International Statement: Secwepemc Native Youth Movement

NYM Warrior Society, Skwelkekwelt Protection Center, Secwepmec Nation, Annishinabe from Grassy Narrows, Native Elders Council, No-One is Illegal, Anti-Poverty Committee, ; Anti-Olympic Coalition, Unite Voices against Sun Peaks Expansion, New road; the 2010 Olympics.

On Sunday March 18th Skwelkewkwelt Protection Center, Secwepemc Native Youth Movement Warrior Society, Supporters, Allies from many Native Nations, and International Observers Smashed on Sun Peaks Ski-Resort. The Protest and Press Conference was held to let the world know that Secwepemc People will continue to Fight against the illegal development on Un-Surrendered/Un-Ceded Secwepemc Territory. Sun Peaks is presently in the midst of a 294 million dollar destruction (expansion), & is planning new paved highways to go through our hunting grounds, and continue the Genocide of Native Lands & Way of Life. Sun Peaks is also attempting to become a municipality and take all of our Land, as well as making sewage water into snow and dumping shit on our Sacred mountains. Skwelkwelk’welt is the name for our mountains, that Sun Peaks is now destroying. Skwelkwek’welt is our home, It is home to all the animals and plants that we depend on as a Nation of distinct Peoples. This is our Survival.

As the Native Youth Movement of the Secwepemc Nation, we are asking the world, including athletes and tourists, not to come to Canada for the 2010 Olympics. KKKanada has, & continues to commit Genocide on Native People, but our Warriorz will Fight back. We will not sit back, give up, and assimilate. We are not reformist; we cannot be bought off, or fooled into believing the evil Invaders that they care about us or our Land. An NYM Spokesperson Stated: “We will honor the our Ancestors, and the Warrior codes of Geronimo and Crazy Horse that NO One Has A Right to Sell the Land, Water, or Air. We are Secwepemc, we still exist, and continue to survive from the land and our traditional territory, the Western Hemisphere is all Indian Land!

We need the help and support of the world to help stop the destruction of the Land and our way of Life. Nippon Cable Owned by Masayoshi Ohkubu, Nancy Green, Al Raine, Intrewest, Eco-Sign, Re-Max, Century 21, D.I.A “chief” Felix Arnouse, the KKKanadian government & all those who continue to ski & play on our Land are all Collaberators in the Genocide continuing against Native People. We must all Unite our Voices and Actions to Defend Our Land, People, and Way of Life. We Stand in Solidarity with all those Fighting Destruction and Terrorism from these evil devils Worldwide. The Zapatistas, & the newly established camps in Cocapah & and Mayan Territory, the 13 Native Nations fighting against sewage being made into snow and put on San Francisco Peaks(‘Arizona’), Dineh Elders fighting a power Plant(‘New Mexico’), the Sta’timc fighting so Sutikalh will not be turned into a 550 million dollar ski-resort, Lakota and Ponca NYM Warriorz and the many Nations who are Uniting to Protect Bear Butte(‘South Dakota’), the Annicinabe fighting logging in Grassy Narrows (‘Ontario’)the Pitt River People Fighting for Medicine Lake(California), the Thaltan(‘British Columbia’) & the Mayan (‘Guatemala’, ‘Mexico’) fighting mining, the People of Oaxaca, and Atenco(‘Mexico’) and their Warriorz sitting in jail, the People of Six Nations(‘Ontario’) Fighting a rich housing devolpment, the Mapuche(‘Argentina’), the Kuna(‘Panama’), and all those fighting for their very existence. It is one Struggle, we must Unite. Cancel the 2010 Olympics! Boycott Sun Peaks and Whistler! Free Leonard Peltier! Long Live the Zapatistas & all Warrior Societies!

NYM Communications: nymcommunications@hotmail.com
NYM Communications

NATIVE YOUTH MOVEMENT

FIGHT FOR LIFE

WARRIORS UNITE FROM ALASKA TO ARGENTINA

Blacks and Immigrants: More Allies Than Adversaries

By Gerald Lenoir. Spring 2007

The year 2006 will go down as a watershed year for the immigrant rights movement in the United States. Bringing millions of immigrants and their families and supporters into the streets was a huge accomplishment. But much more needs to be done to consolidate a fragmented movement and bring on new allies.

Last April, a group of African Americans and Black immigrants in Oakland, California came together to form the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). “BAJI was founded to support the demands of the immigrant rights movement and to engage African Americans in a dialogue about the underlying issues of race and economic status that frame United States immigration policy,” says co-founder Rev. Phillip Lawson.

(Click here to read more)

Cops offer 'Don't Ask' policy

Illegal immigrants can now report crimes without fear of deportation. By CHRIS DOUCETTE, SUN MEDIA. March 23, 2007

The Toronto Police Services Board has given the green light to police Chief Bill Blair to begin implementing a new "Don't Ask" policy that will allow people without "legal status" to report crimes without fear of deportation.

And the dozens of proponents who were on hand at police headquarters to applaud the move yesterday say they are especially encouraged by the board's willingness to consider addressing their concerns, including the possible addition of a "Don't Tell" component to the policy.

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Britain: Detainees Riot Over Bad Conditions

Round The Camp Fire. SchNEWS, the Direct Action Newsletter; March 16/07

Nine people were injured following a fire and riot at Campsfield detention centre early on Wednesday morning with seven immigration staff and two detainees being taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.

The fires were started after forcible removal of an Algerian male asylum seeker from his room by guards. Recent testimony given by prisoners to detainee support group Bail for Immigration detainees (BID), complains of the brutal treatment by staff - including one incident of a cancer patient being handcuffed and dragged out of his hospital bed while still emerging from general anaesthetic.

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The Iroquois Way of Impeachment

Let the Mothers Do It. By KAZ DZIAMKA. March 24 / 25, 2007

Not only does American democracy rank a miserable 17th on the list of the world's modern democracies (according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's index of democracy); it also doesn't fare well when compared with traditional Native American democracies, in particular, with the Iroquois Confederacy--the Haudenosaunee--"the oldest living participatory democracy on earth."

In "Perceptions of America's Native Democracies," Donald A. Grinde Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen point out that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among others, could benefit--and did benefit to some extent--from Native Americans' experience in designing functional democracies. Unfortunately, being racist and sexist as well as mostly contemptuous of direct democracy, our Founding Fathers failed to take full advantage of the political genius of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy: The Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras. Among the Iroquois provisions absent from the U.S. Constitution is the law that allows Iroquois clan mothers to initiate impeachment against incompetent or criminal political leaders, or "sachems":

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Uranium and the War

The effects of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq
by John Williams. Global Research, March 23, 2007. uruknet.info

In five billion years our sun will explode into a white dwarf and envelope the earth, according to NASA projections.

The half-life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years.

This means that by the time the Earth ceases to be a planet, only a little more than half of the depleted uranium (DU) that the United States Army is firing into Iraq and other countries around the world will be gone. The rest of the radioactive material will still be poisoning the Iraqi people.

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Labour Double-Standards Blamed for Farmworkers' Deaths

Relatives, unions decry declining standards. By Tom Sandborn. March 16, 2007. TheTyee.ca

Did Amarjit Kaur Bal, Sarabjit Kaur Sidhu and Sukhwinder Kaur Punia die in vain? The results from a meeting held March 15 in downtown Vancouver may determine the answer to that question.

Family members of farmworkers killed in the roll-over accident of an overloaded labour contractor's van last week and leaders of the B.C. labour movement met on the morning of March 15 with Minister of Labour Olga Ilich and Minister of Agriculture Pat Bell in Vancouver. They presented a comprehensive list of 30 proposals to remedy safety and employment standards abuses in B.C. fields and greenhouses. The submission to the ministers also calls on the government to strike down a controversial memorandum signed by the BC Liberals and the province's large agricultural organizations, which critics say has paved the way for lax enforcement of safety and employment standards protections in the industry.

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CANADA: Counterinsurgency Manual Shows Military's New Face

By Jon Elmer*

TORONTO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada's Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counter-insurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

The manual will guide Canadian Forces doctrine and training well into the future, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

A 250-page publication, the field manual outlines the principles and practices of fighting the kind of insurgencies that have come to define warfare for the Western powers in the 21st century, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. The manual has been two years in development and is scheduled for release later this year. In it, insurgent wars are characterised by their tendency to be local and often popular movements, rather than the traditional military conflicts between states. This type of irregular warfare has confounded U.S. and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, where growing insurgencies have taken a bloody toll on local populations as well as Western troops, and signs of success are few and far between.

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US town tries to ban housing and employing non-status migrants

America watches as one small town tries to turn back time on immigration. Suzanne Goldenberg in Hazleton. March 23, 2007

The outcome of a lawsuit challenging a crackdown on illegal Latino workers could frame nationwide policies

The women's agitation rises from the booth at the local diner, over the lunchtime clatter and the waitresses calling out their orders. Unruly teenagers, street crime, people chattering in Spanish in the street - the women tut and shake their heads. A wave of immigrants has arrived in this former mining town in the Pennsylvania mountains and many of the old-timers do not like it.

"When I come back here I am shocked at what I see," says Monica Tombasco, who grew up in Hazleton and is back to visit her elderly aunt, Mary. "It's scary," says her aunt. "In McDonald's when we go on Saturdays they are always there talking in their language. We never know if they are talking about us."

(Click here to read more)

Bobby Seale Denied Entry to Canada

Former Black Panther denied entry to Canada Maria Kubacki. CanWest News Service. March 23, 2007

OTTAWA -- The Canadian government is refusing Bobby Seale entry to Canada and denying students an opportunity to hear a legendary civil rights activist, according to a University of Ottawa group that invited the former Black Panther Party chairman to speak at an event this weekend.

The University of Ottawa branch of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) -- a student group dedicated to social, economic and environmental justice -- invited Seale to give the keynote address on racism and oppression at a conference this Saturday. But they found out last week that he would not be allowed to enter the country, according to OPIRG board member and University of Ottawa student Michael Cheevers.

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Open Letter To The Anti-War Movement

By Hana Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty. 20 March, 2007

The illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq is not only the biggest crime of recent history, it is the original sin of the 21st century, a depravity. In its war on Iraq, the United States has sought to destroy Iraq as both a state and a nation. It decimated an entire class — the progressive middle class of Iraq that had proven its capacity to manage Iraqi resources independently and to the benefit of all; it killed nearly a million while sending millions more into exile; it orchestrated death squads and looting and invented new horrors in torture and rape; in the name of bringing democracy, it brought material destruction on a mass scale to a people, aiming also to erase their identity, memory, culture, social fabric, institutions and forms of administration, commerce, and everyday life; it even attacked Iraq’s unborn generations with the 4.7 billion-year death of depleted uranium. It has engaged in civilisational genocide as well as its own moral suicide. Force, however, does not dictate right. The brutality of power and imperialism has been definitively exposed while the project for a new American century has utterly failed. The consequences for American and international history are conclusive. The world order that formed around erstwhile US liberal values has evaporated.

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EcoWellness: Race and hazardous waste

By CHRISTINE DELL'AMOREUPI Consumer Health Editor

WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- Twenty years after a landmark study proved a link between hazardous-waste sites and minority neighborhoods, the phenomenon has only settled deeper into U.S. towns and cities, a new report says.

What's more, the racial differences are much greater than previously thought, according to "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty," a preliminary anniversary report released today. The full report will be made public on April 22, Earth Day.

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Deaths in Iraq Have Reached 1 Million

Iraq invasion 4th anniversary & 1 million Iraqi excess deaths
By Gideon Polya. March 19, 2007

On the 4th anniversary of the illegal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq the post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths total 1 million as determined from top US epidemiological data – evidence of immense US-UK-Oz war crimes.

The estimate of 1 million post-invasion excess deaths in Iraq follows inexorably and arithmetically from the findings of top US medical epidemiology group in the World’s top Public Health School (the Nobel Laureate-containing Bloomberg School of Public Health) at the top US Johns Hopkins University, published peer-reviewed in the top UK medical journal The Lancet and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts (for the primary medical literature reference see: link and for its endorsement by 27 top Australian medical experts: link ).

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Inuit Accuse US of Destroying Their Way of Life with Global Warming

February 9, 2007. By Andrew Buncombe

A delegation of Inuit is to travel to Washington DC to provide first-hand testimony of how global warming is destroying their way of life and to accuse the Bush administration of undermining their human rights.

The delegation, representing Inuit peoples from the US, Canada, Russia and Greenland, will argue that the US's energy policies and its position as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is having a devastating effect on their communities. Melting sea ice, rising seas and the impact on the animals they rely on for food threatens their existence.

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Update on Aljazeera, March 1 2007: US emissions 'breach human rights'

Northern Canadians believe that carbon emissions from the US have contributed so much to climate change symptoms that their human rights have been violated. The case was made Thursday by the Inuit community before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

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Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States

Southern Poverty Law Center. March 2007

In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.

What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.

(Click here to read more)

Click here to download the complete report.

Also, click here for interview with Mary Bauer, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, and author of the new report.

Iraqi Women: Four years after the Invasion

Dr. Nadje Al-Ali March 14, 2007. Editor: Erik Leaver, IPS
Foreign Policy In Focus

Every-day survival is a priority in a context where lack of security goes side by side with incredibly difficult living conditions. The Iraqi infrastructure which was already severely debilitated as a result of economic sanctions and a series of wars has deteriorated even further since 2003. Electricity shortages, lack of access to potable water, malfunctioning sanitation systems and a deteriorating health system are part of every-day lives in post-2003 Iraq. Intisar K., who works as a doctor in a teaching hospital in Baghdad, summed up what has also been documented in several UN-related documents: “We only have electricity for three to a maximum of five hours a day. There is not enough clean drinking water. Lack of sanitation is a big problem and continues to be one of the main causes of malnutrition, dysentery and death amongst young children.”

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Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso

"Mothers are Rounded Up in Massachusetts and Sent to a Texas Jail Without Saying Goodby to Their Families"
March 17 / 18, 2007. By GREG MOSES

"We are drawing attention to a humanitarian crisis," says Penny Anderson, speaking from a Saturday morning protest outside the El Paso immigrant jail (March 17). She is the first person to take the cell phone being passed around by activist Amber Clark.

Among the prisoners in the nearby 800-bed jail are about one hundred women flown in from New Bedford, Massachusetts following an immigration raid at a manufacturing shop. Immigration authorities have reported that 116 of the women, believed to be mostly from Guatemala, were brought here to the El Paso Service Processing Center (EPC) on Montana Street. Another 90 were reportedly taken to another immigrant jail in Texas.

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Mumia Addresses the World Death Penalty Conference

"Death Row is a Web That Catches Only the Poor" By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr. February 17 / 18, 2007. Paris, France.

During the opening ceremony of the 3rd World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris recently--a session featuring top diplomats and dignitaries--only one actual death row inmate addressed the delegates from over 120 nations: Pennsylvania death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal delivered brief remarks recorded from his Pa death row cell that echoed criticisms of the death penalty contained in presentations during the opening session by top officials from France, Germany, Italy and the Council of Europe.

"Death row is a web that catches only the poor. Race and poverty are excellent predictors of who ends up on death row," said Abu-Jamal, recognized internationally as a symbol of injustice in the US yet considered by some Americans as simply a 'cop killer.'

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Harassment 'endemic' in US forces

Al Jazeera. March 15, 2007

The US military is pushing hard to recruit female soldiers but struggles to overcome a legacy of sexual harassment, assault and even rape by male colleagues.

Women who have been assaulted or raped report poor medical treatment, lack of counselling, incomplete criminal investigations and even threats of punishment for reporting the assaults.

The military claims changes made over the last few years, most notably in 2005, have made the military a safer working environment for women. But in an exclusive investigation Al Jazeera's Everywoman programme interviewed a number of former female soldiers who say nothing has changed.

(Click here to read more)

See also interviews on Democracy Now!;

The Private War of Women Soldiers: Female Vet, Soldier Speak Out on Rising Sexual Assault Within US Military

On International Women’s Day, we look at the ongoing global struggle for gender equality and equal rights within the US military. Specialist Mickiela Montoya came face to face with the dangers of rape by her male comrades when she was deployed to Iraq with the National Guard. Eli Painted Crow served in the Army for 22 years including time in Iraq in 2004, facing challenges both as a woman and a Native American. And Columbia professor Helen Benedict is author of a forthcoming book about women veterans of the Iraq war.

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Secrets and lies

By Ignacio Ramonet. March 2007

What is the most apt epithet for European governments caught in the act of colluding with a foreign agency in abducting suspects who were then transported to secret prisons and tortured? It is hard to imagine a more flagrant violation of human rights, a violation committed by states that are forever prating about their respect for the law.

Two recent events bear witness to the prevailing schizophrenia. On 7 February representatives of most European governments assembled in Paris and solemnly signed a United Nations convention against enforced disappearances that prohibits secret detention (1). On 14 February the European parliament in Strasbourg adopted a report accusing the same governments of colluding with the United States Central Intelligence Agency in secret abduction operations.

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New Zealand: Images And Reality

By Ghali Hassan. 10 March, 2007

New Zealand prides itself on human rights, social compassion and political “neutrality”. Moreover, New Zealanders pride themselves on being “peace loving” people. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. These images are a distortion of reality. New Zealand is a fully-fledged member of America’s war on Muslims.

I recently spent sometime in New Zealand. As an Australian citizen, I do not need visa to enter or work in New Zealand. However, on my arrival from Melbourne at Wellington Airport, I was singled-out for “questioning” and thorough search. I was told; “it is our policy to identify and question particular passengers”. After a lengthy argument, I was allowed to leave the Airport. Outside the Airport, an Australian passenger said to me; “it has nothing to do with you being Australian or not. Are you a Muslim”? To be plain honest, I never expected this to happen to me in New Zealand.

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Time for a bi-national state

Israel-Palestine: Time for a bi-national state
March 2007. By Leila Farsakh

There is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not created a basis for a democratic Palestinian state as President George Bush had imagined: the Palestinians are watching their territory being fragmented into South African-style bantustans with poverty levels of over 75%. The area is heading to the abyss of an apartheid state system rather than to a viable two-state solution, let alone peace (1).

There have been a number of recent publications proposing a one-state solution as the only alternative to the current impasse. Three years ago Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor in the 1970s, wrote that the question is “no longer whether there is to be a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel, but which model to choose” (2). Respected intellectuals on all sides, including the late Edward Said; the Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara; the Israeli historian Illan Pape; scholars Tanya Reinhart and Virginia Tilley; and journalists Amira Haas and Ali Abunimeh, have all stressed the inevitability of such a solution.

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The War On Sexism Has Yet To Be Won

IWD 2007: The war on sexism has yet to be won. March 8, 2007. Gina Whitfield

Being a feminist in this era of Girls Gone Wild and cell phone porn downloading can be seriously disheartening at times.

To make matters worse, there is the spectre of Stephen Harper lusting after a majority government, with the help of his closest female advisers, R.E.A.L. Women, a right-wing anti-women think tank, who are proud of their motto: “women's rights, but not at the expense of human rights.”

This bizarre group erroneously argues that women are, despite being 52 per cent of the population, a special interest lobbying to suppress men's rights. R.E.A.L Women's political line, however, flies in the face of the lived experience of most “real” women in this country. Unfortunately, the actions of the Harper government are having real negative impacts on Canada's women, which gives this year's International Women's Day (IWD) added significance.

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Canada Must Be Held Accountable For Haiti Coup

Three years later: Canada must be held accountable for Haiti coup. February 28, 2007. Derrick O'Keefe

“Canada has made a significant contribution to stability in Haiti,” noted George W. Bush, in remarks to the media after meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in July 2006 (1).

Three years after Canada helped lead a coup d'état against the democratically elected government of Haiti, almost no one in Ottawa has been held accountable for this crime against the sovereignty of the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

On February 29, 2004, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was spirited out of the country on a plane by US Marines. Canadian Special Forces, allegedly dispatched at the special request of then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, helped secure the airport (2).

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Brazil's Ethanol Slaves

200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom. Tom Phillips in Palmares Paulista. March 9, 2007

Behind rusty gates, the heart of Brazil's energy revolution can be found in the stale air of a squalid red-brick tenement building. Inside, dozens of road-weary migrant workers are crammed into minuscule cubicles, filled with rickety bunk-beds and unpacked bags, preparing for their first day at work in the sugar plantations of Sao Paulo.

This is Palmares Paulista, a rural town 230 miles from Sao Paulo and the centre of a South American renewable energy boom that is transforming Brazil into a global reference point on how to cut carbon emissions and oil imports at the same time.

Inside the prison-like construction are the cortadores de cana - sugar cane cutters - part of a destitute migrant workforce of about 200,000 men who help prop up Brazil's ethanol industry.

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UK Gulag: 940 detained since 9/11 without charge

Less than one in 20 held under anti-terror laws is charged
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent. 06 March 2007

Less than 4 per cent of the people arrested under anti-terror laws since the September 11 attacks five years ago have been convicted of terrorist offences, it was disclosed yesterday.

Following warnings from Muslim groups over the growing alienation of large sections of the community, the Government faced demands for an overhaul of anti-terrorist legislation.

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RAWA statement on the International Women's Day

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) 8th March 2007 - Kabul

As long as the fundamentalists are in power, there will be no end to the oppressions and crimes against Afghan women

The world came into motion in the name of "liberating Afghan woman" and our country was invaded, but the sorrows and deprivations of Afghan women has not just failed to reduce, but actually increased the level of oppression and brutality day by day on this most ruined population of our society.

The corrupt and mafia government of Mr. Karzai and its international guardians, are playing shamelessly with the intolerable suffering of Afghan women and misuse it as their propaganda tool for deceiving the people of the world. They have placed some women into official posts in the government who are favored by the warlords and then proclaim it as symbol of "women's liberation" in the country. But the presence of a number of women in high posts is not important unless they touch the depth of our people's adversities and sufferings, like the parliamentarian Malalai Joya, and uncompromisingly struggle against the bloody enemies of woman's rights and democracy and consider women's emancipation as an integral part of the liberation of our whole country from the filthy shackles of the fundamentalists and their foreign masters.

(Click here to read more)

Palestine: Open Letter to the People of Six Nations

Jamal Juma’, The Electronic Intifada, 5 March 2007

On the anniversary of the Six Nations Land Reclamation we express our solidarity to you and to all those that are defending today their land and livelihoods against theft and colonization.

On February 28th, 2006, after the Canadian government gave a construction company permission to build a settlement on their land, the people of Six Nations took it back, demanding an end to the theft and destruction of their land and to settler encroachment on their territory. Many of them now face charges in Canadian courts for defending their land. This sounds tragically familiar to us in Palestine and to many others around the world. For over 500 years the same mechanisms have been used against indigenous peoples, to colonize and dispossess.

(Click here to read more)

Why Does The Times Recognize Israel's 'Right to Exist'?

March 11, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times . By Saree Makdisi

'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.

No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.

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The Iroquois Curse on Conrad Black – The “Silent” U.S War on Canada.

MNN March 9, 2007.

Did Conrad Black make misjudgments or was he a pawn in a long-term plan to wipe out Canada? According to the March 12, 2007, issue of MacLean’s Magazine, Washington insiders are orchestrating the destruction of Canada. Yes, Conrad was greedy. He was spellbound by Barbara Amiel, his wife since 1991. David Radler, his partner at Hollinger International for over thirty years, ratted him out to the U.S.

Canadians don’t appear to be aware of just how crazy the U.S. lust for Canada can be. Like a rejected lover who flips out when you refuse their candy, the U.S. thinks it owns Canada. If they can’t get their way, they will come back with a gun and blow Canada to smithereens. They already have control over the Canadian military, policing, corporations and governments both federal and provincial.

The Canadians are about to find out what we went through as a result of their betrayal and treachery of us.

It’s history repeating itself. Or are they making it look like they are fighting against each other? Are they really out to destroy the original title holders, the Onkwehonwe, all across Turtle Island.

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US Immigration System at its Worst

By Ali Noorani March 9, 2007

NEW BEDFORD"HAS ANYONE seen my wife? She left for work yesterday and never came home. Our newborn baby is hungry and crying. Can someone please help?" asks a young father in the basement of a crowded church, one clear voice above the din of the hundreds gathered. The fear is palpable in the young man's eyes. He implores the listener to offer solace, hope, and encouragement.

There were hundreds of people searching for news about their loved ones, fighting back nervous tears. They found no information and no answers. Only chaos. And pain. And fear.

For the past three days, this has been the scene at St. James Church in New Bedford.

This is the result of failed immigration laws. This is the nation's immigration system at its worst.

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Trials of Guantanamo suspects begin without a lawyer or reporter in sight

BY Andrew Buncombe in Washington. 08 March 2007

Campaigners have condemned the Bush administration's plan to proceed with secret proceedings against 14 "high-value" terrorism suspects currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. The suspects include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of organising the 11 September 2001 attacks.

The military tribunals, scheduled to begin tomorrow, will take place behind closed doors and away from the scrutiny of the media. Hundreds of previous hearings held to determine the formal status of the prisoners have been open to reporters. None of the suspects will be able to have a lawyer present.

The Pentagon has said that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) are being held in secret to prevent the possible leaking of classified information. But legal campaigners said the decision had been taken to prevent the revelation of information embarrassing to the Bush administration.

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Ghana: 50 years since Independence

Forward ever. Al Ahram 8 - 14 March 2007 Issue No. 835
Gamal Nkrumah examines the significance of Ghana's golden jubilee independence celebrations

Kwame Nkrumah, understood that politics is about the possible. He knew what his people wanted: independence from colonial rule. "Today, I must pay homage to the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and his colleagues of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) who in 1947 launched the last phase of the process towards independence," acknowledged the current Ghanaian President Ageykum Kufour at celebrations marking the commemoration of Ghana's golden independence jubilee. What Kufour failed to note was that Nkrumah soon after his return to Ghana after studies overseas in the United States and Britain, outmaneuvered his colleagues at the UGCC, an elitist group of Africans who had profited from colonial rule.

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War on Terror, War on Women

BY Heather Wokusch. March 8, 2007

Under Bush, the US has become more militaristic and less tolerant of diplomacy and dissent. Women's rights have deteriorated accordingly.

Sabotaging programs for women has become something of a sport for this administration - in fact, one of Bush's first acts as president was to shut down the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach. Among other activities, the office had monitored policy initiatives and coordinated federal programs affecting women.

Bush then tried to close the Department of Labor Women's Bureau regional offices, thus prohibiting women from learning about their legal rights in the workplace.

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Palestinian Refugees of Iraq

BY Rafeef Ziadah. March 10, 2007

On the border between Iraq/Jordan and Iraq/Syria today live hundreds of Palestinian families who fled the US war to find themselves stranded in no-mans land. These families live in tents, in squalor, with little certainty or hope for the future, like their parents and grandparents did after their expulsion from their own homeland in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) by the Israelis. The Al-Hol, Al-Tanaf, Al-Ruweished and Al-Walid refugee camps in the Iraqi desert are examples of the on-going Nakba that Palestinian refugees face. The fate of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees who once lived in Iraq can be added to the many tragic stories of the US invasion and occupation of that country.

There are Palestinian refugees all over the world, and every one of them is being denied their right to return to their homes and villages from which they were expelled. This is a right that cannot be cancelled and a right that doesn’t have a statute of limitations. And while Palestinians continue to demand their right of return, other rights – to safety, to freedom of movement, to work and shelter and food – are violated as a matter of routine. The names of Palestinian refugee camps have become references to massacres and crimes committed against the Palestinian people: Sabra and Shatila (Lebanon), Jenin (West Bank), Rafah (Gaza) and today we add Al-Tanaf, Al-Hol, Al-Walid and Al-Ruweished.

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Native Warriors Claim Responsibility for taking Olympic Flag

March 7th, 2007 Coast Salish Territory [Vancouver, Canada]

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 6th, 2007, we removed the Olympic Flag from its flag-pole at Vancouver City Hall.We pried open the access panel on the pole with a crowbar, using a bolt-cutter, cut the metal cable/halyard inside, causing the flag to fall to the ground.

We claim this action in honor of Harriet Nahanee, our elder-warrior, who was given a death sentence by the BC courts for her courageous stand in defending Mother Earth.

We stand in solidarity with those fighting against the destruction caused by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

No Olympics on Stolen Land!

Native Warrior Society

Board changes spark worries about refugees

Minister will get more power in picking adjudicators for immigration body. Mar 03, 2007 Bruce Campion-Smith OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA–They are in some ways the gatekeepers to Canada, deciding which refugee applicants get to stay and who must return to an uncertain future in their homelands.

In some cases, the decisions made by the adjudicators on the Immigration and Refugee Board could mean life or death for the people involved.

Now, the Conservative government is changing the way those adjudicators are appointed, putting more power over the selection in the hands of Immigration Minister Diane Finley. Immigration experts fear the coming reforms will not only politicize the independent, quasi-judicial board but lead to a more worrisome outcome: an anti-refugee ideology that might close Canada's doors to refugees.

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Police brutality mars Women’s Day Celebration in Montreal

Police Assault women at International Women's Day March
Montreal 9 March 2007

Yesterday, as Montrealers, along with many around the world celebrated International Women's Day - the event was marred by police brutality in which three young women were assaulted, injured and traumatized. Among the issues that were brought up during the speeches at Montreal's women's day march was that in Iran women were prevented from celebrating international women's day. And women in Pakistan were also attacked yesterday in awomen's day event. Yesterday's events make ensure Montreal shares this distinction!

Marchers celebrating International Women's Day had walked from Place Emilie Gamelin (Berri Square) to Phillips Square, along Ste-Catherine Street. After speeches they made their way back to Berri Square. The police made an announcement asking people to walk on the sidewalk. Jaggi Singh, who had been one of many male supporters among the 200 strong celebrating international women's day moved onto the sidewalk. The others continued marching in the street. Police officers began to rush towards Singh, still walking on the sidewalk. They grabbed him and threw him against a nearby police car.

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Listen to an interview about the attacks with 17 year old marcher Emma on CKUT.

Rights Group Lashes U.S. on Status of Iraq Women

By Allison Stevens Washington Bureau Chief. March 6, 2007

The international rights group Madre chastises the Bush administration for supporting Islamist groups and allowing an erosion of women's rights in Iraq. Rape allegations directed at Iraqi forces are focusing the debate on U.S. involvement in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (WOMENSENEWS)--When two Iraqi women made highly public allegations of rape against Iraqi security forces last month, they drew international attention to a subject that usually is taboo in their war-torn country: sexual assault.

Sexual assault and other forms of violence against women, topics surrounded by cultural silence, are on the rise in Iraq, according to a report released today by Madre, an international women's human rights organization in New York.

And the United States, according to the report, bears much of the blame.

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Apartheid Comes to New Jersey

BY Saifedean Ammous. March 06, 2007

It was a cold Sunday morning in Teaneck, N.J. Some two-hundred-odd Jewish-Americans were entering the Orthodox synagogue Congregation B'nai Yeshurun where they were to hear a sales pitch by the Amana Settlement Movement aimed at convincing them to buy homes in illegal Israeli settlements.

America, the land that gave the world the separation of church and state, is hosting an auction where only members of one religious group can buy property. And here I am, a Palestinian who grew up hundreds of meters away from some of these very settlements. I cannot buy any of these houses and am not admitted into the auction room. Literally and figuratively left out in the cold, I light a cigarette and get over it immediately; being denied entry is not an entirely novel experience for a Palestinian.

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Audit Finds Multiple Abuses in Immigration Jails

William Fisher NEW YORK, Feb 9 (IPS)

Suspected illegal immigrants held in detention by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate food, are subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and have their access to lawyers, relatives and immigration authorities improperly limited.

These are among the findings of the department's inspector general, based on an audit of the U.S.-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Centre in Miami, a contract with the Corrections Corporation of America's facility in San Diego, and local jails and prisons in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Hudson and Passaic Counties, New Jersey, from June 2004 to January 2007.

Critics of the agency still called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.

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International Women’s Day 2007: We Stand With The Women Of The World

By Lucinda Marshall. 03 March, 2007

For the past 5000 years, give or take a century or two, there has been a persistent tendency to leave unexamined the impact that social, economic, environmental, and military policies have on the lives of women throughout the world. As a result, women make up the majority of those living in poverty, millions of women have died needlessly due to lack of healthcare and safe living conditions and there is a worldwide pandemic of violence against women.

For those reasons, International Women’s Day (IWD), which is observed on March 8 is a time not only to celebrate women’s lives and achievements, but also a chance to join hands in solidarity with women around the globe and to focus much needed attention on the many problems women face today.

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Reverse Reparations: Race, Place, and the Vicious Circle of Mass Incarceration

“TOWNS PUT DREAMS IN PRISONS” BY Paul Street. March 04, 2007

Sometimes it's the silences that speak the loudest. Consider, for example, a page-one article that appeared in the New York Times in the summer of 2001 under the title "Rural Towns Turn to Prisons to Re-ignite Their Economies." According to this piece, non-metropolitan America was relying like never before on prison construction for jobs and economic development. Formerly, Times reporter Peter Kilborn noted, rural communities had depended for employment and economic development on agriculture, manufacturing, and/or mining. Now, however, they were counting on mass incarceration to deliver the goods. Reporting that “245 prisons sprouted in 212 of the nation’s 2,290 rural counties” during the 1990s, Kilborn quoted the cheerful city manager of Sayre, Oklahoma, which had just opened a prized new maximum-security lockdown. "There's no more recession-proof form of economic development," this local official told Kilborn, than incarceration because "nothing's going to stop crime."

By Kilborn’s account, “prisons have been helping to revive large stretches of rural America. More than a Wal-Mart or a meatpacking plant, state, federal, and private prisons, typically housing 1,000 inmates and providing 300 jobs, can put a town on solid economic footing.” Thanks to money brought in through taxes on prisoners’ telephone calls, sales taxes paid by prisoners and prison staff, and to water, sewer, and landfill fees, Killborn added, Sayre’s city budget increased from $755,000 in 1996 to $1,250,000 in 2001, permitting the town to set aside 15 percent of its revenues for capital improvements. No such savings or investment were possible before the prison, when Sayre “was surviving largely on federal crop support payments to its dwindling farm population” in the wake of the collapse of the state’s oil and gas industry(1).

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Native Youth Movement Statement for Anti-Olympic Campaign

ELDER'S DEATH CAUSED BY GREEDY 2010 OLYMPICS AND ITS ACCOMPLICES

“ALTHOUGH THE VANCOUVER-WHISTLER 2010 WINTER OLYMPICS ARE PLANNED TO TAKE PLACE IN ONLY THE ST’AT’IMC & SQUAMISH TERRITORIES THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF THESE GAMES WILL CARRY OUT ONTO OTHER INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES OF THE AREA AND THE AFTERMATH OF THIS WILL CREATE AN INVASION, NOT SEEN SINCE THE GOLD RUSH”-NYM (CANCEL OLYMPIC LEAFLET, 2006)

The Native Youth Movement is calling for a Boycott and Cancellation of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The Games are scheduled to take place on un-surrendered Native Land from February 12-27, 2010. The Olympic Games represent a continued history of colonization and Genocide. On Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 2007, 73-year old Pacheedaht Elder and great-grandmother Harriet Nahanee died from health complications stemming from being imprisoned in Surrey Pre-trial hell-hole for 14 days. Harriet Nahanee was locked up by BC Supreme Courts’ evil Madame Justice Brenda Brown because of her role in blocking the expansion of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, which destroyed the area of Eagleridge Bluffs for the 2010 Olympics. We hold the International Olympic Committee (IOC), KKKanada, the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and the sell-out chiefs of "2010 Olympic Host Nations," Mt. Currie, Musquem, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish responsible for her death. The death of our Elder is nothing short of murder, murdered for games and greed, for fun and amusement. Her fighting spirit is an inspiration to us all and she will never be forgotten.

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Women's Fair Representation Looks Decades Away

By Ernst-Jan Pfauth. UNITED NATIONS, Mar 1 (IPS)

Although nearly 17 percent of the world's parliamentarians are women -- a rise of 4.7 percent compared to 1995 and an all-time high -- the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) says that the pace of reform is so slow, it would be another 70 years before women achieved full parity with men in politics.

"I have great doubts about the coming years," IPU Secretary-General Anders B. Johnsson told IPS. "I do expect setbacks to happen, but I hope we can successfully reverse them." On Mar. 1, the IPU presented its latest statistics on women in parliament following parliamentary turnovers in 51 countries (61 chambres of parliament) over the last 12 years. Rwanda continues to rank in first place, with women holding 48.8 percent of seats in the Lower House. Still, only 18 other countries in the world have reached at least 30 percent female representation -- Sweden (47.3 percent), Costa Rica (38.6) and the Netherlands (36.7).

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East Jerusalem residents face 'Kafkaesque bureaucracy'

By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent. March 3, 2007

Theoretically nothing is simpler than changing one's address with the Interior Ministry. But when it comes to Arabs who are residents of East Jerusalem with the status of permanent resident in Israel, the process can take years. What is worse, until they complete the painful procedure and changed their address, they cannot register their children in their identity card, and their children thus have no civil status in the interim. As a result, the children cannot receive National Insurance Institute child allowances or belong to a health maintenance organization. If the children reach the age of 18 without being registered, they will have no civil status for the rest of their life - unable to get work, a driver's license and liable at any moment for arrest. That is the fate of families who dare to leave East Jerusalem for another part of the country.

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Agencies hurting efforts to recognize foreign credentials: Kenney

By NOOR JAVED. March 4, 2007

TORONTO (CP) - Government efforts to resolve the issue of foreign credentials recognition is being hindered by professional regulatory agencies, said Conservative MP Jason Kenney on Sunday.

The agencies are "keeping the doors shut" for new Canadians trying to find work in their chosen profession, Kenney said. "The myth of the PhD driving a taxi, or an engineer working at the corner store is all too true," Kenney told policy makers at a diversity conference in Toronto.

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Police go on trial over Katrina killings

Relatives demand justice as police go on trial over Katrina killings. By Paul Harris in New Orleans March 4, 2007

Ronald Madison stayed on in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - he could not bear to leave behind the family dogs, a beloved pair of dachshunds called Bobbi and Sushi. It cost him his life.

Madison, 40, who had the mental age of a child, was shot by police one morrning on Danziger Bridge. James Brisette, 19, was also killed, and four others, including two women, seriously injured. All were black. None had committed a crime.

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50 Migrant Haitians missing after boat fire

Haitians missing after boat fire By JONATHAN M. KATZ Associated Press Writer

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search Friday for nearly 50 Haitian migrants feared dead after their homemade boat caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean, an agency spokesman said. Crews stopped looking for survivors and remains after a nearly 31-hour search across 1,250 square miles yielded only the remains of five passengers, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Barry Bena said.

Two of the estimated 56 passengers were rescued Tuesday by an American couple sailing from Panama to Antigua. The migrants were traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos Islands when a fuel tank exploded about 23 miles north of the Dominican Republic and sank the fiberglass boat, the survivors told their rescuers. Authorities did not know when the blaze occurred or when the migrants set sail.

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Iran: Left Opposition Speaks

IRAN: THE LEFT OPPOSITION SPEAKS. An Interview with Bina Darabzand of Salam Democratby Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT

On December 12, 2006, as the Holocaust revisionism conference called by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened in Tehran, small but angry groups of students held protests—against both the conference and Ahmadinejad, burning his picture and chanting "down with the dictator." Scores of students marched at the Amir Kabir University of Technology (formerly Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran University and Sanandaj University in Kordistan province.

Among the organizers of the protests was Bina Darabzand, a leftist thinker and longtime veteran of Iran's student movement. Born into what he calls a "left-oriented political family" in Tehran in 1957, Darabzand was involved in protest movements against the Shah from his youth. In 1978, he returned home from studies in the US and UK—where he was a representative abroad of the Confederation of Iranian Students—to participate in the Iranian revolution. After Ayatollah Khomeini took power, he was forced into exile, but returned to Iran again in 1986, and has since been working to build a radical left opposition. Since 1997, when the election of President Mohammad Khatami brought a supposedly more open atmosphere, he has been arrested four times—most recently in July 2004, when he was imprisoned for two years on fabricated charges of slandering governmental officials and organizing underground cells.

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US: National ID Card Rules Unveiled

National ID Card Rules Unveiled

Homeland Security officials released long-delayed guidelines that turn state-issued identification cards into de facto internal passports Thursday, estimating the changes will cost states and individuals $23 billion over 10 years.

The move prompted a new round of protest from civil libertarians and security experts, who called on Congress to repeal the 2005 law known as the Real ID Act that mandates the changes. Critics, such as American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Sparapani, charge that the bill increases government access to data on Americans and amplifies the risk of identity theft, without providing significant security benefits. "Real ID creates the largest single database about U.S. people that has ever been created," Sparapani said. "This is the people who brought you long lines at the DMV marrying the people at DHS who brought us Katrina. It's a marriage we need to break up."

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Imminent Execution Of Iraqi Women

Outrage Over Imminent Execution Of Iraqi Women By Dahr Jamail & Ali Al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD, Mar 2 (IPS) - Three young women accused of joining the Iraqi insurgency movement and engaging in "terrorism" have been sentenced to death, provoking protest from rights organisations fearing that this could be the start of more executions of women in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The execution of the three -- Wassan Talib, Zaineb Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad -- and a fourth, Samar Sa'ad 'Abdullah, found guilty of murdering five members of her family, are scheduled to begin Mar. 3, according a member of the citizens group Brussels Tribunal.

All four are being held in the Khadamiya female prison in northern Baghdad. One of the three alleged "terrorists", Muhammad, 25, gave birth to a daughter after her arrest and is still nursing the child in prison. A second, Talib, 31, is also in prison with her three-year-old child, according to Amnesty International. Talib and Fadhil, 25, were sentenced to death by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI) on 31 August 2006 for the 2005 murder of several members of Iraqi security forces in the Baghdad district of Hay al-Furat. Both women denied any involvement. Fadhil reportedly claimed that she was abroad at the time of the alleged killings, according to Amnesty International.

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S Korea: Fire in Detention Center Kills 9

Fire in Immigrant Detention Center in S. Korea Kills 9

At 4:00 am on February 11 a fire swept through the locked cells of the detention center at the Yeosu Immigration Controls Office, killing 9 detainees and wounding 18 others. Neither the alarm system nor the sprinklers operated when the fire broke out. The detention center staff tried but failed to put out the flames using portable fire extinguishers. Even so, they did not unlock cells to free the detainees. The detainees were forced to breathe in toxic fumes emitted from burning mattresses. These fumes were the cause of most of the deaths and injuries. Fire in Immigrant Detention Center in S. Korea Kills 9, Wounds 18, Highlighting Rights Abuses

Please show solidarity your solidarity with the migrant workers movement in South Korea by signing the petition linked below. Background information on the movement and details of the incident follow. www.gopetition.com/online/11348.html

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Political Prisoner Al-Arian Facing Deportation

A Federal Witchhunt: The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

One of the first big show trials here in the post-9/11 homeland was of a Muslim professor from Florida, now 49, Sami al-Arian. Pro-Israel hawks had resented this computer professor at the University of South Florida long before Atta and the hijackers flew their planes into the Trade towers, because they saw al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait of parents kicked out of their Homeland in 1948, as an effective agitator here for the Palestinian cause. As John Sugg, a fine journalist, then based in Tampa, who's followed al-Arian's tribulations for years, wrote in the spring of 2006 on this website:

"When was al-Arian important? More than a decade ago, when Israel's Likudniks in the United States, such as [Steven] Emerson, were working feverishly to undermine the Oslo peace process. No Arab voice could be tolerated, and al-Arian was vigorously trying to communicate with our government and its leaders. He was being successful, making speeches to intelligence and military commanders at MacDill AFB's Central Command, inviting the FBI and other officials to attend meetings of his groups. People were beginning to listen and to wonder why only one side of the Middle East debate was heard here. That was the reason for Al-Arian's political prosecution."

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Click here to go to Free Sami Al-Arian Campaign

New Study: The Myth of Immigrant Criminality

February 28, 2007

It's a widely held belief, reinforced by those who advocate for stricter immigration controls, that increased immigration brings with it increased crime. It's by no means a new notion. All immigrant groups at one time or another have faced accusations of inherent criminality.

Whether it's Italian mafiosos or Chinese opium dens, stereotypes and myths about immigrant criminality have permeated American culture and political discourse since the nation's inception.So it is not surprising that many Americans today believe that the newest wave of immigrants bring with them a disrespect for the law and a proclivity for criminal behavior. A new study, released last Monday, looked at immigrant criminality and found that not only are new immigrants less likely than their native-born counterparts to commit crimes or be incarcerated in state or federal prisons, they actually contributed to a decrease in the overall crime rate nationally.

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Click here for the actual report;
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men

Inmates to Fill the Void in Farm Fields

Pilot program to help farmers replace workers driven off by state's new immigration laws. By CHARLES ASHBY CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU. February 27, 2007

DENVER - It may not be too long before Pueblo County residents start seeing inmates from state prisons working area farms.

Rep. Dorothy Butcher, D-Pueblo, has managed to work out, at least in principle, a new program that would call on the Colorado Department of Corrections to supply inmates to work area farms. The new work program would operate under the department's successful Correctional Industries Program, which helps inmates obtain work while in prison and learn a skill at the same time, DOC Executive Director Ari Zavaras said Monday.

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UN: One-third of Iraqis live in poverty

A U.N. report cites the nation's damaged infrastructure and U.S. free-market policies. By Christian Berthelsen, Times Staff Writer. February 19, 2007

AMMAN, JORDAN — A third of Iraqis live in poverty, according to a study released under United Nations auspices Sunday, dire findings for a nation that enjoyed widespread prosperity less than three decades ago.

The report, produced by a division of the Iraqi government and the United Nations Development Program, examined access to, and the quality of, a wide range of basic needs. It found that by 2004, Iraqi living standards had deteriorated considerably compared with that of the 1970s and '80s, particularly in the areas of water, electricity, sanitation, jobs, income and assets. Damaged or dangerous housing conditions and educational access and quality were also found to be significant areas of deprivation.

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US Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty

By Tony Pugh. February 23, 2007

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

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Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail

Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail. Return to Sender By LAURA CARLSEN

The titles that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attaches to its operations reveal a great deal about the logic behind current U.S. immigration policy. Among the most suggestively titled is the ongoing Operation "Return to Sender," one of the largest such operations in U.S. history. The program, supposedly designed to target "fugitive aliens," has resulted in the indiscriminate round up of over 13,000 undocumented migrants in cities throughout the United States. The cynical name given to this even more cynical operation implies a sender, a receiver -- and an object. The object, or rather objects, are migrant workers and their families.

Operation Return to Sender is an instrumentalist policy that ignores the humanity of migrant workers. It refuses to recognize that migrants have hopes and dreams, that they have a legitimate need to eat and think and act. It denies family ties and affective relationships. It also ignores the central role that undocumented workers play in the U.S. economy and the factors that brought them to the country in the first place. In short, Operation Return to Sender acts on the premise that the millions of undocumented workers in the United States today are little more than globalization's junk mail.

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Democracy Now! Immigration Stories

Democracy Now! Immigration Stories

Human Rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrants
Human rights groups are calling for the U.S. government to shut down a jail in Texas where about 200 immigrant children, some only infants, are being detained.

"I Want To Be Free": 9-Year-Old Canadian Citizen Pleads From Texas Immigration Jail
Majid and his nine-year old son Kevin are Iranian immigrants currently being held at the Hutto detention center. They’ve been forcibly detained since their plane was forced made an emergency landing in Puerto Rico as they made their way to Canada.

Hundreds Protest NYU Republicans’ “Find the Illegal Immigrant” Game
Hundreds of people gathered at New York University on Thursday to protest a game called “Find the Illegal Immigrant” organized by the school’s Republican club.

Raymondville: Inside the Largest Immigration Prison Camp in the US
The largest immigrant prison camp is in Raymondville, Texas. Some two thousand undocumented immigrants are currently being held in the prison awaiting deportation.

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Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran

Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran

John Negroponte was sworn in to his new position as Deputy Secretary of State on Tuesday at a ceremony attended by President Bush. Negroponte resigned from his post as National Intelligence Director in early January. His career includes stints as Ambassador to Iraq after the US invasion and ambassador to Honduras, where he was accused of overseeing the arming of Nicaraguan rebels during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

In an explosive new article, the New Yorker Magazine reports that Negroponte’s decision to resign as National Intelligence Director was made in part because of the Bush administration’s covert actions in the Middle East, which so closely echo Iran-Contra. According to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the Bush administration, with Saudi Arabia, is secretly funding radical Sunni groups - some with ties to al-Qaeda - to counter Shiite groups backed by Iran. Moreover, this is being done without any Congressional authority or oversight. Hersh also reports the Pentagon has established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran. The new panel has been charged with developing a plan that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President Bush. Hersh also reveals that U.S. military and special-operations teams have already crossed the border into Iran in pursuit of Iranian operatives. Seymour Hersh joins me now from Washington DC.

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The War on Terror and the Terror of War

The War on Terror and the Terror of War By BRENT BOWDEN

The world it is at war: an open ended 'War on terrorism'. Leaders across the world have repeated the declaration ad nauseam. We have been told just as many times that it is a 'war like no other'. The stakes are high. If Usama Bin Laden is to be believed it is the 'Third World War'; for George W. Bush the war is nothing less than a 'fight for civilization'. As to whether the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 were in fact an act of war demanding a military response, or a criminal act demanding a legal and justice based response is open to question and debate. Secretary of State Colin Powell's initial response suggests that he regarded it more in terms of a crime than an act of war: 'you can be sure that America will deal with this tragedy in a way that brings those responsible to justice', he is reputed to have said. But President Bush had other ideas, later telling journalist Bob Woodward that his immediate reaction was: 'They had declared war on us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war'. And thus, we are at war.

The casting of the war on terrorism as a war fought on behalf of or for Civilization against some less-than-civilized Other--terrorists and their cohorts--is a significant point that cannot be allowed to pass unexamined. The image being generated and marketed here is one of a war between the civilized defenders of everything that Civilization represents and the barbarous terrorists who oppose it and want to tear it down. Right or wrong this image is not exactly new, and thus the war on terror is not exactly a war like no other. Rather, history and precedents have a lot to tell us about the present and the conducting of this war on terror.

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Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan The Khyber Impasse By TARIQ ALI

It is Year 6 of the UN-backed NATO occupation of Afghanistan, a joint US/EU mission. On 26 February there was an attempted assassination of Dick Cheney by Taliban suicide bombers while he was visiting the 'secure' US air base at Bagram (once an equally secure Soviet air base during an earlier conflict). Two US soldiers and a mercenary ('contractor') died in the attack, as did twenty other people working at the base. This episode alone should have concentrated the US Vice-President's mind on the scale of the Afghan debacle. In 2006 the casualty rates rose substantially and NATO troops lost forty-six soldiers in clashes with the Islamic resistance or shot-down helicopters.

The insurgents now control at least twenty districts in the Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan provinces where NATO troops have replaced US soldiers. And it is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. The situation is out of control. At the beginning of this war Mrs Bush and Mrs Blair appeared on numerous TV and radio shows claiming that the aim of the war was to liberate Afghan women. Try repeating that today and the women will spit in your face.

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