was controversial and even reckless, but he imbued the president with strong doses of reality concerning the Soviet Union and the Middle East. Since the end of the Cold War, he stayed relevant presciently opposing the Iraq War and supporting presidential candidate Barack Obama at a crucial, early date.

In a telephone interview from his office at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Brzezinski has both praise and criticism for the president: “He was an improvement by a very large score over his predecessor, but he could have been better.” He thinks the Obama administration “should have stuck to its guns in promoting a fair settlement” in the Middle East. A longtime foe of Israel’s partisans in the United States, he says the Obama team “fumbled by getting outmaneuvered by the Israelis.” Then he gets blunter: “Domestic politics interceded: The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence.”

Brzezinski is still a believer in the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and is hopeful that Obama will again take up the cause if he gets a second term. “He would have time and the historical immunity to do so, because he wouldn’t be facing an election.” He also thinks space has opened up in the United States to be more critical of Israel. “The American public is becoming more discriminating, and the Jewish public in America is becoming more discriminating,” he says. “They realize that extremist sloganeering and warmongering are not the most helpful approaches.” Brzezinski is careful to note that he was never an official advisor to either candidate or President Obama but lets it be known they are still in touch: “I have a relationship where from time to time I am able to share my views with him,” he says.

The focus of “Strategic Vision” is not on the Middle East, but further to the east. Unlike other adherents to the foreign-policy school known as realism, Brzezinski does not see war between China and the United States as inevitable. Conflict, yes, but war, no. “You can have conflicts but avoid a real collision,” he says, arguing there is only a “remote possibility” of war between China and the U.S. over the next 10 to 15 years.

What makes Brzezinski relatively optimistic for the chances of Sino-American cooperation are his views on history. Many times when great powers have shifted positions in the international hierarchy, they have gone to war. Those predicting China and the United States will inevitably come to blows are relying on history and international relations theory, Brzezinski says. “That’s fine as long as there is historical continuity,” he says, but he thinks the world has changed. “I think major wars have become too prohibitively costly for both sides” for states to want to engage in them, he says.

Two things could potentially ruin the chances for good relations between China and the United States, he suggests: a technological-military revolution, and ineffective leadership. “If there are fantastic breakthroughs in military capabilities that allow one side to neutralize each other’s,” Brzezinski says, the delicate balance necessary to maintain stability would be thrown off. Fortunately, there isn’t much chance of such a technology developing in the foreseeable future, he believes.

The quality of leadership is Brzezinski’s real wild card. Prudent leaders from both countries that prepare their respective publics for the compromises that will inevitably have to be made are badly needed. But the “mindless hypocrisy” of the Republican presidential candidates gives little ground for hope. He won’t single out any of them, finding all of them deeply flawed and uninspiring. Noting the Republican names attached to the blurbs for ”Strategic Vision” — among them former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft — Brzezinski believes there still is the “possibility for consensus.” But men like Scowcroft and Gates, who come from the center-right of the political spectrum, are no longer much welcomed in today’s Republican Party. “That is part of the problem,” he laughed, not sounding entirely amused.
Continue Reading

Jordan Michael Smith writes about U.S. foreign policy for Salon. He has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post.

Constitutional Amendment to Create Public Financing Introduced by Kucinich

2012-01-24T16:06:00.000+03:00

Constitutional Amendment to Create Public Financing Introduced by Kucinich

This needs to become law–and pronto, America!–KAS

By David Swanson

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Constitutional-Amendment-t-by-David-Swanson-120119-42.html

I recently recommened a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections.

The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . . until now.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:

Section 1. All campaigns for President and Members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be financed entirely with public funds. No contributions shall be permitted to any candidate for Federal office from any other source, including the candidate.

Section 2. No expenditures shall be permitted in support of any candidate for Federal office, or in opposition to any candidate for Federal office, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.

Section 3. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds.

Section 4. The Congress shall, by statute, provide criminal penalties for any violation of this Article.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This does not state that corporations are not people or bribery is not speech or the moon is not made of cheese, but it proceeds accordingly and handles the corruption of our elections as effectively as anything I’ve seen. No amendment is completely comprehensive, but no completely comprehensive amendment is likely to get passed (or even read). I also doubt very much that Congress will ever advance any such amendment, at least until there is a serious threat from two-thirds of the states to circumvent Congress with a Constitutional Convention.

But if there is an amendment to build the list of cosponsors on, this looks like the one. This looks to me like something that the anti-corporate-personhood movement, the clean elections movement, the peace movement, and every other cause for peace, justice, or representative government should get behind. I don’t mean get behind a politician or a party or censor your own complete demands. I mean get every possible Congress member to cosponsor this bill, which exists because of our movement.

Blocking funding without providing public financing is a half-solution. Limiting private election spending while leaving loopholes is no solution. Prohibiting private spending, creating public financing, and making those laws enforceable is a huge chunk of the solution.

We can all remember “H J Res 100″. Now to ask our misrepresentatives to sign on!

Submitters Website: http://davidswanson.org

Submitters Bio:

David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org

Is the EPA out to Get You?

2012-01-24T16:05:00.000+03:00

Is the EPA out to Get You?

Kevin,

After more than a dozen debates and hundreds of speeches, one thing is for sure. The Republican primary candidates and their allies will do anything to win over those most important to their campaigns: big polluting billionaires and the right-wing extremists who love them.

These candidates will sacrifice anything – clean air, clean water, and even their fellow Republicans – to please their deep-pocketed puppet-masters and get a shot at the White House.

You’ve seen these puppets in action before. Now comes the much-anticipated political movie that tells the story of when polluters and politicians team up and exposes the shocking truth of what really happened: “When the Puppets Came to Town.”

When the Puppets Came to Town

The Republican presidential primary is really heating up. After more than a dozen debates and hundreds of campaign stops, the candidates and their allies are duking it out in South Carolina. And they are doing and saying anything it takes to win the hearts and minds of those who are most important to their campaigns: big polluting, billionaire donors and the right-wing extremists who love them.

When it comes to winning the favor of their puppet-masters, these candidates will sacrifice anything – clean air, clean water, and even their fellow Republicans – to get a shot at the White House.

You’ve seen these puppets in action before. Now comes the much-anticipated political movie that tells the story of when corporate polluters and politicians team up and exposes the shocking truth of what really happened “When the Puppets Came to Town.”

Real Republicans on the EPA

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, the Sierra Club’sVoter Education Fund launched its Real Republicans primary project, the first major effort by an environmental organization to fight back against the stream of misinformation scapegoating clean air, cleanwater, and public health safeguards and the agencies that implement them. In addition to the new realrepubs.com website, the project will include a series of videos featuring the candidates’ actual words coming from the mouths of sock puppets uncannily designed in their likenesses.

The first video in the “Real Republicans” series contrasts the candidates’ dangerous political assault on the EPA with the reality of the public’s strong support for that agency’s mission. The Sierra Club Voter Education Fund’s Real Republicans project seeks to educate voters about the records of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates by highlighting their extreme positions on public health and other issues of critical importance to the American people and encourage the public to find out more about the candidates and their positions on these issues. More videos and initiatives are planned as the Republican presidential primary continues.

Mitt Debates Mitt on Climate

One is a mild-mannered moderate. The other is a fire-breathing, right-wing conservative. One embraces science, innovation, and the progress of the 21st century. The other prefers the ideas of the Stone Age.

They’re the yin and yang of the political spectrum and the only thing they can agree on is a hairstyle. But what happens when the Mitt Romney of June of 2011 debates the Mitt Romney of October 2011? It’s a battle for the ages.

We can’t make this stuff up.

Newt Debates Newt on Climate

Former Speaker of the House. Historian. Tiffany’s aficionado. Amateur paleontologist?!? Not so fast, Newt.

To be a scientist you have to know your science – but, time and time again, the former Speaker has sided with Big Oil and against the vast majority of the scientific community by denying climate change is occurring.

Thankfully, one prominent Republican candidate has stood up to take him to task for this 19th century philosophy, even crossing party lines to join Nancy Pelosi in a call for solutions to the climate crisis.

That challenger’s name? Newt Gingrich. Watch as fireworks fly when the two lock horns. It’s not the first time they’ve clashed and it certainly won’t be the last.

Army says 164 active-duty troops took their own lives in 2011

2012-01-24T16:03:00.000+03:00

Army says 164 active-duty troops took their own lives in 2011, the highest number ever recorded

Military Suicides Hit New Record High

New figures show suicides among active-duty U.S. soldiers hit another record high last year. The Army says 164 active-duty troops took their own lives in 2011, the highest number ever recorded. Violent sex crimes among active-duty troops also rose nearly 30 percent, with more than half the victims active-duty female soldiers between the ages of 18 and 21.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/20/headlines#11

HAVE YOU, LIKEWISE, BEEN UNFAIRLY HARRASSED?

2012-01-24T16:02:00.000+03:00

HAVE YOU, LIKEWISE, BEEN UNFAIRLY HARRASSED?

1 Votes

Hi Kevin,

When she was studying at the University of Bridgeport, Balayla Ahmad’s only apparent crime was reporting her repeated sexual harassment at the hands of one man. The university’s response to her complaints? Expulsion.

Demand that the University of Bridgeport give Ahmad a fair trial. »

Balayla Ahmad, an African American Muslim woman from Connecticut, had dreams of becoming a chiropractor at the University of Bridgeport. While she was attending school, the same man sexually harassed her several times. When she tried to report her attacker, the university ignored her complaints. »

Upon hearing of Balayla’s attempts to report sexual harassment, Balayla’s attacker made the counter-claim that she was a terrorist. The university promptly dismissed her.

This is a disgusting example of racism and sexism.

Tell the University of Bridgeport to re-enroll Balayla and give her a fair trial today.»
Thanks for taking action!

Kathleen
ThePetitionSite

Justice for Sexually Harassed University Student
Take action now.
Take Action!

Take action link: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ag9zB/zL5h/BBHm3

TARIQ ALI on Democracy Now

2012-01-24T16:00:00.000+03:00

QUOTE of the WEEK concerning the Killing of 24 Pakistani Soliders at their Checkpoint by the USA

TARIQ ALI on Democracy Now:

“Well, Amy, the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers and the bombing of their checkpoint makes no rational sense at all. The United States did it. They knew it was a military checkpoint. They knew that it was Pakistani soldiers. They haven’t yet been able to come up with any reasonable explanation as to how that happened. So one has to assume that it was deliberate. And this happened roughly at the same period as Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, sent a message to the Pentagon saying, “Come and help us against our own army. We’ll do whatever you want,” which has become a huge scandal in Pakistan. It’s like a Clancy novel. And the ambassador actually going and pleading. This ambassador has now been removed. Another one has been appointed. So all sorts of things are going on behind the scenes, of which we haven’t yet heard the whole—the whole story is yet to come out.“

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/20/tariq_ali_obamas_expansion_of_af

NOTE

Runner up for Quote of the Week from Tariq Ali was:

TARIQ ALI: Iran, in my opinion, the Pentagon generals are not in favor of a war on Iran, because that would overstretch the United States, and the Iranians will—are quite a strong country, economically and militarily. They will probably respond within Iraq, within Afghanistan, on the Lebanese border, and in Iran itself. So, is the United States going to be prepared to fight four wars to do something that the Israelis want more than anyone else? I mean, ideally, the United States should have been mending its fences with Iran. I mean, Nixon did it with China. Obama should have flown to Tehran and done a deal with them. They refused to do that, because of the pressure of the Israelis, and the result is now tension. And if the Iranians close down the Straits of Hormuz in any conflict, which they are threatening to do, this will affect oil supplies to the West. And given the economy is already in a mess, the situation will become catastrophic. So I think it would be a crazy president who ordered bombing raids on Iran at the moment.

In America, whites have 20 times the wealth of African-Americans. So says census data

2012-01-24T15:59:00.000+03:00

Dear Kevin:

In America, whites have 20 times the wealth of African-Americans. So says census data.

Not 20% more. Not twice as much. Twenty times as much. Specifically, the median household wealth for whites in 2009 was $113,149, and the median household wealth for African-Americans was $5,677.

When I heard this a few months ago, it was not entirely news to me. When I was in Congress, I read the reports that the Federal Reserve sent to Members; to me, that was interesting reading. In the appendix to one of those Fed reports, from a survey of respondents selected in 2007, these numbers caught my eye:

White, non-Hispanic households – $149,900

Hispanic and African-American households – $23,300

So from $149,900 down to $113,149, and from $23,300 (including Hispanics) down to $5,677. These numbers confirm just how hard the Great Recession has whacked minority households.

But there is a deeper issue. Can someone please explain to me how, in a country where we are told again and again that we are “all created equal,” one group ends up with 20 times as much as another?

MLK’s dream was that his four young children would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” What are we supposed to think – that one group has twenty times as much character as another?

In the face of incredible numbers like these, you will still find right-wingers who insist that America is now a color-blind society (except for the scourge of “reverse racism”). But the numbers tell a different story. They suggest that America is not a color-blind society, but rather a racism-blind society.

And ask yourself: when has any elected official, ANY elected official, ever discussed this inconvenient truth, and tried to discern what should be done about it? Why is there a veil of silence over such a salient, central fact about the country we all share?

I went to a wonderful parade on Saturday, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. And if there is one thing that we know in Central Florida, it’s how to put on a parade; we have several every day. All those smiling, happy faces that I saw on Saturday.

And it’s not my job to rain on anyone’s parade. That’s why I’m saying this today, not yesterday, when we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. But here we are, 49 years later, his “four young children” as old as I am, and one of them already gone from us.

And I have to say, about that dream of equality that he had, it’s still just a dream.

Just a dream.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why . . . . I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Robert Kennedy, on dreams.

Tomgram: Sinking the Petrodollar in the Persian Gulf

2012-01-24T15:58:00.000+03:00

Tomgram: Sinking the Petrodollar in the Persian Gulf & a Quick History for the Uninformed

These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the U.S. and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The CIA and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country’s oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police. He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington’s “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf — until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs. While Khomeini & Co. were hardly Washington’s men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring. In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

1967: Under the U.S. “Atoms for Peace” program, started in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Shah is allowed to buy a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor for Tehran (which — call it irony — is still playing a role in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program). Defense Department officials did worry at the time that the Shah might use the “peaceful atom” as a basis for a future weapons program or that nuclear materials might fall into the wrong hands. “An aggressive successor to the Shah,” went a 1974 Pentagon memo, “might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran’s complete military dominance of the region.” But that didn’t stop them from aiding and abetting the creation of an Iranian nuclear program.

The Shah, like his Islamic successors, argued that such a program was Iran’s national “right” and dreamed of a country that would get significant portions of its electricity from a string of nuclear plants. As a 1970s ad by a group of American power companies put the matter: “The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world. Yet he’s building two nuclear plants and planning two more to provide electricity for his country. He knows the oil is running out — and time with it.” In other words, the U.S. nuclear program was the genesis for the Iranian one that Washington now so despises.

September 1980: Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein launches a war of aggression against Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. In the early 1980s, he becomes Washington’s man, our “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf, and we offer him our hand — and also “detailed information” on Iranian deployments and tactical planning that help him use his chemical weapons more effectively against the Iranian military. Oh, and just to make sure things turn out really, really well, the Reagan administration also decides to sell missiles and other arms to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran on the sly, part of what became known as the “ Iran-Contra Affair” and which almost brings down the president and his men. Success!

March 2003: Saddam Hussein is, by now, no longer our man in Baghdad but a new “Hitler” who, top Washington officials claim, undoubtedly has a nuclear weapons program that could someday leave mushroom clouds rising over U.S. cities. So the Bush administration launches a war of aggression against Iraq, which like Iran just happens to — in the words of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — “float on a sea of oil.” (Bush officials hope, in the wake of a “cakewalk” of a war to revive that country’s oil industry, to privatize it, and use it to destroy OPEC, driving down the price of oil on world markets.) Nine years later, a Shiite government is in power in Baghdad closely allied with Tehran, which has gained regional strength and influence thanks to the disastrous U.S. occupation.

So call it an unblemished record of a kind not easy to find. In more than 50 years, America’s leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn’t lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback. Now, another administration in Washington, after years of what can only be called a covert war against Iran, is preparing yet another set of clever maneuvers — this time sanctions against Iran’s central bank meant to cripple the country’s oil industry and crack open the economy followed by no one knows what.

And honestly, I mean, really, given past history, what could possibly go wrong? Regime change in Iran? It’s bound to be a slam dunk and if you don’t believe it, check out Pepe Escobar, that fabulous peripatetic reporter for Asia Times and TomDispatch regular. Tom

Review: The United States of Fear

2012-01-24T15:53:00.000+03:00

Rarely does a Cartoonist get such a positive review in the Foreign Policy Journals. Great!–KAS

Review: The United States of Fear

By Derek Bolton

Tom Engelhardt’s most recent work, The United Sates of Fear, offers a sobering analysis of U.S. policy in the post 9/11 period, painting a bleak assessment of what he labels an empire in decline. Through his straightforward prose, which avoids the daunting language often found in similar works, Engelhardt mounts a scathing attack on U.S. foreign policy, the military industrial complex, and the Washington politicians who chant the mantra of “national security.” Engelhardt believes that the United States has entered its own “Soviet Era,” having followed slowly in the former superpower’s footsteps since its demise in 1991. In contrast to what many analysts and members of the intelligence community have argued will be a slow decline leading to a soft landing for the world’s sole superpower, Engelhardt suggests that Americans should prepare for a much more grim demise. Through the efforts of successive administrations, the United States has sown the seeds of its own demise.

This drive toward self-destruction dates back to the 1990s, according to Engelhardt, when the United States initiated what he terms an “arms race of one,” a push by the military to ensure American military predominance over future decades. In the post-9/11 era, this rationale would become the foundation of Washington’s policies under George W Bush with the adoption of what Engelhardt calls the“100 percent doctrine,” or 100 percent assurance that the American people would be safe from terrorist threats. As a result, groups like al-Qaeda have managed to drain billions of U.S. dollars by simply representing perceived threats to U.S. security. The U.S. government has devoted enormous resources for increased security in airports, an ever-expanding drone and special operations program, boosting the intelligence community, and maintaining wars in Afghanistan Iraq.

Engelhardt maintains that the Obama administration has similarly fallen victim to this national security logic, which he dubs the “Tao of Terrorism,” by expanding Bush’s “Global War on Terror,” increasing drone activity, orchestrating a surge of troops in Afghanistan, and multiplying the number of monstrous overseas embassies and consulates. This all reflects what Engelhardt views as the “always more, never less” mentality within U.S. policy formation that further drains the treasury with little regard to the internal decay of U.S. infrastructure. Moreover this always-increase mentality has ultimately failed to combat threats. For example, the highest number of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan since the war started took place in 2010-11. In short, the U.S. national security system, for Engelhardt, is literally self-defeating.

Engelhardt’s approach is most certainly poignant and to the point. The work suffers at times from its origin as blog posts, for it is occasionally repetitive. Still, The United States of Fear provides an important balance to mainstream discourse, highlighting the extremely high cost of maintaining the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, the militarization of diplomatic efforts, and the need to reevaluate U.S. budget priorities.

“Fracking” and Halliburton’s role in it EXPLAINE

2012-01-24T15:51:00.000+03:00

Shale-Shocked
Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement

By Ellen Cantarow

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:25612.7432730142/rid:e18eb6e99d19542e5f31de5b03c4c153

This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.

Far below this rippling wealth there’s a vast, rocky netherworld called the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967 when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bomb to unleash it. That idea died, but it’s been reborn in the form of a technology invented by Halliburton Corporation: high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing — “fracking” for short.

Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale.

Up comes the methane — along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States. Surrounded by rumbling machinery, serviced by tens of thousands of diesel trucks, this nightmare technology for energy release has turned rural areas in 34 U.S. states into toxic industrial zones.

Take action by February 7, 2012--Obama Should not Scrap Protections for Endangered Species–SPEAK OUT, AMERICA!

2012-01-24T15:47:00.001+03:00

Obama Should not Scrap Protections for Endangered Species–SPEAK OUT, AMERICA!

Dear Kevin,

The Obama government is now accepting comments on a draft policy that would sharply limit the number of species given protection under the Endangered Species Act. The policy in question is a Bush-era throwback that ignores entire populations of imperiled species.

Unlike weaker wildlife laws, the Endangered Species Act does not require a species to be at risk of global extinction to qualify for protection; it must only be at risk in a “significant portion of its range.” This provision ensures species are protected before they’re past the point of no return; it fulfills the Act’s purpose of protecting the ecosystems on which endangered species depend.

Unfortunately the policy the Obama administration is proposing would ignore historic losses of habitat and reestablish the global-endangerment criterion — a standard that has already allowed the government to downplay the urgent plight of the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl.

Please take action now to tell President Obama’s Interior Department not to shut out animals and plants that desperately need the Act’s protection.

CLICK HERE to take action

EXAMPLE WRITING

Sample letter content:

Subject: Comment on Policy on Significant Portion of Range

I am writing to request that you rescind the proposed policy interpreting the phrase “significant portion of its range” (SPOIR), and replace it with a policy that will truly ensure that species are not lost from significant portions of range.

The draft policy specifies that a portion of the range of a species is significant only if “its contribution to the viability of the species is so important that without that portion, the species would be in danger of extinction.” This definition does not provide a meaningful distinction between when a species is endangered in a SPOIR and when a species is endangered throughout all its range, thereby rendering the SPOIR phrase superfluous and nullifying any conservation benefit of protecting species before they are threatened with worldwide extinction.

The draft policy further specifies that when considering whether a species is endangered in a SPOIR, only the current range of a species will be considered. Ignoring historic range when determining whether species are endangered in significant portions of range amounts to a shifting baseline, whereby species that experienced major declines are considered secure only because the analysis is limited solely to current range. Such an approach is clearly not in the interest of species conservation.

I ask that you rescind this anti-science, anti-common-sense draft policy and instead adopt one that considers the significance of both current and historic range and adopts a broad definition of significance that considers many factors when evaluating portions of range, including biological importance, ecological value and size.

Sincerely,

Please take action by February 7, 2012.

I don’t know how pervasive this scam is at the airport nor for which countries have been involved or identified with this scam–but watch out

2012-01-24T15:40:00.000+03:00

I don’t know how pervasive this scam is at the airport nor for which countries have been involved or identified with this scam–but watch out!

As noted from the headline above, this scam (described below) has occurred in some airports around the world. However, I do not know how up-to-date these vignettes and warnings are. Perhaps, some of you readers can share what you know.–KAS

PASSPORT AWARENESS AT THE AIRPORT
Please be Careful at the Airports, This is a well organized conspiracy by Immigration, Police, Customs and Airline staff with networking at all International Airports. Be careful when ever you give your passport to Immigration/Customs/Airline staff. The pass port can be easily tampered and can create trouble to you. They have found an easy way of making money. This is the way it works:

At the time of the passenger’s departure, if the passenger is not looking at the officer while he is stamping the exit, the officer very cleverly tears away one of the page from the passport. When the passenger leaves the immigration counter, the case is reported on his computer terminal with full details. Now all over the country they have got full details of the passenger with Red Flag flashing on the Passport number entered by the departure immigration officer. They have made their money by doing above.

On arrival next time, he is interrogated.

Subject to the passenger’s period of stay abroad, his income and standing etc., the price to get rid of the problem is settled by the Police and Immigration people. If someone argues, his future is spoiled because there are always some innocent fellows who think the honesty is the basis of getting justice.

Please advise every passenger to be careful at the airports. Whenever they hand over the passport to the counters of Airlines or immigration or the customs, they must be vigilant, should not remove eyes from the passport even if the officer in front tries to divert their attention.

Also, please pass this information to all friends, media men and important politicians. Every month 20-30 cases are happening all over the world to rob the passenger the minute he lands.
A similar case happened with Aramco’s Arifuddin in Pakistan . He was traveling with his family.
They had six passports. They got the visa of America and decided to go via Jeddah. When they reached the States, the page of the American visa on his wife’s passport was missing. At the time of departure from Pakistan it was there, the whole family had to return helplessly. On arrival at Pakistan , they were caught by the police and now it is over 2 months, they are running after the Police, Immigration officers and the Courts. On going in to details with him, he found out the following: One cannot imagine, neither can believe, that the Immigration dept can play such a nasty game to harass the innocent passengers.

All the airlines passengers must be aware of this conspiracy. Every month 15 to 20 cases are taking place, at each mentioned airport, of holding the passengers in the crime of tearing away the passport pages. On interviewing some of them, none of them was aware of what had happened. They don’t know why, when and who tore away the page from the middle of the passport. One can imagine the sufferings of such people at the hands of the immigration, police and the court procedures after that. The number of cases has increased in the last 2-3 years. People who are arriving at the immigration, they are questioned and their passports are being held and they have to go in for detailed interrogation. Obviously, the conspiracy started about 2 to 3 years ago, now the results are coming. Some of the Airline counter staff too is involved in this conspiracy.

SO MAKE SURE NOT TO LET THE PASSPORT GO OFF YOUR SIGHT EVEN FOR A SECOND. THE IMMIGRATION COUNTERS ARE HIGH AND TIRED AND SHORT PASSENGERS REALLY HAVE TO WORK HARD TO KEEP THE PASSPORT IN SIGHT, SPECIALLY AFTER THE EXHAUSTING JOURNEY, EVERYONE WANTS TO GET OVER WITH THE AIRPORT FORMALITIES AND GO HOME. SO BEING VIGILANT FOR AN EXTRA MINUTE WILL SAVE YOU A LIFE TIME OF MISERY. BEST OF LUCK IN YOUR TRAVELS.

KINDLY SEND THIS TO AS MANY OF YOUR INTENDING TRAVELERS AND FRIENDS ACROSS THE WORLD REQUEST THEM TO CHECK THE PASSPORT AT THE CHECKING COUNTERS AND BEFORE LEAVING THE AIRPORT.

I think at least have a full photo copy of Passport and Keep scan of your passport in your Hard drive or flash memory and i will advise same for ticket also
— from Gemma Gabuat Ursua.

Tell the SEC: Shine sunlight on corporate spending in elections!!

2012-01-24T15:32:00.000+03:00

Tell the SEC: Shine sunlight on corporate spending in elections!

Dear Kevin

Curb the Corporate Agenda of Activist CEOs!

Tell the SEC to Expose the Hidden Influence of Corporate Money!

CEOs of massive corporations are poised to secretly funnel millions of dollars from corporate coffers toward electing corporate candidates in 2012. Join our action to stop them now!

They want to keep their spending in the dark. Thankfully, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has the authority to expose their hidden influence. But the SEC isn’t going to act without public pressure.

Tell the SEC: Shine sunlight on corporate spending in elections.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission unleashed this flood of unaccountable corporate money. But the bulk of this money actually belongs to shareholders – mostly working people who have a 401k or similar retirement plan.

You may use the suggested language below without changing it. But if you write your own comment, it will be documented and read separately from those who use the sample language without revising it.

Note: Your comment and any other information you provide below will be displayed publicly on the SEC’s website or on www.regulations.gov.

EXAMPLE

Subject: Comment on File Number 4-637
Your Letter:

I am deeply concerned about the influence of corporate money on our electoral process.

In particular, I am appalled that, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, publicly traded corporations can spend investor’s money on political activity in secret.

I am writing to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their political spending.

Both shareholders and the public must be fully informed as to how much the corporation spends on politics and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Disclosures should be posted promptly on the SEC’s web site.

Thank you for considering my comment.

AFTER CARLSBERG GOES AFTER ITS WORKERS–ANOTHER BREWERY DOES THE SAME

2012-01-24T15:22:00.000+03:00

Grenada, an island in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, can be heaven for tourists but Grenada Breweries Company turned it into a hell for workers as 125 of them were locked out just before the Christmas on December 19, 2011.

CLICK to send a message to Grenada Breweries Company telling them to stop violating workers’ rights and end the lockout!

For more information, read the full story here.

NEW IUF News Service!

Click to subscribe to the new IUF News Service

Ron Oswald
General Secretary, IUF

International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF)

8, rampe du Pont-Rouge
1213 Petit Lancy, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 793 22 33
Fax: +41 22 793 22 38
web-site: www.iuf.org

EXAMPLE

To Andrew Norman Sagba,
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Grenada Breweries Ltd.

Dear Chairman Sagba,

The workers of your Company remain locked out since December 19, 2011 and are effectively being held hostage until they give up or amend the Profit Sharing arrangement guaranteed in the Collective Agreement signed by the company. This item has been in the Agreement since 1980 (22 years before you purchased majority shares in GBL).

I call on you to immediately end the lock-out of these workers and engage the Union in serious negotiations that will not jeopardise established and justified benefits for this longstanding workforce, some of whom have been working with your Company for thirty eight (38) years.

Yours sincerely,

FIDEL SPEAKS OUT

2012-01-24T15:04:00.000+03:00

World Peace Is Hanging By A Thread

By Fidel Castro

The political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all — regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons — are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world’s economy.

::::::::

Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had not seen him since 2006, more than five years ago, when he visited our country to participate in the 14th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries in Havana. During the summit, Cuba was elected for the second time as president of the organization for a three-year term.

I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara.

With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex.

During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms — which, in large part, they produce themselves — to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors.

In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind: “Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history.”

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire.

I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all — regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons — are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world’s economy.

The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction.

I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons.

They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated.

If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception.

However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world’s finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund.

Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, has suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work.

Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states: “The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank.”

During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that “We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures.” This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium.

Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that “China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran’s oil revenues, rejecting Washington’s sanctions on Tehran as overstepping…”

The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency: “The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years.”

On January 12, 2010: “Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital.”

On November 29, 2010: “Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes.” The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors.

On July 23, 2011: “Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten.”

On January 11, 2012 — the same day that Ahmadinejad traveled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana — scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, “a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran.” As in previous years “Iran once again accused the United States and Israel.”

The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence.

At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that “Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey.

“The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to “punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran.”

“NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention….This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey.”

“Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a “no-fly” zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev.”

News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region.

The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities.

In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people’s hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies…

“WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 — US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan ‘utterly deplorable.’ The video of the act was circulated in the Internet.

“‘I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable,’

“‘This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold.’”

In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt.

But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country’s borders have been killed by these bombs.

Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was “simply inhumane.” He asked for the US government “to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that “over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported”"

One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world.

Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives.

Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread?

Submitters Bio:

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban politician, one of the primary leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the Prime Minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976, and then the President of the Council of State of Cuba until his resignation from the office in February 2008. He is currently the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.

AMERICAN LABOR IS UNDER SIEGE AS 2012 DAWNS

2012-01-24T15:03:00.000+03:00

Americans, especially voters, are going to have to get wise to the fact that the wealthiest are mis-running the land. A spate of pro-American and pro-labor candidates need to be elected in 2012. The wealthy Koch brothers and other powerful and anti-American or anti-labor plutocrats and oligarchs have run the place with their money (and our money) for far too long.–KAS for Prez

More Lockouts as Companies Battle Unions

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times

America’s unionized workers, buffeted by layoffs and stagnating wages, face another phenomenon that is increasingly throwing them on the defensive: lockouts.

From the Cooper Tire factory in Findlay, Ohio, to a country club in Southern California and sugar beet processing plants in North Dakota, employers are turning to lockouts to press their unionized workers to grant concessions after contract negotiations deadlock. Even the New York City Opera locked out its orchestra and singers for more than a week before settling the dispute last Wednesday.

Many Americans know about the highly publicized lockouts in professional sports — like last year’s 130-day lockout by the National Football League and the 161-day lockout by the National Basketball Association — but lockouts, once a rarity, have been used in less visible industries as well.

“This is a sign of increased employer militancy,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. “Lockouts were once so rare they were almost unheard of. Now, not only are employers increasingly on the offensive and trying to call the shots in bargaining, but they’re backing that up with action — in the form of lockouts.”

The number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago. That is largely because labor unions’ ranks have declined and because many workers worry that if they strike they will lose pay and might also lose their jobs to permanent replacement workers.

Lockouts, on the other hand, have grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages, according to Bloomberg BNA, a Bloomberg subsidiary that provides information to lawyers and labor relations experts. Last year, at least 17 employers imposed lockouts, telling their workers not to show up until they were willing to accept management’s contract offer.

Perhaps nowhere is the battle more pitched than at American Crystal Sugar, the nation’s largest sugar beet processor.

Last summer, contract negotiations bogged down, with the company insisting that its workers agree to higher payments for health coverage, more outsourcing and many other concessions. Shortly after the 1,300 unionized workers — spread among five plants in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa — voted overwhelmingly to reject those demands, the company locked them out and hired replacement workers.

That was on Aug. 1, more than five months ago, and since then the workers and their families have been scrounging to make ends meet. Some face foreclosure and utility disconnection notices.

American Crystal has hired more than 900 replacement workers to keep its plants running. Federal law allows employers to hire such workers during a lockout, although they cannot permanently replace regular employees. Employers can pay the replacements lower wages, although as is the case with American Crystal, the companies sometimes need to offer higher wages and help pay for housing to attract replacements.

With many private-sector labor unions growing smaller and weaker, and with public-sector unions under attack in numerous states, some employers think the time is ideal to use lockouts, a forceful approach they were once reluctant to use.

Many employers, though, say they have little choice.

Robert Batterman, a labor lawyer who represents employers, said whether it was the N.F.L. or Sotheby’s, which locked out 43 art handlers in Manhattan last July, “the pendulum has swung too far toward the employees, and the employers are looking in these tight economic times to get givebacks.”

“Employers,” he continued, “are using lockouts because unions are reluctant to do what the employers consider reasonable in terms of compromising. Employers are looking to reset their collective bargaining relations.”

After being out of work since Aug. 1, Paul Woinarowicz, a warehouse foreman employed at American Crystal Sugar for 34 years, sees another rationale for lockouts.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/business/lockouts-once-rare-put-workers-on-the-defensive.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/business/lockouts-once-rare-put-workers-on-the-defensive.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

“I don’t know who invented the credit card, but I’d like to have a very serious talk with him”

2012-01-24T15:01:00.000+03:00

By Ron Hutchcraft

I don’t know who invented the credit card, but I’d like to have a very serious talk with him, because I’m not sure he helped any of us by thinking that this plastic “postponer” was going to help us. With a credit card you go to the store with $100 in cash, you get what you wanted, and you come out with $100 in your wallet. And it feels like, “Hey, that didn’t cost anything.” Wrong! Fantasy land! The bill will come…it always does. You postponed the payment, but you didn’t cancel it. Oh, and by postponing it, that purchase is actually going to cost you more. I think that’s what they call interest. The time lag between what you buy and what you pay can get you into big trouble.

I’m Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Credit Card Follies.”

Our word for today from the Word of God; it’s in Galatians 6:7-8. Familiar words, but words that may be right where you’re living right now. Listen, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

Now, why does this statement begin with “don’t be deceived”? Well, maybe it’s because it’s easy to think you’re getting away with your sin, because the consequences, the reaping don’t come immediately. It’s like a credit card. You get what you want to get, do what you want to do, and then there’s a time lag. Because it doesn’t happen immediately – those consequences – you say, “Hey, I got away with it.” Well that’s credit card follies. The passing of time until the consequences come will not lessen the price tag you pay for that sin; in fact, it will make it cost you more.

The farmer doesn’t see immediate results from sowing seed, whether he sows corn or poison ivy. But it will come up. Doing what’s right and what’s wrong have this in common. When you’re doing it, you can’t see where that choice is going to lead. When you have a sexual relationship before marriage, you can’t see the pain and the loss that it will cause in your marriage, but it will.

When you build a pattern of lying, you might get away with the lie; you can’t see what that’s going to do to your reputation, but it will. When you extend a loving hand to someone who’s been your enemy, you can’t see the healing and the blessing that might come from that, but it will.

Since we can’t see where choices lead until it’s too late, do we live by the throw of the dice? Well, that’s where the Bible comes in. It tells us where our decisions lead. When you sow to your sinful nature, it will destroy things. It’s gonna happen! When you sow to things that please the Holy Spirit, you’re going to reap things that will last forever. It’s gonna happen!
Join the Conversation

God’s Word has never been wrong. Oh, some have thought that they’ve cheated the consequences because they didn’t happen immediately. Well, neither do the credit card charges or a farmer’s crops, but they always come. Save yourself a lot of heartache. Believe what God says is going to happen…good or bad. Don’t deceive yourself by thinking you’ll get away with your sin, or that right choices won’t come back to you with interest.

If you’re sowing sin, God’s bill is in the mail. If you’re sowing right living, God’s check is in the mail.

http://www.hutchcraft.com/a-word-with-you/your-personal-power/credit-card-follies-6531?utm_campaign=831a207f23-AWWY+6531&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Ron+Hutchcraft+Ministries%2C+Inc.

Is Obama Insane? “Obama to Grant Banks Robosigning Immunity in Showdown With Breakaway AGs”

2012-01-24T15:00:00.000+03:00

By Gustav Wynn
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-to-Grant-Banks-Robos-by-Gustav-Wynn-120121-502.html

Despite months of outcry, the Obama administration is drawing closer to a deal with the five biggest mortgage banks to settle charges of robo-signing and foreclosure fraud. Led by NY AG Eric Schneiderman, six rogue AGs have defied the “50 state” panel, DOJ and HUD, insisting on carrying forward investigations into forged documents and improper procedures but bank-friendly authorities are seeking a more bank-friendly approach.

::::::::

Without considering the guilt or innocence of the five major banks involved, the Obama Administration is poised to let Wall Street off the hook for foreclosures where as many as one million borrowers were “harmed” by robo-signing practices.

In a three-author article, the Wall Street Journal was abuzz over the impending settlement which will grant immunity for innumerable counts of alleged robo-signing in exchange for loan “haircuts”. Quoting HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, the Journal glowingly touts the deal as the largest principal reduction of the crisis, promising a million borrowers a share of some $19 billion in relief on their loans:

“As part of the proposed settlement, Mr. Donovan said, a “number of families” who were harmed by foreclosure-processing mistakes would be directly compensated by banks.”

The banks would also agree to reforms, as part of the practice of “deferred prosecution” that Obama has continued from the Bush era. Back-room wrangling between Wall Street giants and the SEC or DOJ have shown great tolerance of the reckless behavior that drove the US economy into the ditch.

With banks paying fines that represent small portions of their annual profit totals, the settlements have been considered a nicely manageable cost of doing business. But with a preponderance of industry flacks winding up regulating themselves, public outrage hit new highs this fall.

Finally, we saw NY District Court judge Jed Rakoff change course, infuriated that courts and federal agencies have simply stopped bothering to determine whether or not crimes were committed as they approved a profusion of immunity deals. As a result, Citigroup was instructed to prove their innocence in court risking a lutitude of investor lawsuits should they lose.

Is Anybody Here Sane?

NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been leading the charge to conduct thorough investigations before negotiating away the people’s right to prosecute. Since last August he has opposed Obama’s proposed settlement with Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial for robo-signing, an unauthorized practice that had become so common, authorities stopped caring.

The Revolving Door at Holder’s DOJ

As it happens, four of the five banks involved in the settlement were clients of the DC law firm where both Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, the current head of the DOJ’s criminal division, were partners. Reuters and Huffington Post report here that Holder opposed investigations into robosigning despite receiving ample evidence of forged or suspect documents going back to 2010, the same year deputies under both Holder and Breuer went back to work for to the same law firm.

Brokered by a 50-state panel of Attorneys General, the robosigning settlement talks ground to a halt when Schneiderman objected to the immunity provisions, seeking to preserve NY’s rights to criminally prosecute, but also trying to tie together loan origination and securitization fraud allegations onto the same inquiry.

Upholding the rule of law is our best weapon in preventing future economic catastrophe, strongly dissuading criminal or reckless activity, seeking full reparations for victims instead of partial reimbursements and policing an industry plagued by government-industry incest and pay-for-play at the highest levels.

For taking his job seriously, NY’s Eric Schneiderman was booted from the panel, but was later joined by AGs from five other states, most of whom have filed related lawsuits: Kamala Harris (CA), Martha Coakley (MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Jack Conway (KY) and Beau Biden (DE).

These rogue AGs met January 10, to share notes with some nine other AGs said to be upset with the slow pace of the federal negotiations and the tin ear of the Obama administration. Attending were representatives from NH, HI, MO, MI, MD, MN, OR and MT. Biden’s Deputy AG Ian McConnel suggested the “50 state” AG panel was not truly representing the concerns of all the Attorneys General being asked to sign off on the deal. Follow up meetings were also in the planning, according to Huffington Post coverage.

It’s possible news of an impending settlement came down because the administration felt Schneiderman, Harris and the rogue AGs were leading a growing exodus of other AGs. The stepped-up timetable may be forcing dozens of AGs to hurriedly pick sides in a showdown.

AM radio reports in NYC today suggested New York might ‘lose it’s share of the pie’ because Schneiderman was not onboard. The WSJ spin is palpable, laughably describing the development as a “settlement of an investigation” although no investigation actually has taken place (can you ‘settle’ an investigation?). The WSJ would have New Yorkers believe we are lucky that the banks are offering back a fraction of the money taken through deceptive practice.

From a law and order perspective, Obama’s settlement deal is horrid but it also just looks bad – the Obama administration clearly has favored banks from the outset – and seeks from them the corporate campaign donations that are expected to shatter records this fall.

Schneiderman Finds an Outspoken Ally in DC

But Schneiderman may be armed with new insights after his collaboration with Steve Linick, the Inspector General at the Federal Housing Finance Authority. Also “gone rogue”, Linick has had the audacity to investigate banks after the 2008 collapse in connection with their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dealings.

In October, Linick raised eyebrows reporting Fannie & Freddie knew of rampant problems with foreclosure methods as far back as 2003. Quoting Financial Times [paywall], Firedoglake revealed Schneiderman was given FHFA’s finding on a dozen big banks obtained during a wide probe into specious securitization practices.

Linick has been stymied from making criminal referrals because the Obama/Holder DOJ has been so lax in prosecutions, but the FHFA also had a high bar of proof needed to charge fraud at the federal level, because intent must be proven. By contrast, Schneiderman needs only to prove fraud happened, invoking the Martin Act which grants state authorities greater powers because it was designed to protect the NY state pension fund from potential problems before they cause ruin.

The financial industry and their media mouthpieces now look to restore the banks’ advantage in an unbelievably tangled mess, where faulty paperwork could give homeowners decisive leverage in negotiations.

The surging Occupy movement has been raising awareness of unfair foreclosure practices and the deleterious effect of money in politics, attracting younger activists to the cause. By December, almost 50 Members of Congress responded, backing a bill seeking immediate investigations by state AGs instead of this immunity deal. About a year earlier, Maxine Waters led 31 members of Congress in urging the administration to investigate the robosigners, but was summarily ignored.

Now on the campaign trail, Obama is promising to restore fairness to a middle class besieged by lopsided policies, but the President was criticized for lip service and a “show” crackdown in recent weeks, going after CEOs at Fannie/Freddie while blatantly overlooking Wall Street’s criminal enterprises.

For New Yorkers concerned with this issue, we recommend you contact Schneiderman’s office at http://ny.ag.gov or find your state AG here, but above all, write President Obama who “is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history”.
Cross-posted at NYaltnews.com.

[Update] For more texture and background, see my comment below.
[Update II] While updates on radio news continued to announce a deal is getting closer, a new WSJ piece entitled “Obama faces Heat From Left on ‘Robosigning’ Talks” quotes lead negotiator AG Tom Miller of Iowa as backing off, saying “we won’t reach a settlement any time this week”.

Noting both Sen. Sherrod Brown and MoveOn.org has taken up the cause in petitions and protests of Obama campaign sites (!), the WSJ seems to have overlooked Brown’s point – the settlement reportedly will allow banks to use write-downs to transfer some of the losses to investors, including state pension funds:

“The proposed principal reduction program must focus on banks settling with their own money, rather than shifting their financial liability to Private Label Securities (PLS) trusts.”

Naked Capitalism also fleshes out this investor-fleecing plot, adding other valuable ruminations – for example describing overtures Obama may be making to “favored” state AGs to ensure they don’t join the Schneiderman Six.

Tom Perrelli, the #3 at DOJ intimately involved in the talks announced he will be stepping down in March.

Submitters Bio:

(OpEdNews Contributing Editor since October 2006) Inner city schoolteacher from New York, mostly covering media manipulation. I put election/finance reform ahead of all issues but also advocate for fiscal conservatism, ethics in journalism and curbing overpopulation. I enjoy open debate, history, the arts and hope to adopt a third child. Gustav Wynn is a pseudonym, but you knew that. =–> Users may repost my articles, provided it links to the original.

How Newt Gingrich Saved the Military Industrial Complex

2012-01-24T14:59:00.000+03:00

“The allegations [by the wealthy DOD-addicted contractors],” Sullivan wrote, “had little substance, but Newt Gingrich, representing a headquarters district of Lockheed Martin, led the Republican attack.

How Newt Gingrich Saved the Military Industrial Complex

By David Swanson

The idea of economic conversion, of retooling and retraining pieces of the military industrial complex to build what other wealthy nations have (infrastructure, energy, education, etc.) converged with the end of the Cold War two decades back.

::::::::

The idea of economic conversion, of retooling and retraining pieces of the military industrial complex to build what other wealthy nations have (infrastructure, energy, education, etc.) converged with the end of the Cold War two decades back. It was time for a peace dividend as well as a little sanity in public spending. Among the cosponsors of a bill to begin economic conversion in the late 1980s was a guy by the name of Leon Panetta.

Standing in the way was Congressman Newt Gingrich (Republican, Lockheed Martin).

As Mary Beth Sullivan recounts ( http://MIC50.org ),

“On the first day of the opening of the 101st Congress, Speaker [Jim] Wright convened a meeting of members who had proposed economic conversion legislation, and their aids. The purpose was to ensure that all proposals be joined into one, and that this legislation be given priority. To dramatize the importance of this bill, it would be given number H.R. 101.”

Seymour Melman, a leading proponent of the bill recounts what happened:

“Supporters of such an initiative did not reckon with the enormous power of those opposed to any such move toward economic conversion. In the weeks that followed, these vested interests waged a concerted and aggressive campaign in Congress and the national media to bring down Jim Wright over allegations of financial misconduct.”

“The allegations,” Sullivan writes, “had little substance, but Newt Gingrich, representing a headquarters district of Lockheed Martin, led the Republican attack. Sadly, they won. According to Melman, ‘Their media campaign drowned out any further discussion of economic conversion ” A historic opportunity had been destroyed.”

The military industrial complex survived and thrived and is growing even to this moment with plans to grow on into the foreseeable future, even as we’re falsely told it’s being cut back. Our nation trails others in the areas of education, health, retirement security, life expectancy, infant mortality, environmental sustainability, poverty, and — in so far as anyone has measured it — happiness. Instead we have a military that costs as much as the rest of the world’s put together, and much of the rest of the world’s is purchased from our weapons makers. We have aircraft carriers, bombs, missiles, helicopters, bases, drones, and billionaires to make up for our crappy schools and lousy trains.

While I understand how exciting Newt Gingrich’s sex life may be, there may be other things he has to answer for as well.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Newt-Gingrich-Saved-th-by-David-Swanson-120121-870.html

Submitters Website: http://davidswanson.org

Submitters Bio:

David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org

NEWS FROM MISSOURI–”When being #1 is not so hot!!!”

2012-01-24T14:57:00.000+03:00

Subject: When being #1 is not so hot

Friend –
Tell Our GOP Opponents to Demand Disclosure on Outside Spending If you watch TV sporting events in America, you always see those giant foam hands with the index finger pointing skyward, with a delirious fan shouting “We’re Number 1!”
Unfortunately, in this case we are number one. My campaign for the Senate is now the number one target of the GOP Super PACs, masterminded by Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and Lord only knows who else. They have spent more money against me than any other Democratic senator in the country.
Two years ago today, the Supreme Court issued one of its most misguided decisions in Citizens United v. FEC, opening the floodgates to massive, unaccountable, and untraceable election spending.
Nowhere is the effect of that decision more evident than in our race for U.S. Senate in Missouri. It is insulting to voters to feed them garbage from unknown sources, and expect those distortions to win out, just because they have so much money.
It’s damaging to our democratic process, and it needs to stop.
So today I’m making it known to anyone who wants to support our campaign or attack our opponents: I demand that you either disclose who funds your ads or keep them off the air.
I’m also sending a letter to our potential Republican opponents, asking them to join me in making this call to any outside groups on their side.
I’d love to have your support when I deliver the message to the Republican candidates. Click here to add your name to my letter now and tell them to demand disclosure for all outside ad spending.
There’s a fundamental issue of trust here. Democracy is about public accountability.
People who have something to say to influence an election must say it openly and publicly.
So if you’re watching TV, and you see one of these ads come on that doesn’t tell you who funded it — don’t believe it. Don’t believe anything it says, no matter who it’s supporting or opposing, even if it seems like it’s trying to help me.
Our campaign doesn’t need that kind of help, and neither do my opponents’ campaigns.
That’s why I’m asking my potential opponents to join me and repudiate anonymous, unaccountable outside spending now. Click here to join me, too.
In the two years since Citizens United became the law of the land, it’s already shown why it’s a grave threat to our democracy. We must keep fighting for what’s right.
Thank you for your support,
Claire McCaskill

SOJOURNERS asked me to ask all of you in America…..

2012-01-24T14:55:00.000+03:00

Dear Kevin,

When we’re choosing a president or examining a candidate, it’s fair to ask about their moral compass – how their values affect their decision-making and policy positions. What we shouldn’t do, however, is require that everyone believe in the same doctrine or espouse the same religious traditions.

In the past several months, we’ve seen Christians launch increasingly inappropriate attacks on candidates. From the misguided to the outrageous, here are a few of them:

Rick Perry ran ads stating the current administration had declared a “war on religion.”(1)
Pastor Robert Jeffress attacked Mitt Romney during the primaries by calling Mormonism a “cult.”(2)
Randall Terry, a radical conservative activist, has released ads telling Christians that “when you support Obama … it’s as if your vote is an attack on Jesus himself.”(3)
Mike O’Neal, Kansas House Speaker, sent an email to his Republican colleagues saying that his prayer for President Obama is Psalm 109:8, which reads: “May his days be few; and another take his place of leadership.”(4)

Christians often disagree. Sometimes we become passionate and argue. But these tactics go too far.

Will you sign the pledge below to model a different way to engage faith during this election season?

The Constitution guarantees that there is no religious test in this country, and it needs to stay that way.

We believe, if these attacks are left unchecked, it will only get worse as the election continues. What our country needs is pastors and Christian leaders who are willing to lead by example and show a better path for political engagement.

We need 1,000 faith leaders to sign the pledge so we can get this message across to the national media.

The media has focused on evangelical leaders who consider themselves kingmakers, but we know that there’s an alternative Christian voice in this country.

But we can’t do it alone – we need your partnership. Will you add your name?

In peace,

The Sojourners Team

————————————————–

1 Rick Perry 2012, ‘Strong’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAJNntoRgA

2 ‘Mormonism Is A Cult, But A Theological Cult’, The Huffington Post, 11 October 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/robert-jeffress-mormonism-_n_1004093.html

3 ‘Randall Terry in graphic anti-abortion political ads: Voting for Obama is attacking Jesus Christ’, God Discussion, 6 December 2011 http://www.goddiscussion.com/86373/randall-terry-in-graphic-anti-abortion-political-ads-voting-for-obama-is-attacking-jesus-christ/

4 ‘Mike O’Neal, Kansas House Speaker, Emails Prayer Some Say Wishes For Obama’s Death’, The Huffington Post, 13 January 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/13/mike-oneal-obama-death-prayer-psalm-109_n_1205059.html

(Part 2) TWO LARGE SCALE ENGLISH TEACHER EXCHANGE PROGRAMS COMPARED: in JAPAN (JET) & in TAIWAN (FET)

2012-01-23T16:24:00.002+03:00

By Kevin Stoda

This is the second of two articles evaluating the Japanese and Taiwanese English Exchange teacher programs from a foreign exchange teacher’s perspective.
As a lifelong international educator, at this junction in their educational development, I am particularly worried about the tendency in East Asian countries to subcontract the incoming- exchange-teacher position to a third party who does not have enough stake (or even significant power of persuasion) in areas of the long-term successes, goals, or overall achievements of these international exchange teacher projects.
The first article I wrote on this topic was entitled “Comparison of Two Large Foreign English Teacher and Internationalization Projects in East Asia” (2011). In this original work, I reviewed some milestones in both Japan and Taiwan concerning their foreign exchange teacher projects and noted some instances of successes in both projects.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Comparison-of-Two-Large-Fo-by-Kevin-Anthony-Stod-110417-661.html
In addition, I reviewed some of the shortcoming of both the Japanese and Taiwanese projects’ s—but to a limited degree.
In this article, I will specifically look at the limits imposed on the projects’ attainments and successes which are caused by the growing negative tendency in Asia for educational institutions and governments to outsource responsibility for the incoming foreign exchange teachers. This outsourcing diminishes local sense of efficacy and reduces the participation of stakeholder in the exchange teacher projects.

INTRODUCTION
At the time that the first writing on this topic was published, information on the FET program in Taiwan (written in English) was sparse--and sadly remains surprisingly sparse. However, one important new addition on the internet has been the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan’s page:
http://fetit.eng.ntnu.edu.tw/
The Taiwanese MOE on this site has made very clear what the goals for would-be-exchange-teachers would be. Namely, the Foreign Exchange Teacher project seeks to ensure that:
(1)--Participating teachers will grow professionally as a result of the exchange of instructional practices and strategies
(2)--Students in Taiwan will gain first-hand knowledge, appreciation, and understanding of the English language
(3)--All participating countries benefit from this collaborative relationship, which [should] enhances international awareness and understanding
In many ways, these three modest goals of the MOE in Taiwan are fairly similar to those of the Assistant Language Teacher and JET programs in Japan and the English Program in Korea (EPIK) projects. (There is also another similar project in China called the NET or Native English Teacher program.)
Specifically, the older projects—the JET and other ALT(Assistant Language Teacher) projects--in Japan which date back into the 1980s were conceived by several different ministries and regional organizations working with each other in and through various Japanese government agencies. These groups of intergovernmental actors were determined to create a long term project and work in coordination with one another to improve Japanese foreign relations and image in the world.
In short, Japan of the 1980s set out to create the world's largest teachers exchange project, the JET Programme, a project largely focused on goals of related to improving international communication. The main path breaker for these foreign exchange teacher projects in Japan today continues to be the JET programme, which still “seeks to foster ties between Japanese citizens (mainly youth) and JET participants at the person-to-person level.”

JETs and ALTs
According to JET websites today, “The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme aims to promote grass roots internationalization at the local level by inviting young overseas graduates to assist in international exchange and foreign language education in local governments, boards of education and elementary, junior and senior high schools throughout Japan.”
As part of the methodology of achieving these grass-roots goals, the “JET participants are placed in contracting organizations throughout Japan. Contracting organizations consist of 47 prefectural and 18 designated city governments, individual city, town and village governments, and some private schools. JET participants sign their terms and conditions with their contracting organization and as such, they are under the jurisdiction of the local authority which employs them. CLAIR implements the JET Programme at the national level in conjunction with three Japanese Ministries.”
The number of countries sending participants to Japan had risen over the years-- from about one thousand in 1986 to nearly 10, 000 participants in the late 1990s. However, in 2011 the number of participants in the JET Programme had dipped to 4,330 participants (from 39 countries).
One reason there are less JETs today is that many communities in Japan have been allowing private recruiters to vet and hire the incoming assistant language teacher (ALT) or CIRs (Coordinators of International Relations, who must be fluent in Japanese). In addition, a small number of ALTs and CIRs are hired directly through local governments or cities.
The JET Programme is a government sponsored program of Japan. It is functions as the result of a group of bodies that have created a semi-permanent intragovernmental organization that still supports the original goals of the project as established three decades ago. Major JET stakeholders include:
--The Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR), which administers the JET Programme in cooperation with local government organizations;
--Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC);
--the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA);
--Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/organisations/index.html
Moreover, various Japanese school districts at the prefectural-, city and township levels are also actively involved with JETs on a daily basis, too.
According to the official JET website, “CLAIR provides support for both JET participants and their contracting organizations by arranging each JET participant's arrival and holding orientation seminars, as well as providing counseling and distributing a wide variety of essential resource materials and information.” This subcontracting of duties undertaken by CLAIR and various ministries, however, does not involve long-term commitment and contractual relationships that the hiring of private ALTs in Japan, (FETs) Taiwan, and other East Asian countries do. In short, JET participants are treated as local hires in many ways.
Thus, many JETs feel themselves welcomed into their new schools (and are expected to work in a school community like new employees for whom the employers and townsmen in the community should feel a sense of responsible to oversee and to provide a positive work- and cross-cultural exchange). In short, when a new JET arrives, certain staff members, usually a Japanese teacher of English, will be assigned to take care of and help the new JET settle in. These mentors (or kohai) will try and translate important documents and, upon request, will translate the contents of daily office meetings for the JET. They will also provide advise and counsel for those coming to live and work in Japan. Now that the JET project is so old many advanced forms of support have been developed for new JETs and continuing JETs.
A look at the home page for JET will reveal just a few of the many support projects, newsletters, and programs that JET, its participants, and organizers have spawned over the past twenty-six year.
http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/organisations/index.html
There are numerous magazines, journals, newsletters, chatrooms, blogs, and other means of communication and venues of introspection. There are organizations of volunteers who create movies, lesson plans and are involved in Japan, Japanese culture and abroad in many different ways. This contrasts starkly with the lack of such venues, the lack of such publications and the lack of information provided to new FETs arriving in Taiwan—more than 8 years after the programs creation by the MOE in Taiwan.
On the other hand, in Japan, there are many Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) who do not arrive through the JET scheme. However, they are still vaguely expected to function indirectly in a school community similar to the (current) four thousand JETs. However, the ALTs with JET affiliation are actually not contracted by any public or private school. Instead, the ALTs are employed through recruiters. Thus, from their arrival onwards, there is less of a sense of community ownership and greater sense of distance between work place, source of paycheck, and community than is often the case for those whos are in a JET setting, i.e. where some—albeit at times vague—sense of community ownership for the JET is more likely to prevail.
It is not clear how many “ALTs without JET (or national governmental) affiliation” are functioning in Japan. However, what is certainly clear is that ALTs who are not working in Japan through the JET Programme are often receiving less pay and benefits than are ALTs who do work with JET. In all, such ALTs receive 10 to 20 percent less remuneration than do ALTs hired through the national scheme. I suspect that the pay scales chosen by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan for new FETs is similar to that of ALTs in Japan who are not working in the JET scheme. In other words, salary for FETs initially are quite low as compared to what JETs—many of whom have no teaching degree in their homeland—receive in Japan.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE TEACHER IN TAIWAN
According to the FETIT (Foreign English Teachers in Taiwan) website, the general job description of an FET (Foreign English Teacher) is as follows. The “participating teacher will assist in English language teaching of the school he/she is assigned to, including providing English language instruction to students and teachers, preparing teaching materials, offering assistance in designing effective lesson plans, and participating in activities related to English language education. Each participating teacher's job content may vary in emphasis and proportion from one contracting school to another.”
In addition, “[e]ach participating teacher will work five days a week, eight hours a day. Total instructional hours will not exceed 24 classes (for elementary school teachers) or 22 classes (for junior high school teachers) per week. Class duration is around 40 ~ 50 minutes.”
Before explaining (a) how these duties compare to the expectations in Japan for ALTs and JETs and (b) how these duties be carried about differently among schools within Taiwan--where FETs are actually employed--, I should note that I worked as an ALT (through JET) in rural Niigata prefecture from 1992-1994 and 16 years later worked in Taiwan on the most remote island from the main island for 10 months as an FET.
In Taiwan there are almost no direct local hires working as a FET. Likewise, almost everyone teaching as a FET in Taiwan is hired through a private recruiting agency. In short, in terms of hiring and paycheck, the FET positions resemble the role of privately hired ALTs in Japan. (The major exception is that the money allocated for the FET’s salary are paid for directly from a budget given each school by the MOE, but in most cases the hiring process for the FET almost entirely circumvents any local school decision-maker & any other ministry official who could or should otherwise take ownership for the hire.) From the outset, the local community—or communities--thus has little awareness as to how much stake they should or could have for the FET. They have outsourced the hiring process.
Because the JET in Japan is limited to three years of total employment, the local Japanese teachers of English see the (ALT or) JET as less of a threat to his or her long-term employment. This can be contrasted with Taiwan where reluctance to hire FETs has been the result of labor issues between national and local teachers’ groups and the MOE. One reason for this is that there is fear that a foreigner will take a local Taiwanese’s job away from him.
This fear by local teachers is partially present because the FET program is not an intra-governmental organization--as is the case in Japan. The FET program is run almost entirely at the beck-and-call of the MOE, and local authorities do not even pay a penny (or a Yuan) for the Foreign Exchange Teacher. The FET is thus not necessarily seen by teachers and local administrators as part-and-parcel of a great national and international project involving the future of Taiwan, i.e. in terms of building better foreign and international relations. (This is to be contrasted with the foreign ministry and local authorities in Japan’s involvements with planning and carrying out JET for nearly three decades now.)
It should be noted, however, that, in Taiwan, teachers and educational administrators are not prohibited from striking. Thus, they hold less national political clout than in some countries, so, due to the lack of control at the national and regional levels, individual teachers, teacher organizations, and their local allies in find themselves often in an adversarial position with the MOE. Local Taiwanese officials and teachers, hence, appropriately do what they can to protect local teaching positions. This means that the newcomer FET may find him- or herself hardly integrated into the community in which he or her lives, i.e. as compared to similar cases in Japan, i.e. where intra-communal or intra-governmental cooperation is older and more common than in Taiwan.
NOTE: Some of the secretiveness and go-it-alone mentality of ministries and local schools in Taiwan may have to do with the fact that the country was under martial law for 4 decades (which ended starting in the late 1980s), and fuller democratization of national and local institutions needs to occur before trust can be built or rebuilt across the land. In other words, the country of Taiwan is still sometimes in a siege-mentality and circling-the-wagons comes naturally, i.e. before intra-governmental cooperation often does. This situation has delayed Taiwan’s international relations offensives to lag for decades. This is because an anti-foreigner spirit can raise its head easily; so, there is thus less playroom for a new-comer to move into a community and help “internationalize” it. (This can only change over time and with more activity on the local school and community’s part, i.e. many still don’t see a need to internationalize any faster than they are.)

MY ROLE as a FET
I was assigned to a work role which fairly well fit the minimal description as outlined by the FETIT website above. I taught in both elementary schools and junior highs—mostly in a team teaching situation, as I did when I taught in Japan in the early 1990s. However, as an established instructor, I was also eventually able to plan and lead classes more—often teaching on my own by the end of the second semester.
Likewise, as in Japan, I saw my work to be similar to that of “a butterfly”. I would regularly observe, use, try-out, and take good ideas from one classroom and one teaching situation and use them in another classroom or in another school with a different colleague and a different set of students on a weekly basis.
In addition, similar to when I was in Japan, I was partially supported in running some of my own language contests. (See link below for an example of such a contest.)
http://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/proposal-a-conversation-contest-for-non-english-language-immersion-programs/
As indicated above, in Japan from 1992-1994 , I had seldom taught lessons by myself as a JET. The program I worked on there at that time involved a greater focus on improving methods of high school English teachers. Many of these teachers were hyper-test-focused instructors as is or was the case in Asia (for millennia already, i.e. dating back to Confucian’s era0 .
http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2011/05/continued-lack-of-testing-with.html
In contrast, by the 2010-2011 period in Taiwan, a decade of English TV programs and the spread of the internet had made my job of teaching more communicative-and fun English lessons easier. These motivating kinds of ESL lessons are the staple to which Taiwan elementary schools and young teaching staff are striving to provide during the first 6 years of school for their children.
Sadly, however, the local teachers’ organizations and administrators at the junior high school level were not as supportive of fun English and English immersion. Of my English teaching colleagues, the junior high schools felt that normally only the elite students could or should focus beyond what standardized testing required.
This meant for me that as the final exams approached at the end of the terms and at the end of each school year, I saw less and less of older and weaker students—who were, instead, asked to cram for the exams instead of meeting with me in or out of class. In this aspect, I felt like I was back in the old Japanese rural high schools of the 1980s and 1990s, i.e. before the JET Programme had forever changed language delivery in that East Asian country.

The third article on this topic will be concerning: “CONTRACTORS & SEMI-ADVERSARIAL NEGLECT”

NOTES
Foreign English Teacher in Taiwan, http://fetit.eng.ntnu.edu.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=62
“The goals of the JET Programme”, http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/introduction/goals.html
“Three Types of JET Positions”, http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/introduction/positions.html
“Welcome to the JET Programme”, http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/introduction/index.html
“Who supports JET?”, http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/organisations/index.html

Who or what is the biggest impediment to jobs in America in 2012?

2012-01-23T11:04:00.000+03:00

Who or what is the biggest impediment to jobs in America in 2012?

–Barack Obama and his cronies
-China and some other countries
–Reaganomics and its adherents
-Republicans**
–Tea Party and its Candidates
-anti-social contract capitalism *
–capitalism itself
-socialist tendencies or welfare state

*I want to make an extrapolation to one of the options above, namely “anti-social contract capitalism “.

Prior to the end of the Cold War there were several third way alternatives to super free-market capitalism advocated by Ronald Reagan and the Chicago School of Economists in the USA as THE STANDARD for capitalism for this planet Earth.

One of these “capitalism with a human face models” was prevalent in central and northern European countries. There are remnants of this capitalism still around the globe today in societies which still take seriously contracts–i.e. social contracts between state, its people, and the social and political economies of those states.

With the collapse of communism and the rise of of financial- and corporate- “social-irresponsible” capitalism from the late 1970s onwards, many of these states, for example, Germany, stopped teaching corporate responsibility for society in schools and universities.

Now, in Germany, and in most other lands, social contracts and corporate responsibility to the state and the people making up that union have been discontinued to a large degree . In the USA, it has gotten worse than in other places because the idea of social responsibility for corporations and businesses were never seriously taught there, i.e. not as an American ideal of state, nation nor people–at least not since the 1940s.

In other words, there were once-upon-a-time in many countries on this planet offering prior to 1980 a plethora of options to the kind of capitalism we have been being spoon-fed (to digest) by Western media and poor economic and social education in our schools.

If capitalism is worth saving in the long run, it will need to contain and respect a social contract–one that promotes employment and sustainable environments for work living and raising our children.

** I want to state that the poll was inspired as is by the Republican candidates for president debating this past week in South Carolina. One candidate got a lot of public support for his claim that Obama is responsible for the lack of jobs in America.

Take Poll at http://www.opednews.com/Poll/Who-or-what-is-the-biggest-by-Kevin-Anthony-Stod-120121-202.html

OMAN TODAY, AMERICA YESTERDAY–LET’S TALK LABOR

2012-01-22T15:27:00.001+03:00

OMAN TODAY, AMERICA YESTERDAY–LET’S TALK LABOR

When I watch cartoon movies, like AN AMERICAN TAIL, or more serious films, such as GANGS OF NEW YORK, one finds the same tale of exploited immigrants–old and young.

A recent article in the Oman Newspaper, THE WEEK, shares several similar tales of labor in Oman today working under dangerous conditions and trying to make it in a new place and time. The issues, needs, and reality of global labor need to be taken to heart in Oman, in the USA, and elsewhere across the globe.

In the meantime, read this insightful piece (article below entitled HIGH STAKES) on the Middle East and emigres.–KAS

High Stakes
by Rajarshi Aditya Chaudhuri

Mohammed is one of the many workers who can be seen working on the many buildings coming up in the capital without the necessary safety gear on. “I was given a hard hat by my employer, but no one on the site really wears those as it gets quite hot during the day,” said Mohammed. There were also no harnesses to ensure that when Mohammed lost balance, he would not free fall to the ground two floors below. “We don’t really have any harnesses on the site; I don’t think I have ever really used one before,” he said.

As a young boy growing up in rural Bangladesh, Tazim Ershad knew from a very young age that he wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps and become an electrician. “I used to follow him around and that is how I learnt my trade.” However, as soon as he reached Oman, he found that his brother’s training was not going to help him much in this country. He recently suffered severe second-degree burns to his arms and lower body which resulted in him being out of work for two weeks.

Tazim’s situation is even more dire because, unlike Mohammed, he did not even get any help with his medical bills from his employer despite this being required by part three, article 33 of the Omani Labour Law.

This law requires an employer to cover such medical expenses of employees, especially if the accident takes place on the job. However, due to Tazim’s pseudo-legal work status, he could not avail this provision of the law. “I am associated with a couple of different sub-contracting firms who utilise my services whenever they get a new job. Since I don’t work for any one particular employer, none of them is willing to pay for my medical expenses.”

The lack of proper training and safety measures at work sites is something that has become a common sighting. Smaller sub-contracting firms hire expatriate workers like Tazim and Mohammed coming in to Oman without basic training in safety measures. Given the fact that these workers often work in hazardous conditions with heavy machinery, it is only a matter of time before one makes a mistake that could put them and their co-workers at serious risk. And if an accident were to happen, workers like Tazim and Mohammed often don’t know what kind of services their rights as employees entitle them to.

NL Yadav is the manager at Al Rahhal Manpower, one of the many places around Ruwi that supply manpower for short-term and long-term projects. “Whenever a sub-contracting company needs a number of workers to help construct a building or fix roads, we find them the people for the job.” Depending on Yadav’s agreement with the sub-contracting company, these labourers may be his employees or directly employed by the sub-contractor.

“If they are employed directly by the sub-contractor they are no longer our responsibility. But if they are our employees, we provide them with a food allowance. They are provided with accommodation at a camp or a villa with their co-workers and they are given an annual medical allowance of RO70.” Hassan Abbas Noorani of Noorani Manpower Rec-ruiting Services said, “We make sure that as long as the workers are working with us, we take care of their needs.”

However in Mohammed’s case, the only accommodation he was provided was a corner in the very building he was helping construct and he had to pay for most of his medical expenses. “I had to pay RO180 and since I did not have that much money at the time, I had to borrow it from my friends,” Mohammed said. Tazim was in the hospital for 16 days and his entire medical fee, which amounted to RO120, came out of his own pocket.

Salim al Badi, the director general of Labour Care at the Ministry of Manpower said that measures are in place to help tackle such issues. “Royal Decree number 35 authorises the Health and Safety department at the Ministry to periodically visit these sites to make sure these rules are being followed. Everyone working in hazardous conditions must be issued personal protection and other safety equipment to ensure their safety at the work site,” al Badi said.

There is also a penalty system in place and employers who do not implement changes even after repeated warnings face serious punitive action, he added. “Employees can also anonymously complain by calling 80077000 and we will follow up on the complaint and take necessary measures. And employees should always know that the labour law here in the sultanate is the same for Omanis and expatriate workers.”

Whereas cases like Mohammed and Tazim’s are very common in Oman, there is also the other end of the spectrum. Mathew Roy has been working as health, safety and environment manager of Oman International Group at Petroleum Development Oman for the past 15 years. “And I can proudly say that we have not had a single accident in those past 15 years.” And his form-ula for this impeccable safety record is very simple. “We know that as a company, our employees are our asset and so we make sure they stay safe at all times.”

Companies like Galfar keep track of every safety incident that occurs at their various work sites and serious ones are reviewed by the company’s chief executive office and other department heads, said TG Philip, vice-president of quality, health, safety and environment. “We measure our performance as a company in terms of Lost Time Injury Frequency.” Lost Time Injury (LTI) refers to an injury sustained by an employee that keeps them away from work for more than 24 hours, Philip explained.

But situations like the one at Mohammed’s building site, where workers don’t wear the necessary safety equipment, continue. And even as Mohammed and Tazim recuperate from their injuries,
they don’t have much of an option but to go back to work to their unsafe work environments. “I don’t really have any equipment of my own to protect myself from future accidents,’ said Tazim. “And everyday that I don’t work, my family does not get money.”

http://www.theweek.co.om/disCon.aspx?Cval=5949

“PRODUCT VERSUS PRODUCT? Continuous Assessment in the Oman General Foundation Program” by Marie Therese Le Roux

2012-01-22T15:27:00.000+03:00

By Kevin Stoda

Upon my arrival here in Oman last September, I was introduced to a new era of reform in education here by reading this article [link below] by a former instructor at the Salalah College of Technology. The article was entitled “PRODUCT VERSUS PRODUCT? Continuous Assessment in the Oman General Foundation Program” and was published in the Salalah College of Technology English Language Centre Journal.

The article was written by Marie Therese Le Roux of South Africa, who not only taught at Salalah College of Technology but who also had completed an M.A. through a British university while working here. The graduate degree program of Le Roux’s involved trips from Salalah to Muscat and also involved the building of nationwide discussion groups (or learning communities with Omani classmates online. The behaviors of the peers of Le Roux give some insight into what Omani students expect of a classroom, expect in terms of classroom conducts for themselves, and how professors or teachers have adapted or failed to adapt to the learning styles prevalent in Oman at this junction in history.

This does not imply at all that Omani’s expect an educational delivery to answer to their beck-and-call. In fact, most of the article is about the need for reform–and many Omani’s involved in higher education would agree with Le Roux’s findings.

http://www.sct.edu.om/web/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=301&Itemid=117

The article by Le Roux is part of an educational reform movement that should be sweeping the different Foundations Programs of the region. Le Roux, herself, made a strong effort to persuade the ministry of education to re institute continuing assessment at the Foundation Level of English before returning to South Africa this past 2011. Some of my colleagues at the SCT already note strong improvements in some classes and in many students level of achievements (and increased self-expectations of themselves as a students).

The article, “PRODUCT VERSUS PRODUCT? Continuous Assessment in the Oman General Foundation Program” by Le Roux, can be found on pp.88 through 102 of the first journal at the link below.

http://www.sct.edu.om/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=745&Itemid=684Salalah College of Technology

Pauline Searle’s DAWN OVER OMAN

2012-01-21T14:28:00.000+03:00

Pauline Searle’s DAWN OVER OMAN (Pt. 1)

Searle, Pauline, Dawn over Oman, Muscat: International Printing Press, 1979.

By Kevin Stoda

Oman of a half century ago would be unrecognizable for many visiting here today. The late 1950s and 1960s found Oman in the midst of a civil war. Meanwhile, both the Cold War spies & insurgents plus the drumbeating led by religious wars of the region also shook the Land of Frankincense and Myrrh. This was occurring in a land that had only recently officially abandoned slavery.

Las autumn, when I first moved to Oman, I came across Pauline Searle’s three and half decade-old primer on the country, entitled DAWN OVER OMAN. Because Oman is such an ancient land, the book still reads rather well in helping any reader to come to terms with current Omani culture and history. Searle, whose husband worked with Petroleum Development Oman in the days before national reform took place, spent the better part of two decades getting to know Oman as wife, employee, and journalist for Reuters. She lived in the country starting from a period when ground wars still enveloped the land through the actual dawning of an age of peace in Oman. This occurred after the present ruler, Sultan Qaboos took over in the 1970s.

On the one hand, through carefully gleaning Searle’s publication, DAWN OVER OMAN (1975, 1979), for pearls of insight into era’s gone-by, one can discover what most modern travel books might otherwise provide on Oman’s geography, peoples, languages, and traditions. On the other hand, as the title, “DAWN”, of her classic work presupposes, Searle gave witness to a major new set of developments in Oman (since the early 1970s). This “DAWN“ and its fruits are what one now witnesses in Oman. In short, in a few short decades, Oman has moved from a medieval world into a modern age. Meanwhile, the very same Sultan Qaboos, who took over in 1970, is still on the thrown here.

An example of the “gleaning approach”that I take when reading a historically important works, such as Searle’s DAWN OVER OMAN, might include simply looking at the variety of quotes cited at the beginning of certain sections and chapters of this well-packed 150-page work. Searle wrote:

“The Kesra named Oman Mazun
And Mazun, O Friend! Is a goodly land
A land abounding in fields and groves
With pastures and unfailing springs.”

That selection of poetry, attributed to a pre-Islamic poet, reveals that two to five millennia ago, the land where the country of Modern Oman is located now was once a plush and green place for agriculture—quite different than many of our modern images of this part of the Arabian Peninsula. Naturally, Oman has historically secreted away great aquifers of water—even through this present day--, however, the temperate climate of the 3rd millennium B.C. can only be understood (or tasted) by the retelling of the thoughts of a poet in his or her own words—i.e. as Searle chose to do when she wrote on Oman and thus pealed-back the layers of hidden mystery which had here-to-fore covered the former hermit sultanate’s reality through the better part of the last century.

In her own words, Searle begins her narration by reminding us: “Until mid-1970s Oman was among the least known countries in the world. Geographically isolated by the Arabian Sea to the east, the Empty-Quarter to the west and mountains to north and south, ruled over by a backward-looking and autocratic Sultan with no apparent resources, Oman could have remained this way indefinitely. But” Searle adds, “the discovery of oil was to change everything.”

In the very next paragraph, Searle prophetically reveals what we know to be true today. “Oman is a country ruled over by a progressive… Sultan, and is a member of the Arab League and the United Nations. Ministers fly around the world conferring on political matters; buildings rise overnight; an international airport handles the largest jets and traffic drives bumper to bumper….”

Naturally, we all know, however, that having lots of cars, lots of oil, and lots of GNP does not make all peoples lives better. Nevertheless, one major report from the United Nations, i.e. “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development”, in 2010 reveals that a progressive spirit has dominated the land for over 4 decades now. This UN report stated that Oman was the most improved country on the planet over the previous 40 years, in terms of developments of its peoples, its societies, and its political economy. “Oman took the top position in the rate of progress in human development from among 135 countries worldwide.”

In short, in the early 1970s, Searle was certainly correct in saying that Oman passed from a sort of medieval night or darkness and surged into a new dawn—that is leaving many breathless. However, in contrast to the neighboring UAE, there are still a lot of off-the-beaten-track activities or traditional images of Oman which one can experience, observe and witness today.

There are families that still own thousands of camels. As Searle wrote, there are still small boys who see themselves as “a miniature warrior and men of every age carry rifles and khanjars, the silver dagger in the ornate sheath that has become the symbol of Oman itself.” Meanwhile, Omanis are still considered very friendly to travelers—a custom of hospitality dating to their Bedu ancestory and upbringing in many cases.

In short, more than any other Arab land, Oman has been opening up itself to the West (and to the East) over the past few decades as a safe land to travel in and get to know the citizenry of in the Middle East. “The renowned National Geographic magazine has ranked the Sultanate as one of the 20 top tourist destinations in the world.” [“The Sultanate was the only Arab country to appear in the magazine’s rankings published in its latest edition.”]
Despite this openness, Searle also noted four decades ago, “Oman is full of mysteries—the round stone grave mounds topping the mountains, the fossil shells hundreds of miles into the desert, the hollow geodes whose origin puzzles even the geologists, and stone implements and potsherds found in the most unexpected places.” Searle seemed to be saying that with the opening up of Oman, i.e. post 1970s, new discoveries can and will be made here, but there will continue to be many mysteries and surprises for all visitors here. After living here a while, I agree with Searle that for many reasons the secrets of Oman are still being kept to a great extent. This continuing sense of mystery is one reason I still recommend Searle’s classic primer on Oman. The book DAWN OVER OMAN should titillate you into learning more about this fast changing (but tradition preserving) land and people

NOTES

“The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development 2010”
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR10%20EN%20summary_without%20table.pdf
&
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/chapters/

Oman Ranked the Most Progressive Country
http://oman.org.au/general-news/298-oman-ranked-the-most-progressive-country-un

Pauline Searle,
http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/mec/MEChandlists/GB165-0328-Searle-Collection.pdf

Promo Oman
http://www.promooman.com/aboutoman.html

Sultanate on Top 20, http://main.omanobserver.om/node/75780

A Culture of Resistance is Born in 2011: the People United in an Independent Movement

2012-01-11T12:30:00.000+03:00

A Culture of Resistance is Born in 2011: the People United in an Independent Movement

By Kevin Zeese

After three months it is a good opportunity to reflect on where the Occupy Movement came from, what it has learned and where it is going . . .

::::::::
In 2012, the Real Conversation will be in the Occupations, while Corporate Candidates have a False Conversation

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

The Occupy Movement that developed in 2011 profoundly shook the foundation of the 1%. Almost instantly a new form of political power was created, all truly grown from the grass roots, and handed the 99% some REAL political capital for the first time in decades, and installed the Occupy Movement as a force to be reckoned with. Next spring promises to see more growth of this movement as the economy continues to stagnate and the government continues its dysfunction. Already, the Occupy Movement it showing its political independence: protesting candidates from both parties who are part of corrupt money-based elections. The irrelevance of the political debate, primarily between two-corporate approved candidates, will become more evident as the voices of the people grow.

How We Got Here

No doubt every occupier has their own story, this is ours. On December 16, 2010 we joined with Veterans for Peace and other organizations in an anti-war protest. The theme of the protest was developing a “culture of resistance’ in the United States . Many of us spoke that day about the need for resistance, perhaps none more clearly than noted author Chris Hedges who said “Hope will only come when we resist the violence of the state. . . . those who resist here today with non-violence are the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.” That day 132 Americans, mostly veterans, were arrested standing against the corporate-military state that the United States has become.

The next day, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian vegetable vendor in Sidi Bouzid, a poor town of 40,000 people located in the center of Tunisia, set himself on fire in front of the municipal building seeking redress for police abuse. Bouazizi’s death highlighted an unfair economy that created a life of poverty and misery for many in Tunisia, similar to many around the world. Police corruption and brutality that enforced the unfair economy sparked his suicide. His mother told TIME Magazine that his death “was about his dignity. Dignity before bread. Mohammad’s first concern was his dignity.” His death ignited a rebellion that toppled the 23 year old autocratic rule of Zine Ben Ali in less than one month.

The Tunisian revolution sparked revolutions that became known as the Arab Spring. Most notable was the still-ongoing Egyptian Revolution which began on January 25th receiving wall-to-wall coverage in the United States. Al-Jazeera reported a 2,500% increase in web viewership during the revolt, with more than half of the upsurge coming from the U.S. By February 11th the long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak had resigned. The Arab Spring led to a European summer, especially notable in Spain and Greece — these rebellions also continue.

While these uprisings were occurring, the United States was already in revolt but for the most part it was not covered by the media. The media did take note of the occupation of the capitol in Wisconsin, and to a lesser extent in Ohio and Michigan, but those were the tip of the iceberg of a widespread revolt. There were protests multiple times a week on a range of issues including closings of schools, tuition increases, mountain top removal for coal, austerity measures, health care, banking, foreclosures, failure of big business to pay taxes, climate change, war, torture, Bradley Manning — the issues and actions go on and on. There is a sampling of protest videos in this article, It Can Be Done. Now is the Time, published in July to convince people that the time was right to successfully occupy Freedom Plaza.

Even though all of this was occurring, those of us organizing the occupation of Freedom Plaza were still not sure if the American people were ready to stand up against the power of concentrated wealth that had corrupted the government. On July 13th when Ad Busters published a blog calling for “20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months,” we were not sure whether this would detract or be synergistic with the Occupation of Washington, DC. After a brief discussion, we quickly reached consensus and on July 19 endorsed the action . We decided to do all we could to help it succeed, issuing a joint statement of endorsement with one of the OWS organizing groups on August 8. Organizers from Occupy Washington, DC went to the assemblies in New York to participate in making plans for OWS. Many of us were there on the first day and some stayed until our occupation began on October 6.

While 20,000 did not show up on Wall Street, a small but persistent group of people did sleep in the park and show commitment to the cause of holding the wealthy accountable. This combined with New York City police abusing their power and pepper spraying non-violent protesters who were already in their custody; and then making mass arrests of 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge, led to an explosion of hundreds of occupies throughout the country . More than 1,200 Occupy camps sprang up quickly around the nation and the world. This TIME “Person of the Year” protest awakened Americans to their common economic struggles and the power of their solidarity.

The Occupy Movement had gotten the attention of the nation. The first few months had a noticeable, even dramatic, impact on the public discourse, but the first few months were not without their problems. Occupies were not ready for dealing with many of the problems that exist in our unfair economy — homelessness, mass poverty, crime and violence — all existing problems which were drawn to occupy sites. Decades of policies that funnel wealth to the top left many in the nation abused, beaten down and battered. The Occupies had the challenge of dealing with those injured Americans.

Occupiers were torn between taking care of as many of the 99% as they could and building an effective political movement and safe encampments. At Freedom Plaza, we invited the homeless and hungry for a community dinner in the first few days of our encampment. We quickly learned that societal and individual problems beyond our control came with them. After weeks of trying to deal with the issues we had several General Assemblies discussing the problems. We decided on a set of principles and a community occupant form that people had to sign which included those principles:

Agreement on Principles and Rules:

As an occupant of Freedom Plaza, I agree to the following principles and rules. I understand that a breach of these principles and/or rules may be reason for expulsion. I have received and understand the peacemaker process that is available in case of a dispute, and I understand that certain behaviors such as not participating in the community or violence and drug or alcohol use will result in immediate expulsion.

1. I will use my anger at injustice as a positive, nonviolent force for change.

2. I will not carry weapons of any kind.

3. I will not vandalize, destroy or steal property.

4. I will maintain neatness of my personal belongings and cleanliness of Freedom Plaza.

5. I will not use or carry alcohol or illegal drugs on Freedom Plaza and I will not enter the Plaza in an intoxicated state.

6. I will respect quiet hours between 11 pm and 7 am.

7. I will act in a respectful manner and I will not insult, swear in public or attack others.

8. I will not assault, verbally or physically, those who oppose or disagree with me.

9. I will protect myself and call for assistance if I am assaulted.

10. I will participate in the General Assemblies and direct actions as I am able.

11. I will volunteer in Freedom Plaza daily (see list of tasks on back of page 1).

While some other occupations criticized Freedom Plaza for having rules, we found that even as we discussed this during General Assemblies, some of the homeless participants staying with us began to take on responsibility — helping to serve food, cleaning the camp, manning the health tent, participating in protests — and transformed into very valuable participants. Police, who appreciated our principles and our peacekeepers who enforced them, were often reluctant to remove people from a public park for violating them. Our peacekeepers had to develop methods to enforce the principles without assaulting people who violated the principles. This is still an issue we struggle with as do many Occupations.

The Occupy learned a lot of lessons from the first phase of occupations of public space. No doubt, when occupations re-ignite the lessons will result in even stronger occupations in 2012.

Where We Are Going

When we called for the occupation of Freedom Plaza in early June, we said this occupation would be “the beginning.” We saw the occupation of Freedom Plaza as a tactic, much like a lunch counter sit-in or Freedom Ride during the civil rights movement, designed to educate and mobilize people for a much bigger and longer effort to end a government dominated by money and militarism and shift power to the American people. We knew a long-term independent movement challenging corporate power was needed to undo years of intentional efforts by corporate interests to seize control of government and social institutions.

Shifting power to the American people requires much more than an occupation. The Occupy Movement needs to build on four strong components — (1) non-violent protest and civil resistance, (2) non-participation in the existing corporate finance-dominated economy, (3) the development of concrete plans and policies to transform the corporate economy into a people’s economy and (4) ending government dominated by money by shifting political power to the American people. Occupy Washington, DC says: no oligarchy, no plutocracy we want participatory democracy. As we transitioned to winter we had many discussions on Freedom Plaza and among the web-community of Occupy Washington, DC. We surveyed everyone on the Plaza to understand what their interests were. These ideas and insights determined our next steps, which might be helpful for other occupations to consider:

1. Continue to hold Freedom Plaza. We have achieved a great deal through the occupation of Freedom Plaza. We’ve shown how persons from different backgrounds, economic circumstances, races and political interests can live and work together; and form a community. The encampment on Pennsylvania Ave. between the Congress and the Treasury/White House allowed us to reach thousands of people. Our signs, newspaper — the Occupied Washington Post — and conversations with many Americans have spread the Occupy message. We’ve carried out multiple protest actions in Congress, as well as at banks, the Chamber of Commerce and other locations. We’ve held our own occupied super committee hearing and published a report to fix the economy, the ” 99%’s Deficit Proposal .” This winter the number of people at the encampment will shrink but it will be available to expand as needed for actions like Witness Against Torture from January 11 to 20, the Occupy The Dream’s plans for the Federal Reserve on January 16, MLK Day, Occupy Congress scheduled for January 17 and the Occupy the Courts protest against the Citizen’s United decision on January 20. Freedom Plaza will continue to be a flagship for the American people to see that the Occupy Movement continues.

2. The Peace House and Organizing National Resistance. Approximately a dozen occupiers will move into the Peace House to work on organizing NOW DC (the National Occupation of Washington, DC) that begins on March 30. They will organize to bring occupiers from throughout the country to the nation’s capital to show the breadth and depth of the Occupy Movement. Peace House occupiers will work with occupations and others from across the country to build NOW DC. The creators of the Peace House , William Thomas and his wife Ellen Thomas, maintained and supported a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year, 30 year protest of nuclear war on the north side of the White House. The disarmament vigil, founded on June 3, 1981, is courageously maintained by Concepcion Picciotto who joined Thomas a month after it began. Picciotto will continue to use the Peace House when she takes breaks with Freedom Plaza occupiers filling in to continue the vigil. Volunteers at the Peace House will also work on local outreach and education in the greater DC community.

3. Mt. Rainer House and Organizing Occupy the Economy and Occupy Media. Another dozen occupiers will move into the Mt. Rainer House. This house will focus on building democratic economic structures as alternatives to the corporate-economy. This year is the United Nation’s International Year of Co-operatives and we will focus on creating worker-owned co-operatives that grow a co-operative sub-economy. Business plans will be developed, start-up capital sought and initial projects will be run out of the Mt. Rainer House. We will open the development of democratized economic structures to our web community as well. Already being examined are a political messaging business involving bumper stickers, signs, buttons and tee shirts, a food service providing occu-pie food and a housing redevelopment business. These co-operatives will provide funding to the occupiers working on them and revenues for the Occupy Movement. In addition, the Mt. Rainer House will be developing an Occupy Television Show and other media projects for public access, cable and web-outlets.

Both houses will be run as collectives that we intend to develop into useful models for other Occupies around the country to emulate and improve. Occupy Washington, DC will be building on years of experience with collectives, co-operatives and intentional communities to create Occupy Homes like these that are productive and build the movement.

The fourth leg of our Occupy Washington, DC community is our web-based community . Some web-occupiers have joined the encampment at Freedom Plaza, others have supported it financially, others have organized to bring people to Washington, DC and still others have provided ideas for how we should shape our future. Providing ways for people to be involved who cannot occupy full-time is an essential component of Occupy Washington, DC.

With all of these new activities we are not leaving the old behind. We will continue to provide educational forums on a range of issues, invite noted speakers to Occupy Washington, DC, and we are working on curricula for outreach to youth. The non-violent civil resistance actions we have done against the 1% political and economic elites will continue and escalate. We will continue to organize protest actions in Congress and to expose the monied interests that dominate the government. We are working with Occupy EPA to organize actions that encourage whistleblowers. And, we are inspired by actions we are seeing across the country — the Occupy Our Homes movement to defend people facing foreclosures; No doubt the year will be filled with creative approaches by occupiers across the country.

Of course 2012 is an election year. There is a lot the Occupy Movement can do related to the election. We have been inspired by the work of the Occupy the Caucuses movement in Iowa challenging both parties and all candidates. We are pleased to see this expanding to New Hampshire with Occupy New Hampshire . We hope to see this expand across the country. These efforts are not about supporting candidates, but challenging the corrupt money-dominated electoral system that produces candidates that represent the interests of the 1%. There have also been protests at fundraisers and we hope to see more of those as getting money out of politics is a top priority for creating the new participatory democracy the country needs.

President Obama has received more Wall Street funding than any candidate in history. Mitt Romney is the likely Republican nominee and he is also receiving widespread support from Wall Street . The corporate media will make sure that only these candidates get significant air time. The corporate-funded, two-party run National Commission on Presidential Debates will only allow corporate candidates to participate and exclude those that represent the people. The system will ensure that most Americans will see only two choices — both approved by Wall Street. We do not see how voting for a Wall Street funded candidate will do anything but increase the power of money and decrease the people’s power.

The truth is for the vast majority of Americans their presidential vote is pre-ordained. Due to the Electoral College in all but about a dozen states we can already definitively predict where your vote is going. This should be greatly freeing to most Americans — we do not have to vote for either corporate candidate out of the manipulation created by fear of the greater evil. We are free to send a message to both corporate parties that we do not accept their money-dominated campaigns. In many states there will be other candidates on the ballot. The Green Party is likely to put forward a strong candidate in Jill Stein, MD. The new Justice Party, working to get on the ballot around the country, will put forward a strong candidate in the former mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson.

The Occupy Movement should stay independent of any corporate-funded parties. In Let the Trumpet Sound, the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King is quoted as saying: “I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both–not the servant or master of either.” An election year is an excellent opportunity to show the system is corrupt; the elections are money-elections and protest candidates from both corporate parties. The Occupy Movement should show its independence from the money-dominated elections we seek to end.

The main job of the Occupy Movement during this election year will be to change the conversation from a mostly irrelevant debate between two corporate approved candidates to one relevant to the American people. We need to show that the pre-scripted, focus-group, corporatized rhetoric of the presidential campaign is a false conversation — and the people of the United States are having the real conversation about our future. In the end, whoever is elected will need constant pressure from the Occupy Movement to put the people’s necessities first. So, our job is to build a strong independent movement in 2012 and beyond.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are organizers of Occupy Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza. They co-direct It’s Our Economy , a project seeking to democratize the economy. Margaret, a pediatrician, is Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program , a single payer advocacy group. Kevin, an attorney, is co-chair of the cross-partisan anti-war group, Come Home America and president of Common Sense for Drug Policy .

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Culture-of-Resistance-is-by-Kevin-Zeese-120110-534.html

Submitters Website: http://www.ItsOurEconomy.us and http://www.ComeHomeAmerica.U

Submitters Bio:

Kevin Zeese is co-chair of Come Home America, www.ComeHomeAmerica.US which seeks to end U.S. militarism and empire. He is also co-director of Its Our Economy, www.ItsOurEconomy.US which seeks to democratize the economy and give people greater control over their economic lives and more influence over the direction of the economy.

2012-01-11T12:11:00.000+03:00

Some APA members are still breaking the codes of conduct–Psychologists’ Collusion in Ongoing Illegal Detentions

Psychologists’ Collusion in Ongoing Illegal Detentions

By Roy Eidelson

As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Guantanamo Detention Center, several thousand miles away sits another United States detention facility, less well-known but with a history perhaps even more gruesome.

::::::::

No-Torture-No-Collaboration by self

Note: My thanks to co-authors Trudy Bond, Brad Olson, and Stephen Soldz.

As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Guantanamo Detention Center, several thousand miles away sits another United States detention facility, less well-known but with a history perhaps even more gruesome. Obscured throughout the decade-long “global war on terror,” the detention center at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan is where two detainees died in December 2002. Initial autopsies at the time ruled both deaths homicides, according to a 2,000-page confidential Army file obtained by the New York Times. Autopsies of the two dead detainees found severe trauma to both prisoners’ legs. The coroner for one of the dead noted, “I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.”

In January 2009, to much fanfare, newly-elected President Barack Obama signed a directive authorizing the closing of Guantanamo Detention Center. But a month later the new administration discreetly told a federal judge that military detainees at Bagram had no habeas corpus rights to challenge their imprisonment. At the same time, the Pentagon was moving forward on plans to build a new prison in Bagram, renamed the “Detention Facility in Parwan” (DFIP). This facility was designed to accommodate 600 prisoners under normal conditions and as many as 1,100 during a “surge.”

Today, President Obama has abandoned his inaugural pledge to close Guantanamo and there are more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram –>five times the number of prisoners when the president took office — with a scheduled expansion of the facility by the end of 2012 to house up to 5,500 detainees. One troubling constant across the developments at Bagram is the presence and involvement of psychologists at these facilities, which clearly violate international legal standards for the treatment of detainees. Among the military psychologists present during the early years of the Bagram prison were Colonel Morgan Banks, Captain Bryce Lefever, and Colonel Larry James, notable for their key roles in formulating the American Psychological Association’s (APA) much criticized ethics policy on psychologist-assisted interrogations.

According to Banks’ biographical statement, he “spent four months over the winter of 2001/2002 at Bagram Airfield.” More broadly, Banks provided technical, consultation, and interrogation support to all Army psychologists. He also assisted in establishing the Army’s first permanent SERE training program. As for Lefever’s biosketch, it notes that he also served at the detention center at Bagram Air Base. He “was deployed as the Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and was consulted on various interrogation techniques.”

The third military psychologist, James, was the Chief Psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantanamo when, according to his book, Fixing Hell, he flew to Afghanistan to transfer three juveniles who had been forcibly and arbitrarily detained at Bagram. James described these boys as “the most fragile . . . children [he] had ever met,” yet he oversaw their being loaded onto a cargo plane at Bagram Air Force Base, ” bound [and] blindfolded,” for a flight that typically lasted over 20 hours. Others who appear to have been transferred from Bagram to Guantanamo that same day reported being chained around the waist, wrists, back and ankles and the intense pain of being unable to speak, see, hear, move, or even stretch or breathe properly. The boys were essentially kidnapped, and were returned home a year later, having never had access to legal counsel and having never been charged with a crime.

Public information about exactly what transpires at Bagram today is scarce. The BBC was allowed a rare, one-hour visit to the new Parwan/Bagram prison in 2010. The report noted that “Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as “cages’. The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid. Guards can see down into the cells from above.” These detainees were moved around in wheelchairs, wearing goggles and headphones to block sight and sound.

In 2011, Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First, interviewed 18 former detainees from the main facility in Parwan and was permitted to observe seven detainee hearings there. In her detailed report she noted:

After many years of completely denying detainees in Afghanistan the opportunity to defend themselves against arbitrary detention, the United States government has finally implemented a hearing process that allows detainees to hear the charges against them and to make a statement in their own defense. Although a significant improvement, these new hearings fall short of minimum standards of due process required by international law.” [Emphasis added.]

In a subsequent interview with CBS News , Eviatar stated:

[Parwan] is worse than Guantanamo because there are fewer rights”There was no evidence presented, there was no questioning of the government’s evidence, whether this person had done anything wrong, whether he deserved to be in prison. So that’s a real problem — you have a complete lack of due process.

And in 2010 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed the existence of a separate, second detention facility at Parwan. Many former prisoners have referred to it as the Tor Jail, translated as “Black Jail.” Nine former prisoners interviewed separately by the BBC spoke of almost identical treatment there: distressingly cold cells, perpetual loud noise, constant light, and, violating any sense of privacy, camera surveillance. One former prisoner said American soldiers made him dance to music to obtain permission to use the toilet.

Today, there are clear indications that psychologists continue to be involved in the detention and interrogation of detainees at Parwan/Bagram. Such activities stand in direct contravention of APA policy based on a 2008 petition resolution. Approved through a member-led referendum, this resolution prohibits psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights” (or if they are providing treatment for military personnel).

Significant evidence that psychologists are working at Bagram/Parwan in violation of APA policy comes in part from a symposium on “Operational Problems in Behavioral Sciences” sponsored by the United States Air Force Medical Service in August 2011. The first slide of the partially redacted powerpoint presentation on the “BSCT Mission” describes the role of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) as providing: “”psychological expertise and consultation in order to assist the command in conducting safe, legal, ethical, and effective detention facility operations, intelligence interrogations, and detainee debriefing operations” (OTSG/MEDCOM Policy Memo 09-053).

A later slide reveals that the current BSCTs at the Parwan Detention Facility are composed of a psychologist or forensic psychiatrist, who must be licensed for independent practice, and a “behavioral science technician.” Further confirming the presence of psychologists, a June 2010 newspaper article about Parwan by the military editor of the Fayettville Observer notes: ” Air Force Maj. Colin Burchfield, 34, a clinical psychologist, observes the behavior of both detainees and guards on TV monitors.”

Disturbingly, and contrary to the APA’s 2008 referendum policy, one of the key documents still used to support the ongoing involvement of psychologists at the Parwan facility is an earlier 2005 report from the APA’s “Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security” (the PENS Report). The PENS Report, cited in the Operational Problems powerpoint presentation described above, endorsed psychologists’ engagement in detainee interrogations — despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations and practices that violate international law.

Six of the nine voting members of the PENS Task Force were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies. Five of these six served in chains of command that had been accused of the kinds of abuses that led to the creation of the Task Force, including the three psychologists linked to the early Bagram prison: Dr. Morgan Banks, Dr. Bryce Lefever, and Dr. Larry James. The PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists have an important role to play in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective,” and the APA Board approved the PENS Report in a highly unusual emergency vote.

The APA’s claims that it stands strongly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are belied by the organization’s repeated failure to take assertive and meaningful action. There is no clearer example than the continuing participation of psychologists in detention and interrogation activities at the Parwan/Bagram prison — a site where international law itself is seemingly confined indefinitely to a small, dark cell.

But health professionals, human rights advocates, and intelligence professionals of conscience worldwide have refused to accept this status quo. One noteworthy and promising effort is an online petition campaign calling for the annulment of APA’s PENS Report. The initiative has been supported by many distinguished members of APA, as well as non-psychologists such as psychiatrists Robert Jay Lifton and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles; scholar-activists such as Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky; attorneys who have represented Guantanamo detainees; eminent veterans of the intelligence community; and many other psychologists and human rights advocates. Please consider joining this call and signing the petition at www.ethicalpsychology.org/pens.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Psychologists-Collusion-i-by-Roy-Eidelson-120110-712.html

Submitters Website: www.eidelsonconsulting.com

Submitters Bio:

Roy Eidelson is a psychologist who studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is president of Eidelson Consulting and past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

First Day (or First Week) Activities, Icebreakers, or Introductory Activities for ESL Classes

2012-01-11T09:37:00.003+03:00

First Day (Week) Activities or Introductory Activities for ESL Classes

Shared by Kevin Stoda and many others

I was recently asked to come up with a list of icebreakers and first day (or first week) activities for students and new EFL (ESL) classes at the institution I am working at. I made up this short list and have copied (cut and pasted) some of my favorites. The sources for this material are noted at the end of this article.

I like to use a variety of bingo games, too. I will share those in a later blog.

(1) You could try a "true or false" game.

Get each student to write three statements about themselves. Two statements are true, while one is false.
Each student reads their three statements to the class and they (the rest of the class) guess which statement isn't true.

eg:
1. I have been to five countries.
2. I haven't driven a car.
3. I like to eat apples.

One is false.... Which one is it?

(2) Find the person

Level: Intermediate
Language: asking questions
Procedures:
1. Day 1 - the teacher writes some questions on the board for the students to answer. Students can choose 3 questions and write the answers on three slips of paper. Students are required to give a full answer (I usually read a book at 7 p.m.). The teacher collects the answers and checks them for any mistakes.
Questions:
What do you usually do at 7 p.m.?
What is your favorite movie/TV show?
What is your telephone number?
What is your street number/name of your street?
How many sisters/brothers do you have?
When is your birthday?
What do you like cooking?
Where did you go last summer?
How do you usually get to school?
Who is your father? (What is your father's name?)
2. Day 2 - each student receives 3 slips of paper written by other students. Now students have to go around the room and find those who wrote those answers. They have to ask questions: Do you have three brothers?

(3) Names A to Z

This activity is good for introductions and for practicing the alphabet. It is good for a new group of students and for the class where you have just a few new students or a new teacher.
Level: Beginning through Advanced
Language: What is your name? - My name's ___./I am ___.
Alphabet
Procedures:
1. Students introduce themselves: What is your name? - My name's Anna.
2.Then students line up in the alphabetical order (A to Z). If there isn't enough room in the classroom students can form a circle.
Variation:
More advanced students can be asked to add an adjective in front of their names: I am a smart Sandra.

(4) Snowball Fight

Level: Early Intermediate - Advanced
Materials: sheets of paper, pencils
Procedures:
1. The teacher asks students to write on a full sheet of a paper a question that they would want to ask people in class in order to know them better. Depending on the level of the students, the teacher can encourage them to write interesting and unusual questions. So, students with limited skills can ask questions about age, favorite color, hobby, friends or family. As for students with more proficient language skills, they can ask questions on favorite school subjects, things that the person values in other people, their native country's interesting holidays, etc.
2. The teacher divides the class into two growps (by counting out 1 and 2, picking a card/stick with a certain color, etc.). The two groups stand in the opposite ends of the class.
3. The teacher asks students to fold the paper with their questions into a ball and invites them to throw their paper at the other group. Students should be advised to avoid throwing the paper balls as high as the face. Thus students start the "snowball fight".
4. At a certain signal the teacher stops the games and asks students to pick up one of the balls and go to their seats.
5. When all students are back in their seats, the teacher invites the students to open the balls (one at a time), read the question on that paper and answer it.

(5) Present or Past or Future

This is a writing activity that you can do with your ESL (language learning) students on the first day of class (or later) in order to learn them a little bit better.
Level: Low-Intermediate through Advanced
Materials: paper for drawing and writing, some art supplies (optional), pencils
Procedures:
1. Give students three small pieces of paper (1/3 of a regular sheet of paper). Ask them to draw three pictures: one that would show them in their present (who they are, what they like doing, where they live, what is new in their family, etc.), one that would show a memorable moment from their past (visiting grandparents past summer, fishing with dad, little sister was born, etc.), and one that would show where and how they see themselves in the future (it can be a week, a year, or may be even 20 years from now).
2. When students finish drawing their pictures, ask them to write descriptions for each one of them, providing as much details as possible. Depending on the level of language skills of your students, you can ask them write as little as a sentence or as much as a whole page for each description).
3. Finally, students combine the three pieces on a bigger paper entitling it "My Present, Past and Future". Optionally, your students can use some art supplies to create a poster.
This is a great activity for the first days of school, especially if you don't know the level of your students' language skills. This activity will allow students even with still limited language skills to express themselves through more drawing and less writing.

(6) What do you know about me?

Write a list of ten things about yourself on the board some of which are true and some false.
You need to ensure that the true ones are as unusual as possible. The students discuss the possible answers in groups and once they have come to a group decision about which are true and which are false the voting begins. In order to stop cheating they need to write their answer on a piece of paper and hold it up when everyone is ready, rather than shout it out.
Start each group on two points. If the team gets one right they get two points. If they get it wrong they get a point deducted. If a team goes below zero points then they are out.
To extend this activity and give it a further language focus and student focus you can get the groups to come up with their own lists. The game is played again but this time the rest of the class guess which member of the group each statement applies to.

(7) What don't you know about me?
Give out two strips of paper to each person in the room. Each person must write one unusual thing about themselves on each piece of paper. Give them a few examples such as: I have flown a jumbo jet or I have a collection of 35 pairs of shoes. When they have finished take back the pieces of paper, mix them up and then give them out again to different people. Students must not take a piece of paper back that has their own statement on. Next they mingle to find out who the statements belong to. Be careful here as students like to just show the pieces of paper to each other asking 'Yours?'. Make them leave the slips of paper on their chair so they have to ask questions in order to find out who they belong to. When everyone has found the owners of the statements they return to their places.
To extend this activity students can then report back the findings to the rest of the group. Did you know that Joe has �?
Usually this activity will throw up problems in the use of the Present Perfect for life experience and can be used as an introduction or revision for this tense. More importantly it will get the students interested in each other and usually want to know more.

(8) What would you like to know about me?
A similar activity as the last can be done just changing the tense focus. Give out strips of paper and tell the students it is their chance to find out things about each other and ask questions anonymously.
Each student writes a question on their strip of paper starting 'I would like to know�'. They then fold the paper up and write the recipient's name on the front. Next they shout postman, postman. Yes you guessed it: that's you! You collect the piece of paper and give it to the recipient . They answer the question fold the paper in half and write the originator's name on the front shouting postman, postman. You collect it and deliver it. With a large class it will be difficult to keep up with the delivery and you may want to allot the task to a couple of students instead. It is a good idea to give this job to students who are strongly intrapersonal who may not want to answer questions.
If you collect the pieces of paper at the end, from those who agree, you can analyse the writing mistakes. This can form the basis of a grammar revision lesson or can be the basis of a needs analysis. You can even put together a mistakes page where students try to correct the errors themselves as a class.
Have fun finding out who, in your group, is highly interpersonal!

(9) Four Corners
Here’s another good icebreaker for the beginning of a school semester or as a fun way for people to get to know each other better. Four Corners (also known as Four Squares) is a simple activity in which students share who they are through the use of handdrawn pictures. This icebreaker is for all ages, and works well with small and medium groups. It usually takes about 15 minutes, depending on how much time you want to allow for sharing the pictures. You’ll need sheets of paper and writing utensils. Don’t worry, no artistic skills are required for this icebreaker activity — just have fun and encourage everyone to enjoy being creative while illustrating who they are!
Setup for Four Corners
Distribute a pen and sheet of paper for each player. Each person divides the sheet into four boxes/squares either by folding the paper in half twice (vertically and horizontally) or simply by drawing a horizontal and vertical line that crosses in the middle. For each square, each person will describe themselves in the form of drawings. Choose these four topics in advance. For example, in the top left square, everyone could draw “favorite hobbies,” while in the top right, people could illustrate “favorite place on earth for vacation,” the bottom left could be something like “if you were an animal, which one would you be?” and the bottom right could be something like “what are the most important things in your life?” Feel free to be as creative, hypothetical, or deep as you like.
Allow five to ten minutes to draw. When everyone is finished, gather them together and share the drawings as a group. This icebreaker is an excellent way for students to show-and-tell what makes them unique!

(10) Lost on a Deserted Island
Lost on a Deserted Island is a teambuilding activity that also helps people share a little about themselves. Given the scenario that everyone is lost and stranded on a deserted island, each person describes one object that they would bring and why.
This game is a teambuilding and get-to-know-you icebreaker. The recommended group size is medium, although small and large group sizes are possible too. An indoor setting is ideal. No special props or materials are required. This icebreaker works well for any age, including adults and corporate settings.
Instructions for Lost on a Deserted Island
The situation is dire — following a shipwreck, everyone has been stranded on a deserted island! Each person is allowed to bring one object to the island — ideally something that represents them or something that they enjoy. The first part of this icebreaker is simple: each person is asked to describe what object they would bring and why. This need not be realistic; if someone loves music, he or she might choose to bring a guitar, or an animal lover might choose to bring a dog, a food lover might choose to bring sirloin steaks, and so on. Encourage people to be creative.
After everyone has introduced their object and why they have chosen that object, the teambuilding portion follows. Divide into smaller groups and ask everyone to work together to improve their chances of survival by combining the various objects that they introduced. If necessary, you can add more objects, but be sure to use all the objects that everyone mentioned. If you wish, you can reward the most creative group with a prize.
Lost on a Deserted Island is an approachable way to get people to open up and share a little bit about themselves and what they enjoy or value.
(11) Sorts and Mingle
Sorts and Mingle is an interactive icebreaker that helps people recognize common and unique interests and preferences. The speaker calls out various categories and everyone moves toward various parts of the room, finding people with similar tastes as them.
This game is classified as a get-to-know-you icebreaker with a little bit of active movement (walking around the room, meeting and talking to others). Recommended group size is: medium, large, or extra large. Can be played indoors or outdoors, but indoors is ideal. No special materials are required. No mess. For ages ten and up.
Instructions for Sorts and Mingle
There are two parts to this icebreaker. The first half is the “Sorts” game. The moderator tosses out two contrasting choices and everyone must move either east or west of the room (for example. “Do you prefer Nature or Cities?”) Then the moderator shouts out two more choices and everyone moves north and south of the room. In this way, each person must move to somewhere and can’t get “lost” in the crowd. Some sorts that work well include: dogs vs. cats, books vs. movies, sweet vs. salty, casual vs. dress up, inside vs. outside; be on the stage performing vs. in the audience watching, and so on.
The second half of the icebreaker, the “Mingle” game, works as follows: The moderator shouts out a general category and the group is asked to mingle around to find others that have the same answer and they clump up to form a larger group. After about thirty seconds to one minute, the moderator asks each group call out their answer. If a person is unique and is the only one with an answer, that’s okay. Examples of mingles: your favorite place on Earth; your favorite dessert; the kind of animal you like best; if you could have dinner with someone, who would you choose; your favorite hobby; if you could be anyone, what would it be?
Both halves of this game help people introduce themselves in a fun, interactive format.
(12) Conversation Starters: Topics
http://www.marietta.edu/intl/pdf/Peer_Conversation_Starters.pdf
(13) What’s the Question?

First, write 10 things about myself on the board. I write some easy ones like: 'Bob', '30', 'swimming', etc... And then i write some more obscure ones like: ,'Sage', 'Yes', '8/12/2005', etc...

Then, get the students to guess the question to the answer that is on the board. So they would ask:

Whats your name?
How old are you?
Whats your hobby?
Whats your dog's name?
Are you married?
When did you get married?

After they have figured out the question for each answer, it's their turn. they write down 3-5 things about themselves that maybe their classmates don't know. then they come up to the front of the class, i write their info on the board and the class guesses about the student.

Its a great activity because you really get to know a lot about your students and they learn a bit about you. plus, its a lot of fun!

SOURCES
http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Ice:Breakers
http://www.eslhq.com/forums/esl-forums/esl-games-activities/first-day-activities-318/
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/sep01/sart10.htm
http://www.icebreakers.ws/get-to-know-you
http://languageavenue.com/teaching-ideas/first-day-of-class-esl-games-activities/

Among the Darn Things that Kids Draw

2012-01-08T07:23:00.000+03:00

Among the Darn Things that Kids Draw

By Kevin Stoda

CONTEXT

I was married just three years ago, and now I have a little girl nearing the age of two. So, now, I am busy reading a lot about raising children, about being a good husband, and other self-help books for families and couples. Sometimes the amount of material in such books is simply overwhelming— still, at other times, some parts of books seem so superficial or uni-dimensional.

In one particular book on relationships and marriage, 6 Secrets to a Lasting Love, one of the two main protagonists—that is, the one who provided a great lesson for all--was a very young girl named Sarah.

A CHILD’S DRAWING

For three decades now, Dr. Gary Rosberg--along with his wife, Barbara--has made quite a name for himself offering counseling seminars and writing books for married couples. In reading one of them, the Rosberg’s 6 Secrets to a Lasting Love, I came across the following vignette which will likely continue to influence my thinking on family and life for years to come:

The vignette deals with the Rosbergs and their children during the early stages of their own marriage—at a time when Gary was very busy as a full-time employee, busy as a student working on his doctoral dissertation, and still busier undertaking various volunteer counseling efforts in his own community and church. Meanwhile, Barbara was holding down the home front with their two daughters, Sarah and Missy,--and their pet dog, Katie.

Meanwhile, Gary’s wife Barbara had agreed to take on a lot of the family duties for the duration of Gary’s doctoral studies. Barabara was feeling a bit overwhelmed at times but she rarely bothered Gary with the troubles. Gary was obviously overextending himself, too. He was going from activity to activity each day, and he was leaving home early and coming home late at night. Sometimes, he hung out at odd hours in the library. When Gary was back at his own home, especially on weekends, he would constantly find himself penned up in the family’s den working on his doctoral research, reading, and writing.

One afternoon, as his doctoral defense approached, Gary felt particularly squeezed for time as his little daughter, Sarah, came into his office library and asked him if Gary wanted to see her newest drawing. Gary continued typing away and indicated, “Sarah, Daddy’s busy. Come back in a little while, honey.”

Sure enough, the little daughter dutifully returned 10 minutes later and asked if her father was ready to look at her picture. Gary brushed her away—saying that Dad was sadly still busy at that moment, too. Soon Gary thought better about it, and he went out of the room finally to track down his daughter. Gary wrote later, “[S]he obliged with no recriminations [at his impatience] and hopped up onto my lap”.

Sarah then showed him the picture on which she had carefully printed a title: “Our Family Best”. Sarah told Gary about the picture she had colored, “Here is Mommy [a stick figure with long yellow curly hair]. Here is me standing by Mommy [with a smiley face]. Here is Katie [our dog]. And here is Missy [her little sister was a stick figure lying in the street in front of the house, about three times bigger than anyone else].”

Gary told her that he loved the picture and would hang it up where he could look at it again. Little Sarah then happily hopped away.

A few minutes later Gary was back in his study—but he knew he could no longer study. He was disturbed by the picture—which revealed the world as seen through the eyes of his older daughter. Gary went back outside and found little Sarah.

“Sarah,” Gary pleaded, “could you come back inside a minute, please? I want to look at your picture again.”

Gary sat his daughter down and asked, “Honey, I see Mommy and Sarah and Missy. Katie the dog is in the picture, and the sun and the house and squirrels and birdies. But Sarah, where is Daddy?

“Your at the library,” his little Sarah responded.

Gary then concluded, “With that simple statement my little princess stopped time for me. Lifting her gently off my lap, I sent her back to play in the spring sunshine. I slumped back in my chair dazed. Even as I type these words [nearly 3 decades later], I can still feel those sensations all over again.” The next months and years were hard for Gary as he time-and-again walked past Sarah’s drawing. The drawing accused him of failing his family. Gary would have to take responsibility for the disappearance of himself in the lives of the world of his daughters and his wife. (Gary would have to work hard on rebuilding his family- and marital relationships over the next years before he could really learn to serve others much better.)

In short, Gary would have to reprioritize his life and put himself back in the center of the lives of his loved ones.

STOPPING TIME

I have been pondering doing a doctorate myself, but after reading of Sarah’s drawing, I am tempted to avoid ever putting the world of my family into jeopardy as Gary did when he struggled through graduated school while working on a professional dream of his own to become a doctor who could counsel others better. On the one hand, Gary and Barbara did, in fact, eventually work together on retransforming their marriage again once Gary had his doctorate in hand.

On the other hand, the painful memory of seeing Sarah’s drawing poses a warning to me—as a new father and relatively new husband—that one cannot lose focus on more urgent priorities—those priorities that are far beyond any single professional goals one might set for oneself. Nor should one set up as a one-dimensional visions of the eventual or hoped-for improvements in standard of living (or lifestyle) which one might be holding on to for one’s family destiny, i.e. based on having a doctorate and earning a bit more money and respect. .

Our realities and visions must be what a child can call us back to. They cannot be something too abstract or so contingent upon massive time spent away from our households. We—like Dr. Rosberg, need to hear the child’s voice in the drawing (of their world) —and act or proceed accordingly—before it is too late.

On Symbolism of Renewal, Baptisms, and Anniversary Celebrations: December 31

2011-12-31T12:33:00.000+03:00

December 31, 2011

On Symbolism of Renewal, Baptisms, and Anniversary Celebrations: December 31

By Kevin Anthony Stoda

Why did we we get married on December 31? Why questions are important--especially this time of year--wherever you are and whoever you are.

::::::::

By Kevin Stoda, Oman

When my wife and I married back in December 2008, we had originally intended to undertake a civil marriage ceremony as immediately as possible--right --after Christmas, e.g. approximately on either the 26th or 27th of December.
That ceremony was to be in Kuwait where my wife and I had met.
Alas, in Kuwait,--officially--only people of Ibrahimic faiths are allowed to conduct a civil ceremony. The Ibrahimic faiths (or Abrahimic faiths) are, of course, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish. The civil servant conducting the ceremony requires, therefore , a statement from either a mosque, church, or temple or a state-recognized religious authority that verifies that one is from one of the three faiths.
We were not aware of the trouble involved in gaining this particular document--and so eventually we had had to end up waiting till the very last moments of 2008 to accomplish a civil wedding ceremony. (Moreover, I need to add that previously there was another delay caused by the wait for a single document from the Filipino Embassy, which had also initially led to another delay for us that same week after Christmas 2008).

December 31 MarriagesNaturally, love and marriages are (or should be) guided by our Lord and our faith, so (in the end) my wife and I can state that for some special reason, the All-Mighty had determined that we should first get married on the very last date of the year: December 31.
Finally, as we are celebrating this 3rd anniversary of the civil marriage, I can state that I now know why the Lord ended up choosing the date of December 31 for our marriage.
I should add, however, that I just discovered this insight yesterday at the baptism of another husband and wife yesterday here in Muscat. Let me explain:
It was explained to us during the sermon which preceded the baptisms that December 31 is the date when we look forward to a new beginning or a new star t in life. For example, in the Philippines people like to purchase a new set of clothing at the end of each year, so as to be wearing a set of new clothes on New Years Day. It is hoped or believed that by wearing new clothes on New Years Day, one will be blessed with many new things--and better things--in the coming year.
"This idea of the end of the year and the wearing of new clothes," said the leader of the congregation, "is similar to the symbolism of baptism itself, whereby one is baptized in water--not to cleanse the person--but to arise from the surface of the water as a new born person who is ready to follow the Lord and change his life and ways."
Similarly, as husband and wife, who were married on December 31, my wife and I need to see that our December 31 anniversary marks a renewal --not just of our vows--but of our commitment to living a new and better life while putting the sins and intrapersonal struggles of our past year behind us.
In summary, my wife and I were blessed to be married on the cusp of a new year and on the final edge of an old year. We can take time to reflect not only on renewing our wedding vows now, but on the renewal of our entire spiritual, physical, mental, and familial selves.
Moreover, we can reflect on our friends' baptism, too, (yesterday) and see that this is the time when we need to be arising anew from our old selves and our old ways of 2011--or whatever long year--and really begin putting on our new clothes for whatever roles we are up to in the coming years. In our family that means the roles of either (1) husband or wife, (2) son or daughter, (3) father or mother, and (4) friend or lover.
Interestingly, we are going to a small new years celebration with those who were at the baptism I attended yesterday. Not only will the baptized couple from Muscat be there--but another couple, named Ray and Jackie, who also were married on December 31 a few years ago are hosting the New Year's Eve Bash at their home.
Happy Anniversary, Ray and Jackie!
Happy New Year!
Happy Renewal, too--wherever and whoever you are!

TEXTBOOKS, LONE STAR & ONGOING WAR OF CULTURE

2011-12-28T11:32:00.000+03:00

TEXTBOOKS, LONE STAR & ONGOING WAR OF CULTURE

Yesterday I was listening to a DEMOCRACY NOW interview with director and author, John Sayles, from Thanksgiving day. It is appropriate that it was played on Thanksgiving because Americans should always take that long weekend to recall 400 or more years of American history.

Speaking of history, John Sayle’s movie, LONE STAR, was played several times on TV last spring in Taiwan and Asia. His films provide a much more nuanced and almost real photo snapshots of the continuing ongoing cultural wars in the USA. These wars are over memory and how to narrate them. Here is the text from a great clip of that film. The text deals with a parent and teacher debate in a local Texas School:

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip of Lone Star, set near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, a parent-teacher meeting erupting into clear fault lines between white parents and Chicano parents, who want a more diverse portrait. The two teachers leading the meeting—one white, one Latina—try to resolve the tension.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: Just tearing everything down, tearing down our heritage, tearing down the memory of people who fought and died for this land.

MEXICAN-AMERICAN FATHER: We fought and died for this land, too. We fought the U.S. Army, the Texas Rangers.

ANGLO FATHER: Yeah, you lost, buddy. Winners get the bragging rights. That’s just the way it goes.

MODERATOR: People! People! I think it would be best if we don’t view this thing in terms of winners and losers.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: Well, the way she’s teaching, it’s got everything switched around. I was on the textbook committee, and her version is not—

MODERATOR: We think of the textbook as a guide, not as an absolute.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: It is not what we set as the standard. Now you people can believe whatever you want, but when it comes to teaching our children —

MEXICAN-AMERICAN MOTHER: They’re our children, too. And as the majority in this community, we have the right.

ANGLO FATHER: Oh, yeah? Well, the men that founded this state have the right, the right to have their story told the way it happened, not the way somebody wanted it to happen.

DANNY: Eh, eh. The men who founded this state broke from Mexico because they needed slavery to be legal to make a fortune in the cotton business.

PILAR: I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification.

ANGLO FATHER: Are you reporting this meeting, Danny, or are you running it now, huh?

DANNY: Just adding a little historical perspective.

ANGLO FATHER: Oh, yeah? Well, you call it history; I call it propaganda. Now, I’m sure they’ve got their own account of the Alamo on the other side, but we’re not on the other side.

PILAR: There’s no reason to be so threatened by this.

ANGLO FATHER: And we’re not about to have our schools taught that way!

PILAR: Excuse me. I’ve only been trying to get across part of the complexity of our situation down here, cultures coming together in both negative and positive ways.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: If you’re talking about food and music and all, I have no problem with that. But when you start changing who did what to who.

TEACHER: We’re not changing anything. We’re just trying to present a more complete picture.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: And that’s what’s got to stop.

TEACHER: Look, there’s enough ignorance in the world without us encouraging it in the classroom.

TEXTBOOK COMMITTEE WOMAN: Now who are you calling ignorant?

The idea that winners get the bragging rights over those peoples that American colonialism stomped on has been rejected in the USA for more than half a century but in response, cultural wars of backlash have been financed by the same people who fought reconstruction and a 100 years of post Civil War deprivations of the masses in the South.

What have you been teaching our youth this holiday season, America?

The Neo-Nazi Scandal of Germany Should be Leading Americans to Reflect on their Own Neglect of Fascist and Racist Groups in America over the Past Dec

2011-12-28T11:30:00.000+03:00

The Neo-Nazi Scandal of Germany Should be Leading Americans to Reflect on their Own Neglect of Fascist and Racist Groups in America over the Past Decade

This story below has continued to be the number one story in German Newspapers over the past 2 Weeks. Americans should understand the institutional neglect there and then look closely at its failure to stop racism and fascism in the USA over the past 50 years.–KAS
Neo-Nazi terror scandal grows in GermanyFurther evidence emerges of German security service failures that let far-right terrorists commit 10 murders

Helen Pidd in Zwickau, Germany guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011
More damaging evidence has emerged of the German authorities’ failure to stop a group of neo-Nazi terrorists who killed 10 people, robbed 14 banks and planted two nail bombs during 13 years on the run.

On Tuesday, the Hessen branch of the domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz, or BfV, admitted that one of its agents had been present in April 2006 when two members of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) shot dead a 21-year-old Turk in an internet café.

It has now emerged that the agent, who was transferred to less-sensitive work following an investigation at the time, openly held rightwing views and was known in the village where he grew up as “Little Adolf”. When police raided his flat following the murder, they found a cache of guns, for which he had a legitimate licence, and extracts from Mein Kampf, according to Der Spiegel. There are unconfirmed reports that the man was present at three or more other neo-Nazi murder scenes.

Hajo Funke, one of Germany’s most foremost experts in rightwing extremism, said on ARD television: “It can’t be ruled out that his BfV employee took part in the murder, and that is a scandal.” He has called the case “a Watergate-scale” crisis for German secret intelligence.

The interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has called for a national register listing all neo-Nazis. The database should hold “information about potentially violent rightwing extremists and rightwing politically motivated acts of violence”, he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It should be accessible to all 16 regional branches of the domestic intelligence service, as well as the national umbrella organisation, plus police authorities, he said.

Following the discovery of the terror cell’s base in the quiet town of Zwickau, near the Czech border, the German government is under pressure to explain how the group managed to carry out their murderous acts undetected for so long. The two men and one woman believed to be founder members of the NSU were known to police in their home town of Jena, east Germany, after a bomb-making factory was discovered in the garage rented by the woman, Beate Zschäpe, in 1998.

The local branch of the Thuringian secret service allegedly had 24 lever-arch files on the trio and yet they only uncovered the cell years after they carried out at least 10 murders – and after the men were found dead, apparently following a joint suicide pact, and Zschäpe turned herself in to police.

Zschäpe has remained silent since turning herself in to police last week, but some local media reports suggested she had told police she was ready to be interviewed about her involvement on Wednesday.

On Tuesday evening, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) voted at its party conference in Leipzig for a ban on the NPD (German Nationalist party), a legal far-right group which has seats in a number of local parliaments in former east Germany. The opposition Social Democrat (SPD) party has also called for the NPD to be outlawed.

Such calls have been criticised by politicians in Merkel’s own coalition. Hans-Peter Uhl, an expert in interior security from the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, said: “There is no better sign of democracy than for the electorate to vote against the NPD at elections,” he said. “That’s the most noble way.”

Uhl said it would be better for Germany’s strict data protection laws to be changed to allow detectives to analyse communications. “The whole country is wondering how big the neo-Nazi quagmire is in Germany. Without using internet and telephone data collected from the Zwickau cell that is going to be difficult to establish,” he told the Neue Osnabrücke Zeitung.

Earlier this week Merkel described the case as a “disgrace” for Germany

NOTES

Scores of Unanswered Questions
Neo-Nazi Terror Cell Still Shrouded in Mystery

DPA
An investigator combs through the remains of the burned-out house in Zwickau looking for clues.
German authorities face scores of questions after the discovery that a neo-Nazi terrorist cell murdered immigrants and robbed banks for over a decade without anyone apparently knowing it existed. There are growing calls for a reform of the security services. In a strange twist, it emerged that an intelligence agent was at the scene of one of the crimes.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the “i” symbol.
The discovery that a neo-Nazi group was behind the murders of several immigrants during a six-year killing spree is threatening to erupt into a full-blown scandal for Germany’s security services which face awkward questions about their failure to tackle right-wing terrorism.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday described the emergence of right-wing terrorism as a “disgrace to Germany” and pledged a thorough investigation.

The “National Socialist Underground,” consisting of at least three members, two men and a woman, has claimed responsibility for the killing of eight Turks and one Greek man between 2000 and 2006, as well as the murder of a German policewoman in 2007, and two bombings in which more than 20 people, primarily with immigration backgrounds, were injured.

In a bizarre twist, politicians on Tuesday called for an urgent investigation into reports that an employee of the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was at the scene of one of the crimes — the killing of 21-year-old Halit Y. in an Internet cafe in Kassel on April 6, 2006.

That fact is not new — the employee was interviewed by police years ago and eliminated from their enquiries. But even if it is found to be irrelevant, the development makes the case even more embarrassing to the agency, which is under intense fire for having been apparently unaware of the presence of a murderous neo-Nazi cell in Germany for over a decade.

The agent, reportedly described as “Little Adolf” by colleagues because he himself held far-right views, told police at the time that he was in the Internet cafe by chance, to seek contact with women via chat rooms, and that he didn’t see the killing, which happened in another part of the cafe. It is unclear if he left the cafe shortly before the shooting or if he didn’t hear the shots because the killers used a silencer. During a search of the man’s home around that time, investigators found copies of Third Reich propaganda as well as extracts from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” which is effectively banned in Germany.

Officials said, however, that the man was close to the scenes of four of the other shootings. Hans-Peter Uhl, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said on Tuesday that the behavior of the agent raised “considerable questions.” The agent was fired and now works for the local government authority in the western state of Hesse.

Chilling DVD

The two men in the terrorist trio, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, were found dead on Nov. 4 in a camper van in the eastern city of Eisenach after having apparently committed suicide. The woman, Beate Zschäpe, turned herself into the police after having apparently set fire to a villa in the eastern town of Zwickau in which the trio had lived.

Police searching the burnt-out house found four DVDs, packed and ready to be sent to the Left Party, several news organizations and Islamic cultural centers, in which the group bragged about the killings, poked fun at the police, and showed photos of blood-soaked victims, apparently taken by the killers themselves. The murdered men were all shopkeepers with two of them running doner kebab shops. As a result, the murders became known as the Doner Killings.

For years, police had insisted that the killings were committed by the Turkish mafia or shadowy nationalist groups and had effectively ruled out a far-right link. Muslim groups and the children of the men who died have accused the authorties of being blind to the threat of far-right violence, and having focused too heavily in recent years on combating Islamist terrorism.

Victim’s Daughter Criticizes Police

Gamze K., 22, the daughter of Mehmet K. who was shot dead in his kiosk in Dortmund on April 4, 2006, recalled how the police speculated that her father had gambling debts or was killed by a protection racket or the Turkish mafia.

“We were suddenly under suspicion,” she told Bild newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday. The police kept looking for dodgy business dealings supposedly done by my father. The police didn’t take seriously our suspicion that it could have been neo-Nazis.”

“I think something’s wrong here,” she said. “Why did the attackers suddenly kill each other? It wasn’t just the three of them, there are influential men behind them.”

The case has prompted urgent calls for a reform of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which was set up to combat extremist groups and protect the democratic order in postwar Germany. It has 16 regional departments, one for each of Germany’s federal states, and the department for the state of Thuringia, where the trio lived, has come under particular scrutiny.

Terrorists Were on Police Files

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe were known to the agency’s Thuringia department in the 1990s, when they became involved with the neo-Nazi scene there. They built fake bombs and hoarded weapons and explosives, but authorities lost sight of them in January 1998, when they went underground and embarked on a 13-year spree of murder, bombings and a suspected total of 14 bank robberies.

The case has also called into question the agency’s practice of running paid informants in the neo-Nazi scene and in the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). Critics are saying the system evidently isn’t working, and that it may even be unintentionally funding the activities of the far right.

For example, the Thuringia agency paid a total of 200,000 marks (€102,258) to a man named only as Tino B. The man is the head of Thuringia Homeland Protection, a neo-Nazi group that the three terrorists belonged to in the 1990s. He doesn’t appear to have warned the authorities about his three dangerous comrades.

The presence of paid informants is controversial for another reason — it thwarted a legal bid to outlaw the NPD in 2003 when the Constitutional Court ruled that the presence of agency informants, some in senior positions within the party, would prejudice the case.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Monday for a review into whether the NPD should be banned. The party is seen as a flagship of the neo-Nazi scene in Germany. But to have any chance of succes, a legal bid to outlaw the NPD would require severing ties with informants, effectively sacrificing the authorities’ ability to monitor the inner workings of the party.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has called for better coordination between the regional and national security authorities.

Scores of Questions

There are many unanswered questions in this case, the most pressing being whether the NSU had more members or helpers within the far-right scene. One suspected helper, a forklift driver named only as Holger G., was taken into custody on Monday on suspicion of helping the trio by giving them his driver’s license in 2007 and his passport four months ago. There may well be more. Some have also wondered how the group financed itself. Their bank robberies since 1999 are reported to have raised up to €70,000 — not nearly enough to live on over that time period.

Further questions surround the apparent suicides of Böhnhardt and Mundlos in their camper van. One of them was reportedly shot in the chest, the tabloid Bild reported — an unusual suicide method. Also, both died from rifle bullets. Pistols are more usual in suicides.

The killing of a policewoman in 2007 in the southern city of Heilbronn is also a mystery. She was shot in the head while sitting in her car. Her colleague was also shot and seriously injured. Why take the huge risk of killing a police officer? Why did the killers hold on to weapons that would incriminate them? Investigators searching the burnt-out camper van and the Zwickau apartment found the police officers’ Heckler & Koch P 2000 pistols and the Ceska 7.65 millimetre Browning used in the Doner killings. They also found the policewoman’s handcuffs, her pepperspray and her Victorinox Swiss Army knife. Were they kept as trophies?

And what about the DVDs? How did they survive a fire that even melted weapons? “According to our official information the DVDs were secured in the rubble of the Zwickau flat,” says one investigator. “But I admit that this fact raises questions.”

Finally, are there more neo-Nazi terror cells out there? Anti-racism groups say right-wing extremism has been allowed to fester in parts of eastern Germany, with neo-Nazis left in charge of running the voluntary fire departments, organizing youth leisure activities and even running citizen’s advice bureaus for welfare claimants in rural regions that have suffered from depopulation and economic decline since unification in 1990.

That is fertile ground, experts say, for violent cliques to get together and to graduate from beating up foreigners to planning murders and bomb attacks.

With reporting by Matthias Gebauer http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,797947,00.html

Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans Made During The Financial Crisis

2011-12-28T11:28:00.000+03:00

Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans Made During The Financial Crisis

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/28/376430/wall-street-banks-fed-loans-secret/

Wall Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans Made During The Financial Crisis

By Travis Waldron on Nov 28, 2011 at 9:25 am

In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

The total cost of the Fed loans amounted to $7.77 trillion, and unlike the funds made available by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks:

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”

In one month, Morgan Stanley — one of the most vulnerable financial companies at the time — took $107 billion in secret loans, enough to pay off a tenth of the nation’s delinquent mortgages. The loans, like those made to other institutions, were never reported to Morgan Stanley’s shareholders or the taxpayers who subsidized them.

Other banks drew similar loans without disclosing them. Bank of America, for instance, held $86 billion in public debt on the day then-CEO Ken Lewis declared his company “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” Bank of America’s Fed borrowing peaked at $91.4 billion in February 2009; at the same time, it benefited from $45 billion in TARP loans.

And even while members of Congress were working to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system, the banks and the Fed kept them in the dark about the loans. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the architects of the Wall Street reform act that eventually became law, and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the GOP’s lead negotiator on TARP, told Bloomberg they were unaware of the specifics of such loans.

Had Congress had such information, members of both parties would have changed their votes to favor Wall Street reform, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), meanwhile, said knowledge of the loans could have led to a push to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from owning investment companies and vice versa, thereby limiting their size and vulnerability to such crises.

The secret nature of the loans, however, instead helped Wall Street work to “preserve a broken status quo” that allowed its biggest banks to grow even larger than they were before the crisis. The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a record high this year.

Escobar and many Asian Analysts fail to take seriously China and USA need to Cooperate in Reducing Climate Change Tempo

2011-12-28T11:27:00.000+03:00

This is a good article (below) on China and the USA but it fails to touch upon the biggest issue on which China and the USA are intricately involved, namely by the simple fact that combined they create 40% of the worlds global warming gas emissions annually. This is an area in which both parties could cooperate and be global leaders but both the Chinese and the USA have worked to undermine the KYOTO CLIMATE REGIME since its inception. Currently, their abstinance from Global Warming Solutions are threatening the planet–no only for our generation but for ALL TIME.

The Asian author (below) needs to incorporate this Horror into his Asian and partially pro-Chinese narration.–KAS

China and the US: The roadmaps
While Beijing tries to address the West’s concerns, Hillary Clinton has a conflicting vision for the 21st century.

by Pepe Escobar

Inquiring minds scattered across the world have been pondering whether Washington elites are sneakily slouching towards Beijing – as in eventually focusing on China as the ultimate bogeyman and catalyst of the Pentagon-denominated Long War.

It’s as if Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Libya and the fight for African resources, were mere pawns in the master chess game of the 21st century featuring the US and China.

The Arab Spring, in its early Tunisian and Egyptian chapters, led to the impression that the neo-conservatives promoted ‘clash of civilisations’ was over.

But the 2012 race to the White House has revealed that it is a return of the living dead. With the troubling add-on that Washington reserves for itself the right of nuclear first strikes against any possible confrontation with competitors – China and Russia.

So it’s time to back off and examine how the leadership in Washington and Beijing is interpreting the future.

Exhibit A is China’s Peaceful Development, a white paper released by the State Council Information Office, the cabinet at the heart of the system in Beijing.

Exhibit B is America’s Pacific Century, a wittily-titled essay published by Foreign Policy magazine and written by “global superstar” (according to CNN) and smart power practitioner US Secretary of State Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton.

Readers are strongly encouraged to read both documents and draw their own conclusions.

Don’t rock my domestic boat

First a word on how Beijing works. The 370-member Central Committee – including ministers, provincial leaders, the top military brass, heads of state companies – is a sort of mega-board of directors of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Central Committee selects the 25-member Politburo. And the Politburo selects the nine-member Standing Committee, the holy of the holies. It’s fair to assume the white paper has been commissioned and approved by these gentlemen.

The Politburo and the Standing Committee are responsible for the Communist Party’s tight grip on the Chinese state, the economy, the civil service, the military, police, education, the media, and last but not least, the carefully constructed official narrative of how China finally got rid of repeated historical humiliations by foreigners and is now a resurgent civilisation.

The white paper has a crystal clear objective; to explain the Chinese model – and the mind-bending subtleties of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – to the West.

The target audience is Washington and London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.

Yet the fact that Western corporate media barely noticed – not to mention discussed – the paper is already troubling.

The white paper stresses China’s “strong collective consciousness” and “sense of social responsibility” as much as the “multipolarity” of international relations. At the same time, in a subtle nod towards Washington, it rejects a “dangerous cold and hot war mentality”.

Three ultimate fears prevail in Beijing’s narrative. 1) A hardened Cold War mentality blinding the West; 2) The possibility of a trade war with the West; 3) Luan (“chaos”) of the political kind, provoked by outsiders who resent China’s phenomenal economic success.

Even while discussing foreign policy, the paper makes it clear China’s top priority is domestic stability.

China’s interpretation of foreign investment, for instance, is that it is welcomed as long as it enhances domestic stability.

Thus everything is subordinated to “harmonious development” – Chinese President Hu Jintao’s trademark doctrine.

“China’s top priority is domestic stability.”

- Pepe Escobar

That even implies, in the future, mechanisms to allow the Chinese people to “supervise the government” – something that in the West may be interpreted as democracy, even though not related to Scandinavia’s.

While Beijing endlessly worries about domestic stability, the paper also stresses how dangerously easy it would be for a global economic crisis to force countries – another nod to Washington – to go to war.

So, essentially, Beijing wants “a peaceful mainly economic development in a peaceful multipolar world”. Yet the multi-trillion dollar question is whether the ‘Atlanticist’ West will let it happen.

Hillary’s concerns

Hillary’s essay is bound to express the views of the State Department, which may not necessarily be shared by the Pentagon and the CIA.

For all the smart power rhetoric, the stress is on “continued American leadership well into this century”.

Beijing will also be slightly disturbed that “our treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand are the fulcrum for our strategic turn to the Asia-Pacific”.

Hillary feels obliged to nod to her “Chinese counterparts, State Councillor Dai Bingguo and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi”, as they have been engaged in “candid discussions about important challenges like North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and developments in the South China Sea.”

“Challenges” is the understatement of the century; China and the US fiercely disagree on all these dossiers.

A measure of wishful thinking is at hand, as in “we look to China to take steps to allow its currency to appreciate more rapidly, both against the dollar and against the currencies of its other major trading partners.”

It won’t happen – and Beijing has already made it clear.

As in a Freudian slip, Hillary let it know that “Europe, home to most of our traditional allies, is still a partner of first resort”. And then “we move forward to set the stage for engagement in the Asia-Pacific over the next 60 years”.

So what is it going to be; a special relationship with Europe and just “engagement” with Asia-Pacific?

Unlike Beijing in the white paper trying to address the West’s concerns, Hillary only seems bothered to address Americans.

What she does not say, but leaves implied, has more impact than the text itself. The eternal notion of the US as the indispensable nation. The barely disguised feeling of “danger” about the rise of China. The US in Asia as a benevolent outside power.

Beijing would have noticed there is not a word on Washington’s global drive to control remaining sources of oil, while trying to make life to Beijing as hard as possible.

Not a word on the Pentagon-defined “arc of instability”: from the Maghreb to – you guessed it – Western China.

Not a word on the “need of strategic stability” for the Indian Ocean – which will put the US on a collision course not only with China but also with India.

“Unlike Washington and Tehran, who never talk to each other, at least Washington and Beijing are talking, even if past one another.”

- Pepe Escobar

Not a word on the US Navy’s 2007 maritime strategy – “sustained, forward presence” in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. Or the US Marine Corps 2008 “Vision and Strategy” – covering up to 2025 – defining the Indian Ocean as a privileged theatre of conflict.

Unlike Washington and Tehran, who never talk to each other, at least Washington and Beijing are talking, even if past one another.

Beijing has already announced its peaceful intentions. But when it looks at Africa – and sees its trade and commercial deals being counter-acted by a Pentagon-led militarisation drive – the conclusion is self-evident.

One can only hope that the parties will keep speaking softly – while carrying no big stick.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011102812222630653.html

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Here is a great collection of conversation topic questions for EFL or ESL students at the intermediate or higher levels

2011-12-28T11:25:00.000+03:00

Here is a great collection of conversation topic questions for EFL or ESL students at the intermediate or higher levels

By Kevin Stoda, ESL Instructor

Here is a great collection of conversation topic questions for EFL or ESL students at the intermediate or higher levels.

http://iteslj.org/questions/

I don’t currently teach students at the intermediate and advanced levels, but many of the questions on this wonderful link can be modified for discussion. Otherwise, the teacher can glean each topic for questions appropriate to the levels and appropriate to the cultures and geographic location of one’s students.

http://iteslj.org/questions/

Foreclosures on houses with delinquent mortgages have doubled since 2010, with housing prices expected to drop another 10% before stabilizing

2011-12-28T11:23:00.000+03:00

Tomgram: Steve Fraser, “De-Fault Is Ours”

Change a single letter in what is and, lo and behold, you get what if.

Here’s just a taste of what is:

Foreclosures on houses with delinquent mortgages have doubled since 2010, with housing prices expected to drop another 10% before stabilizing. Meanwhile, the executives of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, institutions bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $169 billion, are offering next to no significant relief to mortgage-holders in trouble. For such “work,” the top six executives of the two outfits raked in “$35 million in compensation, including millions in bonuses.”

One in every three Americans is now considered either poor or “near poor,” according to recent census data; that is, 49.1 million Americans are below the poverty line and another 51 million perilously close to it. This, of course, represents a significant increase in downward mobility. According to the New York Times, “over half of the near poor in the new tally actually fell into that group from higher income levels as their resources were sapped by medical expenses, taxes, work-related costs and other unavoidable outlays.”

On the upward mobility front, the news has been anything but upbeat. Recent evidence indicates that, if upward mobility happens to be your urge, you better move to Canada — or to “aristocratic” Europe, where they still have it (though for how long, given the Euro crisis, is anyone’s guess). One thing is clear: given what’s happening to American education, the next generation’s fate is likely to range from immobility to downward mobility. The average graduate who takes out loans to pay for college now emerges from his or her subprime education with a debt burden of more than $25,000 dollars, a figure growing by the year. Meanwhile, at state colleges, once the portals to an upward-mobile future, students are paying ever more for ever less educationally as tuitions rise and state support shrinks.

As for wealth in this country, from 2005 to 2009, median wealth among Hispanics fell 66% to $6,235, among African-Americans, 53% to $5,677, and among whites, 16%, to $113,149. These figures represent the largest wealth disparities in the quarter century the Census Bureau has been collecting data on the subject. As for income, between 1979 and 2007, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office, the after-tax earnings of the top 1% of Americans grew by 275%, while those of the bottom 20% rose by only 18%. Meanwhile, American corporations are sitting on “record amounts of cash,” even as job-creation has been next to nil, capital investment in new plants and infrastructure stagnates, and companies are happy to invest their multibillions instead in stock-buyback deals.

Here’s the financial overview: the top 1% of Americans now take in more than 25% of the nation’s income and control at least 40% of its wealth. (A quarter of a century ago, the figures were 12% and 33%.) To make it into that top 1%, according to economist Emmanuel Saez, your family needs to make a minimum of $368,238 a year (based on 2008 income figures); for the 15,000 families that make up the top .01%, average annual income is $27,342,212.

In other words, if you aren’t in the top 1% right now, it’s all what is, and never what if — no dreams allowed.

When it comes to what is, the news is terrible. When it comes to what if, who knows? TomDispatch regular Steve Fraser, our preeminent historian of Wall Street and author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace and Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life, offers his own ideas about how, here in the U.S. of A., what is might be challenged and turned back into what if? Tom

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Empowering people to pursue justice

2011-12-28T11:21:00.000+03:00

Empowering people to pursue justice

By MCJ

One of the joys of our work at the Mississippi Center for Justice is getting to know our clients, hardworking individuals striving to improve their lives and care for their families. With generous support from people like you, we have spent 2011 fighting to reform predatory lending practices, to ensure equity in the BP oil disaster recovery and to provide safe, affordable housing for all Mississippians.

Helen Byrd is a vivacious community leader in Indianola, Miss. She is also a resident of South Delta Regional Housing Authority, a mismanaged public housing entity in the Mississippi Delta. South Delta’s complex is comprised of pre-fabricated homes that were built in the 1970’s and span six counties. Over the decades, little was done to maintain the properties, and the homes began to fall apart.

Tenants reported leaky roofs, rotten eaves, cracked floors and shifting foundations, yet few repairs were made. In one home, the front screen door was knocked off by a storm. South Delta never showed up to fix it, but they did send the family a bill for a new door.

When the tenants received notice of rent increases that would have more than doubled rent, without regard to income, Ms. Byrd and others fought back. With the help and support of people like you, the Center was able to file a lawsuit that resulted in a successful settlement that ultimately delivered lower rents and better maintenance for South Delta residents.

Donations from our supporters made our role in this case possible. As we look forward to next year, we need your help to continue serving inspiring individuals like Ms. Byrd. By supporting the Center, you will allow us continue our mission to achieve racial and economic justice for all. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Mississippi Center for Justice today.

Tom Hayden is Right–War could break out in Iraq any time again in the next months and years

2011-12-28T11:19:00.000+03:00

Published by Tom Hayden, The Peace Exchange Bulletin is a reader-supported journal, critically following the Pentagon’s Long War in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, as well as the failed U.S. wars on drugs and gangs, and U.S. military responses to nationalism and poverty around the world.

A Strategy Note

In the coming year, peace groups will have to build linkages around domestic economic and environmental issues with the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club and insurgent movements including Wisconsin and Occupy Wall Street. For the peace movement, the purpose is to build a stronger coalition than between longtime pacifist and religious communities. And domestic movements will have to be convinced that their goals are unattainable without ending the trillion dollar wars abroad. Democrats will have to decide that winning elections requires a platform commitment to rapidly end these wars. And the peace movement will have to build a mandate for peace into the 2012 election.
The Long Wars
Possible Sectarian War in Iraq
Iraq Nationalism May Falter and Divide

The Peace Exchange Bulletin

Another war in Iraq may begin, a sectarian war spurred by Shiite revenge and reflecting the geo-political tensions of the region, Shiite versus Sunni, Iran versus Saudi Arabia. While America bears responsibility for stirring the sectarian cauldron, a next war will not be America’s to fight. Despite global pretensions, the mythic days of Laurence of Arabia, when Kipling’s heroes saved the Arabs from themselves, are over.

With Western imperialism in retreat, Iraqi nationalism may falter and divide. The actual winner of the last Iraqi election was the Iraqiya bloc whose leadership includes Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, former prime minister and American “asset”, supported by the vast majority of Sunnis. The Iraqiya leadership also includes Iraq’s current vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and parliamentary leader Saleh al-Mutlaq. Iraqiya won 2.8 million votes (24.5%) and 91 parliamentary seats in the 2010 election, slightly more than Nuri al-Maliki’s Shiite coalition, which won 89 seats and 24.2% of the vote.

Maliki managed to maintain power, however, through consolidation of Shiite organizations, ignoring of parliament, and repression of dissidents – all accomplished under America’s watch, despite ineffective US appeals for unity.

Continue reading…
In Iraq, Peace at Last

America owes a debt of gratitude to the activists who opposed the Iraq war from the start, and who kept the pressure on.

The Peace Exchange Bulletin
A U.S. soldier walks past cables for media use before the start of ceremonies in Baghdad marking end of the American military mission in Iraq. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)
The American war in Iraq is over.

Another war in Iraq may begin, a sectarian war spurred by Shiite revenge and reflecting the geo-political tensions of the region, Shiite versus Sunni, Iran versus Saudi Arabia. While America bears responsibility for stirring the sectarian cauldron, a next war will not be America’s to fight. Despite global pretensions, the mythic days of Laurence of Arabia are over. (SEE FULL ARTICLE)

Four thousand four hundred eighty-seven Americans were killed during the war, and 32,226 wounded. We will never know exactly how many Iraqis died, because the authorities went to great lengths to cloud the numbers. The last of America’s 170,000 troops finally left Iraq under cover of secrecy, not even saying goodbye to their Iraqi allies, on December 18, thus exposing any lingering boasts of military victory as hollow.

Continue reading…
Americans Demand Withdrawal
Polling Reflects Call for Peace

As Obama pulls out of Iraq and considers the same course in Afghanistan, overwhelming majorities of Americans are with him.

On Iraq, 78 percent support Obama’s decision, including 90 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of Independents, and 58 percent of Republicans, while only 33 percent now think the Iraq War was worth fighting.(Washington Post-ABC Poll, November 6, 2011)

On Afghanistan, 62 percent of Americans say US troop levels should be decreased, while only 24 percent favored the same levels, and a marginal seven percent favor sending more troops. 38 percent of that 62 percent want “large numbers” withdrawn in one year, 24 percent want “large numbers” in one to two years. Only 18 percent want the American troops to stay “as long as it takes.” (CBS Poll, October 3, 2011)

The authors write, "If terrorists ever target Fargo, North Dakota, the local police will be ready."

2011-12-28T11:12:00.002+03:00

The War at Home: Militarized Local Police Tap Post-9/11 Grants to Stockpile Combat Gear, Use Drones

Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
George Schulz, works with the Center for Investigative Reporting. He is one of the reporters who runs the Homeland Security Project.

A new report by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that since 9/11, local law enforcement agencies have used $34 billion in federal grants to acquire military equipment such as bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets. "A lot of this technology and the devices have been around for a long time. But as soon as they have, for instance, a law enforcement capability, that’s a game changer," says George Schulz, with the Center for Investigative Reporting. "The courts and the public have to ask, how is the technology being used by a community of people—police—who are endowed with more power than the rest of us?’" Local police departments have also added drones to their toolkit. In June, a drone helped local police in North Dakota with surveillance leading to what may be the first domestic arrests with help from a drone. The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a new report that calls on the government to establish privacy protections for surveillance by unmanned aerial drones, especially of people engaged in protests. "We believe that people should not be targeted for surveillance via drones just because they’re they are engaged in First Amendment-protected activity," says Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new report which shows, in the 10 years since 9/11, police departments across the country have acquired more and more military equipment. The authors write, "If terrorists ever target Fargo, North Dakota, the local police will be ready. In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars." For local siege situations requiring real firepower, the report notes officers can use a new $256,000 armored truck which has a rotating gun turret. The report, published by the Center for Investigative Reporting, finds police increasingly rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment acquired with the $34 billion in federal grants disbursed across the country since September 11, 2001.

Local police departments have also added unmanned Predator drones to their tool kit. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times revealed new details about how domestic law enforcement agents have begun using unmanned drones inside the United States. In June, an unmanned Predator drone helped local police in North Dakota with surveillance leading to the arrest of three people. According to the Los Angeles Times, the incident marked the first time American citizens have been arrested domestically with the help from a Predator drone.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union has issued a new report that calls on the government to put protections in place to guard Americans’ privacy from surveillance by these unmanned aerial drones.

To talk more about this, we’re joined by George Schulz, who is with the Center for Investigative Reporting, one of the reporters who runs the Homeland Security Project. He’s joining us by Democracy Now! video stream. We’re also joined in our studio by Catherine Crump, senior—she’s a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, and she co-authored the report by the ACLU on the domestic use of drones.

Catherine, let’s start by laying out the story, for example, in North Dakota, where many of these stories around the militarization of police seem to focus. But tell us what happened there.

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, in North Dakota, the police were engaged in a law enforcement action, and they thought that it would be to their benefit to have a drone take a view of the scene, and so they called on the federal government to help them. And Customs and Border Protection essentially loaned the local police a drone and helped them identify some suspects on private property, but also were able to tell, for instance, whether those individuals were armed. Now, in this particular instance, the police agents did have a warrant. But I think this broader story is showing how drones, and in fact other militaristic technologies, are increasingly being used for domestic law enforcement in ways that the American public doesn’t fully understand.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about—just discuss this further. Expand it from North Dakota. How are the drones being used?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, you know, in some extent, we don’t know. But it is clear that local police departments are keenly interested in getting a hold of drones. Helicopter technology is very expensive, but drones are cheap. And there aren’t legal protections in place to preserve Americans’ privacy when these are used. And so, we face a real possibility that drones will be used by law enforcement agents across the country with very little regulation. And the ACLU published a report on this because we think it’s vitally important that privacy protections be put in place now, so that before drones come to the U.S. airspace, there are rules and regulations in place to make sure we’re all safe from pervasive surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in North Dakota, they had been using the drones for the border. And so, when they wanted to move in—and maybe you could explain more fully what this story was in North Dakota.

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, the police actually were engaging in an investigation about some stolen cows, actually, and they were concerned that the people who were on the property were armed. And so, they asked—they called in the Border Patrol and said, "Hey, could you help back us up in this operation, and could you help us by engaging in drone surveillance?" And they did that and were able to give the police information about who was on the property and whether or not they had weapons. And it’s just—it’s a remarkable story, because although—even those of us who follow the use of drones quite closely weren’t aware that the federal government was actually loaning out its drones to local agencies to engage in surveillance. And then that, of course, poses the prospects that even smaller police departments are using this extremely advanced technology to engage in surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by George Schulz, who is looking at the so-called toolkit of police, of which now drones is being—drones are being added, one of the reporters who runs the Homeland Security Project, who put out this report on the militarization of police. George Schulz, talk about the use of drones and—well, and much more, when it comes to stockpiling equipment by police in this country.

GEORGE SCHULZ: Now drones are among a number of 21st century technologies that local police in the United States are adopting very, very rapidly. And it’s a number of factors that are contributing to this. You know, prior to September 11th, there was a sort of militarization of police already underway as a result of the drug war, and now the rise of task forces and a couple of programs that enabled local police departments to acquire decommissioned equipment from the military. But after 9/11, there was an additional spending spree through federal Homeland Security grants that made it easier for police departments, large and small, in the United States to acquire equipment they couldn’t necessarily afford before or necessarily justify buying.

So, what we did was set out to approach every state in the United States, through open government laws, to try to collect records showing how communities were spending Homeland Security grants. And basically, what Congress did after 9/11 was say, "Well, communities around the country need to be ready for another 9/11-style attack, so we need to start funding preparedness programs." But the list of items you could buy every day grew bigger and bigger and bigger, because all of it feasibly could be used to help prepare for a terrorist attack. But terrorism scenarios are fairly unlikely in the U.S., so a lot of this equipment was being used for everyday law enforcement, if it was being used at all. Right? So what we saw among a lot of police departments was the purchase of combat-style equipment, tactical equipment—combat helmets, really expensive tactical vests, tactical shields, breach-entry equipment for tactical raids. Basically, you can buy anything you want with Homeland Security grants except the guns.

So what we saw parallel to the purchase of combat-style equipment with Homeland Security grants was also a wider adoption of the use AR-15 and M-16 military-style assault rifles. And when we talked to folks in the law enforcement community about that, part of the reason they were adopting that use, even though it was occurring to an extent before 9/11, a lot of the folks were pointing to events like the Mumbai attacks in India and terrorist attacks like that that were sort of lower-level and involved attackers using assault rifles, small explosive devices, things like that. So then bigger cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas became concerned that if an event like that were to be replicated here, their officers would need things like AR-15 assault rifles to fight back. So, there were basically two tracks here over the last several years that we saw: the spending spree from Homeland Security grants on military-style protective gear and then the wider adoption of the use of AR-15s and M-16s among everyday patrol officers in the U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: Last month I spoke with the former chief of police of Seattle, Norm Stamper, who was the police chief in charge during the Battle of Seattle in November 1999. He wrote a critical article for The Nation magazine entitled "Paramilitary Policing from Seattle to Occupy Wall Street."

NORM STAMPER: I do believe that since 1999 and the Battle in Seattle there have been many changes. My concern is, many of those changes have been for the worse. The officers, for example, in Oakland were dressed as my police officers were in Seattle, which is, in effect, for full—in full battle gear. We were using military tactics. I authorized the use of chemical agents on nonviolent offenders. I thought I had good justification at that time. I did not. The police officer in me was thinking about emergency vehicles, fire trucks, aid cars being able to get through a key intersection. The police chief in me should have said, "This is wrong," and vetoed that decision. I will regret that decision for the rest of my life. We took a military response to a situation that was fundamentally nonviolent, in which Americans were expressing their views and their values, and used tear gas on them. And that was just plain wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: George Schulz, if you could respond to what the former chief of police of Seattle, Norm Stamper, had to say, as we see these militarized police everywhere from the Occupy Wall Street encampments to the Republican and Democratic conventions that we went through and are going to be dealing with again in Tampa and Charlotte?

GEORGE SCHULZ: Well, it was pretty extraordinary to see that op-ed from Chief Stamper. In the law enforcement community, the After Action Report from the so-called Battle in Seattle, it still circulates to this day as a document that warns other cities about what could happen if they allow protests to grow out of control. I mean, I hear police departments talk about those events to this day, and they’re petrified that an event like that is going to occur on their streets, and if they don’t control it early on, it’s going to be egg on their face. So I think that’s why you see these sort of aggressive responses to protesters, because a lot of law enforcement folks think back to Seattle, and they don’t want a perception globally that they’re allowing things to grow out of control.

But 10 years out, we’ve seen police respond to protests in a variety of different ways over the last decade. And we’ve seen some cities take what you might call a non-militaristic approach, where they have taken their time and attempted to negotiate, for instance, with Occupy protesters, over decamping rather than sort of rushing in to use force or gas, whatever is believed to be necessary to deal with those protesters. And what I think we’ve seen departments, especially in the last few months, demonstrate is that there are alternatives. There are a few different approaches you can take. And that’s, I think, what Chief Stamper is trying to indicate, that there were alternatives he could have used back then, and he didn’t, and he regrets that today. And it was pretty compelling to hear him say that.

AMY GOODMAN: Catherine Crump, I wanted to go back to the use of drones. We have an act, the Posse Comitatus Act, that said the military can’t operate here on U.S. soil. Explain then, are they getting around it by militarizing the police, bringing in National Guard? What have you found in your report?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, one way this works is that the federal law enforcement agencies have this technology and can simply lend it to the local law enforcement agencies. But actually the more alarming prospect is that drones are so cheap that any local surveillance—any local police department can afford them now. You have the large drones that are used in places like Iraq and Yemen, but you also have very small drones that can be used for local law enforcement agencies. They can—local law enforcement, they can stay aloft for a long time. They can have cameras that zoom in in great detail. They have thermal imaging that can allow the law enforcement agents to see things that aren’t visible with the naked eye. And I think this raises the prospect for a real transformation in American life.

AMY GOODMAN: We have visitors today from Colorado, from our radio station KGNU, community radio station in Boulder and Denver. Talk about Colorado, for example.

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, Colorado is one state in which the police have gotten a hold of drones. But it’s really just one example of a broader phenomenon. Think about—

AMY GOODMAN: They got FAA approval.

CATHERINE CRUMP: They did get FAA approval. You know, so far, one reason we haven’t seen a great availability of drones is that the FAA has by and large stopped broader surveillance. However, the FAA is under tremendous pressure from industry and its allies in Congress to loosen the rules and to allow broader use of drones. And before that happens, it’s extremely important that there be safety—regulations put in place to preserve privacy, to make sure that drones don’t become a force for pervasive surveillance and instead are only used in limited circumstances.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re talking about drones for surveillance. Of course, drones can drop bombs. What about drones tasering?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Yes, that’s a very interesting point. Drones are known for having cameras attached to them. And overseas, they’ve been used to drop bombs. But actually, they can be used to deliver other kinds of force. For example, tasers. And while no local law enforcement agencies are currently using drones in that way, manufacturers are excitingly equipping them so that they can use that type of technology. And one police department in Texas has actually acquired drones that are capable of using that type of force.

AMY GOODMAN: And bombs?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, we haven’t heard about that yet, but, you know, technology is what it is. And it’s important to regulate it before it’s used in ways that Americans wouldn’t have anticipated five years ago and that seriously infringe on our freedoms.

AMY GOODMAN: And the recommendations around the issue of privacy in the use of drones that the ACLU is making now with this report?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, we recommend, first of all, that drones should only be used where the police have a reasonable suspicion to believe that there’s some criminal activity going on. And that’s specifically talking about drones for surveillance purposes. We also recommend that images not be—of identifiable people not be retained, where those people aren’t engaged in wrongdoing. And important to the protest issues that have been the focus of much of our attention these days, we believe that people should not be targeted for surveillance via drones just because they’re engaged in First Amendment-protected activity. Americans shouldn’t have to fear that when they go out and engage in lawful protest activity, that they’re going to be subject to surveillance by drones.

AMY GOODMAN: And just on that issue of Posse Comitatus, it applies to the U.S. Army and Air Force on U.S. soil, but not the National Guard?

CATHERINE CRUMP: Well, it applies to the Army and Air Force, but it doesn’t apply, for instance, to Customs and Border Protection, which has drones that it’s currently using to patrol the border. And one concern is that federal agencies will make their drones available to local law enforcement, as has happened in North Dakota, as we started out discussing.

AMY GOODMAN: George Schulz, the Center for Investigative Reporting report that you have just co-authored, "Local Police Stockpile High-Tech, Combat-Ready Gear," what were you most surprised by, as we wrap up this discussion?

GEORGE SCHULZ: I guess, you know, in the end, I think it was the dollar volumes that we were looking at. These programs, year after year, Congress was funding them with a few billion dollars a year, to the point that we’ve reached $34 billion 10 years after September 11th. And it was just such an explosion of spending that we hadn’t seen before. Some of these grant programs existed before 9/11, but they weren’t funded anywhere near what they were after September 11th. And there’s such, at this point, a dizzying array of grant programs that communities are eligible for, and the list goes on and on. If you don’t get a piece of equipment you want from one grant program, you can turn to another one and apply for that one. And there are similar programs available through the Justice Department. I think that was a key point that Catherine was making, was that the drone that was used in North Dakota was CBP-controlled, so it didn’t have anything to do with the military. It was a federal law enforcement agency sharing its equipment with the local law enforcement agency. And that’s a type of resource sharing I think you’re going to—it’s going to be really, really common.

But the courts on public opinion are struggling to keep up with a lot of this technology. We’re discussing drones today, but we could just as likely be discussing license plate scanners—an enormous amount of data is accumulated through license plate scanners—public surveillance cameras, remote digital fingerprinting. There are loads of these technologies that, when you think from a law enforcement perspective, it’s no surprise they want to use them. In their mind, it makes their job easier.

AMY GOODMAN: And then there’s, of course, the issue of then corporate use of drones.

GEORGE SCHULZ: Yeah, absolutely. It could eventually be an issue. How are private citizens going to use these aircraft? I mean, some of the equipment that’s being used, like Catherine said, it’s—they’re basically remote-controlled helicopters with a—small remote-controlled helicopters with a camera affixed to them. A lot of this technology and the devices have been around for a long time. But as soon as they have, for instance, a law enforcement capability, that’s a game changer. And if departments are using them more broadly, the courts have to and the public have to ask, how is the technology being used by a community of people—police—who are endowed with more power than the rest of us?

AMY GOODMAN: George Schulz, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Center for Investigative Reporting. Your report, "Local Police Stockpile High-Tech, Combat-Ready Gear." And Catherine Crump, with the American Civil Liberties Union, co-author with Jay Stanley of the ACLU’s report on the domestic use of drones called "Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft." We’ll link to both of your reports. Thanks so much.

Rob Kall: "A Congress of Cowards?"

2011-12-28T11:09:00.000+03:00

I’m sure you are as disgusted as I am with congress.
I had an epiphany recently that I discuss in my newest article.

By Rob Kall

A Congress of Cowards
Congress is punting again, this time on the tax cut extension. This pattern, which has led to the lowest approval levels since measures of approval were taken, has become chronic. It’s really about the bulk of the members of congress being cowards who are intentionally destroying the balance of powers between legislative, Judiciary and Exectutive, so they can save their jobs.

We have a lot of work in front of us. The sites that support Obama and the current system are not going to get us where we need to go– to change that Democrats and Republicans will never legislate. Opednews is committed to being a voice for the REALLY BIG change that must happen. Won’t you support our work with a donation? Click here to give a generous donation to help Opednews keep up the fight.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Congress-of-Cowards-by-Rob-Kall-111220-272.html

The Life and Death of American Drones

2011-12-28T11:07:00.001+03:00

Drones are certainly one reason the USA is still supporting the Salah family and its despotic arms from Yemen.-KAS

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Life and Death of American Drones

It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your drone is?

Oh, the confusion of it all! The U.S. military now insists it was deeply befuddled when it claimed that a super-secret advanced RQ-170 Sentinel drone (aka ” the beast of Kandahar”) which fell into Iranian hands on December 4th — evidently while surveying suspected nuclear sites — was lost patrolling the Afghan border. The military, said a spokesman, “did not have a good understanding of what was going on because it was a CIA mission.”

Whatever happened, that lost drone story hit the headlines in a way that allowed everyone their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Dick Cheney went on the air to insist that President Obama should have sent Air Force planes into Iran to blow the grounded Sentinel to bits. (Who cares about sparking off hostilities or sending global oil prices skyrocketing?) President Obama formally asked for the plane’s return, but somehow didn’t have high hopes that the Iranians would comply. ( Check out Gary Powers and the downing of his U-2 spy plane over Russia in 1960 for a precedent.) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta swore we would never stop our Afghan-based drone surveillance of Iran. Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked that his country be kept out of any “adversarial relations between Iran and the United States.” (Fat chance!) The Iranians, who displayed the plane, insisted proudly that they had hacked into it, “spoofed” its navigational controls, and brought it in for a relatively soft landing. And Kim Kardashian… oops, wrong story.

All in all, it was a little robotic circus. All three rings’ worth. Meanwhile, drones weren’t having such a good time of it elsewhere either, even if no one was paying much attention. The half-hidden drone story of the week wasn’t on the Iranian side of the Afghan border, but on the Pakistani side. There, in that country’s tribal borderlands, the CIA had for years been conducting an escalating drone air campaign, hundreds of strikes, often several a week, against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. In the wake of an “incident” in which U.S. air strikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at two border posts, however, the Pakistanis closed the border to U.S. supplies for the Afghan war (significantly increasing the cost of that conflict), kicked the U.S. out of Shamsi air base, the CIA’s main drone facility in the country, and threatened to shoot down any U.S. drones over its territory. In the process, they seem to have forced the Obama administration to shut down its covert drone air campaign. At this point, there have been no drone attacks for almost a month.

When he was still CIA Director, Leon Panetta termed the Agency’s drone campaign the “only game in town.” Now it’s “on hold.” (“There is concern that another hit [by the drones] will push US-Pakistan relations past the point of no return,” one official told The Long War Journal. “We don’t know how far we can push them [Pakistan], how much more they are willing to tolerate.”) After those hundreds of strikes and significant civilian casualties, which have helped turn the Pakistani public against the U.S. — according to a recent poll, a staggering 97% of Pakistanis oppose the attacks — it’s a stunning reversal, however temporary and little noted.

In other words, we’ve come a long way, baby, since the moment in 2001 when Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly stormed into the office of Pakistan’s intelligence director and told him to either ally with Washington in the fight against al-Qaeda or prepare to be bombed “back to the Stone Age.” As the U.S. leaves Iraq with its tail between its legs, the setback in Pakistan (as in Iran) should be considered a gauge of just how little Washington’s massive high-tech military edge, drones and otherwise, has been able to alter the shifting power equation on the planet.

In the latest piece in his new changing-face-of-empire series, TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse explores why, despite its advocates’ claims, America’s newest wonder weapon will never prove a game changer. Tom

The Drone That Fell From the Sky
What a Busted Robot Airplane Tells Us About the American Empire in 2012 and Beyond
By Nick Turse

The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane’s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the “cautionary” range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on. While the crew desperately ran through its “engine overheat” checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing.

By now, they had a full-blown in-flight emergency on their hands. “We still have control of the engine, but engine failure is imminent,” the pilot announced over the radio.

Almost two hours after the first signs of distress, the engine indeed failed. Traveling at 712 feet per minute, the drone clipped a fence before crashing.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

A Time of Remembrance and Prayer For Peace, Remember the Cost of War

2011-12-28T11:03:00.000+03:00

Friends Center | 1501 Cherry Street | Philadelphia

There is no victory and no victors in this war.

*****

For 30 years the Iraqi people have endured three wars and for 20 years suffered under some of the most severe and comprehensive economic and political sanctions ever imposed against a nation and its people.

A war of choice starting in 2003 destroyed the infrastructure, left hundreds of thousands dead, opened the way to civil war/ethnic fighting, and created the largest movement of refugees and internally displaced in the region since the creation of Israel in 1948.

With the withdrawal of US combat troops by the end of this year it is time to look back on the past to better understand future challenges. Join us to explore the legacies of war in Iraq: war that has gutted our economy.

Speakers:

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, an outgrowth of a campaign to end economic sanctions against Iraq. With members of the Iraq Peace Team, she lived in Iraq during the 2003 U.S. invasion and initial weeks of the U.S. Occupation.

Mary Trotochaud was the AFSC country representative from 2004 – 2007. She worked with Iraqi women in early efforts to help create a new vision for their country. She later worked in Washington with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL).

Rick McDowell has lead fifteen delegations to Iraq (1996-2003) to witness the impact of comprehensive economic sanctions. In 2002 he led a group of Nobel Laureates and was the AFSC Iraq Country Representative from 2004-2007 before working with FCNL.

Raed Jarrar is an Iraq specialist, political analyst and former AFSC consultant based in Washington, D.C. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Raed became the country director for CIVIC Worldwide, the only door-to-door casualty survey group in post-war Iraq.

Abdulla Al-Obeidi grew up in Baghdad. As a refugee in Egypt he worked with other Iraqi teens. He is now studying sociology/pre-med at Rowan University and active on campus – and community – efforts to bridge the gap between Middle Eastern and US cultures.

Celeste Zappala is a Gold Star Mother for Peace. Her son, PA Guard Sgt. Sherwood R. Baker, was killed in Iraq on April 2004. His unit was in charge of guarding those looking for Iraq’s non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Moderator: Peter Lems, AFSC Program Director, Education and Advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Friday 30 December | 5 – 7 PM
Arch Street United Methodist Church | Broad and Arch

This solemn Candlelight and Bell-Tolling vigil will be the formal closing of the monthly vigil held since 2005 at the corner of Broad and Arch Street by Celeste Zappala, Gold Star Mother for Peace. Her son, PA Guard Sgt. Sherwood R. Baker, was killed in Iraq, April 2004, guarding the unit looking for Iraq’s non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. The vigil will be followed by a special time of remembrance with music, prayer, and reflection beginning at 6 PM inside the church

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR ME AND CHANGE IN THE IOWA CAUCUS!–KAS

2011-12-28T11:02:00.001+03:00

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR ME AND CHANGE IN THE IOWA CAUCUS!–KAS

Dear Kevin,

2012 is going to be a doozy.

Thanks to a Supreme Court whose members won’t even abide by the code of conduct established for all other federal judges, we have corporations masquerading as people and pouring millions of dollars into the first presidential election since the disastrous Citizens United decision.

Meanwhile, a coordinated effort by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and its corporate backers like the Koch brothers, is attempting to roll back voting rights and make it harder for eligible citizens – particularly students, the elderly, minorities and the working poor – to vote.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’re also seeing the growth of a true citizens’ movement that is ready and willing to take our democracy back. Whether we will be able to do it will depend on a commitment from each and every Common Cause member across the country.

Common Cause is leading the charge against the corporate takeover of democracy and working hard to maintain a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And we’re counting on you to help us channel the anger and frustration that so many of us are feeling into meaningful reforms that stop the special interests in their tracks.

Let’s make 2012 the year that we get corporate profits out of politics, reverse Citizens United and take back our democracy.

On behalf of Robert Reich, our chairman, and the entire staff and board of Common Cause, thank you for all you do and best wishes for a happy holiday season.

Sincerely,

Bob Edgar
President, Common Cause

Meet the Former Militiaman Behind the Fast and Furious Scandal

2011-12-28T11:01:00.001+03:00

—By Stephanie Mencimer at MOTHER JONES

On December 8, when Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee about Operation Fast and Furious, the bungled federal attempt to combat gun smuggling to Mexico, his testimony was met with frequent snickers and occasional hostility. The source wasn’t Republican committee members, but rather a blogger seated at the press table. Wearing a homemade press pass in a National Rifle Association badge-holder, Mike Vanderboegh had arrived at the hearing toting an Army-issue laptop case that appeared capable of withstanding a roadside bomb.

A large, ruddy fellow with white hair and a mischievous smile, he had played a key role in turning Fast and Furious into a national scandal. From his home in Pinson, Alabama, Vanderboegh writes a little-known, far-right blog called Sipsey Street Irregulars. Last December, in a post titled, “Border Patrol agent killed with ATF-smuggled AR? Some ATF agents seem to think so,” he reported on rumors flying around law enforcement circles about the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Two weeks earlier, Terry and his team had been tracking a Mexican “rip crew”—who specialize in robbing drug smugglers—in Nogales, Arizona. Shots were fired and Terry was hit in the back. He died the next day.

Vanderboegh reported that agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives believed that the gun that killed Terry had been part of an anti-gun smuggling operation—later known publicly as Operation Fast and Furious. Vanderboegh suggested that ATF agents had encouraged “snitches” to purchase hundreds of guns in the US and smuggle them into Mexico to track the weapons to high-level drug kingpins. He quoted a website set up by anonymous disgruntled ATF agents: It “appears that ATF may be one of the largest suppliers of assault rifles to the Mexican cartels!” one wrote.

Using what he calls the “desert telegraph” (an anonymous email system) to communicate with whistleblowers, Vanderboegh says he helped arrange for ATF agents to talk to the staff of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Department of Justice. Later, Vanderboegh connected the whistleblowers with the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who took over as the committee’s chair in January.
.Advertise on MotherJones.com
Acting on tips from the whistleblowers, congressional investigators turned up evidence that the ATF had allowed straw buyers in Arizona to purchase more than 2,000 high-powered weapons and smuggle them into Mexico in order to follow them up the chain to high-level drug traffickers. Yet hundreds of the guns disappeared in the process, some turning up later at grisly crime scenes in Mexico. So far, the missing arms have been connected to about 200 Mexican deaths.

Congressional Republicans, notably Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have pursued the scandal relentlessly. At least 56 members of Congress have called for Holder to resign over of his handling of the debacle, as have presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman. And the scandal has already claimed the jobs of the acting head of the ATF and the US attorney for Arizona.

The affair has been quite a coup for Vanderboegh, who is better known for inciting violence than for exposing wrongdoing. When Obama’s health care reform bill passed in March 2010, Vanderboegh encouraged readers to throw rocks through the windows of Democratic Party headquarters, writing:

[I]f you wish to send a message that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows. Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats. But BREAK them.

A few people heeded his call, smashing the windows of a handful of congressional offices, including the Tucson office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot and seriously wounded last January.

“We will not disarm. You cannot convince us. You cannot intimidate us. You can try to kill us, if you think you can. But remember, we’ll shoot back.”In November, Vanderboegh made national news again, this time for his alleged role in inspiring a domestic terrorism plot. The FBI alleged that a handful of Georgia senior citizens had met at a Waffle House to plot a domestic bioterrorism attack. When they were arrested, word leaked that they’d been inspired by Vanderboegh’s unpublished novel, Absolved, in which underground militia groups plan to assassinate law enforcement and judicial officials to protest gun control and gay marriage. Vanderboegh has called the book “a combination field manual, technical manual, and call to arms for my beloved gunnies of the armed citizenry.” (Parts of the book are available online.)

Vanderboegh is unapologetic about his advocacy for armed resistance against what he views as a repressive government. He describes himself as a member of the Three Percent movement. It’s a reference to those who fought in the American Revolution, a minority that Vanderboegh claims “never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists.” On his website, Vanderboegh sums up the doctrine of the Three Percent: “We will not disarm. You cannot convince us. You cannot intimidate us. You can try to kill us, if you think you can. But remember, we’ll shoot back.”

Fiery rhetoric about resistance and revolution isn’t new for Vanderboegh, though the origins of his activism may seem a bit incongruous. “I used to be a communist,” he says. Vanderboegh, who is in his late 50s, claims he joined the anti-war movement in 1967, first with Students for a Democratic Society, then the Socialist Workers Party, and eventually the Maoist Progressive Labor Party.

Next Page: Vanderboegh authored a document titled “Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Read more at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/fast-and-furious-scandal-mike-vanderboegh?page=2

Heroic football player stops potentially lethal teacher attack

2011-12-28T11:00:00.001+03:00

If public and student hate were not bad enough for teachers in America–teachers who are facing lay-offs again and again due to public budget cuts–, we are now finding tales like this of teachers fighting on the web.–KAS

Heroic football player stops potentially lethal teacher attack

By Cameron Smith

By all accounts, the attack looked like it would be lethal.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Heroic-football-player-stops-potentially-lethal-?urn=highschool-wp10312

In the moments after the school bell rang, a 40-year-old teacher brutally attacked a fellow teacher. With screwdriver blows from English teacher Ronette Ricketts raining on the victim, fellow English teacher Cynthia Glozier, a varsity football player thought quick, relied on his athletic instincts and stopped the attack in its tracks.

According to New York TV network WPIX and the Poughkeepsie Journal, among other sources, Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) High senior linebacker Justin Richardson is now being hailed as a hero and a likely lifesaver as a result.

“I saw Ms. Ricketts just hammering her in the side of head,” Richardson told PIX 11 TV. “I saw a lot of blood. It was shocking. I just jammed her really hard to get the screwdriver [to] fly out of her hand. If I didn’t step in she would have killed her.”

Luckily for all involved, Richardson did step in to stop a shocking attack before it became a deadly one. As it is, Ricketts is still facing charges of first-degree attempted assault, second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon, and is likely to lose a job in which she was previously highly respected.

It remains uncertain what caused the longtime English teacher to snap — the two teachers were reportedly talking in the hallway moments before the screwdriver attack — but Ricketts is now facing potentially life-changing charges, all while Glozier faces a long recovery to get back to her life as normal. The Poughkeepsie Journal reported that Glozier was in good condition at Saint Francis Hospital, but her attorney, Tom O’Neill, said she was “extremely traumatized” by the attack.

“It wasn’t two teachers arguing, it was one attacking another,” Poughkeepsie principal Edgar Glascott told PIX 11.

Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Visit RivalsHigh or connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

My dream was not to grow up to become a whistleblower. My dream was to become an FBI agent. But after 20 years at the FBI, I came face to face with co

2011-12-28T10:58:00.000+03:00

My dream was not to grow up to become a whistleblower. My dream was to become an FBI agent. But after 20 years at the FBI, I came face to face with corruption. My moral compass allowed no other option: expose the truth

Dear Kevin,

My dream was not to grow up to become a whistleblower. My dream was to become an FBI agent. But after 20 years at the FBI, I came face to face with corruption. My moral compass allowed no other option: expose the truth.

Fortunately, I found the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC), an organization fighting every day for whistleblower rights. The NWC was created to advocate for whistleblowers who do not have a voice. Over the years, the NWC has created a vibrant whistleblower community. It consists of people throughout the country who put the greater good over their own financial and emotional security.

Please help me support the NWC by making a donation today.

One of the NWC’s contributions to the whistleblower community this year has been the launch of a new weekly radio show, Honesty Without Fear. I joined as a host because I see the radio show as an opportunity for the public to learn about the contributions whistleblowers make to our society and to become involved in the fight for stronger protections.

The NWC also works hard to educate whistleblowers and their advocates. In addition to their online resources and seminars, this year the NWC coordinated a campaign that encouraged whistleblowers to donate 1,000 copies of the new Whistleblower’s Handbook to public libraries across the country. This guide did not exist for me, but now it will be available to those who need it most.

But to be totally realistic, we live in a culture where being a whistleblower is not recognized as an honorable or positive thing. There are no national holidays for whistleblowers, no parades, no financial support, and until the NWC was founded, no real assistance. I am proud to be associated with the NWC in changing this culture and making things a little easier for individuals with a moral compass.

Every voice makes us stronger. Make your tax-deductible donation today to the National Whistleblowers Center so they can continue protecting and advocating for whistleblowers.

Sincerely,
Jane Turner
FBI Whistleblower and 25-Year Veteran Agent