local stuffs list: local stuffs

1. My Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rally
at capitol this Monday
2. Advetiser article on rally at the alleged
Hawaii State Capitol
3. New Books and Gift Suggestions!
4. Airdates - Hawaiian Kingdom Government & Succession
5. Free Hawai`I TV - "How Fair Is That?"
6. more on My
Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rally at capitol this Monday
7. yesterday's rally
8. Elizabeth Kucinich - Money Medic
9. OHA stock portfolio plummets 27.9%
10. Native Hawaiian Education Act, Part B
11. Criminalizing Charity
12. comment on Free Hawai`I TV - "How Fair Is That?"
13. Today's Action Alert - Less than five minutes!
14. 7th Annual Winter Concert, Stille Nacht, December 5, 2008
15. First Foreign Interview with Raul Castro (and with Hugo Chavez) by
Sean Penn (long)
16. Maka`ala OHA's Smoke and Screen...IT IS Their Way!
17. Not Your Soldier HS Tour
18. Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity
19. more on My Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rallyat
capitol this Monday
20. IMPEACHED LINGLE NOW
21. Faculty 2008 Fall Lecture Series
22. Seeking departmental histories
23. Vote for Obama Cabinet position on Violence Against Women
24. Storytellings & Youth slam this Weekend
25. Please take the ceded lands poll online. - comment
26. Voices Health/Environment News
27. Rapprochement Center - Current Project - Nights of
the Shepherds
28. AlterNet: No Thanks to Thanksgiving
29. NZ Women seen as 2nd class commodity
30. Patrick Irelan: PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela
31. Hawaiian Rally To Save Ceded Lands (fwd)
32. Statement By Governor Lingle On Ceded Lands Debate
33. Lingle Moves Forward With U.S. Supreme Court Hearing On "Ceded'
Lands
34. ALOHA OE, LINGLE
35. a question
36. Hawaiian Independence Day, La Ku'oko'a: Nov. 28
37. The Corruption That Makes Unpeople Of An Entire Nation
38. ENGLISH DEPT. COLLOQUIUM: FIRST YEAR WRITING ASSESSMENT
39. Dean Kamen's amazing, cheap water purifier
40. Bogus Bonds
41. Tax Break?
42. Rolf Harris says sorry for racist song lyrics -
then goes on to slam 'lazy Aborigines
43. 'buzz' that Arne Duncan will be Ed Sec- sign
petition now to oppose this
44. Rolf Harris says sorry for racist song
lyrics - then goes on to slam 'lazy Aborigines - comment
45. Check out YouTube - Kupuna shares his MANA'O (fwd)
46. Disappeared News - Newspapers vs. the immediacy of the Internet
47. Light & refreshing Lemon Jelly Cheese Cake
48. Photos from tonight's Haulelani/La Kuokoa at ahu
49. New Zealand: May not be able to rescue whale
protesters
50. poem - W.S. Merwin
51. Lingle's Contradicting On Earlier Statements
52. Snails and Slugs Research in News@UH

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:38:55 -0500
From: kahiwal@cs.com
My Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rally
at capitol this Monday

Kekahuna Keaweiwi <kekahunakeaweiwi@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Not to divide, but unite....It is essential to have a clear, definitive
>and realistic perception of the issue. Yes....people need to come
>together in solidarity and confront the hewa of Lingle/Bennett....and yes
>OHA.

We (the people) need our own legal counsel - as this is a very important
issue. After this - no matter what can be "negotiated" by a possible
passage of the so-called "akaka bill," the lands may have already been
lost.

The so-called state (of Hawaii) and "akaka" are 2 good ways for a possible
complete loss of our lands - even though the lands were stolen with no
compensation being paid.

It would be great if we could hire a top-gun like Laurence Tribe - a
high-flying, quick-shooting - solicitor that could add a lot of weight to
our side of the scale.

If OHA would pick up the bill - it would be great!

However, the $1M or so that he would charge would be really worth it -
especially when compared to the millions that OHA has spent on "akaka" and
Cow Inoa.

If any agree with my suggestion - contact the OHA trustees and let's see
if we can squeaze out some of this much needed money that will go a long
ways in saving our lands.

ku
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:01:37 -1000
From: Tane . <Tane_1@msn.com>
Advetiser article on rally at the alleged
Hawaii State Capitol

The headline is incorrect in that the illegal state is filing an illegal
claim.

Newlands Resolution and the Apology Resolution is the same type of
instrument. If they recognized the Newlands resolution, then they have to
recognize the Apology Resolution which the U.S. acknowledges its guilt.
This undoes the other; which means the U.S. is belligerently occupyiing
the Hawaiian Kingdom. The State of Hawai'i, then, is null and void and an
illegal entity.

As a few of the senators stated concerns, the only logical consequence of
the apology bill is total independence. They are very correct in their
summation of the bill. How it is resolved is a matter of interpretation
on whether the thief wants to keep its stolen property criminally gotten
and not return it to the rightful owners.

If Lingle's administration has done the most for the "Hawaiians", then we
don't need anymore enemies to the Kingdom. The fatuous Akaka Bill is
their tool to seal a deal of their own making to steal once and for all
the land and is repugnant to us for it would create us as stateless in
our homeland.

Mark Bennets inane argument means that the U.S. has a right to annex Iraq
and the admission as a state of the U.S. without Iraqis' consent.

The state of Hawaii is not the legitimate government and cannot dispense
with our national lands. Hawai'i is not for U.S. Americans nor its
government; it's for Hawai'i nationals and its government. Write to the
Associated press and get the truth to them since they have twisted the
story. The Ku'e Petitions of 1897 confirms the Hawaiian subjects,
Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian citizens, objected to the occupation and
annexation of our Hawaiian Kingdom. I used the word Hawaiian for their
benefit as we all know we are kanaka maoli and haole is foreigner to
Hawai'i no matter what ethnicity. We never wanted the U.S. here and
still don't. The laws of Occupation still apply which the U.S.
continuously violates. Yankee go home! God Bless the Hawaiian Kingdom!

Tane
1107 Acacia Road #113
Manana (Pearl City)
U.S. Occupied Kingdom of Hawai'i
-----

300 protest lands appeal
GROUPS URGE LINGLE TO END LEGAL CLAIM, LET HAWAII HIGH COURT DECISION
STAND
Advertiser Staff

About 300 people converged on the state Capitol yesterday and urged the
Lingle administration to back off its legal claim that the state has the
right to sell ceded lands.

In a case that places the state against the state Office of Hawaiian
Affairs, Gov. Linda Lingle and her administration are appealing a
unanimous ruling by the Hawai'i Supreme Court in January that the state
cannot sell or otherwise transfer ceded lands until Native Hawaiian
claims against the land holds were resolved.
"The administration's decision to appeal has the potential to adversely
impact the way the people of Hawai'i deal with issues affecting Native
Hawaiians locally," the groups of Native Hawaiian supporters said in a
statement. "A U.S. Supreme Court decision threatens what our state
Legislature and state courts have already decided ^× Native Hawaiians
have a valid unsettled claim to ceded lands. ... The Lingle
administration's appeal threatens the future of the Hawaiian community
and is in direct conflict with the administration's reported support for
the Native Hawaiian community."
The state received approximately 1.2 million acres of former Hawaiian
government land ^× sometimes called ceded lands ^× as part of Hawai'i's
Admission Act in 1959.
Nearly all of the state's lands are among the ceded lands, Lingle said
yesterday, including much of the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and UH-Hilo,
many public schools, much of Honolulu International Airport and other
public buildings such as Hilo Hospital.
Her administration has work- ed harder than any others for Hawaiian
rights and its efforts to get Hawaiians onto Hawaiian homestead land is
"unparalleled by any previous administration," Lingle said.
"Anyone who categorizes our taking this case to the Supreme Court as
being against Hawaiian rights is simply misrepresenting our position,"
she said.
Hawai'i has been joined by 29 states in pushing the appeal to the Supreme
Court.
Other than the original 13 colonies, Maine, Texas and West Virginia, "all
the states of the union received their land from the United States as
part of an admission act or a resolution of admission," Attorney General
Mark Bennett said yesterday.
But Native Hawaiians worry that the case could have unintended
consequences if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to use it to end
preferential government programs for Hawaiians such as low-cost homes and
low-interest loans.
It also could derail pending federal legislation that would give
Hawaiians autonomy rights similar to those for American Indians, and
perhaps hand over some of these lands to them.
But Lingle argues the state has a right to handle its property for the
benefit of all residents, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian alike.
The protesters waved signs saying "Moratorium now! Preserve our lands!"
and "Hawaii is a sovereign nation occupied by America." They chanted
"impeach Lingle, impeach Lingle" and wore shirts saying, "Justice for
Hawaiians."
"These are stolen lands, we're clear on that," Native Hawaiian
practitioner Andre Perez said to the crowd. "I want my land back. I want
my country back."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
________________________________________________________________________________

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:33:21 -0600
From: revolutionbks@yahoo.com
New Books and Gift Suggestions!

If you give gifts over the holidays, give gifts that matter (and support
Revolution Books at the same time!). We have lots of new books in stock,
and more are arriving every day. Here are just a few of them:

Just Arrived!

The Superferry Chronicles
Hawaii's Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism,
and the Desecration of the Earth.
By Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander
and published by Koa Books

"The authors and a team of attorneys, military strategists, and
environmental activists expose in detail how Hawaiiâ^À^Ùs interisland
ferry was hijacked by neoconservatives with vast military ties and is, in
fact, a prototype for Americaâ^À^Ùs sea-based military strategy. Without
an Environmental Impact Statement and never approved by the people of
Hawaiâ^À^Øi, the 800-ton Superferry rode into Hawaiâ^À^Øi on a wave of
deception and corruption." [from the book jacket]

This book is an engaging read - and includes an excellent essay on
militarization in Hawai`i by Kyle Kajihiro. Get your copy now. Read it
and then give it to one of those friends of yours who thought you were
nuts when you suggested that the Superferry might be military-related!
[14746517.JPG]

Trespassing
by Uzma Aslam Khan

"In this sweeping novel of modern Pakistan, Uzma Aslam Khan takes us from
the stifling demands of tradition and family to the daily oppression of
routine political violence, from the gorgeous sensual vistas of the silk
farms to the teeming streets of Karachi--stinking, crumbling, and
corrupt." [from the book synopsis]

This fascinating novel will introduce you to the work of Uzma Khan. Uzma
is from Lahore, Pakistan and recently joined the UH-Manoa English
Department faculty. Her multi-layered book will transport you to another
place and introduce you to another history and culture, while resonating
with issues of love and politics that are painfully familiar.

[away_with_all_gods_150x225.jpg]

Away With All Gods!
Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
by Bob Avakian

Released in April of this year, "Away With All Gods" has been the
bookstore's all-time bestseller and has provoked the most discussion. It
has been the subject of major programs on college campuses, at
progressive and revolutionary bookstores across the U.S., and even at
churches. For example, check out this week's article on Sunsara Taylor's
speaking tour promoting the book at:
http://www.revcom.us/a/147/sunsara_tour-en.html

"What most distinguishes Avakian's Away With All Gods from other much
publicized books of this kind, such as those by Dawkins, Harris, and
Hitchens, is the direct connection Avakian makes between combating
religious fundamentalism and promoting a radical political agenda.
Avakian is also to be commended not only for combining his religious
freethinking with an endorsement of the modern Enlightenment tradition,
but also for providing a sober warning against 'the smug arrogance of the
enlightened.' Anyone who has read any of the other books mentioned above
should also take the time to read this one." â^À^ÔAllen Wood, author of
Karl Marx and Kantian Ethics [14869322.JPG]

Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Ilan Pappe

"In this controversial new book, a prominent Israeli historian at Haifa
University revisits the formative period of the State of Israel.
Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of
their own accord during the War of Independence, he offers archival
evidence to demonstrate that a central plank in Israel's founding
ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. This book
is a passionate plea to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in
1948 as the root cause of the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict." From
the book cover

This book is one of the best on Palestine. It's clear, compelling and
meticulously researched (without being boring). At a time when Barack
Obama has pledged his unwavering support for Israel, it's necessary for
every one of us to get grounded in the real facts! [31504776.JPG]

Soil Not Oil
Vandana Shiva

With Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva connects the dots between industrial
agriculture and climate change. Shiva shows that a world beyond
dependence on fossil fuels and globalization is both possible and
necessary. We at Revolution Books think that to accomplish this on the
scale necessary will take a revolution, but this insightful book
contributes to understanding what agriculture in a whole different world,
based on the needs of the people and not profit, might look like.

Give a subscription to Revolution Newspaper.

Every week this newspaper not only "tells it like it is" - but gets into
why what's happening is happening. Instead of just being outraged by the
lies in the mainstream news, or whining about the ignorance of your
colleagues and friends, get them a subscription to the newspaper that
will help them understand the problem and that puts forward a solution.
Check out this week's issue of the paper and subscribe now.

[149p01-th-en.jpg] The Desperate Hours of Addie Polk On October 1, 2008,
a sheriff and his deputy knocked on the door of a small white house in
Akron, Ohio. Addie Polk, the 90-year-old Black woman who lived there,
went to her dresser and looked at the foreclosure notice that had been
duct-taped to her door a month earlier. She pulled out her life insurance
policy. She put it next to her keys.

And then she opened the drawer where the pistol was kept. Read more at:
Revolution Newspaper

[Change Subscription] [Cancel Subscription]

From revolutionbks@yahoo.com Wed Nov 26 14:15:26 2008
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:33:21 -0600
From: revolutionbks@yahoo.com
Reply-To: bounce-live-964841272-60875194@ezinedirector.net
To: welford@hawaii.edu
Subject: [UTF-8] New Books and Gift Suggestions!

Just Arrived!

The Superferry Chronicles
Hawaii's Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism,
and the Desecration of the Earth.
By Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander
and published by Koa Books

Trespassing
by Uzma Aslam Khan

[away_with_all_gods_150x225.jpg]

Away With All Gods!
Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
by Bob Avakian

Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Ilan Pappe

Soil Not Oil
Vandana Shiva

Give a subscription to Revolution Newspaper.

And then she opened the drawer where the pistol was kept. Read more at:
Revolution Newspaper
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:38:13 -1000
From: Lc <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
Airdates - Hawaiian Kingdom Government & Succession

coming up on christmas day...

----- Original Message ----- From: Cherisse Lum
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 9:34 PM

Hawaiian Kingdom Government & Succession

All on Channel 53

12/25/08 Thu 10:00 pm

12/26/08 Fri 8:00 am

1/1/09 Thu 10:00 pm

1/2/09 Fri 8:00 am
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:58:27 -0800
From: `Ehu Kekahu Cardwell <ehukekahu@koanifoundation.org>
Free Hawai`I TV - "How Fair Is That?"

FREEHAWAII.INFO PRESENTS

FREE HAWAI`I TV

THE FREE HAWAI`I BROADCASTING NETWORK

TODAYÕS VIDEO COMMENTARY

ÒHOW FAIR IS THAT?Ó

The Person With The Most Votes Lost In The Recent Office Of Hawaiian
Affairs Trustee Elections.

How Can That Be? Watch & Find Out
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:11:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Kekahuna Keaweiwi <kekahunakeaweiwi@yahoo.com>
more on My
Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rally at capitol this Monday

E kala mai...earlier I said tandem, I meant parallel to us Independence,
Hawaiian Nationals.

Perhaps all the Native Hawaiian-US Nationals should pursue OHA for the
money...and a lot more and work (while respecting our place) with us.

Also for consideration:

Maybe we should consider for the subsequent events like yestereday that
the two parallel groups of Hawaiian wear two different color (Red & maybe
Earth Green) shirts to show respect for one another's political position,
while also sending out the message loud and clear that as "kanaka maoli"
we stand in solidarity on the subject matter.

Two halves coming together in solidarity creating SYNERGY!

Foster

--- On Tue, 11/25/08, kahiwal@cs.com <kahiwal@cs.com> wrote:
Kekahuna Keaweiwi <kekahunakeaweiwi@ yahoo.com> wrote:

>Not to divide, but unite....It is essential to have a clear,
definitive and realistic perception of the issue.
Yes....people need to come together in solidarity and
confront the hewa of Lingle/Bennett. ...and yes OHA.

We (the people) need our own legal counsel - as this is a
very important issue. After this - no matter what can be
"negotiated" by a possible passage of the so-called "akaka
bill," the lands may have already been lost.

The so-called state (of Hawaii) and "akaka" are 2 good ways
for a possible complete loss of our lands - even though the
lands were stolen with no compensation being paid.

It would be great if we could hire a top-gun like Laurence
Tribe - a high-flying, quick-shooting - solicitor that could
add a lot of weight to our side of the scale.

If OHA would pick up the bill - it would be great!

However, the $1M or so that he would charge would be really
worth it - especially when compared to the millions that OHA
has spent on "akaka" and Cow Inoa.

If any agree with my suggestion - contact the OHA trustees
and let's see if we can squeaze out some of this much needed
money that will go a long ways in saving our lands.

ku
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:43:00 -1000
From: nohohewa.com <nohohewa@nohohewa.com>
yesterday's rally

noe's speech is in the last one and it's good! k.

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Pono Kealoha Jr." <alwayz_aloha@msn.com>
Date: November 25, 2008 12:13:32 PM HST

Kupu'Ä^Áina Coalition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fIM2W1mSmI

Ceded Scam 11-23-08 KeAloha Aiu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szEnyAeO-dA

KU'E 11-24-08 Vicky Takamine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak-nHQ2Vc6A
KU'E 11-24-08 Andre Perez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOD9RaZp5YQ

KU'E 11-24-08 Pomai Kinney
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhpAiR-Vk5s

KU'E 11-24-08 #2 Willam Aila
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUP79OTBvZ4
KU'E 11-24-08 CEDED SCAM Eric Po'ohina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klMhx315CQQ

KU'E 11-24-08 Jon Sorio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipPe5qCGco

KU'E 11-24-08 Andre Perez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Hfa-YG1EU

KU'E 11-24-08 Willam Aila
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tan5UPP_W4c

KU'E 11-24-08 Ending
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYoolVxUYjM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:13:59 -1000
From: Robin Rae <Art4Peace@hawaii.rr.com>
Elizabeth Kucinich - Money Medic

It's great to hear about what Elizabeth has been up to. She is an amazing
lady! If you, or someone you know, is in a really deep financial hole and
would like some help, check out Elizabeth's site and send her an email.
She is incredibly intelligent and definitely someone you can trust.

-----
Updates from Elizabeth Kucinich (Official)
Money Medic
Sun 11:02pm
Dear Friends,

First of all, thank you for your support, your love and your
messages following Dennis' successful Congressional
re-election and then the sudden passing of Dennis' beloved
sister Beth Ann on November 11th. The outpouring of love was
overwhelming and we shall be sharing your messages with the
whole Kucinich family on Thanksgiving, as we give thanks for
you on our day together.

Since Nov 4th, I've been working to help friends and family
get out of debt and am now branching my efforts out to fulfil
my vision to change the financial landscape of America one
family at a time (as well as pursue national monetary
reform!!)

I work with a dynamic personalized system that helps people
precisely (to the last penny) readjust the way in which they
manage their income regarding bill payments and the types of
accounts they use in order to reduce payment time on debts
and hence reduce the over all total interest they pay, so
they can get to a point of building their equity faster.

I am now dedicating my time to helping people save their
money rather than spend it on giving it to banks in the form
of interest payments, through managing their money and
accounts differently. This week I ran the numbers of one
prospective client who I really wasn't sure I could help
initially. He had 2 mortgages (23 years left on each), 9
credit cards some personal loans, car loans. His income just
covered his minimum payments & expenditures. On working
through his numbers we were able to save him over $220,000 in
interest payments and have him debt free in a projected 9
years.

Did you know that it takes 21 years on a regular 30 year
mortgage to pay down just 50% of the original mortgage
principle? I can help you pay it down a 30 year mortgage in
half the time! I'd love to share the potential of this system
with anyone who has student loans, mortgages, credit card
debts, etc. Feel free to contact me
MoneyMedic@ElizabethKucinich.com

All the best to you and thank you for everything and I look
forward to helping you!

Much love,
Elizabeth

http://www.ElizabethKucinich.com
United First Financial Independant Agent
Source: www.elizabethkucinich.com

Through an innovative program called the Money Merge Account
system, homeowners across the nation are paying off their
mortgages in as little as 1/2 to 1/3 the time. Become one of
the thousands ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:34:44 -0500
From: dlimay7@aol.com
OHA stock portfolio plummets 27.9%

Actually, the U.S. stock market--aka the casino economy--has fallen off
almost 50% from its high in 2006, and most everybody who owned 401K plans
etc. have suffered losses of 30% to 40% or more. So what's to complain
about a "plummet" of onlly 27.9%? And with the fraudulent giveaways to
Hank Paulson's Wall Street cronies with the $5 Trillion Bailouts(so far!),
the real "Free Fall" is yet to come! :(

Peace & Imua, Danny
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:36:42 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com
Native Hawaiian Education Act, Part B

(12) The United States has recognized and reaffirmed that â^À^Ô

(A) Native Hawaiians have a cultural, historic, and land-based link to
the indigenous people who exercised sovereignty over the Hawaiian
Islands, and that group has never relinquished its claims to sovereignty
or its sovereign lands;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:25:37 -0800
From: mike reitz <mreitz@pacbell.net>
Criminalizing Charity

VERDICT AGAINST HOLY LAND CHARITY COULD HAVE A CHILLING EFFECT ON THE
MUSLIM COMMUNITY
By Laila Al-Arian, AlterNet
Posted on November 26, 2008, Printed on November 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/108740/

On Monday afternoon, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men
guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation's largest terrorism
financing trial since 9/11.

But was this case about prosecuting terrorism, or the Bush
administration's "war on terror?"

Prosecutors never argued that the charity, the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development, or any of its officials were ever involved in
violence, either through funding it or directly participating in it.
Instead, they told the jury that the charity sent money to schools,
hospitals and social welfare programs that were controlled by Hamas, a
group listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department since
1995.

Edward Abington, the former number two intelligence official at the State
Department (and ex-US consul in Jerusalem), told jurors he was never told
that the Palestinian charity committees supported by Holy Land were part
of Hamas in the daily intelligence briefings he received. In fact, these
same charities, or "zakat committees," still receive donations from the
U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Red
Cross.

This was the second trial against Holy Land. Last year, the government's
case ended in embarrassment and defeat when jurors returned after 19 days
of deliberations with no guilty verdicts. At least one of the defendants
would have been completely acquitted had a juror not changed her mind at
the eleventh hour, backing out of her decision to acquit when the judge
polled the panel about their votes. Another juror later said she refused
to discuss the evidence during deliberations, simply explaining that she
relied on her "feelings."

The stark differences between the two juries became apparent at the
conclusion of the second trial. "Twelve good American citizens in the
first trial didn't convict anyone of anything," Linda Moreno, one of the
defense attorneys on the case, told the Associated Press. "And 12 good
American citizens in the second trial convicted everyone of everything.
If you can make sense of that explain it to me." (Ms. Moreno was an
attorney for my father, Sami Al-Arian, in his 2005 trial).

Over fervent objections from the defense, the judge in the Holy Land
trial allowed the prosecution to present testimony from an anonymous
Israeli intelligence agent. This bizarre episode marked the first time in
American legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert
witness with no identity. If the witness, who was introduced to the jury
simply as "Avi," lied or committed perjury, he faces no consequences. He
is officially non-existent, after all.

Though the prosecution ostensibly limited their case to Palestinian
charities operating in the present day, most of the evidence presented to
the jury involved the general activities of Hamas, and dated back
decades. With its propaganda-like quality, the evidence was clearly
intended to provoke an emotional response. For example, jurors were
repeatedly shown videos of grisly suicide bombings that none of the
defendants were in any way connected to, or accused of planning.

William Neal, who served on the first Holy Land jury, raised disturbing
questions about the prosecution's tactics in an interview with Dallas
radio station KRLD 1080. "They never proved -- they kept trying to show
us stuff around the case, not the case. They presented to the jury, you
know these committees, these organizations controlled by or on the behalf
of Hamas, but they kept showing us blown-up buses and they kept showing
us little kids in bomb belts reenacting Hamas leaders," he said. "It had
nothing to do with the actual charges. It had nothing to do with the
defendants."

I went to Dallas a week before the verdict to cover the case, and found a
group of Holy Land supporters a block away from the federal courthouse
where the case was being prosecuted. There, I met Diane Baker, a
62-year-old ordained minister with blonde hair and a rail-thin frame. On
her lunch break from her job as a hospice chaplain, she came to the vigil
wearing blue hospital scrubs and her colorful Reverend's stole.

"When we carry the burden of others, we wear this," she said, pointing to
the cloth wrapped around her neck. "There were days when I left the
courtroom with tears in my eyes, but I'm hopeful."

I called Diane a day after the verdict and asked her how she felt. "I was
shocked," she said. "And I felt a great deal of grief, especially for the
families, who I know." Speaking of the defendants, she said, "These
people have done what their hearts has called on them to do."

Hadi Jawad, a member of the Hungry for Justice coalition, an umbrella
group of Holy Land supporters, said the U.S. government has taken sides
in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through their prosecution of the Holy
Land Foundation.

"It's about demonizing an entire people -- in this case, the Palestinian
people," Jawad told me. "They're saying that they're not worthy of aid
and help, even when they're destitute, hungry and need medical
attention."

Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States when the
Bush administration shut it down in December 2001. On the heels of the
September 11th attacks, Bush, Ashcroft and company wanted to show they
were fighting the "war on terror" by pointing to the Holy Land case, and
the arrest of its five officials. In an unusual move, prosecutors
unveiled the list of more than 300 un-indicted co-conspirators, something
that is kept secret under normal legal protocol. Many of those on the
list were respected Muslim leaders who were shocked to find they were
under suspicion for involvement in terrorist acts.

Mustafaa Carroll, the director of the Dallas chapter of the Council of
American-Islamic Relations, warned the Holy Land verdict could send a
chilling effect over America's already traumatized Muslim community.
"Muslims are concerned about how this is going to affect them," he told
me. "By criminalizing charity, it may even have an impact on American
charities in general. People are really afraid."
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:39:58 -1000
From: pilipo souza <pilipohale@hawaii.rr.com>
comment on Free Hawai`I TV - "How Fair Is That?"

Aloha kakou, I am in complete agreement with the fraudulent voting in the
recent OHA election.

The people of Moloka'i and Lanai were denied representation. Moloka'i and
Lanai are part of the County of Maui. No one from Oahu should be allowed
to cast a vote unless the Candidate is running "at Large" Only Apoliona
seat was at Large during this election..

Kauai had the same situation. It is entitrely an injustice of the voting
system based upon rightful representation. The incumbents of OHA have the
advantage of being public on Oahu due to the the center of OHA business
is Oahu. If allowed this system protects incumbents. Even to make all OHA
positions at Large would be a direct conflict of fair representation.

Hilahila, one would think at least the Chair of OHA would expose this?
Mahalo for exposing the travesty.
pilipo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:05:58 -0500
From: BreakTheBailout.com <info@breakthebailout.com>
Today's Action Alert - Less than five minutes!

ACTION NEEDED, CLICK HERE: http://www.breakthebailout.com/node/23

Bailout Breakers: Do you know what the real cost of the bailout is: $7.76
Trillion.

That is what Bloomberg reports has been committed on behalf of the
American taxpayer to bailout Americaâ^À^Ùs finance system. And that before
yesterdayâ^À^Ùs bailout activities â^À^Ó now its up to $8.4 billion. This
includes spending by the Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC.

- The amount is equal to half the value of everything produced in the
United States last year.

- It is $24,000 for every man, woman and child in America, that is nearly
$100,000 for a family of four.

- It's nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

- It is enough money to pay off more than half the country's mortgages,
but bankruptcies have continued despite the bailout.

All of this money poured into banks and yet foreclosures, bankruptcy and
unemployment are all up; the stock market, consumer spending and housing
prices are down.

Below we ask you to take two easy steps that can make a difference, but
first consider this: Barry Ritholtz, author of "Bailout Nation," points
out, the bailout has cost more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase,
moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, the Iraq war, the Vietnam
war, and NASA's lifetime budget â^À^Ó COMBINED! In fact, the bailout is
almost double:

- Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3
billion
- Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217
billion
- Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237
billion
- S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
- Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
- The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500
billion (Est)
- Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597
billion
- Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
- NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

We are asking you to do two things â^À^Ó they will just take you a few
minutes:

1. First we are working to break the bailout. Pledge today at
BreakTheBailout.com and pledge to help Break the Bailout. If you have
already pledged, urge everyone you know to join you by forwarding this
message to them. Click here to pledge:
http://www.breakthebailout.com

2. Write to your senator and congressman to urge them to Break the
Bailout by publicly proclaiming they will not support the second half of
the bailout approved by Congress. Paulsen is almost out of money â^À^Ó
letâ^À^Ùs not give him anymore. Click HERE to send a letter:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1331/t/8125/campaign.jsp?campaign_K...

Acting alone, we can achieve nothing; acting together, we can change
everything. We need to act together because change is urgently needed.

Sincerely,

Kevin Zeese
Executive Director, Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Poltics
Co-found, Break the Bailout
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:11:48 -1000
From: Lc <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
7th Annual Winter Concert, Stille Nacht, December 5, 2008

fyi...it's free.

----- Original Message -----
From: "HPU Pipeline" <cpannounce@hpu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 3:20 AM

> On Friday, December 5, 2008, Hawai'i Pacific University's International
> Chorale and Vocal Ensemble, along with the HPU Chamber Orchestra will
> present their 7th Annual Winter Concert, Stille Nacht. The Chamber
> Orchestra will perform works by Felix Mendelssohn and J. S. Bach, as
> well as traditional holiday favorites. The International Chorale and
> Vocal Ensemble will perform pieces honoring King Kalakaua, Queen
> Lili'uokalani, and Princess Ka'iulani. The vocal groups will also
> present traditional spirituals, folk songs from around the world, and
> songs for the holiday season. The concert will culminate with a
> candlelit, joint performance of Stille Nacht (Silent Night). Admission
> is free. 7:00pm, Central Union Church.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------->

From: <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:32 PM
First Foreign Interview with Raul Castro (and with Hugo Chavez) by
Sean Penn (long)

> Sean Penn Sits Down With Raul Castro for First Foreign Interview
>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- November 25, 2008 Cuban President Raul Castro
> Sits Down with Sean Penn & The Nation for First Foreign Interview Castro
> Speaks About President-Elect Obama, Guantanamo and Relations With the
> Pentagon; Hugo Chavez Interviewed As Well.
>
> In the cover story of this week's Nation Magazine,
> [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn] actor/filmmaker Sean Penn
> questions Cuban President Raul Castro in his first-ever interview with the
> foreign press. In the wide-ranging, seven-hour conversation, Castro
> discusses his views of President-elect Barack Obama, reflects on his role
> during the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, and shares
> details of the secret but ongoing military relationship between the
> Pentagon and Cuba over Guantanamo.
>
> Penn, making his second trip to Cuba, spoke to Castro at the Presidential
> Palace in Havana with the knowledge of Castro's brother Fidel. In the
> interview, Castro:
>
> * Expands on the secret military relationship between the Pentagon and
> Cuba, detailing a remarkably structured series of monthly meetings, formal
> response plans to crises on the base, and even a hotline and collaborative
> emergency response exercises held jointly between the two militaries. This
> cooperation belies the popular image of two antagonistic nations on the
> brink of conflict.
>
> * Offered his prediction about the (then) upcoming U.S.
> Presidential election. "If he is not murdered before
> November 4," he says of Obama, "he will be your next
> President."
>
> * Describes the drama and unheard details about the
> Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion.
>
> * Responds forcefully to allegations of human rights
> violations and suppression of free speech, and defends
> criticism of Cuba as a haven for the drug trade.
>
> * Extends a surprising olive branch to the United
> States, proposing a summit with President-elect Barack
> Obama.
>
> Castro, sipping tea and discussing films as well as politics with Penn, is
> at times defiant towards the United States. "Iraq is a child's game," he
> tells Penn, "compared with what would happen if the U.S. invaded Cuba."
> Largely, though, Castro is respectful towards the United States and it's
> people, challenging policy ("a blockade is an act of war, so Americans
> prefer the term embargo") but expressing generosity towards Americans.
> "The American people are among our closest neighbors," he says. "We should
> respect each other. We have never held anything against the American
> people. Good relations would be mutually advantageous. Perhaps we cannot
> solve all of our problems, but we can solve a good many of them."
>
> In the article, Conversations with Chavez and Castro, Penn also travels to
> Venezuela as well as to Cuba with journalist Christopher Hitchens and
> historian Douglas Brinkley. In Venezuela, the group interviewed President
> Hugo Chavez at length, discussing his view of a potential relationship
> with President Obama, the Monroe Doctrine and human rights and freedom of
> expression under his presidency.
>
> The article is online now at:
> [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn], along with a VideoNation
> interview with Sean Penn.
>
> =====
>
> Conversations With Chavez and Castro
>
> by Sean Penn
>
> The Nation.com - November 25, 2008
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn
>
> [This article is an adapted excerpt of the essay/interview "A Mountain of
> Snakes," which will appear in full December 1 at HuffingtonPost.com]
>
> Soon to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden was rallying the troops: "We can
> no longer be energy dependent on Saudi Arabia or a Venezuelan dictator."
> Well, I know what Saudi Arabia is. But having been to Venezuela in 2006,
> touring slums, mixing with the wealthy opposition and spending days and
> hours at its president's side, I wondered, without wondering, to whom
> Senator Biden was referring. Hugo ChÃ¡vez FrÃas is the democratically
> elected president of Venezuela (and by democratically elected I mean that
> he has repeatedly stood before the voters in internationally sanctioned
> elections and won large majorities, in a system that, despite flaws and
> irregularities, has allowed his opponents to defeat him and win office,
> both in a countrywide referendum last year and in regional elections in
> November). And Biden's words were the kind of rhetoric that had recently
> led us into a life-losing and monetarily costly war, which, while toppling
> a shmuck in Iraq, had also toppled the most dynamic principles upon which
> the United States was founded, enhanced recruitment for Al Qaeda and
> deconstructed the US military.
>
> By now, October 2008, I had digested my earlier visits to Venezuela and
> Cuba and time spent with ChÃ¡vez and Fidel Castro. I had grown
> increasingly intolerant of the propaganda. Though ChÃ¡vez himself has a
> penchant for rhetoric, never has it been a cause for war. In hopes of
> demythologizing this "dictator," I decided to pay him another visit. By
> this time I had come to say to friends in private, "It's true, ChÃ¡vez may
> not be a good man. But he may well be a great one."
>
> Among those to whom I said this were historian Douglas Brinkley and Vanity
> Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens. These two were perfect complements.
> Brinkley is a notably steady thinker whose historian's code of ethics
> assures adherence to supremely reasoned evidence. Hitchens, a wily
> wordsmith, ever too unpredictable for predisposition, is a wild card by
> any measure who in a talk-show throwaway once referred to ChÃ¡vez as an
> "oil-rich clown." Though I believe Hitchens to be as principled as he is
> brilliant, he can be combative to the point of bullying, as he once was in
> severe comments made about saintly antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.
> Brinkley and Hitchens would balance any perceived bias in my writing.
> Also, these are a couple of guys I have a lot of fun with and affection
> for.
>
> So I called Fernando Sulichin, an old friend and well-connected
> independent film producer from Argentina, and asked that he get them
> vetted and approved to interview ChÃ¡vez. In addition, we wanted to fly
> from Venezuela to Havana, and I asked that Fernando request on our behalf
> interviews with the Castro brothers, most urgently RaÃºl, who had taken
> over the reins of power from an ailing Fidel in February--and who had
> never given a foreign interview. I had traveled to Cuba in 2005, when I
> had the good fortune of meeting Fidel, and was eager for an interview with
> the new president. The phone rang at 2 o'clock the following afternoon.
> "Mi hermano," Fernando said. "It is done."
>
> Our flight from Houston to Caracas was delayed due to mechanical problems.
> It was 1 o'clock in the morning, and as we waited, Hitchens paced. "Very
> rarely does only one thing go wrong," he said. He must have liked the way
> it sounded, because he said it again. He was God's pessimist. I said,
> "Hitch, it's gonna be fine. They'll get us another plane, and we'll be
> there on time." But God's pessimist is actually God's atheistic pessimist.
> And I would later be reminded of the clarity in his atheism. Something
> else would indeed go wrong. Well, right and wrong, as you'll find out.
> Within two hours, we were taking off.
>
> When we landed at Caracas airport, Fernando was there to greet us. He
> guided us to a private terminal, where we waited for the arrival of
> President ChÃ¡vez, who would take us on a stumping tour for gubernatorial
> candidates on the beautiful Isla Margarita.
>
> We spent the next two days in ChÃ¡vez's constant company, with many hours
> of private meetings among the four of us. In the private quarters of the
> president's plane, I find that on the subject of baseball ChÃ¡vez's
> command of English soars. When Douglas asks if the Monroe Doctrine should
> be abolished, ChÃ¡vez, wanting to choose his words carefully, reverts to
> Spanish to detail the nuances of his position against this doctrine, which
> has justified US intervention in Latin America for almost two centuries.
> "The Monroe Doctrine has to be broken," he says. "We've been stuck with it
> for over 200 years. It always gets back to the old confrontation of Monroe
> versus BolÃvar. Jefferson used to say that America should swallow, one by
> one, the republics of the south. The country where you were born was based
> on an imperialistic attitude."
>
> Venezuelan intelligence tells him that the Pentagon has plans for invading
> his country. "I know they are thinking about invading Venezuela," ChÃ¡vez
> says. It seems he sees killing the Monroe Doctrine as a yardstick for his
> destiny. "Nobody again can come here and export our natural resources." Is
> he concerned about the US reaction to his bold statements about the Monroe
> Doctrine? He quotes Uruguayan freedom fighter JosÃ© Gervasio Artigas:
> "With the truth, I don't offend or fear."
>
> Hitchens sits quietly, taking notes throughout the conversation. ChÃ¡vez
> recognizes a flicker of skepticism in his eye. "CREES-to-fer, ask me a
> question. Ask me the hardest question." They share a smile. Hitchens asks,
> "What's the difference between you and Fidel?" ChÃ¡vez says, "Fidel is a
> communist. I am not. I am a social democrat. Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist.
> I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not. One day we discussed God and
> Christ. I told Castro, I am a Christian. I believe in the Social Gospels
> of Christ. He doesn't. Just doesn't. More than once, Castro told me that
> Venezuela is not Cuba, and we are not in the 1960s.
>
> "You see," ChÃ¡vez says, "Venezuela must have democratic socialism. Castro
> has been a teacher for me. A master. Not on ideology but on strategy."
> Perhaps ironically, John F. Kennedy is ChÃ¡vez's favorite US president. "I
> was a boy," he says. "Kennedy was the driving force of reform in America."
> Surprised by ChÃ¡vez's affinity for Kennedy, Hitch chimes in, referring to
> Kennedy's counter-Cuba economic plan for Latin America: "The Alliance for
> Progress was a good thing?" "Yes," says ChÃ¡vez. "The Alliance for
> Progress was a political proposal to improve conditions. It was aimed at
> lowering the social difference between cultures."
>
> Conversation among the four of us continues on buses, at rallies and at
> dedications throughout Isla Margarita. ChÃ¡vez is tireless. He addresses
> every new group for hours on end under a blistering sun. At most he'll
> sleep four hours at night, spending the first hour of his morning reading
> news of the world. And once he's on his feet, he's unstoppable despite
> heat, humidity and the two layers of revolutionary red shirts he wears.
>
> I had three primary motivations for this trip: to include the voices of
> Brinkley and Hitchens, to deepen my understanding of ChÃ¡vez and Venezuela
> and excite my writing hand, and to enlist ChÃ¡vez's support in encouraging
> the Castro brothers to meet with the three of us in Havana. While my
> understanding through Fernando was that this third piece of the puzzle had
> been approved and confirmed, somewhere in the cultural, language and
> telephonic exchanges there had been a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, CBS
> News was expecting a report from Brinkley, Vanity Fair was expecting one
> from Hitchens and I was writing on behalf of The Nation.
>
> On our third day in Venezuela, we thanked President ChÃ¡vez for his time,
> the four of us standing among security personnel and press at the Santiago
> Marino Airport on Isla Margarita. Brinkley had a final question, and so
> did I. "Mr. President," he said, "if Barack Obama is elected president of
> the United States, would you accept an invitation to fly to Washington and
> meet with him?" ChÃ¡vez immediately answered, "Yes."
>
> When it was my turn, I said, "Mr. President, it is very important for us
> to meet with the Castros. It is impossible to tell the story of Venezuela
> without including Cuba--and impossible to tell the story of Cuba without
> the Castros." ChÃ¡vez promised us that he would call President Castro the
> moment he got on his plane and ask on our behalf but warned us that it was
> unlikely big brother Fidel would be able to respond so quickly, as he was
> doing a lot of writing and reflecting these days, not seeing a lot of
> people. He could make no promises about RaÃºl either. ChÃ¡vez boarded his
> plane, and we watched him fly away.
>
> The next morning we took off for Havana. Full disclosure: we were loaned
> an airplane through the Venezuelan Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. If
> someone wants to refer to that as a payoff, be my guest. But when you read
> the next report from a journalist flying on Air Force One, or hopping on
> board a US military transport plane, be so kind as to dismiss that article
> as well. We appreciated the ride in all its luxury, but our reporting
> remains uninfluenced.
>
> 'Very Rarely Does Only One Thing Go Wrong'
>
> For me the personal stakes were pretty high. Getting on the plane to
> Havana shy of that guarantee of access to RaÃºl Castro was making me
> anxious. Christopher had pulled out of a few important speaking
> engagements at the last minute to make the trip. It was not his practice
> to leave others holding the bag. So for him, it was buy or bust, and he
> was becoming agitated. Douglas, a professor of history at Rice University,
> would have to return imminently for lecture obligations. Fernando was
> feeling the weight of our expectation that he'd be our battering ram. And
> me, well, I was depending on the call to Castro from ChÃ¡vez, both to get
> the interview and to save my ass with my companions.
>
> We landed in Havana around noon and were met on the tarmac by Omar
> Gonzalez Jimenez, president of the Cuban Film Institute, and Luis Alberto
> Notario, head of the institute's international co-production wing. I'd
> spent time with both of them on my earlier trip to Cuba. We started
> catching up on personal matters on the walk to the customs office, until
> Hitch stepped forward and unabashedly demanded of Omar, "Sir, we must see
> the president!" "Yes," Omar said. "We are aware of the request, and word
> has been passed to the president. We are still awaiting his response."
>
> For the rest of that day and into the following afternoon, we tortured our
> hosts with the incessant drumbeat: RaÃºl, RaÃºl, RaÃºl. I assumed if Fidel
> was up to it and could make the time, he would call. And if not, I
> remained appreciative of our prior meeting and said as much in a note I
> passed to him through Omar. RaÃºl I only knew about through what I'd read,
> and I hadn't a clue as to whether or not he'd see us.
>
> Cubans are a particularly warm and hospitable people. As our hosts took us
> around the city, I noticed that the number of American 1950s cars had
> diminished even in the few years since my last trip, giving way to smaller
> Russian designs. On a sweep by the invasive-looking US Interests Section
> on the MalecÃ³n, where waves breaking against the sea wall shower passing
> cars, I noticed something almost indescribable about the atmosphere in
> Cuba. It is the palpable presence of architectural and living human
> history on a small plot of land surrounded by water. Even the visitor
> feels the spirit of a culture that proclaims, in various ways, "This is
> our special place."
>
> We snaked through Old Havana, and in a glass-encased display outside the
> Museum of the Revolution we saw the Granma, the boat used to transport
> Cuban revolutionaries from Mexico in 1956. We moved on to the Palace of
> Fine Arts, with its collection of passionate and political pieces from a
> cross section of Cuba's deep talent pool. We then toured the Higher
> Institute of Arts and later went to dinner with National Assembly
> President Ricardo AlarcÃ³n and Roberto Fabelo, a painter they had invited
> after I'd expressed appreciation of his work at the art museum that
> afternoon. By midnight there had still been no word from RaÃºl Castro.
> After that we were taken to the protocol house, where we would lay our
> heads till dawn.
>
> By noon of the following day, the clock was ticking loudly in our ears. We
> had sixteen hours left in Havana before we would have to head to the
> airport to catch our flights back home. We were sitting around a table at
> La Castellana, an upscale Old Havana eatery, with a large group of artists
> and musicians who, led by the famed Cuban painter Kcho, had established
> Brigada Martha Machado, an organization of volunteers aiding victims of
> Hurricanes Ike and Gustav on the Isle of Youth. The brigade has the full
> support of government dollars, airplanes and staff that would be the envy
> of our Gulf Coast volunteers after Hurricane Katrina. Also joining us for
> lunch was Antonio Castro Soto del Valle, a handsome young man of humble
> character who is the 39-year-old son of Fidel Castro. Antonio is a doctor
> and chief medic for the Cuban national baseball team. I had a brief but
> pleasant chat with him and re-emphasized our RaÃºl agenda.
>
> The clock was no longer ticking. It was pounding. Omar told me we would be
> hearing the decision of the president quite soon. Fingers crossed,
> Douglas, Hitch, Fernando and I went back to the protocol house to get our
> bags packed in advance. By 6 pm, we were on a ten-hour countdown. I was
> sitting downstairs in the living room, reading in the hazy late-afternoon
> light. Hitch and Douglas were in their upstairs quarters, I assumed
> napping to offset anxiety. And on the couch beside me was Fernando,
> snoring away.
>
> Then Luis appeared at our open front door. I glanced over the top of my
> glasses as he gave me a very direct nod. Without words, I pointed
> questioningly up the stairs to where my companions lay. But Luis shook his
> head apologetically. "Only you," he said. The president had made his
> decision.
>
> I could hear Hitch's words of doubt echo in my head, "Very rarely does
> only one thing go wrong." Was he talking about me? Et mi, Brute?
> Nonetheless, I grabbed at my back pocket to make sure I had my pad of
> Venezuela notes, checked for my pen, pocketed my specs and headed out with
> Luis. Just before I shut the door of the waiting car, I heard Fernando's
> voice calling after me. "Sean!" We drove away.
>
> I'm Off to See the Wizard
>
> Stateside, Cuban President RaÃºl Castro, the island's former minister of
> the Armed Forces, has been branded a "cold militarist" and a "puppet" of
> Fidel. But the once ponytailed young revolutionary of the Sierra Maestra
> is proving the snakes wrong. Indeed, "Raulism" is on the rise alongside a
> recent industrial and agricultural economic boom. Fidel's legacy, like
> that of ChÃ¡vez, will depend upon the sustainability of a flexible
> revolution, one that could survive its leader's departure by death or
> resignation. Fidel has once again been underestimated by the North. In the
> selection of his brother RaÃºl, he has put the day-to-day policy-making of
> his country into formidable hands. In a report by the Council on
> Hemispheric Affairs, US State Department spokesman John Casey acknowledges
> that Raulism could lead to "greater openness and freedom for the Cuban
> people."
>
> Soon enough I'm sitting at a small polished table in a government office
> with President Castro and a translator. "Fidel called me moments ago," he
> tells me. "He wants me to call him after we have spoken." There is a humor
> in RaÃºl's voice that recalls a lifetime of affectionate tolerance for his
> big brother's watchful eye. "He wants to know everything we speak about,"
> he says with the chuckle of the wise. "I never liked the idea of giving
> interviews," he says. "One says many things, but when they are published,
> they become shortened, condensed. The ideas lose their meaning. I was told
> you make long movies. Maybe you will make long journalism as well." I
> promise him I'll write as fast as I can, and print as much as I write. He
> tells me he's informally promised his first interview as president
> elsewhere, and not wanting to multiply what could be construed as an
> insult, he singled me out from my companions.
>
> Castro and I share a cup of tea. "Forty-six years ago today, at exactly
> this time of day, we mobilized troops, Alameda in the West, Fidel in
> Havana, me in Areda. It had been announced at noon in Washington that
> President Kennedy would give a speech. This was during the missile crisis.
> We anticipated that the speech would be a declaration of war. After his
> humiliation at the Bay of Pigs, the pressure of the missiles [which Castro
> claims were strictly defensive] would represent a great defeat to Kennedy.
> Kennedy would not stand with that defeat. Today we study US candidates
> very carefully, focusing on McCain and Obama. We look at all the old
> speeches. Particularly those made in Florida, where opposing Cuba has
> become a for-profit business for many. In Cuba we have one party, but in
> the US there is very little difference. Both parties are an expression of
> the ruling class." He says today's Miami Cuban lobby members are
> descendants of Batista-era wealth, or international landowners "who'd only
> paid pennies for their land" while Cuba had been under absolute US rule
> for sixty years.
>
> "The 1959 land reform was the Rubicon of our revolution. A death sentence
> for our US relations." Castro seems to be sizing me up as he takes another
> sip of his tea. "At that moment, there was no discussion about socialism,
> or Cuba dealing with Russia. But the die was cast."
>
> After the Eisenhower administration bombed two vessel-loads of guns headed
> for Cuba, Fidel reached out to old allies. RaÃºl says, "We asked Italy.
> No! We asked Czechoslovakia. No! Nobody would give us weapons to defend
> ourselves because Eisenhower had put pressure on them. So by the time we
> got weapons from Russia, we had no time to learn how to use them before
> the US attacked at the Bay of Pigs!" He laughs and excuses himself to an
> adjacent restroom, briefly disappearing behind a wall, only to immediately
> pop back into the room, joking, "At 77, this is the fault of the tea."
>
> Joking aside, Castro moves with the agility of a young man. He exercises
> every day, his eyes are bright and his voice is strong. He picks up where
> he left off. "You know, Sean, there was a famous picture of Fidel from the
> Bay of Pigs invasion. He is standing in front of a Russian tank. We did
> not yet know even how to put those tanks in reverse. So," he jokes,
> "retreat was no option!" So much for the "cold militarist." RaÃºl Castro
> was warm, open, energetic and sharp of wit.
>
> I return to the subject of US elections by repeating the question Brinkley
> had asked ChÃ¡vez: Would Castro accept an invitation to Washington to meet
> with a President Obama, assuming he won in the polling, only a few weeks
> away? Castro becomes reflective. "This is an interesting question," he
> says, followed by a rather long, awkward silence. Until: "The US has the
> most complicated election process in the world. There are practiced
> election stealers in the Cuban-American lobby in Florida..." I chime in,
> "I think that lobby is fracturing." And then, with the certainty of a
> die-hard optimist, I say, "Obama will be our next president." Castro
> smiles, seemingly at my naÃ¯vetÃ©, but the smile disappears as he says,
> "If he is not murdered before November 4, he'll be your next president." I
> note that he had still not answered my question about meeting in
> Washington. "You know," he says, "I have read the statements Obama has
> made, that he would preserve the blockade." I interject, "His term was
> embargo." "Yes," Castro says, "blockade is an act of war, so Americans
> prefer the term embargo, a word that is used in legal proceedings...but in
> either case, we know that this is pre-election talk, and that he has also
> said he is open to discussion with anyone."
>
> RaÃºl interrupts himself: "You are probably thinking, Oh, the brother
> talks as much as Fidel!" We laugh. "It is not usually so, but you know,
> Fidel--once he had a delegation here, in this room, from China. Several
> diplomats and a young translator. I think it was the translator's first
> time with a head of state. They'd all had a very long flight and were
> jet-lagged. Fidel, of course, knew this, but still he talked for hours.
> Soon, one near the end of the table, just there [pointing to a nearby
> chair], his eyes begin to get heavy. Then another, then another. But
> Fidel, he continued to talk. Soon all, including the highest-ranking of
> them, to whom Fidel had been directly addressing his words, fell sound
> asleep in their chairs. So Fidel, he turns his eyes to the only one awake,
> the young translator, and kept him in conversation till dawn." By this
> time in the story, both RaÃºl and I were in stitches. I'd only had the one
> meeting with Fidel, whose astonishing mind and passion bleed words. But it
> was enough to get the picture. Only our translator was not laughing, as
> Castro returned to the point.
>
> "In my first statement after Fidel fell ill, I said we are willing to
> discuss our relationship with the US on equal footing. Later, in 2006, I
> said it again in an address at the Revolutionary Square. I was laughed at
> by the US media--that I was applying cosmetics over dictatorship." I offer
> him another opportunity to speak to the American people. He answers, "The
> American people are among our closest neighbors. We should respect each
> other. We have never held anything against the American people. Good
> relations would be mutually advantageous. Perhaps we cannot solve all of
> our problems, but we can solve a good many of them."
>
> He paused now, slowly considering a thought. "I'll tell you something, and
> I've never said it publicly before. It had been leaked, at some point, by
> someone in the US State Department, but was quickly hushed up because of
> concern about the Florida electorate, though now, as I tell you this, the
> Pentagon will think me indiscreet."
>
> I wait with bated breath. "We've had permanent contact with the US
> military, by secret agreement, since 1994," Castro tells me. "It is based
> on the premise that we would discuss issues only related to GuantÃ¡namo.
> On February 17, 1993, following a request by the United States to discuss
> issues related to buoy locators for ship navigations into the bay, was the
> first contact in the history of the revolution. Between March 4 and July
> 1, the Rafters Crisis took place. A military-to-military hot line was
> established, and on May 9, 1995, we agreed to monthly meetings with
> primaries from both governments. To this day, there have been 157
> meetings, and there is a taped record of every meeting. The meetings are
> conducted on the third Friday of every month. We alternate locations
> between the American base at GuantÃ¡namo and in Cuban-held territory. We
> conduct joint emergency-response exercises. For example, we set a fire,
> and American helicopters bring water from the bay, in concert with Cuban
> helicopters. [Before this] the American base at GuantÃ¡namo had created
> chaos. We had lost border guards, and have graphic evidence of it. The US
> had encouraged illegal and dangerous emigration, with US Coast Guard ships
> intercepting Cubans who tried to leave the island. They would bring them
> to GuantÃ¡namo, and a minimal cooperation began. But we would no longer
> play guard to our coast. If someone wanted to leave, we said, Go ahead.
> And so, with the navigation issues came the beginning of this
> collaboration. Now at the Friday meetings there is always a representative
> of the US State Department." No name given. He continues, "The State
> Department tends to be less reasonable than the Pentagon. But no one
> raises their voice because...I don't take part. Because I talk loud. It is
> the only place in the world where these two militaries meet in peace."
>
> "What about GuantÃ¡namo?" I ask. "I'll tell you the truth," Castro says.
> "The base is our hostage. As a president, I say the US should go. As a
> military man, I say let them stay." Inside, I'm wondering, Have I got a
> big story to break here? Or is this of little relevance? It should be no
> surprise that enemies speak behind the scenes. What is a surprise is that
> he's talking to me about it. And with that, I circle back to the question
> of a meeting with Obama. "Should a meeting take place between you and our
> next president, what would be Cuba's first priority?" Without a beat,
> Castro answers, "Normalize trade." The indecency of the US embargo on Cuba
> has never been more evident than now, in the wake of three devastating
> hurricanes. The Cuban people's needs have never been more desperate. The
> embargo is simply inhumane and entirely unproductive. RaÃºl continues,
> "The only reason for the blockade is to hurt us. Nothing can deter the
> revolution. Let Cubans come to visit with their families. Let Americans
> come to Cuba." It seems he's saying, Let them come see this terrible
> Communist dictatorship they keep hearing about in the press, where even
> representatives of the State Department and prominent dissidents
> acknowledge that in a free and open election in Cuba today, the ruling
> Communist Party would win 80 percent of the electorate. I list several US
> conservatives who have been critical of the embargo, from the late
> economist Milton Friedman, to Colin Powell, to even Texas Republican
> Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who said, "I have believed for a while that
> we should be looking for a new strategy for Cuba. And that is, opening
> more trade, especially food trade, especially if we can give the people
> more contact with the outside world. If we can build up the economy, that
> might make the people more able to fight the dictatorship." Castro,
> ignoring the slight, responds boldly, "We welcome the challenge."
>
> By now, we have moved on from the tea to red wine and dinner. "Let me tell
> you something," he says. "We have newly advanced research that strongly
> suggests deepwater offshore oil reserves, which US companies can come and
> drill. We can negotiate. The US is protected by the same Cuban trade laws
> as anyone else. Perhaps there can be some reciprocity. There are 110,000
> square kilometers of sea in the divided area. God would be unfair not to
> give some oil to us. I don't believe he would deprive us this way."
> Indeed, the US Geological Survey speculates something in the area of 9
> billion barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves
> in the North Cuba Basin. Now that he's improved recently rocky relations
> with Mexico, Castro is looking at also improving prospects with the
> European Union. "EU relations should improve with Bush's exit," he states
> confidently. "And the US?" I ask. "Listen," he says, "we are as patient as
> the Chinese. Seventy percent of our population was born under the
> blockade. I am the longest-standing minister of Armed Forces in history.
> Forty-eight and a half years until last October. That's why I'm in this
> uniform and continue to work from my old office. In Fidel's office,
> nothing has been touched. At the Warsaw Pact military exercises, I was the
> youngest, and the one who had been there the longest. Then, I was the
> oldest, and still the one who had been there the longest. Iraq is a
> child's game compared with what would happen if the US invaded Cuba."
> After another sip of wine, Castro says, "Preventing a war is tantamount to
> winning a war. This is in our doctrine."
>
> With our dinner finished, I walk with the president through the sliding
> glass doors onto a greenhouse-like terrace with tropical plants and birds.
> As we sip more wine, he says, "There is an American movie--the elite are
> sitting around a table, trying to decide who will be their next president.
> They look outside the window, where they see the gardener. Do you know the
> movie I'm talking about?" "Being There," I say. "Yes!" Castro responds
> excitedly, "Being There. I like this movie very much. With the United
> States, every objective possibility exists. The Chinese say: 'On the
> longest path, you start with the first step.' The US president should take
> this step on his own, but with no threat to our sovereignty. That is not
> negotiable. We can make demands without telling each other what to do
> within our borders."
>
> "Mr. President," I say, "watching the last presidential debate in the
> United States, we heard John McCain encouraging the free-trade agreement
> with Colombia, a country where death squads are notorious and
> assassinations of labor leaders have been occurring, and yet relations
> with the United States continue to get closer, as the Bush administration
> is currently attempting to push that agreement through Congress. As you
> know, I've just come from Venezuela, which, like Cuba, the Bush
> administration considers an enemy nation, though of course we buy a lot of
> oil from them. It occurred to me that Colombia may reasonably become our
> geographically strategic partner in South America, as Israel is in the
> Middle East. Would you comment on that?"
>
> He considers the question with caution, speaking in a slow and metered
> tone. "Right now," he says, "we have good relations with Colombia. But I
> will say that if there is a country in South America where an environment
> exists that is vulnerable to that...it is Colombia." Thinking of ChÃ¡vez's
> suspicion of US intentions to intervene in Venezuela, I take a deep
> breath.
>
> The hour was getting late, but I didn't want to leave without asking
> Castro about allegations of human rights violations and alleged
> narco-trafficking facilitated by the Cuban government. A 2007 report by
> Human Rights Watch states that Cuba "remains the one country in Latin
> America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent."
> Furthermore, there are about 200 political prisoners in Cuba today,
> approximately 4 percent of whom are convicted of crimes of nonviolent
> dissent. As I await Castro's comments, I can't help but think of the
> nearby US prison at GuantÃ¡namo and the horrendous US offenses against
> human rights there.
>
> "No country is 100 percent free of human rights abuses," Castro tells me.
> But, he insists, "reports in the US media are highly exaggerated and
> hypocritical." Indeed, even high-profile Cuban dissidents, such as Eloy
> GutiÃ©rrez Menoyo, acknowledge the manipulations, accusing the US
> Interests Section of gaining dissident testimony through cash payoffs.
> Ironically, in 1992 and '94, Human Rights Watch also described lawlessness
> and intimidation by anti-Castro groups in Miami as what author/journalist
> Reese Erlich termed "violations normally associated with Latin American
> dictatorships."
>
> Having said that, I'm a proud American and infinitely aware that if I were
> a Cuban citizen and were to write an article such as this about the Cuban
> leadership, I could be jailed. Furthermore, I'm proud that the system set
> up by our founding fathers, while not exactly intact today, was never
> dependent on just one great leader per epoch. These things remain in
> question for the romantic heroes of Cuba and Venezuela. I consider
> mentioning this, and perhaps should have, but I've got something else on
> my mind.
>
> "Can we talk about drugs?" I ask Castro. He responds, "The United States
> is the largest consumer of narcotics in the world. Cuba sits directly
> between the United States and its suppliers. It is a big problem for
> us.... With the expansion of tourism, a new market has developed, and we
> struggle with it. It is also said that we allow narco-traffickers to
> travel through Cuban airspace. We allow no such thing. I'm sure some of
> these planes get by us. It is simply due to economic restrictions that we
> no longer have functioning low-altitude radar."
>
> While this may sound like tall-tale telling, not so, according to Col.
> Lawrence Wilkerson, a former adviser to Colin Powell. Wilkerson told Reese
> Erlich in a January interview, "The Cubans are our best partners in the
> counter-drug and counter-terror war in the Caribbean. Even better than
> Mexico. The military looked at Cuba as a very cooperative partner."
>
> I want to ask Castro my unanswered question a final time, as our mutual
> body language suggests we've hit the witching hour. It is after 1 am, but
> he initiates. "Now," he says, "you asked if I would accept to meet with
> [Obama] in Washington. I would have to think about it. I would discuss it
> with all my comrades in the leadership. Personally, I think it would not
> be fair that I be the first to visit, because it is always the Latin
> American presidents who go to the United States first. But it would also
> be unfair to expect the president of the United States to come to Cuba. We
> should meet in a neutral place."
>
> He pauses, putting down his empty wine glass. "Perhaps we could meet at
> GuantÃ¡namo. We must meet and begin to solve our problems, and at the end
> of the meeting, we could give the president a gift...we could send him
> home with the American flag that waves over GuantÃ¡namo Bay."
>
> As we exit his office, we are followed by staff as President Castro takes
> me down the elevator to the lobby and walks me to my waiting car. I thank
> him for the generosity of his time. As my driver puts the car in gear, the
> president taps on the window beside me. I roll it down as the president
> checks his watch, realizing that seven hours have passed since we began
> the interview. Smiling, he says, "I will call Fidel now. I can promise you
> this. When Fidel finds I have spoken to you for seven hours, he will be
> sure to give you seven and a half when you return to Cuba." We share a
> laugh and a last handshake.
>
> It had rained earlier in the night. In this early-hour darkness, our tires
> streaming over the wet pavement on a quiet Havana morning, it strikes me
> that the most basic questions of sovereignty offer substantial insight
> into the complexities of US antagonism toward Cuba and Venezuela, as well
> as those countries' policies. They've only ever had two choices: to be
> imperfectly ours, or imperfectly their own.
>
> Viva Cuba. Viva Venezuela. Viva USA.
>
> When I got back to the protocol house, it was nearly 2 am. My old friend
> Fernando, looking much the worse for wear, had waited up. My companions
> had had quite a night. Poor Fernando had taken the brunt of their
> frustration. They hadn't known where I'd gone, nor why I had left them
> behind. And the remaining Cuban officials they'd been able to contact had
> insisted they stay put, should either of the Castro brothers spontaneously
> offer an audience. So they had also missed out on a last Cuban night on
> the town. After filling me in, Fernando went to get a couple hours' sleep.
> I stayed up reviewing my notes and was first at the breakfast table, at
> 4:45 am. When Douglas and Hitch ambled down the stairs, I put the edge of
> the tablecloth over my head in mock shame. I guess, under the
> circumstances, it was a bit early (in more than just the hour) to be
> testing their humor. The joke didn't play. While Fernando took a separate
> flight to Buenos Aires, we had a quiet breakfast and a quiet flight back
> to home sweet home.
>
> When we arrived in Houston, I realized I'd underestimated the thick skin
> of these two road-worn professionals. Whatever ice I'd perceived earlier
> had melted. We said our goodbyes, celebrating what had been a thrilling
> several days. Neither had been so catty as to inquire into the content of
> my interview, but Christopher headed to his eastbound connection with a
> parting word, "Well...I guess we'll read about it."
>
> Â¡SÃ, Se Puede!
>
> I sat on the edge of my bed with my wife, son and daughter, tears
> streaming down my face, as Barack Obama spoke for the first time as the
> president-elect of the United States of America. I closed my eyes and
> started to see a film in my head. I could hear the music too,
> appropriately the Dixie Chicks covering a Fleetwood Mac song over
> slow-motion images in montage. There they were: Bush, Hannity, Cheney,
> McCain, Limbaugh and Robertson. I saw them all. And the song was rising as
> the image of Sarah Palin took over the screen. Natalie Maines sweetly
> sang,
>
> And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
> till the landslide brought me down.
> Landslide brought me down.
> ===
>
> [Actor/filmmaker Sean Penn's pieces have appeared in the San Francisco
> Chronicle, Time, Rolling Stone and at HuffingtonPost.com, among others.]
>
> Conversations with Chavez and Castro is adapted from a longer essay,
> which will appear at www.huffingtonpost.com on December 1st. Nation
> Managing Editor Roane Carey is available to discuss the piece. Please
> contact habiba Alcindor, 212-209-5426, habiba@thenation.com for
> interviews or more information.
-------
>
> Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that
> will help them to interpret the world and to change it.
>
> Submit via email: moderator@portside.org Submit via the Web:
> portside.org/submit Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
> Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~-------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:38:17 -0800 (PST)
From: Kekahuna Keaweiwi <kekahunakeaweiwi@yahoo.com>
Maka`ala OHA's Smoke and Screen...IT IS Their Way!

This is for consideration and to be prepared...so their myth does not
go unaddressed.

OHA will now use the coverage and footage of Monday's Rally at the
Capitol Building to spin and generate the illusion to Obama that
Hawaiians are united behind the Akaka Bill...that majority of Hawaiians
support Statehood and perpetuate the Occupier's Myth and propaganda.

Right now is a good time for one (facilitator) who is respected and
trusted by both sides (Academics/Hard-Core Activism-Resistance/Cultural
Depth) of the issues and has the ability (maybe even a gift) to
articulate/communicate with passion/substance to unite the Hawaiians and
their Non-Hawaiian Supporters/Allies and move/guide us to the next level.

I see Hawaiians gathering in numbers....they just need a leader that can
unite and lead them in the right direction for the RIGHT reasons.

Foster
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: stephanie@worldcantwait.net [mailto:stephanie@worldcantwait.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:22 PM
Not Your Soldier HS Tour

To socially conscious educators and students

Bring the Military Recruiters Out Of Our Schools And Communities Tour to
your campus!

What?

A nationwide effort, beginning in October and November, to reach high
school students with the truth about military recruiters and the wars that
they are recruiting for. We are looking for teachers and students to help
arrange classroom presentations and school assemblies. These would
include a short presentation by a World Can't Wait youth organizer and
either an Iraq war veteran or a military family member as well as an open
discussion. We would also play a 10-minute video clip of testimony by
Iraq veterans from the recent Winter Soldier hearings about the reality of
this war - the things they witnessed and also perpetrated - and footage of
high school students protesting military recruiters. We would conclude
with a short survey that students would take in order to get a better
sense of what the students think.

Why?

Over 1 million Iraqis have been killed. Over 5 million have been forced
to flee their homes. Both presidential candidates are promising to
escalate the war in Afghanistan. Iran, Pakistan, and other countries are
in the crosshairs. The war crime of torture is being carried out by U.S.
forces under the direction of the highest levels of government. Where are
they going to get the troops to fight their "war on terror"?

In high schools across America, military recruiters are given free reign
to prey on the youth. They pull up in their hummers, walk right into
classrooms and give presentations that make war seem like a video game.
They stalk students at school and at home, making false promises and even
(as has been documented recently on Democracy Now!) threatening students
with jail time if they decide not to enlist. In particular they target
poor rural youth, inner city youth of color and immigrant youth (with
promises of citizenship). In fact, all this is mandated by No Child Left
Behind which requires high schools to give students' personal information
over to the military. If you find this situation unacceptable and think
that schools should be places of learning and not cheap labor depots for
the U.S. military, then help bring this tour to your school!

Recruiters lie. Many people know that they lie about the job skills
training and education benefits that enlistees will (not) receive. And
they will never tell these youth about the one third of female GIs that
report being raped while in the service or the post-traumatic stress
disorder and suicide rates of the returning veterans. But what this tour
aims to expose is even bigger. What are they recruiting for? Is this a
military that goes around the world spreading freedom and democracy? Or
does this war, and the whole history of U.S. policy going back hundreds of
years reveal something different? What does it mean to be "patriotic" and
"support the troops"? How can you prioritize the people of the world? Is
the military the place to be if you're looking to "have an experience,"
"get some discipline and structure," "give your life a purpose," or have a
"career"? Or is joining the military harmful to oneself and to people
throughout the world?

These are the questions we'd like to explore with high school students.
We are hoping to bring home the reality of what these recruiters are
actually recruiting young people to do; but we also want to learn from the
students and we know we will have many different points of view in the
audience. We look forward to stirring up some debate which all too often
gets doesn't happen, in the name of being "balanced" and avoiding
controversy. Help bring this tour to your campus and be part of awakening
the consciousness and activism of a new generation struggling to figure
out what to do with their lives.

For more info or to set up a classroom presentation, school assembly, or
debate at your school, contact us at: sf@worldcantwait.org or call
415-864-5153

For more information about World Can't Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime,
check out WORLDCANTWAIT.ORG
_____________________________________________________________________

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:33:24 -1000
From: Lc <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity

all this sounds familiar...
-------

from CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/mencher06282008.html
Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity
The Human Right to Eat
By JOAN P. MENCHER

Somini Sengupta's front-page article, "India's Growth Outstrips Crops"
(New York Times, June 22, 2008) points out various reasons for the current
shortage of staple foods in India-- including rapidly sinking water
tables, inadequate government investment in agriculture and especially in
irrigation and access to loans for farmers, agricultural land being sold
for residential use since the profits from agriculture were so poor.
Between 1968 and 1998 India's production of cereals had doubled, but
between 1998 and 2008 it has gone down due to the cancellation of
government support prices, which followed the advice of the World Bank and
the United States economists. Based on my own field research on
agricultural issues in India over the last fifty years I have always been
surprised by the disconnect between what farmers tell me and what I hear
from economists (most of whom rarely visit many farms). I see a very
different picture.

Starting with the colonial occupation of India, the government's
agricultural policies have focused on the accumulation of money by the
well-do-do farmers and the government at the expense of those who tilled
the land. Instead of focusing on increasing the production of multiple
crops, grown in tandem either through crop rotations or by intercropping
(such as the intercropping of trees and field crops), the focus was from
early on, and more so during the last 10 years, on crops for export (for
example bananas and other fruits to Europe) rather than on feeding its own
population. The journal Seedling, published by an NGO named GRAIN, points
out that all of the largest grain traders in the world have greatly
increased their profits during the past two years; Cargill, for example,
announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of
2008 were 86% higher than for the same period of 2007. It is not
surprising that the poor do not have enough to eat. See: www.grain.org

While many of us would consider the right to food to be a fundamental
human right, the concept of "rights" has paradoxically been appropriated
by multinational corporations, as well as governments, to expand the
philosophy of neoliberalism. For example, recent changes in Mexican law
have elevated the "right" of private ownership over the communal ownership
of common lands, water resources, etc., traditionally observed by
indigenous communities (Seedling, Oct. 2007, pages 6-7.) And we are all
familiar with the use of the "right" to individual (or corporate)
ownership to steal traditional products of nature from local traditional
societies, including not only indigenous tribal groups but also many
preparations used by our grandmothers, by patenting them in a slightly
modified form. Seedling quotes a Canadian farmer saying: "farmers all over
the world need to start thinking once again of food as a source of
nutrition and sustenance and to re-connect with old ideas about fertility,
knowledge, labour and community. . . awareness that the corporate strategy
for world domination is unsustainable and ultimately self-defeating."
Not only in some parts of rural India, but the world over, people's
"rights " and their advocates are increasingly being heard, and people are
beginning to look to a new pattern of agriculture that will be directed
toward feeding people rather than toward profit.

After the dry spell in the mid 1960s-early 1970s, making India
self-sufficient in food became a rallying call. But instead of basing the
methods for accomplishing this on land reform (along with really well
informed, ecologically sound extension), the politically driven emphasis
on mono-cropping, export for profit, and complex market chains led to an
adoption of the U.S. model of agriculture based on a limited number of
commodities. This approach relied on an extensive use of artificial
petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, with a strong emphasis on
the large and very large farmers (size defined in locally relevant terms).
With the so-called "liberalization" of the economy in the last 10 years,
there has been a large emphasis on export crops, based on the views of
economists who believed that it would be good for trade if India were to
import many of its basic grains, taking advantage of what economists call
"economies of scale", a concept borrowed from industry which ignores the
realities of rural/agricultural life. As George Mombiot recently pointed
out, it has been known since the 1960's that small farms produce greater
yields per acre than large farms, sometimes as much as 20 times greater.
(The Guardian, London, 10 June 2008). In the 1950s WalterGoldschmidt's
work, as well as the political reaction to it, made it clear that
industrial agriculture is less a matter of efficiency (productivity,
energy, or capital usage) than of political power.

In any case, food is not simply a product, like a piece of cloth or a
machine, though food companies have tried to turn it into commodities like
pieces of cloth.. The growth of plants and animals is part and parcel of
local communal life, of the quality of rural day-to-day existence and the
local exchange of goods. The current policy also makes people dependent
on the transportation of food and food products over long distances (using
large amounts of petrochemicals), as well as on petrochemicals for
fertilizers, herbicides, and enormous quantities of pesticides which are
destructive of the soil, apart from having numerous health impacts.

In addition, the central and state governments have chosen to focus on
larger size dams and irrigation projects, while neglecting local-level
water conservation and water harvesting along with small household level
ponds, the recycling of semi-contaminated water at the local level (such
as bath water etc.) and failing to employ the most ecologically sound
methods of water use, which has inevitably had a negative impact on
agriculture.

In 1995, an important conference organized by the International Food
Policy Research Institute based in Washington, D.C. concluded that with
existing technology, along with new methods already being tried out--such
as the SRI (System of Rice Intensification, developed in Madagascar),
India would be able to feed itself for the next 25 or more years. Yet the
significant increase in export farming, the continual neglect of small
farmers, the belief held by the urban elite that basically nobody wants to
farm, the rapid increase in the price of oil and other petrochemical
products, has made it extremely difficult for poor farmers and even
middle-sized ones. The failure of various south Indian state governments
(where I have been working) to support the use of (formerly) common lands
by self-help groups of landless women which were producing vegetables both
for their own consumption and the local market is one of the pieces of a
broader failure to see sustainable agriculture by villagers as a
meaningful alternative to so-called "modern" agriculture.

The tendency among the elite, and this includes many (though not all)
economists, to belittle small farmers, those that grow for the local
community and perhaps the nearby city, encourages farm policies that make
rural people more dependent on importing foods from longer and longer
distances, and that fail to meet the needs of local farmers and consumers
both. The government's downplaying of procurement policies, buying of
grains and basic foodstuffs at lower than market prices, only exacerbates
food crises, and may even create them.

I have seen NGOs struggling to obtain funds to help with programs that
assist small farmers having to fight both their local government policies
as well as those of the central government. I have also witnessed farm
after farm obtaining high yields of multiple crops when they are given not
only financial support but also technical advice and examples to follow as
well as community support. The focus of these groups is clearly at
variance with most government policies.

Agricultural changes in the US today also reflect a rejection of
centralized agricultural policies. We are experiencing a major change as
more and more people turn to Community Supported Agriculture associations
(CSAs), farmers' markets, and small-scale urban agriculture, which is
creating a significant though still small movement which may well
transform the way we eat. Even though this movement is against the
interests of large corporate interests, it continues to grow. The
movement in the US is starting from a very different place compared to the
situation we find in India. While the gap between urban elites and food
cultivators is every way as great in India as in the U.S., perhaps even
greater because of issues of caste in India, it is still possible for
Indian farmers to be weaned away from export crops, and to return to
production for local and regional markets. For example, in Bangalore I
have seen how organic food brought in to a city market usually sells out
in a few hours--even in poorer neighborhoods. People want healthier
foods. Even urban people are beginning to grow their own vegetables and
fruits (though not yet grains), as well as keeping a few hens to provide
their families with fresh eggs.

For a number of reasons, the increasing cost of food may serve to send
more people back to local consumption. The real problem in India and
elsewhere are the really poor, in rural areas the landless, in urban areas
the homeless or the slum dwellers, who lack even tiny amounts of space to
grow food, or to innovate on water conservation, etc. At this moment in
many countries of the world, these people are barely able to afford the
minimum nutrition their bodies need. This is fine for the commodity
traders, who are in a perfect position to profit from other people's
hunger. Is a trader's "right" to obscene levels of profit more sacred
than a poor person's right to eat?

Which brings us back to the question of human rights--the right to land,
to housing, to water, to food and to a decent quality of life for
everyone. With a recognition of these rights most of the people reading
this will have the chance to gain more autonomy over their own lives. The
struggle for this is essential for both human survival and the survival of
all types of life on this planet. .

Joan P. Mencher is an Emerita Professor of Anthropology from the City
University of New York's Graduate Center, and Lehman College of the City
University of New York. She is the chair of an embryonic not-for-profit
called The Second Chance Foundation,which works to support rural
grassroots organizations in India and the United States who work with poor
and small farmers on issues of sustainable agriculture. She has worked
primarily in South India but also in West Bengal briefly, on issues of
ecology, caste, land reform, agriculture, women, and related issues over
the last half century, and has published widely both in the United States
and in India on all of these subjects, primarily in academic journals. For
comments or questions, write JMencher@TheSecondChance.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:13:06 -0500
From: kahiwal@cs.com
more on My Mana'o - "Stolen Lands" rallyat
capitol this Monday

"J.Keliipio" <josephine@poidogs.com> wrote:

>Lawrence Tribe? I have never heard of him. Does OHA know of him? Just
>wondering.

I believe he was on the winning side of the Rice vs. Cayetano case.

If this guy is in the Supreme Court on any kind of argument, it seems, the
justices give him lots of leeway AND they listen.

ku
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:28:43 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com
IMPEACHED LINGLE NOW

Pomaikaiokalani
-----
AOL

For over 108 years the federal government of the United States, the
Territory of Hawaii and now the State of Hawaii governments have
administrated the Natational Lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom. National
Lands that were transfered to them as a "Special Trust" for the people of
Hawaii. Where the United States held only a "Nake Title" to the National
Lands that the Indegenous Hawaiian people never relinquisted their
Sovereignty or claims to those National Lands.
For over 50 years since Hawaii became a State of the Union, the
State of Hawaii has solely administrated the National Lands of the
Hawaiian people for the General Public. While evciting and arresting
Native Hawaiians off of their National Lands that are held in a "Special
Trust" by the United States and the State of Hawaii.
Native Hawaiian have never properly benefiied from the selling or
leasing of the National Lands by the State of Hawaii. When the State of
Hawaii leased the 'Ahupua'a o Makua to the Army for 65 years for ONE
DOLLARS, Native Hawaiians did not benefit from the lease of their
National Lands to the United States Army. Which is a direct Violation of
the Trust provisions of the State of Hawaii's Admission Act.
Since the creation of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs the State of
Hawaii has never released a complete Inventory of the Public Lands Trust
that the State of Hawaii administrates as a Trust for all the people of
Hawaii which includes the Native Hawaiian people as the sole
beneficiaries of the National Lands of the Public Land Trust of the State
of Hawaii. Governor
Lingle should be Impeached.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:34:01 -1000
From: Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education
<announce@HAWAII.EDU>
Faculty 2008 Fall Lecture Series

Victor Lubecke, Electrical Engineering
^ÓThrough Wall Monitoring of Human Life Signs^Ô

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Hamilton Library, Room 301
3:30 ^Ö 4:30 PM
Admission free, Refreshments provided
Doors open at 3:15 PM

Technology that can be used to unobtrusively detect and monitor the
presence of human subjects from a distance and through barriers can be a
powerful tool for law enforcement, military, and health monitoring
applications.

Various technologies from passive millimeter-wave imaging to ultra
wideband radar have demonstrated potential for identifying shapes, motion,
and even materials and biological characteristics through various
obstructions.

Compact microwave radar systems can now detect and monitor cardiopulmonary
activity for multiple hidden stationary subjects, and even leverage
ambient radio signals to provide a virtually passive means to track human
life signs through walls. Approaches for applications ranging from
counter-terrorism to outpatient healthcare will be reviewed, with an
emphasis on detection and monitoring of human cardiopulmonary activity.

BIODATA Victor Lubecke currently conducts research in remote monitoring of
human life signs, microwave/millimeter-wave circuits, and MEMS
integration. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from
Caltech in 1995, and worked for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Riken
(Japan), and Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies, prior to joining the
University of Hawaii in 2003. He is currently a Distinguished Microwave
Lecturer of the IEEE, and is actively involved in IEEE MTT/BME and SPIE
professional societies. He has written over 100 papers for which he has
received several awards. Lubecke has had 4 US patents granted with
several more pending for award winning IP. He co-founded Kai Sensors, a
Hawaii-based high-tech start-up company.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:50:00 -1000
From: UH Manoa Library <announce@HAWAII.EDU>
Seeking departmental histories

Did your school or department write its history for the UH centennial or
for any other reason?

The UH Manoa Library is seeking departmental and school histories for
Manoa's online institutional repository, known as ScholarSpace. Through
ScholarSpace your history will be accessible on the web and archived for
future research.

If you can assist, please contact Beth Tillinghast, ScholarSpace project
manager, at betht@hawaii.edu, or 956-6130.
-- -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:49:51 -0800
From: Facebook <notification+nabmqqn@facebookmail.com>
Vote for Obama Cabinet position on Violence Against Women

Cheyla McCornack sent a message to the members of One in Three Women
Campaign.

Greetings:

One in Three women has submitted an "idea" for change in America.
President-Elect Obama says he wants to hear ideas from all Americans, so
we're taking him up on his offer.

The "Top 10 Ideas for America" will be presented to the Obama
Administration on Inauguration Day. Change.org then build a national
campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of
Change.org, MySpace, and dozens of partner organizations and millions of
combined members. What is Ideas for Change in America? Ideas for Change in
America is a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create
momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and 111th
Congress can turn the broad call for "change" across the country into
specific policies.

The project is nonpartisan, and invites all political points of view. It
is not connected to the Obama campaign or the Obama Administration.

PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK AND VOTE FOR: CABINET POSITION ON VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN

CIRCULATE TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES TO ENSURE THAT THIS IDEA IS IN THE TOP
TEN TO BE SENT TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON INAUGURATION DAY. let's make
this happen!

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.change.org%2Fideas%2Fview%2Fcreate_cabinet_position_on_violence_against_women

Cheyla McCornack and Evelyn Brom
Co-Founders
One in Three Womenâ^Ä¢
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.oneinthreewomen.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:52:46 -1000
From: Lc <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
Storytellings & Youth slam this Weekend

there's a lot in here, but what i wanted to push is the youth speaks
hawaii slam poetry. if you've not been to one, you're missing something!
these kids are hot!

Youth Speaks Hawaii (LLC) presents
the 4th Annual INTERscholastic Poetry Slam* (2008)
hosted by: world champion slam poet, the Mighty Mike McGee**
featuring: Farrington HS -vs.- Kalani HS -vs.- Kalaheo HS ^Övs.- UH Lab
School ^Övs.- Haki Puu LC
Saturday, November 29th, 7/8pm (in just 3 days!)
@ Kaimuki High School Auditorium
All Ages, $3

for those of you who came to a packed Hawaiian Hut for last year's
InterSlam, you know how awesome it was, we fully expect to you see you
folks again! AND please don't forget to tell everyone you know about next
Saturday's show! "Slam*"? A poetry slam is a competitive event in which
poets perform their original work and are judged by 5 members of the
audience who are instructed to give numerical scores (on a zero to 10 or
one to 10 scale) based on the poets' content and performance.

----- Original Message ----- From: Gere, Jeffrey L.
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:54 PM

STORYTELLING, SLAM , ODDS ^Ñn ENDS

HELLO STORY LOVERS!

JEFF GERE here, director of the Talk Story Festival (remember that in
mid-October?). Well, enjoy my favorite 3 photos from TALK STORY taken by
Kelli Heath. Why so long in coming with a story event note? Here^Òs my
story: I^Òd been noticing stars in the periphery of my right eye leading
upto Talk Story #20, and 2 days after that wonderful celebration I had an
operation for a detached retina (which prevented me from touring as
planned to Maui and Kauai). Then it was Halloween, I was healing well, and
I did the shows booked^Å and tore the retina again. It is healing fine
finally (but sslloowww by my standards, but OK.)

I am just now back at work after a month. I write to alert and invite you
to a few upcoming storytellings (etc.) as I will from time to time.
Thanks, your welcome.

CATHY SPAGNOLI (our guest from Seattle this Talk Story, and with a ^Ñbad
hip^Ò toured Maui and Kauai through October^Å ) has just come out of
surgery for a brain tumor. Please keep her in your thoughts during this
Thanksgiving pause. And hug your loved ones.

STORYTELLINGS THIS WEEKEND

Two performances by master storyteller Ashley Ramsden, in Honolulu for the
first time this weekend at the Waldorf School^Òs Niu Valley campus, 350
Ulua Street. On November 28 (poetry of Rumi) and 29 (his unique version of
A Christmas Carol)- see more on attached. I^Òll attend Sunday. Both public
performances begin at 7:00 p.m. Tickets at the door ($10 for adults, $5
for students under 18).

December UH-Manoa Gamelan Performance!

University of Hawai'i Manoa - Gamelan Ensemble Show Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008
7:30 p.m., UH^Òs Barbara B. Smith Amphitheater, UH Music Department
complex (corner of Dole St. and University Ave.) $12 general / $8 students
& seniors

MOONLIGHT STORYTELLERS has monthly storytelling ^Ñswap^Ò meetings open to
anyone interested (being reinvented now). With the reminder/ announcement
comes a note of some events related to storytelling. Write to Vicky
Dworkin at dworkin@hawaii.edu

LOPAKA KAPANUI^Òs various Honolulu Ghost Tours can be booked by calling
him at 699-4940.

YOUTH POETRY SLAM SATURDAY This just in: it is SO good when it^Òs good I
really encourage you to go: perhaps you saw Ittai at the Talk Story
Saturday night slamming (he was on the team from Hawaii that came in first
Nationally last summer). Yes, they swear and are passionate, and sometimes
offensive (painfully honest). I find the BEST of them inspiring! Now you
know. Here^Òs what they sent:

!!! PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!
Youth Speaks Hawaii (LLC) presents
the 4th Annual INTERscholastic Poetry Slam* (2008)
hosted by: world champion slam poet, the Mighty Mike McGee**
featuring: Farrington HS -vs.- Kalani HS -vs.- Kalaheo HS ^Övs.- UH Lab
School ^Övs.- Haki Puu LC
Saturday, November 29th, 7/8pm (in just 3 days!)
@ Kaimuki High School Auditorium
All Ages, $3

so far the schools sending teams to compete in this year's poetry slam
are:
- Kalani HS (3X defending champs) - Haki Pu'u (3rd year)
- Kalaheo HS (2nd year) - UH Lab School (2nd
year)
- Farrington HS (1st year ever)
questionable: Punahou (2nd year), Halau Ku Mana (2nd year) & Waianae HS
(1st year ever)

as some of you are familiar, Youth Speaks Hawaii had a great summer
the 2008 YSH Slam Team placed 1st, winning this year's annual Brave New
Voices International Youth Spoken Word Slam Poetry Festival held in
Washington DC, while being filmed for a HBO (home box office)
documentary, scheduled to air in jan/feb '09.

in the meantime, this year's fall semester brings us
- 4 new YSH mentors: Jocelyn Ng, William Giles, Tui Scanlan, & guest
mentor Moira Pirsch (of wisc & minn fame)
- 2 YSH after school artist residencies @ Kalani and Farrington high
schools
- a language arts elective course @ UH Lab School, taught by our very own
talented Arts & Education Director / Workshop Facilitator / Mentor:
Darron Cambra (Darron@YouthSpeaksHawaii.org)
- continue free & open Wednesday youth poetry workshops, 4:30pm @ The
ARTS at Marks Garage (1159 Nuuanu)
- bold new partnerships with Kids Talk Story Hawaii, GirlFest Hawaii &
The ARTS at Marks Garage
- the 2008 Youth Speaks Hawaii INTERscholastic Poetry Slam! (sat, nov29),
we are looking for volunteers (see below)

we are currently working on
- a new YSH spoken word cd featuring the world champion 2008 YSH Slam
Team, and the poems that won them such fame (this cd should be available
in limited amount at next week's INTERslam!)
- starting up a new free monthly weekend YSH open mic /slam
- an arts and education youth spoken word curriculum development program
- seeking / finding help with YSH grant writing / non-profit paperwork
stuff, like book-keeping and accounting etc
- a new YSH chapbook, we are accepting submissions, so get at us!

Anyone interested in lending us a helping hand this Saturday?
Or have any questions, concerns, or anything in general etc; please feel
free to holler @ me: Travis@YouthSpeaksHawaii.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:35:46 -1000
From: pilipo souza <pilipohale@hawaii.rr.com>
Please take the ceded lands poll online. - comment

Aloha kakou,

May I caution anyone of pro-Hawaiian Independence to sign on to any poll
concerning "ceded" lands. There is no such thing as "ceded" Hawaiian
lands. There is only "stolen" Hawaiian lands. To get the Kanaka Maoli to
accept "stolen" lands as being equal to "ceded" lands is far a greater
crime than the theft itself.

If there was any such thing as "ceded" Hawaiian lands, does one believe
the State of Hawaii or the federal United States of America would need
permission of the Kanaka Maoli do whatever they wanted to do with the
aina.

Getting people other than Kanaka Maoli to vote on Kanaka Maoli issues is
only another diversionary tactic from the 'Play Book' of team Committee
of Safety known as "Deceive Left with Motion Right. Mark Twain said, "You
can not create Empires in foreign lands and call yourself a Republic at
home". The U. S. Military occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom .was a
necessity for the United States of America to expand its Empire.

Do not accept a gifted horse at your door of your hale or in your mind.
Do not seek anything you don't deserve and you won't get upset. Justice
is not in the house they want you to enter. Justice can only be obtain
by numbers saying, "a'ole" for to honor the thieves is to glorify the
theft.

e ala e1 Beware!
pilipo
---------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nimchira <nimchira@cox.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:06:29 -0600
Voices Health/Environment News

News from the Health and Environmental Communities.
Published since Nov, 2005
Nov. 26, 2008

May you all have a safe and happy holiday

In this Issue:

Recalls

Mars Extends Pet Food Recall; More Salmonella Found, Expanded recall covers
cat food sold in East Coast states.
http://consumeraffairs.list-manage.com/track/click?u=48290de6249ef2cecba9fe5de&id=f41e704cc1&e=0fa96e422d

Balanced Health Products, Inc. Conducts Voluntary Urgent Nationwide Recall
of Starcaps Dietary Supplement Capsules Found to Contain an Undeclared Drug
Ingredient: Balanced Health Products, Inc. is voluntarily recalling STARCAPS
DIET SYSTEM DIETARY SUPPLEMENT, Lot 12/2011 - 84810, sold in 30 capsule
plastic bottles.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/balancedhealth11_08.html

Fashion Sanctuary Issues a Voluntary Nationwide Recall of All Lots of Zhen
De Shou Fat Loss Capsules Found to Contain an Undeclared Drug Ingredient:
Fashion Sanctuary is recalling all lot codes of Zhen De Shou Fat Loss
Capsules sold in 10 count blister cards.
http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/fashionsanctuary11_08.html
============================

FDA Finds Melamine in U.S. Infant Formula Agency insists amounts were
"minute" and do not pose an immediate danger.
http://consumeraffairs.list-manage.com/track/click?u=48290de6249ef2cecba9fe5de&id=78382471f5&e=0fa96e422d

Border Fence to Carve up Nature Reserve
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=pB07DBlr%2Foq67RFLFh9mkTbgYxcpkK4K

Plan for New Orleans Hospitals Draws Outcry
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/26-6

Many Kids in Katrina Trailer Park Anemic
http://www.truthout.org/112608N

Medicare's Private Insurers Await Impending Cutbacks
http://www.truthout.org/112508HA

Ailing FDA may need major restructuring.
http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/18704/3057/24331/0/

Many drug trials never see publication.
http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/18704/3057/24332/0/

EPA moves to ease pollution rules.
http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/18704/3057/24334/0/

Lawmakers push government to enforce chemical ban in toys.
http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/18704/3057/24343/0/

Washington suing U.S. over slow cleanup at Hanford.
http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/18704/3057/24344/0/
=============

The news that is reported is not necessarily the viewpoint of Voices
Health/Environmental News. Nothing within this message should be construed
as endorsing, promoting or abetting any illegal or unethical activity. The
articles in this newsletter are not necessarily the opinion of the editor.
Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to
those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for
research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.
S. C. section 107. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright
Law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

All copyrights belong to original publisher.Under Bill s.1618 TITLE III
passed by the 105th U.S. Congress. This letter cannot be considered spam
as long as we include: Contact information & a Remove Link Reprinted under
the Fair Use Law: Doctrine of international copyright law.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

To send news reports, subscribe or unsubscribe send email to:
nimchira@cox.net Specify Voices, the Peoples News, or Voices
Health/Environmental News.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:54:28 -0800 (PST)
From: George N. Rishmawi <abunimir@yahoo.com>
Rapprochement Center - Current Project - Nights of
the Shepherds

Below is a letter from Mazin Qumsieh PhD, President of the Board of
Directors of PCR, Please read through,, your support is needed

George Rishmawi

Exc. Director
===========

I am in Cyprus till Saturday and then in the US for a week starting Sunday
then back to Palestine.  The hospitality and generosity of Palestinians,
people who visit Palestine, and people who care everywhere are inspiring
acts of universal humanity.  In this belated message we focus on the
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People (PCR, a pioneer in
bridging cultural differences, empowering Palestinians, and bringing
people to support Palestine, actions that led to formation of the
International Solidarity Movement). I also would like to tell you about
the biggest projects we are involved in now and seek your support
(material and otherwise).  Below are the mission, the goals, a call to
join us for Nights of the Shepherds (and/or support in other ways), a
history of previous activities of PCR, and a list of current activities.
The exciting new project Nights of the Shepherds is cosponsored by PCR and
the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the YMCA/YWCA and will bring community
and visitors together to protect the land and the people of the Shepherds
field (the Bethlehem rural areas) that are under threat by colonial
settlers. Last week and unsolicited, USAID offered to fund the project
with $20,000 from but the aid was unanimously rejected on principle (USAID
requires groups to adhere to a US policy made and produced in Tel Aviv).
Instead, we rely on people of good will (like you) to support our
functions. Please read the following and consider making a donation (or
provide other kind of support).

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People
http://www.pcr.ps/

Mission: The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People was
founded in April 1988 with the mission of bridging the gap between
Palestinians and peoples from all around the world, informing the public
about the reality in Palestine, and empower the community through
nonviolent direct action for peace.

Goals:

- Organize activities that enhance the chances for a just and peaceful
solution to the Palestinian cause

- Challenge stereotypes and prejudice on all sides by bringing people
together for example through the alternative tourism program that allows
Internationals and Palestinians to live and work together

- Engage in media campaigns that provide accurate and first hand
information Palesine and life in the occupied territories,

- Organize functions that enhance civic duty and civic responsibility in a
safe atmosphere for youth, women, and for marginalized segments of our
society.

NEXT ACTIVITY TO SUPPORT: Join us for Nights of the Shepherds: Community
and people connections to protect the land and the people of the Shepherds
field.

Cosponsored by PCR and the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the YMCA/YWCA

Thousands of pilgrims and locals come to Bethlehem and Beit Sahour during
the Christmas season to celebrate the momentous events and connect to
biblical sites like the Shepherds field and the Church of Nativity.

The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People
(http://www.pcr.ps) and its tourist division the Siraj center in
Collaboration with the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the YMCA/YWCA invite
you to join us:

- The First night, 24 Dec 2008: Palestinian art consisting of
music, folkloric dances, music, choires, theater groups, marching bands,
art exhibits, other artistic expressions. The location is be the YMCA
grounds in Beit Sahour

- The Second day, 25 Dec 2008: Tourists and locals are invited
to joint programs and celebrations ranging from home visits to visits to
impoverished areas to bring the Christmas spirit to the needy etc. More
afternoon programs at the location of the first evening will include
Children^Òs program and Christmas Carols. In the evening at 4 PM, a
^Ócandle light procession^Ô from Shepherds Field will commence.

The Shepherds^Ò fields are endangered by settlement activities. We are
now surrounded by colonial settlements on three sides and the fourth is
being targeted by settler groups (Ush Ghrab to the East of Beit
Sahour). There is some emigration of people from our communities
(Christian and Muslim) because of the depressed economic situation and
other pressures of the occupation. Yet there is a tremendous amount of
good activism and community work. The idea of the Shepherds night will
add to this empowerment and steadfastness (sumud) in our communities as
well as provide a tangible benefit to the tourism sector.

To support this project send donations to PCR (PCR ). For tax deductible
donations from the US, please send you check or wire transfer with a note
to indicate it is for the Rapprochement Center to The Biblical Studies
Fund, 661 Massachusetts Avenue Suite 40,Arlington, MA 02476

http://www.pcr.ps/

Wire: ABA/Routing # 211371120 (there is no SWIFT code)

Bank Name: Cambridge Savings Bank, 1374 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138

Acct #: 535716139 Account Title: The Biblical Studies Fund

Please email me at qumsi001@hotmail.com to indicate you have sent any
money through this appeal so that I can forward to George and the staff
the good news of your forthcoming support and to keep track of funding
sent through our fiscal sponsor.

Previous activities of PCR: PCR had a very rich and productive 20
years. They can be divided into these periods:

1988-1994

During the first uprising, PCR pioneered nonviolent resistance that
involved large segments of the society with support of
internationals.  We provided training to locals in conflict resolution
management, peaceful resistance, and cross-cultural dialogue.  We were
the first group in the West Bank to have a formal and periodic (monthly)
dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.  This dialogue continued on a
regular pace for 12 years even as the uprising and the violence
escalated.  It kept the hope alive of coexistance and peace.

PCR played an important role in organizing the 1989 tax resistace (No
Taxation without Representation) that gained the admiration of people of
good will around the world including our Israeli colleagues and dozens of
international visitors who visited even during siege and curfew. We
carried dozens of direct actions in the years 1989-1994 that generated
significant media and public attention. That experience also taught us
to learn to disseminate information to an outside world hungry for real
information and was a prelude to our accelerated media efforts during the
second uprising.

1994-2000

The decrease in violence during the Oslo years did not decrease our
commitment and interest in peace making and direct action. PCR with
support from the Israeli members of the dialogue group supported the land
defense committees that challenged the building of settlements on
Palestinian lands. The most prominent case, PCR was involved in was
Jabal Abu Ghneim where we kept a protest tent in operation with Israelis
and internationals for four months 24 hours a day. We challenged the
settlement activities in Israeli courts including this case that moved
for nearly four years (a good delay for us) until the Israeli Supreme
court ruled in favor of the State and in violation of International law.

PCR did not feel defeated.  To protect Beit Sahour Land threatened by the
Har Homa settlement on Jabal Abu Ghneim, we worked with a number of
groups and land owners to encourage buildings on their lands as close as
is feasible to the settlement.  These threatened lands we knew would be
protected if we had people living there.  This included a housing project
in the area of Mazmouria.  The land belongs to people from Beit Sahour,
however, as residents of the West Bank, we can not build houses there,
because that land was identified within the borders of
Jerusalem.  Therefore Jerusalemites were the perfect candidates for such
a project.

A housing committee was founded that included people from Jerusalem who
need to build houses, but do not have land in Jerusalem. One land owner
with an area of around 40 dunams agreed to include his land in this
project. The idea was to plan a housing project on that land, apply for
building permits from the municipality of Jerusalem and if permits were
granted, the members of the housing committee will buy lots in this
land. In this case, the land owner is selling his land to people from
Jerusalem to build houses.

A Palestinian famous architect who lives in Jordan, volunteers most of
his effort and time in planning the area and designed houses with Arabic
architecture. The municipality of Jerusalem refused to allow the housing
society to officially submit the full application and kept asking for
modifications. In October 2000, shortly after the second intifada
started, the Israeli army built a military road to connect the settlement
on Abu Ghneim with the military base in Beit Sahour, and with other
settlements. This road went right through the project^Òs land, which was
the last nail in the coffin for this project. But the experience was
worthwhile and the citizens of Beit Sahour developed housing projects
very near the Har Homa settlement (but outside of the illegally expanded
and illegally annexed East Jerusalem lands).

In those years, PCR also developed programs for training youth and women
in leadership positions, expanded its activities in community development
and education, and hosted many international delegations on fact finding
and solidarity trips.

2000-2008

Our community service program was expanded and made a formal division of
PCR. We engaged more youth with nonviolent resistance. In one capacity
building program 70 young Palestinians received training in advocacy,
communication skills, conflict resolution and democracy. When trained
and empowered these young advocates became the backbone of other PCR and
community activities.

One project we pioneered and led by the young people was the Displaced
Shepherd project which aimed at renovating homes damaged as a result of
the Israeli shelling of the Eastern neighborhood of Beit Sahour from the
military base in Ush Ghrab.

The young activists of PCR visited all families and documented damages
and recorded stories.  They uploaded all this information as family
profiles on the internet.  This information was used a fund raising
campaign in which raided $400,000 dollars raised with the municipality of
Beit Sahour as a joint effort.  As a result, almost all families managed
to return to their homes in few months.

In 2000, we mobilized our dialogue group and international friends for
actions to reclaim the military base that was located on town land and
was a major issue in the community.  We successfully held nonviolent
protests at the base (even getting inside the base by the hundreds) and
this success led to the formation of the International Solidarity
Movement (ISM).  PCR was heavily involved in ISM for five years, during
which it had employed around ninety percent of its efforts and finances
to support ISM.  PCR hosted ISM headquarters until 2005 when the
headquarters was moved to Ramallah (this followed a raid by the
Occupation soldiers on our offices in Beit Sahour).

Current Activities

Currently PCR has three departments, Alternative Travel Department,
Community Service Department, and the Media Department that complement
each other and help Palestine concurrent with helping Internationals
connect better with Palestine.

The Alternative Travel department includes Siraj Center for Holy Land
Studies. [www.sirajcenter.org]

Siraj organizes an annual summer program, known as Palestine Summer
Celebration.  This extremely successful project gives participants have
an opportunity to live with Palestinian Families, learn Arabic, volunteer
at Palestinian NGOs, learn Palestinian culture (e.g. folklore dancing),
and eat and cook Arabic food.  These individuals also visit remote areas,
tour the wall, the seam line, visit with Palestians and Israelis inside
and outside the Green Line.  Siraj brings Palestinians and Internationals
in its unique way at other times of the years and sometimes in
unconventional tourism.  One Peace Cycle projects brought European
cyclists on a tour of the West Bank and another one for hikers.

The Community Service Department includes two projects, the ^ÓEducation
for All Program^Ô (EFAP) and the ^ÓYoung Advocates Program^Ô (YAP). EFAP
provids free-of-charge support classes for student of less fortunate
families who need support to enhance their academic performance including
classes in Arabic and English. We also trained youth in extracurricular
activities including arts and drama. The program trained boys and girls,
Christians and Muslims from the five schools in the town of Beit Sahour.
The program is currently funded by ^ÓA La Calle^Ô, an Italian
organization working for social change.

YAP is a capacity building program that aims at preparing young
Palestinians form more involvement in their society and in the civil
based nonviolent resistance in Palestine. The program is a continuation
of the community program launched in 1997. Around 30 young people from
Bethlehem area received basic and advanced training in Human Rights,
Communication Skills, Media and Web Design and Advocacy skills.

Currently the department, together with the Alternative Travel Department
(Siraj Center) is actively working on the "Nights of the Shepherds"
described above and for which we seek your support (participation,
financial, publicity, donations in kind etc).

The Media Department includes the International Middle East Media Center
(IMEMC).  a Palestinian-International collaborative effort, IMEMC to
provide accurate reporting that helps increase understanding of the
context, history, and the socio-political developments in Palestine. We
provide news in English, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic languages all
edited and produced by volunteers in places like Rome, Barcelona,
Bethlehem and the US. IMEMC also provide News in Arabic through the
Palestine News Network (PNN) website, [http://arabic.pnn.ps] as a
cooperation between IMEMC & PNN.  IMEMC is a founding member of the
Network of United Radio and TV Stations (NUR Media)
[http://english.nurmedia.org].  NUR became member of Palestine News
Network-United a coalition of Radio, TV and Website groups. IMEMC
provides a daily news cast in English and Italian languages, which
provides nearly five minutes featuring main incidents of the day.  IMEMC
field reporters cover actions and events usually misrepresented or not
covered in Western Media.

A video production training project is being implemented to provide young
Palestinians with skills needed to produce short videos, skills that will
be expanded to create job opportunities. The IMEMC production unit
produces documentaries that highlight issues of critical importance in
Palestine (e.g. the plight of remote villages) but that do not receive
adequate media coverage.

Current Needs:

The achievements of the past twenty years and current projects
(highlighted above) contributed tremendously in bridging the gap between
the Palestinians and grassroots people from many countries around the
globe and all were done .All were done with shoestring budgets and
maximizing the use of volunteers and the few amazingly inspiring and
hardworking staff who are paid little and work extremely hard.  It is
amazing to think that we could do all the above with an annual budget of
$95000 for PCR.  But with a current budget deficit of $12,000 and demands
on our services constantly increasing, we need your support for any and
all projects above.  For tax deductible donations from the US, please
send you check or wire transfer with a note to indicate it is for the
Rapprochement Center to The Biblical Studies Fund, 661 Massachusetts
Avenue Suite 40, Arlington, MA  02476

http://www.pcr.ps/

Wire: ABA/Routing # 211371120 (there is no SWIFT code)

Bank Name: Cambridge Savings Bank, 1374 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138

Acct #: 535716139 Account Title: The Biblical Studies Fund

We also always need volunteers in the different departments/activities so
contact us and let us know what skills and/or time you have to offer.

http://www.pcr.ps/
-----------
George N. Rishmawi
The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People (PCR)
Director
Phone: +972(0)2-277-2018 Fax: +972(0)2-277-4602
+970-599-833-888 (cell)
+972-(0)544-351-339 (cell)
www.pcr.ps , www.imemc.org
________________________________________________________________________________

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:16:55 -0500 (EST)
From: keala.kelly@gmail.com
AlterNet: No Thanks to Thanksgiving

This story has been forwarded to you from http://www.alternet.org by
keala.kelly@gmail.com

it's refreshing to see this in print.
-----

No Thanks to Thanksgiving http://www.alternet.org/story/108876

Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited -- and condoned
-- by the very men we idolize as our 'heroic' founding fathers.
-------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:23:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Moe/Percy/whanau <manuwai_heihei@yahoo.co.nz>
NZ Women seen as 2nd class commodity

NZ women seen as 2nd class commodity by Law, 'cause if it is not so how do
we get this? http://www.stuff.co.nz/4774864a11.html Or this:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4774797a11.html

It seems that any woman can be used like a public convenience & society
will slap the abuser with a wet bus ticket. No wonder when the second
headline happens that the first occurs. When will this society hand out
tough sentences for the harming of women & children rather than sending
the message that it is not so important?

Let us not forget the Doug Graham as justice minister attitude to
instrument rape. If something like a broken bottle or a baton was used,
it was not rape in law, as the woman could not be impregnated. WTF!?!?!?!
If no cuckoo is put in a man's nest then there is little to worry about.
It will take more than the wearing of white ribbons to change this kind of
attitude.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:35:08 -1000
From: Robin Rae <Art4Peace@hawaii.rr.com>
Patrick Irelan: PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful GivingThanks Day!!

WAR CRIMES TRIALS FOR BUSH, CHENEY AND RUMSFELD?

Inter Press Service has a piece this morning
<http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44854> about whether
we can move away from torture policies without prosecutions
of those responsible. It gives different sides of the
debate, including the usual corporate media conservatives.
--------

UPDATE ON OBAMA APPOINTMENTS

President elect Obama's choice for Secretary of Defense is
being echoed in the corporate media as Bush's man Robert
Gates. We have shown how Gates has sold out the American
people during his entire government career. This appears to
be more of the Obama "change."

Further, Obama's choice for National Security Adviser, the
most important foreign policy post in the White House,
appears to be General James Jones. Republicans like Jones,
who is a close friend of John McCain and was asked by
Condoleezza Rice twice to be her number two at State.

Jones was elected to the board of directors of Chevron
earlier this year, and Boeing last year, so has both Big Oil
and Nuclear Mafia ties, but don't expect to hear this from US
mass media, who have the same conflicts of interest and never
blow the whistle.

John Brennan, Obama's top adviser on intelligence, has taken
his name out of the running for CIA director, after having
been outed as supporting the Bush regime torture agenda.
Brennan and corporate media have spun this to make it appear
he did not support torture.

Right wingers like Joe Lieberman are wild about the
appointments, saying "Everything that President-elect Obama
has done since election night has been just about perfect,
both in terms of a tone and also in terms of the strength of
the names that have either been announced or are being
discussed to fill his administration."
------

KUCINICH TAKES ON THE EMPIRE

Dina Gusovsky of Russia Today did an interview with
Congressman Dennis Kucinich that you may watch here:
<http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1823>

Kucinich called for pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan,
along with a stop to threats on Iran. "We need to pull back
from this position of empire--of unilateralism." Working
with Russia is key to global security, he said, by way of
eliminating the use of nuclear weapons. The nation, as well,
needs to stop positioning itself as an aggressor, he added.
"We don't want to go back to the days of the Cold War," he
continued, "where both of our countries saw our economies
stressed because of all the money that was spent for military
buildups."

Kucinich is willing to speak out on behalf of the public
interest in opposing our foreign policy despite the
opposition he gets from it. Corporate media attack any
government official who disagrees with the official foreign
policy of the National Security State, saying that only the
president has a right to decide policy which, of course,
keeps us in this endless cycle of meddling in the affairs of
other nations in ways we would not want done to us.

It is shameful that such an interview may not be heard in the
mass media of the "Land of the Free."
------

Last night, PBS ran one of the most biased TV programs we
have ever seen at LUV News. Their Frontline program did a
hatchet job on Hugo Chavez.

It is easy to see why Robert Parry, one of the best
journalists in the country, no longer works for Frontline.
Unlike Frontline, Parry insists on using hard facts.

Frontline did the usual attacks on Chavez, calling him
anti-American without pointing out that Chavez provides
inexpensive heating oil to the poor of the USA, unlike those
in power in our own government, who ignore our record (among
major industrialized nations) homeless and hungry.

President Bush turned down funding medical care for the
children of our working poor, saying we don't have a few
billion dollars for that, but has approved trillions of
dollars to bail out his bankster friends, and we don't find
corporate media calling Bush "anti-American."

Frontline did the usual stories attacking Chavez from the
viewpoint of PBS-funding Big Oil and the elites of Venezuela,
those who control Venezuela's mass media and wealth. At LUV
News we long ago pointed out the misinformation in the many
discredited stories told by Frontline last night.

Patrick Irelan wrote the following before the program aired
last night, touching on much of this. --Jack

The Petroleum Broadcasting System
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela
-------

By PATRICK IRELAN

On Tuesday evening, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) will
carry a 90-minute review of the presidency of Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez. As the show progresses, it quickly becomes
apparent to the viewer why critics often refer to PBS as the
"Petroleum Broadcasting System." Venezuela has huge oil
reserves. Big Oil provides much of the funding for PBS
programs. And it would not be wise to offend this source of
cash, regardless of how greedy and despicable the oil barons
might be.

Before we get on with show, let me remind you that state and
municipal elections were held in Venezuela on Sunday, with
the pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)
winning gubernatorial seats in 17 states and the opposition
winning in 5 states. No election was held in the state of
Amazonas, which is on a different election cycle. The
governor of that state is a Chavez supporter. The results of
328 municipal elections have not yet been announced.

After the results had been tallied, President Chavez
commended Venezuelans for their participation in the
elections, in which 65 percent of registered voters cast
their ballots. Chavez said, "I recognize opposition
victories; I hope they do the same." In 2002, they did not
recognize his victories and mounted a coup with the
enthusiastic support of the Bush administration. The coup
failed, and Pedro Carmona, the heroic 48-hour coup leader and
president, ran away to Florida.

With these recent events in mind, viewers will be prepared
for Tuesday
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0877458308/counterpunchmaga>
night's broadcast of Frontline on PBS. This episode is
called "The Hugo Chavez Show." It was written, directed, and
produced by Ofra Bikel, the winner of uncountable awards for
documentaries.

In an interview that complements the show, Bikel drops hints
about her
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0877458308/counterpunchmaga>
opinion of Chavez and his political style. Chavez, she says,
is "so outrageously rude and says insane things about
President Bush, calling him `donkey,' `Mr. Danger,' `the
devil.'"

I would agree with Ms. Bikel that these statements are rude,
but they're far from insane. I like "Mr. Danger" best of all,
but others might prefer "the devil." It's all a matter of
taste.

Bikel is upset that she couldn't interview President Chavez.
"... you can manage to do a lot of things as far as filming
is concerned," she says, "because the situation is so
chaotic, and no one pays attention to the rules-until it has
to do with Chavez. Not only is he incredibly well-protected,
but you can't film anything that has to do with him unless
it's a march or rally."

This is an overstatement. It also reveals that Bikel is
unaware that because of repeated threats against his life,
Chavez now takes special precautions. Prior to the 2002 coup
attempt, he moved about freely and announced his itinerary in
advance. Now he still goes out every day, but the schedule is
no longer released ahead of time.

Bikel believes she was denied access to the president because
she was viewed as "anti-Chavez." How terribly the Venezuelan
authorities have treated her. And she has all those awards.
What were they thinking?

So much for the interview. You can read the rest for yourself
at the PBS website. Let me give you a few samples from the
documentary, which consists almost entirely of interviews
with objective journalists, biased journalists, the
president's enemies, and various other observers. It also
includes many excerpts from Chavez's Sunday TV broadcasts,
Alo Presidente.

Bikel, Big Oil, foreign and domestic enemies, et al. don't
like Alo Presidente. Chavez doesn't obey the normal rules for
presidential appearances. He answers questions phoned in by
citizens. He sings. He improvises. He talks a long time. He
rides a tractor on a grain farm. He rides a horse on a cattle
farm. He walks down deserted Sunday streets in Caracas with
the mayor and other officials, discussing the problem of
street crime. Wouldn't it be better if he walked up to a
podium like George Bush and said "nucular"?

After the walk, he appears with an audience and moves on to a
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0877458308/counterpunchmaga>
discussion of Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, who has
ordered an invasion of Ecuador to kill member of the FARC. He
says Uribe is a criminal, a mobster, a liar, a paramilitary
thug, and a lackey of George Bush. Regrettably, there is much
evidence for all these charges. (See my CounterPunch articles
of 4/1/2008<file:///C:/Program%20Files/Common%20Files/Microsoft%20Shared/Stationery/irelan0
4012008.html> and 7/8/2008<file:///C:/Program%20Files/Common%20Files/Microsoft%20Shared/Stationery/irelan0
7082008.html> .)

One of the show's guests states that Chavez had once said
that he wanted to get out of the International Monetary Fund,
but someone advised him on that occasion that Venezuela
lacked the money to get out, and Chavez never talked about it
again. Actually, Venezuela withdrew from both the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund in the second and third
quarters of 2007, paying off all debts to both of those
grasping arms of the Washington Consensus. (Ven-Global News,
9/30/2008)

The program inevitably starts crawling around inside the head
of Hugo Chavez. This is often a waste of time for
psychiatrists and always a failure for amateurs. While
engaged in this nonsense, Bikel and Company misses one of the
most obvious things about the man, the color of his skin. The
president of Venezuela is a mestizo, unlike any other
president in the country's history. The oligarchy that has
ruled until now is mostly as white as the sickly face of
Pedro Carmona on the day when he learned that his presidency
would be the shortest in history.

The mass media in Venezuela is controlled by the rich white
elite. Day after day, it uses racist terms to describe Chavez
and others like him. Only one newspaper and the two
state-owned TV stations carry the real news of the Chavez
government. One private station, RCTV, lost its broadcast
license because it stridently aired its support of the 2002
coup while that coup was actually taking place. RCTV is now
available only on cable. Frontline provides the sad story of
RCTV, but fails to mention its acts of treason.

The majority of the population in Venezuela is of either
mestizo or African descent, people who've never before had a
president who looked remotely like them. They don't care if
he sings, rides a tractor, or talks for hours. They won't
follow him into a dictatorship, but he isn't headed in that
direction. Frontline cleverly implies that he is.

The U.S. corporate media loves to tell us that Venezuela is
about to become another Cuba. The Washington Post suffers
from delusions unheard of since the yellow journalism of the
Spanish-American War era. Chavez admires Fidel Castro because
he overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and has
now withstood U.S. interference for half a century. But both
men know that their respective revolutions are entirely
different.

The members of the Bush administration say that Chavez is
undemocratic. What comedians they are. Has Venezuela invaded
another country, bombed its towns and cities, hanged its
president, killed thousands of civilians, and turned millions
of others into refugees? Has Chavez denied prisoners of war
all rights, allowed them to be tortured, and broken all the
customary international agreements about the treatment of
POWs?

Chavez has done none of these things. He even pardoned the
men who plotted the coup, after which many of them
immediately began verbally attacking him again. I could cite
many other falsehoods in Bikel's fairytale, but I've said all
I can bear.

Chavez wants nothing more than a mixed economy in which the
profits from huge industries are used to benefit all
citizens, not just the white descendants of European
conquerors. The Chavez government pays the owners for any
industries it nationalizes. And it has no interest in the Mom
and Pop cafe down the street. Frontline won't tell you any of
this.

But Chavez does want PDVSA, the national oil company, to
serve the interests of all Venezuelans, not merely those of
the private club that controlled it before the election of
Chavez. After the members of that club went on "strike,"
Chavez fired them and hired new people. He wants all citizens
to join the club.

Is that really too much to ask?

---
Patrick Irelan is a retired high-school teacher. He is the
author of A Firefly in the Night (Ice Cube Press) and Central
Standard: A Time, a Place, a Family (University of Iowa
Press). You can contact him at pwirelan43@yahoo.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 02:03:40 -1000
From: Tane . <Tane_1@msn.com>
Hawaiian Rally To Save Ceded Lands (fwd)

Again the plaintiffs are asking a narrow question as they did in the rice
vs Cayatano case. It's all about the 14th amendment. They question
should be broadened to the Apology Bill's assertion in it's complicity in
invading and occupying the Hawaiian Kingdom. The fact that the Newland's
Resolution was illegal, null and void, makes the statehood act illegal as
well. This means the State is not lawful nor has jurisdiction.

All these laws are domestic and internal within the U.S.A. and doesn't
effect a foreign country. Will the courts continue to support the fraud
and lies of the U.S. or support the facts?

Tane
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:07:38 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com
Statement By Governor Lingle On Ceded Lands Debate

STATEMENT BY GOVERNOR LINGLE ON CEDED LANDS DEBATE
For Immediate Release: November 24, 2008

HONOLULU â^À^Ó Governor Linda Lingle spoke with reporters today regarding
the pending lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the
Hawaiâ^À^Øi State Supreme Courtsâ^À^Ù decision about ceded lands in
Hawaiâ^À^Øi. Watch the complete news conference on the Governorâ^À^Ùs
website at www.hawaii.gov/gov.

"I have always supported Native Hawaiians rights and will continue to do
so. I have also supported the Akaka Bill and will continue to do so.
But, Hawai'i's public trust lands were transferred to the State by United
States Congress in trust for the benefit of all the people of Hawai'i,
and, therefore, the State of Hawai'i has the right and the obligation to
use those lands for the public purposes specified in the Admission Act
and State lawâ^À^Ôfor the benefit of all Hawaiâ^À^Øiâ^À^Ùs citizens.
That can include at times, selling or transferring the lands, such as
what the Waihee Administration and the State Legislature sought to do to
promote affordable housing on Maui.

I supported the appeal to the United States Supreme Court because I
believe the Congress did not take from the State in 1993 the rights it
gave the State in 1959. I believe the United States Supreme Court will
agree and will confirm Hawaiâ^À^Øiâ^À^Ùs rights granted to it in the
Admission Act of 1959. As the Governor of all Hawaiâ^À^Øi's people,
Native Hawaiian and non-Native Hawaiian alike, I could not in good
conscience seek to withdraw our appeal to the United States Supreme Court
and will not do so."

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

In 1959, the United States Congress, as a part of Hawai'i's Admission
Act, transferred to the State of Hawai'i full title to approximately 1.2
million acres of land, to be held by the State as a public trust for the
benefit of all the people of Hawai'i, for public purposes, including for
the support of public schools, to provide for the development of home
ownership, for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, and
for other public purposes. Currently much of the University of
Hawaiâ^À^Øi, many public schools, much of the Honolulu International
Airport, and many other public buildings like Hilo Hospital sit on the
public trust land.

The public trust land is sometimes known as the ceded lands. The public
trust or ceded lands were previously the government and crown lands of
the Kingdom of Hawaiâ^À^Øi, ceded to the United States when Hawaiâ^À^Øi
became part of the United States, and then transferred to the State of
Hawaiâ^À^Øi in 1959 at Statehood. These lands constitute almost all
lands owned by the State.

The Congress also transferred to the State approximately 200,000 acres of
land solely for the benefit of the native Hawaiians (land that had
previously been set aside by the Congress in the Hawaiian Homes
Commission Act of 1920). That land is under the control of the State
Department of Hawaiian Homelands and is not involved in the current
lawsuit.

The Admission Act, and later state legislation, gave the State the
explicit right to sell or exchange public land for the public purposes
specified in the Admission Act, like promoting home ownership and
supporting the public schools.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, because of the demand for affordable
housing, the State decided to help promote affordable housing on the
Neighbor Islands. This was consistent not only with federal and state
law, and with the State's practice since statehood, but consistent with
good government. The State Legislature specifically sanctioned a project
near LÄ^Áhaina on the Island of Maui, which would have involved the
creation of thousands of new affordable homes.

In 1993, the Congress passed a Resolution apologizing to Native Hawaiians
for, among other things, the United States' role in the overthrow of the
Kingdom of Hawaiâ^À^Øi 100 years before.

In a lawsuit filed shortly thereafter, OHA and several individuals sued
the State, claiming the Apology Resolution had clouded the State's title
to its public trust lands, and also claiming that the State did not hold
good title to the public trust lands, and thus the State could not sell
or transfer public land to third parties, even to help promote affordable
housing (or for any other purpose permitted by the Admission Act and
state law).

The Cayetano Administration vigorously defended the lawsuit, and in 2002,
the State Circuit Court ruled in favor of the State. OHA and the
individual plaintiffs appealed. In January 2008, the Hawai'i Supreme
Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and against the State. The Court,

relying on the federal Apology Resolution, barred the State from
transferring any of the public trust land to any third-party for any
purpose, for an indefinite period of time, regardless of whether the
purpose of the transfer was to promote a purpose specified in the
Admission Act, like home ownership, or not. The Court cited the federal
Apology Resolution in its decision more than 80 times.

The State appealed this case to the United States Supreme Court, asking
that Court to hold that Congress did not, in the Apology Resolution, take
from the State the rights it had explicitly granted Hawai'i in 1959.

The State has asked the United States Supreme Court to confirm that the
Apology Resolution did not in any way change the legal landscape or cloud
the Stateâ^À^Ùs title to the public trust lands in any way. The State
appealed both because it believed the Hawaiâ^À^Øi Court's decision was
wrong and contrary to law, but also because the decision prevented the
State from continuing to fully utilize the public trust lands for the
benefit of all of Hawaiâ^À^Øi's citizens, including Native Hawaiians,
pursuant to the authority the State had been specifically granted in the
Admission Act and by State law. Twenty-nine other states joined
Hawaiâ^À^Øi in asking the United States Supreme Court to hear the case.

In October 2008, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the
case. Oral argument will likely be held in February or March 2009, and
the Court will likely issue a decision by July 2009.
####

For more information, contact:
Mark Bennett
Attorney General
Tel: (808) 586-1282

Lenny Klompus
Senior Advisor â^À^Ó Communications
Tel: (808) 586-7708
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:14:53 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com
Lingle Moves Forward With U.S. Supreme Court Hearing On "Ceded'
Lands

Lingle moves forward with U.S. Supreme Court hearing on â^À^Ücededâ^À^Ý
lands
Posted November 25th, 2008 in Hawaii, News, United States by Travis
Quezon Tags: Apology Resolution, ceded lands, Linda Lingle
Related Osorio: â^À^ÜThese are our lands, our responsibilityâ^À^Ý

In a show of solidarity, hundreds of demonstrators wearing red T-shirts
gathered on Monday in front of the Queen Liliâ^À^Øuokalani statue
fronting the Hawaiâ^À^Øi State Capitol. Signs reading â^À^ÜLingle:
withdraw nowâ^À^Ý and â^À^ÜSave ceded landsâ^À^Ý urged Gov. Linda Lingle
to reconsider going forward with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to
overturn a January 2008 decision by the Hawaiâ^À^Øi Supreme Court, which
granted an injunction against the state from selling ceded lands from the
public lands trust until the claims of Native Hawaiians to those lands
have been resolved.

Gov. Linda Lingle said in a statement that she would not withdraw the
stateâ^À^Ùs appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court because she did not believe
a Congressional apology to Native Hawaiians in 1993 overturned land
rights granted to the state when it was created in 1959.

â^À^ÜHawaiâ^À^Ùiâ^À^Ùs public trust lands were transferred to the state
by United States Congress in trust for the benefit of all the people of
Hawaiâ^À^Ùi,â^À^Ý Lingle said, â^À^Üand, therefore, the State of
Hawaiâ^À^Ùi has the right and the obligation to use those lands for the
public purposes specified in the Admission Act and State lawâ^À^Ôfor the
benefit of all Hawaiâ^À^Øiâ^À^Ùs citizens. That can include at times,
selling or transferring the lands, such as what the Waihee Administration
and the state Legislature sought to do to promote affordable housing on
Maui.

â^À^ÜI supported the appeal to the United States Supreme Court because I
believe the Congress did not take from the State in 1993 the rights it
gave the State in 1959. I believe the United States Supreme Court will
agree and will confirm Hawaiâ^À^Øiâ^À^Ùs rights granted to it in the
Admission Act of 1959. As the Governor of all Hawaiâ^À^Øiâ^À^Ùs people,
Native Hawaiian and non-Native Hawaiian alike, I could not in good
conscience seek to withdraw our appeal to the United States Supreme Court
and will not do so.â^À^Ý

In opposition to the state, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, who filed the
initial lawsuit in 1994 to argue that the state did not hold good title
to public trust lands, aims to see that the 2008 decision to suspend the
selling of ceded lands is preserved.

â^À^ÜThis case now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court is of grave
concern,â^À^Ý OHA Board Chairperson Haunani Apoliona said. â^À^ÜWe firmly
stand behind the state Supreme Courtâ^À^Ùs opinion, which says the state
should keep the ceded land trust intact until Native Hawaiian claims to
these lands are settled.â^À^Ý

â^À^ÜWe firmly stand behind the state Supreme Courtâ^À^Ùs opinion, which
says the state should keep the ceded land trust intact until Native
Hawaiian claims to these lands are settled,â^À^Ý Haunani Apoliona said.

OHA was created in a 1978 Constitutional Convention in part to manage the
proceeds from lands ceded by the Kingdom of Hawaiâ^À^Øi following its
overthrow by the United States.

In its lawsuit, OHA argued that â^À^Üany transfer of ceded lands by the
state to third parties would amount to a breach of trustâ^À^Ý and did not
ensure the interests of Native Hawaiians to those lands. In 2002, a trial
court ruled that the state did have the power to sell ceded lands to
private residential developers.

Earlier this year, the Hawaiâ^À^Øi Supreme Court overruled the trial
courtâ^À^Ùs decision, also ordering that there be an injunction to
prevent the state from selling ceded lands from the public trust.

The Hawaiâ^À^Øi Supreme Court cited the apology resolution, known as 103d
Congress Joint Resolution 19, in its decision.

The apology resolution stated that the Congress â^À^Üon the occasion of
the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of
Hawaiâ^À^Øi on January 17, 1893, acknowledges the historical significance
of this event which resulted in the suppression of the inherent
sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian People.â^À^Ý

The Congress also expressed its commitment to reverse the ramifications
of the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiâ^À^Øi in order to provide a
proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and Native
Hawaiians.

Following the Hawaiâ^À^Øi Supreme Courtâ^À^Ùs overruling, Hawaiâ^À^Øi
Attorney General Mark Bennett, who believed that the apology resolution
should be construed as strictly symbolic, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to
hear the case.

In October 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review.

With Lingle adamant in supporting another hearing of the ceded lands
case, it will now be up to the the highest court in the land to answer
the following question:

â^À^ÜIn the Joint Resolution to Acknowledge the 100th Anniversary of the
January 17, 1893 Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiâ^À^Øi, Congress
acknowledged and apologized for the United Statesâ^À^Ù role in that
overthrow. The question here is whether this symbolic resolution strips
Hawaiâ^À^Øi of its sovereign authority to sell, exchange, or transfer 1.2
million acres of state landâ^À^Ô29 percent of the total land area of the
State and almost all the land owned by the Stateâ^À^Ôunless and until it
reaches a political settlement with Native Hawaiians about the status of
that land.â^À^Ý
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:32:43 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com
ALOHA OE, LINGLE

November 28th, 2008 at 2:27 am

The â^À^ÜCededâ^À^Ý Lands are the â^À^ÜSovereignâ^À^Ý Lands of the
Indegenous Hawaiian people. â^À^ÜSovereignâ^À^Ý Lands that the Kanana
Maoli Hawaii people who have a rightfull claims to those lands. For over
50 the State of Hawaii has treated the Kanaka Maoli Hawaii people as
Second Class citizens of the â^À^ÜCededâ^À^Ý Lands Trust. Lingle took an
oath to protect the laws and the Constitutions of the United State and the
State of Hawaii. Like Mr. Bush, Lingle seems to place herself above the
laws of the United States and the State of Hawaii.

ALOHA OE, LINGLE

KUE, o Pomaikaiokalani
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:29:38 -0700
From: Rebecca Cummings <beckyspi@mac.com>
a question

I've noticed something the last few times I've been in stores -- stores
like Walmart and grocery stores. There seems to be a significant decline
in "stock" of all different kinds. Most recent example: I was shopping
at a super Walmart yesterday for groceries as they were the only open
grocery store. They had no cherry flavored chapstick for less than $3,
tho they had the same brand for $1 w/the icky mediciny flavor -- and I
mean the boxes that held the cherry flavored were still there but empty --
and that was true of every cash register. Also I noticed that half of one
aisle in the liquor section had been loaded with non-liquor items, and it
was in the section of special holiday gifts at a time of year they just
wouldn't be willingly not putting this stuff on the shelves. There was
only one hunk of Tillamook cheddar cheese left, and it was NOT on sale.
There seemed to be lots of empty sections. This is not the first time
I've noticed this of late, and in parts stores (try finding a window knob
for an RV window!) and all kinds of stores. Has anyone else noticed?
Anyone have any info about this?

Rebecca Cummings
beckyspi@mac.com

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
--Mignon McLaughlin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:35:11 -1000
From: Scott Crawford <scott@aloha.net>
Hawaiian Independence Day, La Ku'oko'a: Nov. 28

http://www.oha.org/kawaiola/2008/11/story12.php
Ka Wai Ola o OHA
November 2008
Independence Day, La Ku'oko'a: Nov. 28
By Keanu Sai / Special to Ka Wai Ola

In 1842, Kamehameha III had a "very strong desire that his Kingdom shall
be formally acknowledged by the civilized nations of the world as a
sovereign and independent State." To accomplish this, he appointed
Timoteo Ha'alilio, William Richards and Sir George Simpson, a British
subject, as joint ministers plenipotentiary on April 8, 1842. Shortly
thereafter, Simpson left for England, via Alaska and Siberia, while
Ha'alilio and Richards departed for the United States, via Mexico, on
July 8, 1842.
After Ha'alilio and Richards secured President John Tyler's assurance of
recognizing Hawaiian independence on Dec. 19, 1842, the delegation
proceeded to meet Simpson in Europe. On March 17, 1843, King
Louis-Philippe assures them of France's recognition of Hawaiian
independence, and on April 1, 1843, Lord Aberdeen, on behalf of Queen
Victoria, assured the Hawaiian delegation that "Her Majesty's Government
was willing and had determined to recognize the independence of the
Sandwich Islands under their present sovereign." Confirming these
assurances, Great Britain and France formally recognized Hawaiian
sovereignty on Nov. 28, 1843, by joint proclamation at the Court of
London, and the United States followed on July 6, 1844, by letter of
Secretary of State J.C. Calhoun. Nov. 28 was a national holiday
celebrating Hawaiian Independence, La Ku'oko'a.

On May 16, 1854, Kamehameha III proclaimed the Hawaiian Kingdom to be a
neutral State, and it was expressly stated in treaties with Sweden-Norway
in 1852 and Spain in 1863. As an internationally recognized sovereign and
neutral state, the Hawaiian Kingdom joined the Universal Postal Union on
Jan. 1, 1882, (today an agency of the United Nations) maintained more
than 90 legations (embassies) and consulates throughout the world, and
entered into extensive diplomatic and treaty relations with
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bremen, Chili, Denmark, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Guatemala, Hamburg, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru,
Portugal, Russia, Samoa, Spain, Sweden-Norway, Switzerland, the United
States and Uruguay.

The year 1893 was to have been a festive year celebrating the 50th
anniversary of Hawaiian independence. Instead, it was a year that the
United States began to systematically violate Hawaiian sovereignty that
resulted in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government and the
prolonged occupation of the country since the Spanish-American War.
Nevertheless, Nov. 28 was and still remains a national holiday.
Keanu Sai is completing his Ph.D. in political science at the University
of Hawai'i at Manoa, specializing in Public Law and International
Relations. His dissertation is titled The American Occupation of the
Hawaiian Kingdom: Beginning the Transition from Occupied to Restored
State.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~-----------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:54:00 -1000
From: Lc <palolo@hawaii.rr.com>
The Corruption That Makes Unpeople Of An Entire Nation

sounds familiar...

----- Original Message ----- From: mike reitz
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 8:43 AM

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21328.htm
The Corruption That Makes Unpeople Of An Entire Nation
By John Pilger

November 27, 2008 --- I went to the Houses of Parliament on 22 October to
join a disconsolate group of shivering people who had arrived from a
faraway tropical place and were being prevented from entering the Public
Gallery to hear their fate. This was not headline news; the BBC reporter
seemed almost embarrassed. Crimes of such magnitude are not news when they
are ours, and neither is injustice or corruption at the apex of British
power.

Lizette Talatte was there, her tiny frail self swallowed by the cavernous
stone grey of Westminster Hall. I first saw her in a Colonial Office film
from the 1950s which described her homeland, the island of Diego Garcia in
the Indian Ocean, as a paradise long settled by people "born and brought
up in conditions most tranquil and benign". Lizette was then 14 years old.
She remembers the producer saying to her and her friends, "Keep smiling,
girls!" When we met in Mauritius, four years ago, she said: "We didn't
need to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep
in Diego Garcia. My great-grandmother was born there, and I made six
children there. Maybe only the English can make a film that showed we were
an established community, then deny their own evidence and invent the lie
that we were transient workers."

During the 1960s and 1970s British governments, Labour and Tory, tricked
and expelled the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago, more than
2,000 British citizens, so that Diego Garcia could be given to the United
States as the site for a military base. It was an act of mass kidnapping
carried out in high secrecy. As unclassified official files now show,
Foreign Office officials conspired to lie, coaching each other to
"maintain" and "argue" the "fiction" that the Chagossians existed only as
a "floating population". On 28 July 1965, a senior Foreign Office
official, T C D Jerrom, wrote to the British representative at the United
Nations, instructing him to lie to the General Assembly that the Chagos
Archipelago was "uninhabited when the United Kingdom government first
acquired it". Nine years later, the Ministry of Defence went further,
lying that "there is nothing in our files about inhabitants [of the
Chagos] or about an evacuation".

"To get us out of our homes," Lizette told me, "they spread rumours we
would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs. The American soldiers who
had arrived to build the base backed several of their big vehicles against
a brick shed, and hundreds of dogs were rounded up and imprisoned there,
and they gassed them through a tube from the trucks' exhaust. You could
hear them crying. Then they burned them on a pyre, many still alive."

Lizette and her family were finally forced on to a rusting freighter and
made to lie on a cargo of bird fertiliser during a voyage, through stormy
seas, to the slums of Port Louis, Mauritius. Within months, she had lost
Jollice, aged eight, and Regis, aged ten months. "They died of sadness,"
she said. "The eight-year-old had seen the horror of what had happened to
the dogs. The doctor said he could not treat sadness."

Since 2000, no fewer than nine high court judgments have described these
British government actions as "illegal", "outrageous" and "repugnant". One
ruling cited Magna Carta, which says no free man can be sent into exile.
In desperation, the Blair government used the royal prerogative ^Ö the
divine right of kings ^Ö to circumvent the courts and parliament and to
ban the islanders from even visiting the Chagos. When this, too, was
overturned by the high court, the government was rescued by the law lords,
of whom a majority of one (three to two) found for the government in a
scandalously inept, political manner. In the weasel, almost flippant words
of Lord Hoffmann, "the right of abode is a creature of the law. The law
gives it and the law takes it away." Forget Magna Carta. Human rights are
in the gift of three stooges doing the dirty work of a government, itself
lawless.

As the official files show, the Chagos conspiracy and cover-up involved
three prime ministers and 13 cabinet ministers, including those who
approved "the plan". But elite corruption is unspeakable in Britain. I
know of no work of serious scholarship on this crime against humanity.
The honourable exception is the work of the historian Mark Curtis, who
describes the Chagossians as "unpeople".

The reason for this silence is ideological. Courtier commentators and
media historians obstruct our view of the recent past, ensuring, as
Harold Pinter pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that
while the "systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless
suppression of independent thought" in Stalinist Russia were well known
in the west, the great state crimes of western governments "have only
been superficially recorded, let alone documented".

Typically, the pop historian Tristram Hunt writes in the Observer (23
November): "Nestling in the slipstream of American hegemony served us
well in the 20th century. The bonds of culture, religion, language and
ideology ensured Britain a postwar economic bailout, a nuclear deterrent
and the continuing ability to 'punch above our weight' on the world
stage. Thanks to US patronage, our story of decolonisation was for us a
relatively painless affair..."

Not a word of this drivel hints at the transatlantic elite's Cold War
paranoia, which put us all in mortal danger, or the rapacious
Anglo-American wars that continue to claim untold lives. As part of the
"bonds" that allow us to "punch above our weight", the US gave Britain a
derisory $14m discount off the price of Polaris nuclear missiles in
exchange for the Chagos Islands, whose "painless decolonisation" was
etched on Lizette Talatte's face the other day. Never forget, Lord
Hoffmann, that she, too, will die of sadness.

www.johnpilger.com
=====-------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:51:31 -1000 (HST)
From: Mark Heberle <heberle@hawaii.edu>
ENGLISH DEPT. COLLOQUIUM: FIRST YEAR WRITING ASSESSMENT

English Department Colloquium, Kuykendall 410, Thursday, Dec. 4, 3:00-4:30
p.m.

Assessing Ourselves: Results and Findings From our Foundations in Writing
Assessment Measure-The Results are In!"

A report on the results of WASC-mandated Assessment of First-Year Writing
at Manoa this past spring together with discussion of ways to continue
improving our university-wide pedagogy and curriculum so that we may
better serve our students in future semesters.

Panelists: Erica Clayton, Assistant Professor of English; Holly Hull
Bruland, PhD Candidate in Composition and Rhetoric, English; Jim Henry,
Professor of English and Director of Composition and Rhetoric; Kenton
Harsch, Director of the UHM English Language Institute; Drs. Monica
Stitt-Bergh and Marlene Lowe, UHM Assessment Officers, who will conduct
break-out sessions
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:16:00 -0800
From: David Pursglove
Dean Kamen's amazing, cheap water purifier

Mes amis, for your holiday edification and delectation!

You may have already seen this, but a friend just hooked me up to it.
Kamen's the guy that did the Segway gizmo that doesn't seem to have taken
off.

This unit however is super wowie!! I can't understand that he's not
cranking out thousands a day. Even at a $5200 starting price FOB (lots
lower if many more produced), this is a freaking steal for any third
world country with lots of villages or shanty towns near bad or
industrially tainted water. As well as some coastal villages and towns
in desert nations of which there must be hundreds of thousands
worldwide. (The quote below doesn't mention it, but this unit
desalinates as well!!! Dayumm!! Colbert jokes about a 50 gal drum of
urine, and Kamen says no problem. Yeeeeeeeeeha!! [Drinking water from
your cowpies and fuel for the Stirling gen from the dried remains. Beat
that!])

http://www.redferret.net/?p=10222

Dean Kamen has unveiled the latest iteration of his power and
water package for the third world. The two components are a
water purifier called Slingshot that uses a fraction of the
power of alternatives and a Stirling engine based power
generator that works on cow dung. The $1500 water purifier
will produce 1000 liters of water a day, while the $3,700
generator produces around 1 kW, which is enough to deliver
light to a small village. The two products have been in
development for years, but it looks as though they are now
ready for more prime time consideration.

Also some goofy fun with Colbert about the eqpt at
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/colbert-and-kam.html

-=d=-
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:20:51 -1000
From: Dedibble DeKepalo <dekepalo@gmail.com>
Bogus Bonds

Hawaii Feds Probe Alleged "Bogus Bond" Foreclosure Rescue Scam ... By Home
Equity Theft Reporter(Home Equity Theft Reporter) In Hawaii, The Honolulu
Advertiser reports:. The FBI is investigating several local companies that
allegedly bilked homeowners out of more than $300000 on O'ahu, the Big
Island and Maui with false promises to help them avoid foreclosure ... The
Home Equity Theft Reporter... -
http://homeequitytheft-cases-articles.blogspot.com/
________________________________________________________________________________

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:22:22 -1000
From: Dedibble DeKepalo <dekepalo@gmail.com>
Tax Break?

County offers tax break to kuleana land owners
Lihue Garden Island - Lihue,HI,USA

Genealogy verification provided by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs or
court order. Property owner is responsible for costs associated with
verification. ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:24:56 +1100
From: Jo Kamira <jokamira@kamirastacey.com.au>
Rolf Harris says sorry for racist song lyrics -
then goes on to slam 'lazy Aborigines

FYI - from the UK Daily MailHe did something similar in a 1998 Sunday
Times interview when he said he did not use Aborigines in his band as they
went 'walkabout'.

Rolf Harris says sorry for racist song lyrics .... then goes on to
slam 'lazy' Aborigines
By RICHARD SHEARS
Last updated at 1:13 PM on 28th November 2008

Rolf Harris apologised yesterday for a racist slur in his famous 'Tie Me
Kangaroo Down, Sport' song - but then added a new insult to Australia's
Aborigines.

The 78-year-old iconic Aussie said he regretted the words in his song
which referred to Aborigines as 'Abos' - a slur that is similar to calling
a Pakistani a Paki - but he then said that some indigenous Australians
needed to 'get up off your a*** and clean up the streets your bloody
self'.

His new assault on Australia's blacks angered a group of Aborigines in
Sydney's Redfern district - where many live - last night. The mostly young
men said he should now offer a new apology for his latest remarks.

'It's a disgrace. He's got to watch his lip,' said one man.

Enlarge rolf harris

Rolf Harris, in action with his 'wobbleboard', has apologised for a racist
slur in his Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, song but then went on to add a
new insult to Aborigines

'It's the same old story - kick the Aborigine in the guts and blame him
for everything.'

And blaming some in the Aboriginal community for the race's problems is
exactly what Mr Harris has done as he launched a new book of illustrations
in Melbourne during a visit from his base in London.

Referring to some people in Aboriginal communities who complained about
their poverty and filthy conditions, he turned the grievances back onto
the black people themselves.

'You sit at home watching the television and you think to yourself
"Get up off your a*** and clean up the streets your bloody self,
and why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your
garbage, which you've dumped everywhere?"

'But then you have to think to yourself that it's a different
attitude to life.'

He went on to explain that Aboriginal children were never
disciplined or expected to adhere to rules until adulthood.

'Till then, they have a totally carefree life to do what they want
and that quite often involves smashing everything that they have,'
he told Melbourne's The Age.

Blaming Aboriginal traditional values for the appalling conditions
found in many black communities, he added: 'The attitude is that in
their original way of life they would really wreck the surrounding
countryside that they lived in and they would leave all the garbage
and they would go walkabout to the next place.

'The traditional attitude is still there and I wish there was a
simple solution - but I'm not certain.'

Despite his outspoken and controversial comments, he said he wanted
to apologise for the words in his 'Kangaroo' song that carried the
lines 'Let me Abos go loose, Lou....They're of no further use,
Lou.'

He said he had tried to erase the lines from all recordings over
the years, replacing 'Abo' with the word 'emu', but he had had
limited success.

'It was a mark of the times, done totally innocently with no
realisation that you would offend at all,' he said.

Looking back to the time when the song had carried him to fame in
Britain and Australia nearly 50 years ago, he added that he was
'just trying to create a fun song for a bunch of Aussies who were
drinking themselves stupid on Swan Lager in London at the time'.

His apology yesterday follows one he issued during a recording with
Radio Scotland in 2006, when he said that since 1960 he had never
sung that offending verse.

'I have great love and respect for the Aborigines,' he said.

Dr Mark Rose, director of Indigenous Education at Melbourne
University, said at the time that he was please Mr Harris was
feeling remorse about the song, which had been recorded at a time
when racism against indigenous Australians was rife.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:57:02 +0000
From: brian roa <brianroa@hotmail.com>
'buzz' that Arne Duncan will be Ed Sec- sign
petition now to oppose this

Duncan is a gentrifier of neighborhoods and a privatizer and militarizer
of public education in Chicago

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jen Johnson <msjennrefi@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 2:07 PM

Check this group and their petition out. Not sure if anyone else has more
info.

Jennifer Louise Johnson
msjennrefi@yahoo.com
------

Here's it is, the Secretary of Education concern, please pass on to ALL
teachers and anybody concerned about the state of public education.

Beth Drake

"Judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment."
-- Simon Bolivar, revolutionary leader and liberator of Peru.
------

Unfortunately far more attention was paid to Joel Klein as a possible Sec
of Ed than to Arne Duncan, whose policies overall are not very
distinguishable and revolve around testing, privatization, icing out
parents from meaningful roles, lots of bureaucratic obfuscation, spending
lots of money on bean counters who know nothing about education to make
policy, etc.

Duncan has led implementation of "Renaissance 2010" which was initiated by
very pro-privatization business groups in Chicago. Community
organizations, large and small, have led opposition to Ren10,
unsuccessfully. The union has formally opposed it but in practice done
almost nothing. If you have not, go to
http://www.teacheractivistgroups.org/ and sign the petition. This one
names Duncan and Klein as examples of the wrong kind of Secretary, Linda
Darling-Hammond as the correct sort. For details about Duncan, you can see
a report from Parents United for Responsible Education, Designs for
Change, and FairTest. It is on the FT web at
http://www.fairtest.org/new-report-challenges-strategies-promoted-chicago-
[that hypen at the end is part of the url, I think - you may need to cut
and paste, I can't get it to catch and be part of url here]. Chicago
School Reform: Lessons for the Nation January 2007 Executive Summary
Public education in the U.S. faces a critical choice. We can continue to
follow the path of punishment and privatization promoted by business and
political interests and enshrined in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and
various Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies and practices. Or we can
expand the fairer, more effective strategies that have been evolving in
the most successful schools in Chicago and elsewhere. Unfortunately, many
ineffective CPS strategies are being promoted across the nation as
solutions to schools failing to make Ã¢â^Â¬Å^Óadequate yearly
progressÃ¢â^Â¬ï¿½ (AYP) under NCLB. This report takes a close look at the
successes and failures of Chicago school reform Ã¢â^Â¬" what research
shows has and has not worked. The report covers Chicago school reform from
the decentralization period of the early 1990s (Chapter I), to the 1995
mayoral takeover (Chapter II), and on to the most recent CPS improvement
scheme, called the Ã¢â^Â¬Å^ÓRenaissance 2010Ã¢â^Â¬ï¿½ plan (Chapter III).

Among the ineffective, damaging practices carried out in Chicago are
educationally counter-productive central office interventions, most rooted
in the misuse of high-stakes tests, such as scripted curricula and
reconstitution; grade retention based on test scores; undermining local
decision making; and increased privatization. While NCLB does not require
all of these, the test-focused environment created by NCLB encourages
these harmful practices.

An alternative approach for sustained, continuous school improvement uses
strategies shown to be successful in Chicago (Chapter IV). The
recommendations listed below and described in more detail in the final
chapter sum up and are based on these successful approaches. They are
supported by current research in key areas such as professional
development, parent involvement, and assessment. While these
recommendations focus on Chicago, most have implications for NCLB, such as
improved funding equity, ways to ensure schools can assist one another to
improve curriculum and instruction, and focusing on strengthening school
capacity to serve all children well through professional development and
parent involvement.

Recommendation 1: Illinois and Chicago must improve funding adequacy and
equity. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Illinois needs to provide substantially more funding,
allocated especially to those districts with the most needs, including
Chicago. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ ChicagoÃ¢â^Â¬â^Ä¢s Mayor and CPS need to establish a
fair, adequate and equitable distribution of resources within Chicago
Public Schools. Recommendation 2. CPS must initiate a program of sharing
best practices, including those developed in its stronger schools, among
both successful schools and struggling schools. Recommendation 3: Elected
parent-majority Local School Councils (LSC) must be the default governance
structure in all non-charter CPS schools.

Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Hold charters accountable for parent involvement in
decision-making by requiring annual reporting of parental activity in this
area. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Outsource LSC support and training to qualified groups and
individuals to avoid conflict of interest between local school and central
office/city hall interests and increase the quality of LSC training.
Recommendation 4. CPS must improve curriculum and instruction and foster
high-quality professional development: Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Eliminate scripted
curricula and move away from Ã¢â^Â¬Å^Óteaching the test.Ã¢â^Â¬ï¿½

Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Ensure that professional development focuses on authentic,
intellectually challenging and engaging curriculum and instruction.
Recommendation 5. CPS must prioritize professional development, supporting
a decentralized and collaborative approach, following the guidelines of
the National Staff Development Council and the U.S. Department of
Education Professional Development Team. Recommendation 6. CPS must
improve parent involvement training and practices. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Ensure that
schools have access to high-quality training for parents and teachers on
parentsÃ¢â^Â¬â^Ä¢ rights under NCLB to observe classrooms and be involved
in school improvement planning and evaluation. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Construct a
standard, CPS-approved, comprehensive annual parent survey; and require
schools to use it or some comparable tool to gather parent input prior to
developing or modifying parent involvement and school improvement plans
for the coming year. Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Require all schools to report to the public
annually on progress with parent involvement. Recommendation 7. CPS must
implement high-quality assessment practices and fair and beneficial
accountability policies: Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Ensure that learning high-quality
assessment is part of expanded professional development, including work on
using formative assessment techniques.

Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Implement the assessment and accountability recommendations of
the CPS-developed Commission on Improving Classroom-based Assessment and
the New ERA plan, which rely more on performance-based assessments than
standardized tests, while pushing Illinois to support high-quality local
assessment.

Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Halt the grade retention program, making retention a rarity while
providing needed assistance in mastering a rich curriculum to all students
who need it, regardless of their test scores.

Ã¢â^Â¬Â¢ Implement both the letter and the spirit of the remediation,
probation, and intervention provisions of the Chicago school reform law:
carry out high-quality needs assessment, program planning, and program
evaluation in a process which includes all school stake-holders including
the LSC; provide adequate time and resources for programs to succeed.
Recommendation 8. CPS must actively participate in the ESEA/NCLB
reauthorization process by supporting the recommendations in the Joint
Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (2004). This report is
endorsed by the following groups:

Designs for Change

National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest)

Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) Attachment Size
ChicagoReportEXECSUM2007.pdf 26.31 KB
ChicagoReport2007.pdf 214.5 KB
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Kenneth Bernstein" <kber@earthlink.net>
>Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 5:29 PM
>>
>> 1) hearing a lot of buzz that SecEd will be Arne Duncan
>>
>> 2) the kids will be doing as did Chelsie CLinton - heading to
Sidwell friends

>> Ken Bernstein
>Check out Rethinking Schools Online atwww.rethinkingschools.org.
________________________________________________________________________________

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:54:04 +1100
From: Jo Kamira <jokamira@kamirastacey.com.au>
Rolf Harris says sorry for racist song
lyrics - then goes on to slam 'lazy Aborigines - comment

He's coming to Canberra this week. I can't believe that none of the
Australian papers picked this piece up. Mind you, they didn't in 1998
with the Sunday Times interview. We only saw it because we were living in
the UK at the time.

I'm not going to let my kids see the bit where he claims that Koori kids
aren't disciplined until they reach adulthood. They'll want to know why
they are being discriminated against - rotflmlmao.

Jo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check out YouTube - Kupuna shares his MANA'O (fwd)
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:41:21 -0500 (EST)
From: HIAHAWAII@aol.com

_YouTube - Kupuna shares his MANA'O_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-bYPiTHtkA) Make LOVE, Not WAR
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 02:24:57 -0500
From: FeedBlitz <feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com>
Disappeared News - Newspapers vs. the immediacy of the Internet

"DISAPPEARED NEWS" - 1 NEW ARTICLE

1. Newspapers vs. the immediacy of the Internet
2. More Recent Articles
3. Search Disappeared News

Newspapers vs. the immediacy of the Internet

by Larry Geller Maybe newspapers really are obsolete. Yesterdayâ^À^Ùs
Advertiser had a sad article on the Senate appointments. Instead of
relying on their own reporters for news at the State Capitol, a few
blocks from their offices, they ran copy from the Maui News. It was
incomplete. I was looking to find who was the chair of the health
committee but didnâ^À^Ùt see it in the article, which was,,,,

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Sunday, November 30, 2008

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