Gene Robin..son: Gay Bisho..p Givin..g Obama..

Inaug..urati..on Praye..r
The Huffi..ngton.. Post | Rache..l Weine..r

New Hamps..hire Episc..opal Bisho..p Gene Robin..son, a vocal.. gay right..s leade..r, will open Presi..dent-..elect.. Barac..k Obama..'s inaug..urati..on with a praye..r on Sunda..y's kick-..off event.. at the Linco..ln Memor..ial.

"I am writi..ng to tell you that Presi..dent-..Elect.. Obama.. and the Inaug..ural Commi..ttee have invit..ed me to give the invoc..ation.. at the openi..ng event.. of the Inaug..ural Week activ..ities.., We are One, to be held at the Linco..ln Memor..ial,.." Robin..son wrote.. in an email.. to frien..ds.

The annou..nceme..nt comes.. after.. weeks.. of outcr..y from the gay commu..nity over Obama..'s choic..e of evang..elica..l, anti-..gay pasto..r Rick Warre..n to deliv..er the inaug..ural invoc..ation...

"..It's impor..tant for any minor..ity to see thems..elves.. repre..sente..d in some way,.." Robin..son said in an inter..view with the Conco..rd Monit..or. "..Wheth..er it be a racia..l minor..ity, an ethni..c minor..ity or, in our case,.. a sexua..l minor..ity. Just seein..g someo..ne like you up front.. matte..rs."

Robin..son is the first.. openl..y gay dioce..san bisho..p in the Angli..can Commu..nion... "God never.. gets it wrong... The churc..h often.. takes.. a long time to get it right... It is a human.. insti..tutio..n, but one capab..le of self-..corre..ction..," Robin..son told the Seatt..le Post-..Intel..ligen..cer. "I belie..ve in my heart.. that the churc..h got it wrong.. about.. homos..exual..ity. There.. is great.. excit..ement.. in my heart.. to be livin..g in a time when the churc..h is start..ing to get it right..."

Robin..son said he would.. love to sit down with Rick Warre..n but belie..ved that the Calif..ornia.. pasto..r has "..perpe..trate..d lies about.. the gay, lesbi..an and bisex..ual commu..nity."

Vitamin C About to be Made Illegal in Canada!

Why should you be concerned if you live in the US?

What if, just for taking vitamin C, you could be thrown in jail for up to 2 years and fined up to $5,000,000?

That scenario could very well soon become a reality in Canada..



The Canadian Government is trying to pass a bill known as Bill C51; According to some interpretations of the bill, it would remove all supplements from over-the-counter availability, by only allowing MD's to prescribe them as they see fit

This would mean that if you wanted to take a multivitamin, you would have to book an appointment with your doctor and try to convince your doctor that you are in need of these supplements; If your doctor decides a certain drug would be better for you, then you won't have access to your supplements anymore

Consequences of the bill could include:

*No more supplement stores

*Supplements made illegal unless obtained through a prescription; 70 percent of all current supplements on the market could be removed

*Fines of up to $5,000,000 and/or 2 years in jail per incident of being caught breaking this law

Dr Mercola's Comments:

For many, this sounds inconceivable; Surely someone is misinterpreting the proposed law?

After hours of cross-checking, I must admit, I'm still a bit confused about its true potential ramifications

In reading the proposed law itself (for the full act see this link), the statements above appear to be potentially accurate interpretations; Ditto on the dire predictions made by Stop51. com

And, although the Canadian government's site Healthy Canadians claims that none of the above statements are true, it offers very little in terms of guidance on just how and why the law doesn't mean what it says

Why Should Americans Care?

If you're one of the millions of people in Canada, the United States or Mexico, who has never heard of the Trilateral Union, the North American Union (NAU), or Codex, I'm afraid you may be in for a quite a surprise; But don't feel bad, neither of our respective governments or major media outlets are speaking publicly or frankly about these plans

These issues are far too broad and deep to go into in this article, but they are the reasons why you should care about this law passing in Canada, even if you don't live there now – because in the foreseeable future the borders between our three countries might disappear

If you're reading this newsletter you obviously have access to the internet, so just Google "North American Union" or "Codex" and you'll get more than 74point6 million and 13 million hits respectively on these two topics

You can also search my website for previous articles on Codex and what these international food and supplement standards may mean for the future of nutritional supplements

If being an informed citizen matter to you, don't let these topics slip under your radar – they have the power to change our respective countries and our ways of life in more ways than you could imagine

What Does Codex Have to Do With C-51?

To answer that question we have to back up a couple of paces and start with a quick explanation of what Codex is

The Codex Alimentarius Commission, conceived by the United Nations in 1962, was birthed through a series of relationships between The World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as the American FDA and USDA

The Codex Alimentarius itself is a compilation of food standards, codes of practice and guidelines that specify all requirements related to foods (whether processed, semi-processed, genetically engineered, or raw); Their purpose is to protect consumers' health, ensure fair business practices within the food trade, and eliminate international food trade barriers by standardizing food quality

Sounds good in theory, right?

However, the two most potentially dangerous prospects of Codex are: 1) these standards are being devised as international rules intended for world-wide adoption, and 2) Codex has classified nutrients as toxins

Yes, toxins; That's not a misprint

The Codex Commission decided—with the support of the United States—to use something called Risk Assessment, which assesses the maximum level of a substance – in this case a nutrient -- that may be ingested without causing any discernable biological effect

Did you get that one? Let me explain further

Risk Assessment is a branch of Toxicology, a.k.a.



the science of toxins (as opposed to the science of nutrition); In a sane world, it is used to assess how much of a toxic substance you can safely eat without noticing any physical effects or problems; As soon as there is a biological effect, you have hit the upper, maximum limit for that substance

Codex is slowly but surely shimmying into position to mandate the universal maximum "safe" level of every vitamin, mineral, supplement and herb that may legally be manufactured, used or sold -- with "safe" being a level that has no physical effect

So, what does this have to do with Canada's potential adoption of C-51?

Well, C-51 also amends the Canadian law to allow trade agreements to become law without Parliamentary approval, and for the regulation to incorporate documents produced by a foreign state or subdivision of a foreign state

What that means is that the Codex treaty could become Canadian law without Parliamentary approval simply by passing a regulation saying it is now part of the Canadian regulations

If the Codex rules become the law of the land in Canada, the safety of supplements might become judged on the toxicology scale, and if Canada has these laws in place when the NAU becomes reality – guess what? The US and Mexico may have little choice but to fall under the same umbrella of laws and standards

And, even if you refuse to believe that the North American Union will ever take place, passing similar, potentially restricting natural health laws in the US will be a whole lot easier if Canada sets the precedent

The Fine Art of Double-Speak

The Canadian law, known as C-51, was introduced by the Canadian Minister of Health on April 8th, 2008, proposing far-reaching changes to Canada's Food and Drugs Act; The question on everyone's mind is whether or not it might have devastating consequences on the health products industry

According to the government website Healthy Canadians, Canadians will continue to have access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality, and claims that:

Natural health products will not be regulated as pharmaceutical drugs; they will continue to be regulated under their own regulations - separate from drugs and foods

Bill C-51 will not increase the costs of natural health products

Bill C-51 does not regulate growing an herb garden

Bill C-51 does not target practitioners who compound products for their patients

Bill C-51 does not target Canadians' personal use of natural health products

Health food stores will not require a special license to sell natural health products

Canadians will not require a prescription from a doctor for natural health products

However, the site also makes somewhat confusing statements like:

"Under Bill C-51 the term 'therapeutic products' encompasses a range of products sold for therapeutic purposes, including drugs, medical devices, biologics, and natural health products; This does not change the classification of a natural health product nor impose additional requirements"

Personally, I've not been able to sort out why or how a natural health product -- if now lumped together with drugs under the term 'therapeutic products' -- would not change its classification, and why they would not have to abide by the same rules as all other 'therapeutic products'

The Power of Words

One of the most opposed changes is this radical alteration to key terminology, including replacing the word "drug" with "therapeutic product," which is the same term used for all natural products as well

To get a better idea of the many questions and confusing pitfalls this law change brings to fore, I recommend reading the NHPPA Draft Discussion Paper on Bill C-51

Clearly, I'm not the only one who can't make heads or tails out of this legislative doublespeak, and the paper (written by a defense attorney specializing in the Food and Drugs Act) succinctly points out the power of language and key words in legislative debate

For example, the old definition of "sell" is:

"includes the offer for sale, expose for sale, have in possession for sale and distribute, whether or not the distribution is made for consideration"

That's clear; In fact, I think most of us have a decent idea of what "selling" means; The NEW definition of "sell," however, opens the door for a very broad interpretation:

"includes offer for sale, expose for sale or have in possession for sale, or distribute to one or more persons, whether or not the distribution is made for consideration and in relation to a device, includes lease, offer for lease, expose for lease or have in possession for lease"

Now, what's the reason for redefining the meaning of the word "sell" to include the simple act of "distributing to one or more persons"? Who does this new meaning benefit? Who does this now include that was not included before? Why the need for such a broad definition?

In plain English, it appears the law now applies if I were to simply give something to another person for free, whether it's a stranger or a family member

More Questionable Interpretations

Another interesting rebuttal by the Canadian government is the issue of whether or not an inspector would be allowed to enter private property without permission or a warrant

The Healthy Canadian site states, "Inspectors will not be able to enter a private home without permission or a warrant"

And yet the law, Section 23 (4), clearly reads: An inspector who is carrying out their functions may enter on or pass through or over private property without being liable for doing so and without the owner of the property having the right to object to that use of the property

Since when does "without the right to object" mean that they have to ask for permission or present a warrant?

What Can You Do?

I don't pretend to know or understand the full potential implications of this proposed law; However, if -- after reading through the many source links I've included in this comment -- you believe that C-51 is a law that is not in your and your family's best interest, you can make your voice heard by signing the StopC51 petition

http://articles. mercola. com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/19/vitamin-c-about-to-be-made-illegal-in-canada. aspx?source=nl

Related Articles:

How the Government is Threatening Your Freedom to Use Supplements
What You Can do About Codex, A Threat to Your Health Freedom
Flawed Codex Guidelines Passed

Ron Paul Claims Pelosi Spiked Iran Bill
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 5:07 PM

By: Rick Pedraza

Representative Ron Paul says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed a section from a bill passed by Congress which would have barred the U.S. from going to war with Iran without a congressional vote, claiming she did so at the behest of the leadership of Israel and AIPAC.



Paul, a former Republican presidential contender who formally removed himself from the party's nomination race last week, makes the allegation on C-SPAN during a recently held foreign policy conference in Virginia.



Paul says Pelosi's first act as House Speaker in 2006 was to "deliberately" remove a portion of a legislative spending bill which said the United States "can't go to war with Iran without getting approval from Congress.

"

According to Paul, Pelosi and her allies in the chamber's Democratic leadership initially accepted the bill designed to outline an Iraq exit strategy, but during a revision of the legislation excluded the statement regarding the need for congressional approval of any military assault on the neighboring country of Iran.



"She [Pelosi] removed it deliberately," Paul says. "And then, the astounding thing is, when asked why, she said the leadership in Israel asked her to. That was in the newspaper, that was in 'The Washington Post,' that she was asked by AIPAC and others not to do that.

"

Paul implies Pelosi, desperate to advance her flawed spending legislation, bargained away the proposal that would have been the House leadership's primary vehicle for challenging the administration's policies in the region.



According to John Nichols, who covered the story about Pelosi's capitulation at the time for "The Nation," Pelosi was "under pressure from some conservative members of her caucus, and from lobbyists associated with neoconservative groups that want war with Iran, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

"

Paul's allegation is corroborated by 'The Asia Times', which in another article published at the time says AIPAC was strongly against attaching "a provision to a Pentagon spending bill that would require President Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. AIPAC was strongly against it because it viewed the legislation as taking the military option 'off the table.' The provision was killed.

"

The article also cites Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, as saying [Pelosi's] decision was due to AIPAC.

Fascist European Union plans anger Latin America...
Body:
(READ AND REPOST!!!)

BBC NEWS

Latin America outraged at EU plan

By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News.


Buenos Aires

Leaders across Latin America have reacted angrily to a new EU law that could jail illegal immigrants for up to 18 months before they are deported.




One president called it a hate initiative. Another said it was an attack on people's rights and lives.




Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans live and work in Europe, many of them without permission.




Many do jobs that Europeans do not want to do, providing a vital source of income for poor families back home.




Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez led the reaction, threatening to cut oil exports to Europe unless the EU retracted the measure.




Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorean leader, made the statement that Latin American countries should present a united front against what he called a hate initiative.




Bolivian President Evo Morales said Latin America should work with Africa against laws that he said attacked people's rights and lives.




The European Union on Wednesday adopted the measures, which could come into force in 2010.




The law will oblige EU members to choose between issuing residency permits to the estimated half a million illegal immigrants who enter each year, or returning them to their country of origin.




The head of the South American Mercosur trade bloc, Carlos Alvarez, believes the new measure openly violates human rights.




He said the EU should remember that in the past, millions of Europeans came to Latin America as victims of hunger, war, injustice and totalitarian regimes, and were assimilated with no problems.




Peruvian human rights spokesman Wilfredo Ardito said the new law was a hypocritical effort to make it illegal to be poor.

Fear: democracy's biggest enemy.


T


House votes to expand Bush wiretap powers, telecom immunity
06/20/2008 @ 12:47 pm
Filed by Nick Juliano

Less than 24 hours after introducing a controversial measure to expand President Bush's authority to spy on Americans, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Friday voted to approve the administration- and Republican-supported bill, sending it to the Senate where it will likely be adopted.



Civil liberties and privacy advocates forcefully panned the measure, which was crafted behind closed doors in negotiations among moderate Democrats, Republicans, the White House and telecommunications lobbyists.



"It's Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, said in a news release. "The House just wrapped up some expensive gifts for the administration and their buddies at the phone companies.

"

Friday's vote represented the beginning of the end in a legislative battle aimed at reining in the warrantless surveillance program Bush acknowledged instituting after 9/11.



"Immunity for telecom giants that secretly assisted in the NSA's warrantless surveillance undermines the rule of law and the privacy of every American," said Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Congress should let the courts do their job instead of helping the administration and the phone companies avoid accountability for a half decade of illegal domestic spying. If this legislation passes the Senate and is signed into law, the American people will have lost their last best chance to discover the true scope of the president's wiretapping program and to determine whether or not the law was broken.

"

EFF is representing plaintiffs in more than 40 lawsuits alleging the telecoms broke the law and violated their customers' privacy by facilitating the warrantless wiretaps.



The House had earlier proved to be a bulwark in the way of the president's attempt to retroactively legalize his conduct and excuse from legal oversight the telecommunications companies that assisted him. That wall fell Friday.


Pressure mounts on Obama to oppose

Now activists are turning their attention to the Senate, and pressure is mounting on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to step up and lead an effort to block the latest FISA bill.



"We look to leaders in the Senate who value the rule of law to stand up and strongly oppose this blanket immunity for telecom lawbreakers," Bankston said, "and in particular urge Senator Barack Obama to lead his party in rejecting this false compromise.

"

Obama has said nothing about the recently announced FISA compromise. Robert Gibbs, his presidential campaign's communications director, said he was unsure whether Obama would participate in debate on the FISA bill, which is expected next week in the Senate. Gibbs promised to provide more information later after he was asked about Obama and FISA by RAW STORY and other reporters during a conference call Friday.



The Democratic candidate was criticized earlier this week for endorsing Rep. John Barrow, a pro-immunity Georgia Democrat, who is in the middle of a primary campaign against a progressive State Senator.



When the Senate passed an earlier FISA bill in February, Obama supported amendments to strip immunity from it. He supported a filibuster after that amendment fail, although the Illinois senator did not vote on the final bill itself.


Pelosi, Hoyer lead effort in opposition to majority of Dems

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer shepherded through a surveillance bill opposed by the majority of their caucus.



The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act update passed 293-129, with support from just 107 Democrats. Opposing the measure were 128 Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Timothy Johnson of Illinois.



"Watching the House fall to scare tactics and political maneuvering is especially infuriating given the way it stood up to pressure from the president on this same issue just months ago," Fredrickson said. "In March we thought the House leadership had finally grown a backbone by rejecting the Senate's FISA bill. Now we know they will not stand up for the Constitution.

"

Pelosi said the only choice the House had was between the FISA update it considered Friday and a worse version passed by the Senate earlier this year. A FISA update the House approved in March, that did not include immunity and earned praise from civil libertarians, was apparently no longer an option because Democrats decided it could not pass the Senate.



She said she was unsatisfied with the immunity provision, which leaves telecommunications companies "with a taint," but she said the overall bill was acceptable because it improved on the Senate version. The House compromise requires intelligence agencies' Inspectors General to review the warrantless wiretapping program, instead of the independent judicial review that would have come from the lawsuits moving forward.



Acknowledging the controversy in the bill, Pelosi didn't attempt to prevent the defection of a majority of the Democratic caucus. (This, by the way, stands in stark contrast to the way in which Republicans ran the House; they would not even bring a measure to the floor if it did not have majority GOP support.

)

"I'm not asking anybody to vote for this bill," Pelosi said at the end of her floor speech. "I just wanted to let you know why I am.

"

DEVELOPING...

Hispanics Hit Hard by Economic Slump

Adolfo Morones, owner of El Sombrero restaurant in Dalton, Ga.,

said sales had dropped by half this year, forcing layoffs.

 

 

..TR>

	..TR> ..TR> ..TABLE>..TABLE>..TABLE> DALTON, Ga. (By Peter S. Goodman, NYTimes) May 13, 2008 — In his first years in the United States, Carlos B. Jacinto endured the itinerant life of a Guatemalan migrant worker, from picking fruit in Florida to moving logs at a sawmill in Washington. Eventually, he settled here in northern Georgia and erected a middle-class American life. The carpet factories that sustained this town were desperate for workers to supply a nationwide boom in home construction. The wages Mr. Jacinto earned over the last decade were enough to buy a minivan and a brick house with a yard and a swing set for his four young girls. It was a long way from his childhood home in Guatemala, a wooden shack without electricity or plumbing. But last month, amid the shrinking fortunes of the American economy, Mr. Jacinto, 37, was laid off. Everything he has achieved is suddenly at risk. "Am I going to be able to keep up the payments on my house?" he asked. "I never believed this could happen. Now, we don't know the future." The economic downturn unfolding across the United States is imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics, a group that was among the primary beneficiaries of the expansion in recent years. What had been a story of broad and steady advances has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes. The boom in American housing generated millions of new jobs for those willing to engage in physically demanding tasks, from factory work churning out floorboards, carpeting and upholstery, to landscaping, roofing and janitorial services. Hispanics occupied widening swaths of these trades and filled large numbers of relatively high-paying construction jobs. As a great influx of Hispanic immigrants spread beyond the initial entryways of the Southwest into smaller cities and towns across the South and the Midwest, many found employment doing much of the unpleasant work shunned by those with better prospects. But now significant portions of this work are disappearing. What were once the fastest-growing areas of the nation, including states with expanding Hispanic populations like Florida, California, Georgia and Nevada, are often bearing the brunt of the pain. From April of last year to April of this year, the Labor Department reported, the unemployment rate among Hispanics spiked 1.4 percentage points, to 6.9 percent. By comparison, the overall jobless rate rose half a percentage point, to 5 percent. For the nearly 19 million Hispanic immigrants in the United States, the downturn in the job market has cut significantly into earnings, dropping the share of those sending money home to families in Latin America from nearly three-fourths two years ago to about half, according to a survey released last month by the Inter-American Development Bank. Economic troubles now threaten to reverse a long period of gains in homeownership among Hispanics as well. From 1994 to 2006, the rate of Hispanic homeownership climbed to 50 percent from 41 percent, according to census data, a pace more than double the increase among non-Hispanics. Growth was fueled by heavy reliance on subprime mortgages — loans extended to people with troubled credit histories, which have since proved the most likely to go bad. By 2006, 47 percent of the loans issued for home purchases by Hispanics were subprime, nearly double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a paper by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Only African-Americans leaned harder on subprime loans. Last year, the homeownership rate among Hispanics fell, a trend that is likely to continue: one in 12 of the mortgages made to Hispanic households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail, estimates Catherine Singley, a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group in Washington. Georgia is one of many states where Hispanics are now feeling strains. From 2000 to 2007, the state's Hispanic population grew more than 70 percent, according to census data. In the Atlanta area, construction exerted a strong pull, mirroring the national trend. Nationally, Hispanics rose from one-fifth of the construction work force in 2000 to almost one-third by 2006, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute. Among foreign-born Hispanics, construction was responsible for 46 percent of the growth in employment from 2004 to 2006, according to Rakesh Kochhar, an economist at the Pew Hispanic Center. Now, that dynamic is working in reverse. "Hispanics are concentrated in an industry that is leading the downturn," Mr. Kochhar said. For the last eight years, Jose Serrano, an undocumented immigrant, has crammed into rented houses in Atlanta with five and six other men while working construction jobs that paid about $10 an hour, sending most of his earnings home to Mexico City to support his wife and three children. But since November, Mr. Serrano has failed to find steady work. Every morning, he joins dozens of others in a parking lot, where contractors hire for odd jobs. Most days, he waits in vain, he said. Now, there is no money to send home. He has sold his car, navigating Atlanta's freeway-laced sprawl by bicycle. He has been borrowing from friends to pay his rent of $150 a month. Others in his situation have returned to Mexico, he said, discouraged by the deteriorating job market and a recent surge in crackdowns against undocumented immigrants. If things do not improve soon, so will he, though he is pained by the thought of having to lean on the very family he is supposed to be supporting. "Your dreams have disappeared," Mr. Serrano said. "Your family is counting on you for basic necessities. You feel defeated." Dalton, a town of 35,000 people 90 miles northwest of Atlanta, is where three-fourths of the carpeting in the United States is produced. It benefited from the housing boom, serving as an archetype of Hispanic upward mobility. Before the 1980s, the carpet industry attracted mostly white blue-collar workers from as far as Tennessee and Alabama, offering wages that paid enough to support families. But competition intensified and as similar jobs sprang up elsewhere, Dalton's carpet mills struggled to find enough workers. Among Hispanics, word spread that a small town in Georgia, with fresh air and thick stands of trees, had abundant jobs at wages reaching $14 an hour. Houses were affordable. "This was the dream they were seeing on television," said America Gruner, founder of the Coalition of Hispanic Leaders, a local social service organization. Today, Hispanics make up about 40 percent of the city's population, up from 10 percent a decade ago. Some 70 percent of the students in the city school system are Hispanic. "They came in here and saved jobs," said Dalton's mayor, David E. Pennington. "This is a one-industry town. If they hadn't come here, the carpet industry was going to leave." For several years, Rafael Ortiz picked strawberries in California for 12 and 14 hours a day, being paid about $250 a week. On a visit home to his village in the Mexican state of Guanajuato a decade ago, relatives told him he could make twice as much in northern Georgia, working indoors. Mr. Ortiz and his wife boarded a Greyhound bus with their six children — the youngest then 8 years old. They arrived with no savings, staying with cousins. Mr. Ortiz quickly found a job in a factory making bathroom mats and toilet seat covers. Nearly all of the workers were from Mexico or Guatemala, he said. He was paid $8.50 an hour, with as much overtime as he was willing to take. He brought home $450 to $500 a week. Over subsequent years, Mr. Ortiz, 62, never lacked for work. In 2000, he paid $4,500 for a trailer, plunked it on a three-quarter-acre lot and called it home. He recently became an American citizen. "I have 10 grandchildren, and there's plenty of room there to run around," Mr. Ortiz said. "That's my satisfaction." But last fall, Mr. Ortiz's father grew ill. He returned to Mexico to be with him before he died. Since coming back to Dalton in February, he has not found work. He no longer takes his grandchildren out to eat, he said. He relies on his grown children to pay the bills. From the fall of 2005 to the end of 2007, carpet industry jobs in Whitfield County declined to 15,416 from 17,140, according to the Georgia Department of Labor. At the Southern Janitorial Services Corporation, where 95 percent of the employees are Hispanic, working hours are being cut and paychecks are down from $450 a week to as little as $300 a week, according to Gabriela Gardea, the company's receptionist. The impact of smaller paychecks is now rippling out to businesses built to serve the Hispanic influx. At El Sombrero, a Mexican restaurant in an old brick storefront downtown, sales have dropped by half since the beginning of the year, said the owner, Adolfo Morones. He has been forced to lay off a waiter and two kitchen employees, he said. At La Michoacana, a grocery store festooned with colorful piñatas, the owner, Efrain Espinoza, said he was losing money. "We don't know how long we can continue like this," he said. A taxi service that ferries Hispanic workers from home to job has idled three of its six cars, Maria T. Perez, the owner, said. Born in Mexico, Ms. Perez arrived here from Los Angeles a decade ago to put her five children — then mostly teenagers — beyond the reach of gangs, she said. She started the taxi service in 2001, making use of no-money-down financing to buy her first car, a used Buick Regal. As Dalton filled with Hispanics, her business expanded, earning her a $40,000 profit in 2004 and again the following year, she said. She and her husband, Ricardo Torres, bought a four-bedroom house with a swimming pool, a huge living room, a washer-dryer and a kitchen with granite countertops. They paid $240,000, with no money down, she said. The promotional mortgage payment of $1,700 a month was manageable, she said. But the taxi business dipped the following year. And by early 2007, their mortgage payment had jumped to $2,500, she said. Last summer, with the taxi service losing money, Ms. Perez stopped making house payments. In January, she and her husband gave up their home to foreclosure, she said, joining a growing crowd. From January to March of this year, Dalton registered 111 foreclosure filings, nearly four times the number of the previous year, according to data from RealtyTrac. Ms. Perez and her husband are now camping in the taxi company office. They do their laundry at a Laundromat, and cook with a hot plate, opening the door to release the smoke. "I don't know what's going to happen in the future," she said. "The only thing that's left is to wait and see." 9:44 PM  0 Comments (Add Comment) | 0 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
Tuesday, May 20, 2008  700 Arrested In Iowa Immigration Raid. Category: News and Politics   700 Arrested in Iowa Immigration Raid   POSTVILLE, Iowa (By Nigel Duara and William Petroski, Des Moines Register) May 12, 2008 — A raid by federal immigration officials at the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant may have resulted in as many as 700 arrests, immigration officials said Monday Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered the Agriprocessors Inc. complex in northeast Iowa Monday morning to execute a criminal search warrant for evidence relating to aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers and other crimes, said Tim Counts, a Midwest ICE spokesman. Agents are also executing a civil search warrant for people undocumented in the United States, he said. Immigration officials told aides to Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, that they expect 600 to 700 arrests. About 1,000 to 1,050 people work at the plant, according to Iowa Workforce Development, the state's employment services agency. Chuck Larson, a truck driver for Agriprocessing, was in the plant when the agents arrived. "There has to be 100 of them," he said of the agents. Larson said the agents told workers to stay in place then separated them by asking those with identification to stand to the right and those with other papers, to stand to the left. "There was plenty of hollering," Larson said. "You couldn't go anywhere." When asked who was separated, Larson said those standing in the group with other papers were all Hispanic. ICE spokesman Harold Ort in Postville did not confirm or deny anyone had been detained, but went on to say the children of those detained would be cared for and "their caregiver situation will be addressed." "They were asked multiple times if they have any sole-caregiver issues or any childcare issues," Ort said. Aides to Braley said they have been told "hundreds" of arrests are expected because the action is more of an "investigation" than an immigration raid, and specific individuals are being targeted for arrest as part of the investigation. Counts described the events in Postville as a "single site operation." He said he was not aware of any other immigration raids being conducted elsewhere Monday. Postville Police Chief Michael Halse said he did not know anything about the raid until Monday morning. Postville is a community of more than 2,500 people that includes natives of German and Norwegian heritage and newcomers who include Hasidic Jews from New York, plus immigrants from Mexico, Russian, Ukraine and many other countries. The Agriprocessors plant, known as the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, is northeast Iowa's largest employer. About 200 Hasidic Jews arrived in Postville in 1987, when butcher Aaron Rubashkin of Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood reopened a defunct meat-packing plant with his two sons, Sholom and Heshy, just outside the city limits. Business boomed at the plant, reviving the depressed economy while pitting the newcomers against the predominantly Lutheran community. Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said the Postville immigration investigations were warranted despite concerns federal official violated the constitutional rights of people in past raids. "Remember our concern has not been about whether or not there should be raids," Vilsack said. "It's the way the raids have been conducted and the way in which American citizens' rights have been violated by virtue of sort of a roundup process that's used and what we think are inappropriate and unconstitutional actions on the part of immigration officials." Vilsack and others have alleged that immigration officials used humiliation, opposite-sex searches and long periods of secrecy in the Dec. 12, 2006, raids at Swift & Co. in Marshalltown, Iowa, where 90 people were arrested on immigration charges. 9:42 PM  0 Comments (Add Comment) | 0 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
Saturday, May 03, 2008  Celebrating Enthnic cleansing? (Commentary) Category: News and Politics   Disclaimer: The views represented in this article represent the views of the author of the article and do not represent the views of the author of the blog. Celebrating ethnic cleansing? Oxford Students' Palestine Society Thursday, 01 May 2008 It is with bemusement and outrage that we find ourselves being asked to celebrate 60 years of Israel's existence, Sixty years ago this month, the State of Israel was declared in historic Palestine, Less than a year after this declaration, when a ceasefire was declared, Zionist forces were in control of 78% of Palestine. ,Yet the creation of this State came at unspeakable cost to the Palestinian people, who had been living there continuously for centuries, 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, fleeing from the Stern Gang and the Haganah Terror militias and the newly created Israel Defence Forces, Many were chased directly from their villages; others fled, hearing of the massacres inflicted upon other Palestinians, such as those of Deir Yassin, where over 100 people, including at least 50 women and children, were brutally and systematically murdered, In order to ensure that those who were fleeing the terror would never be able to return to their homes, 418 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Neither their inhabitants, nor their descendants, have ever been allowed to return home, in direct contravention of UN Resolution 194, which demands that 'refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so,' To describe this ethnic cleansing and the brutal destruction of their homeland Palestinians use the word Nakba – catastrophe, For the first two weeks of May, the Israeli Cultural Society (ICS) is inviting Oxford to join them in celebration of Israel's 60th birthday. We are appalled. The state of Israel was built on the burning ruins of Palestinian homes, and is ensuring the Nakba continues to this day. Any celebration of its 'birth' is an open and defiant justification of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate? Since its establishment, Israel has continually enacted discriminatory policies towards the Palestinian population both inside and outside its borders. It has prevented internally displaced persons from returning home, and the legal system and government of the Israeli state discriminates against Palestinians on vital issues such as the purchasing of land, building permission, economic assistance for development towns – the list goes on. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate? The Palestinians of the West Bank have lived under occupation for more than 40 years, an occupation which poisons and stifles every aspect of their lives. Since this occupation began, Israel has attempted to colonise the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, and creating a segregated road system – with certain roads reserved for Jewish settlers, and other, inferior roads for Palestinians. Freedom of movement is severely restricted by the checkpoints, road blocks and barriers which choke the West Bank. The segregation wall, which is just the latest attempt to annex Palestinian land, surrounds cities such as Qalqilyah - population over 40,000 – leaving its inhabitants just one entrance. When they are allowed in or out, that is, The wall separates villagers from their farmland, students from their schools, patients from their hospitals, and tears families and communities apart. And let us not forget the policy of house demolitions, which since 1967 has claimed over 12,000 Palestinian homes, leaving over 70,000 people without shelter and traumatised. Is this what we are being asked to celebrate? On the 5th of May, camels will be arriving on Broad Street as part of the festivities. Such a superficial gesture ignores and trivialises the tragedy suffered by the Middle East; meanwhile the falafel and shisha pipes, sold to us as Israeli culture, represent Israeli appropriation of Palestinian heritage, which is slowly and stealthilyeroding the Palestinian nation's link to its homeland and denying it the dignity a society needs to survive, One event in particular is cruelly ironic - a talk entitled 'Israeli Medical Achievements - Saving Lives Worldwide'. Why is it, we wonder, that Israel saves lives worldwide, but regularly refuses to allow food aid, fuel and medicine into the Gaza strip? What is Israel, which controls Gaza's borders, airspace and coastline, doing to save Gazan lives? Just last week, the United Nations reported that it has been forced to halt desperately needed food aid distribution, upon which more than 1. 1m Gazans are dependent, because Israeli-imposed sanctions have created massive fuel shortages, It is with bemusement and outrage that we find ourselves being asked to celebrate 60 years of Israel's existence. If the ICS wish to celebrate ethnic cleansing, racism, and the daily persecution of an entire nation, we will most certainly not be joining them. Oxford Students' Palestine Society believe this is a reason for protest, not celebration, and we invite you to stand with us Original Post By; PEACE & JUSTICE www. myspace. com/xxxx101 ethnic cleansing from 1948 to now and the zionists are telling the world that Palestine was a land without a people,,, If you are not a zionist jew , according to them you are not human,,, read their religous books, i challenge any one to prove me wrong,,,Shadia as far as the eye can see Christians and Muslims ethnically cleansed by Zionists who came from all over the world to steal, loot and SQUAT on the land of Palestine And those Christians and muslims who are left are being murderd on a daily basses in their concentration camps or cages. 4:07 PM  0 Comments (Add Comment) | 0 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
Saturday, May 03, 2008  The Revolt Over Rising Food Prices Category: News and Politics Let them eat ethanol: The revolt over rising food prices SHARON SMITH, International Socialist Review May–June 2008 WALL STREET millionaires have spent months mourning their losses from once ridiculously overvalued investments. Yet these same free-market cheerleaders remain blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the crisis facing the real victims of the unfolding global meltdown they so enthusiastically enabled. For the 3 billion people who survive on less than $2 a day, the upward spiral in global food prices has meant a struggle for the most basic of human rights—the right to eat. Rice, bread, and tortillas are the staple food for this half of the world's population. In 2007, the price of grain rose by 42 percent, and dairy products by 80 percent, according to United Nations figures, and food inflation has accelerated further in recent months. In the last twelve months alone, wheat prices have increased by 130 percent, and rice by 74 percent. As the Observer noted on April 6, "A global rice shortage that has seen prices of one of the world's most important staple foods increase by 50 percent in the past two weeks alone is triggering an international crisis." In March and April, mass hunger spawned violent rioting in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, and Haiti. Six straight days of rioting rocked Haiti in early April. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day and the typical adult diet consists of just 1,640 calories—640 calories less than the average adult requirement—according to the World Food Program. Haitians have grown tired of subsisting on what has become the common diet: clay, salt, and vegetable shortening. "Protesters compared the burning hunger in their stomachs to bleach or battery acid," noted the Guardian on April 9. Say no to McCain, Clinton, Obama, and the rest of the Republicrat yahoos! Instead cast your vote for Marx and Engels in 2008. On April 4, thousands of angry Haitians protested in the southern city of Les Cayes, attempting to set the UN police base on fire while stealing rice from trucks. The rioting soon spread to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where thousands stormed the presidential palace demanding the resignation of the U.S.'s hand-picked president, René Préval. Fortunately for Préval, UN "peacekeepers" eventually managed to disburse the starving masses with tear gas and rubber bullets. Their brutal suppression perhaps prevented Préval from meeting the same fate as Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the U.S.-backed dictator overthrown by a popular rebellion in 1986. Préval has done nothing to stabilize skyrocketing food prices or to assist those on the brink of starvation—and he made clear in a televised speech on April 9 that he has no intention of doing so now. In a Marie Antoinette moment, Préval scolded Haitian citizens, "The demonstrations and destruction won't make the prices go down or resolve the country's problems. On the contrary, this can make the misery grow and prevent investment in the country. " In Egypt, where protests and strikes are illegal, thousands of textile workers and supporters in Mahalla el-Kobra rioted against high food prices and low wages on April 6 and 7. Police occupied the state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving plant overnight to prevent workers from going on strike as they had planned, but protesters responded by setting buildings on fire and throwing bricks at police who were tear-gassing them. Police repression did not succeed in frightening these protesters, but rather further fueled their anger. Roughly 40 percent of Egyptians survive on less than $2 per day, while the price of unsubsidized bread rose by ten times in recent months and the cost of rice doubled in a single week. The national minimum wage has remained unchanged since 1984, at 115 Egyptian pounds per month. The Mahallah workers have called for a national minimum wage of 1,200 pounds per month—which would still leave a family of four living under the poverty level of $2 per day. The rioting in Mahalla is the latest episode in the rising class struggle now reaching deep inside Egypt's working class. Middle East Report and Information Project contributing editor Joel Beinin argued of the growing strike movement, "This is potentially the broadest-based gathering of dissent the Mubarak regime has ever faced. The combination of repression, apathy, and political demobilization that has sustained autocracy in Egypt for over half a century is being forcefully challenged, making it increasingly difficult for the Mubarak regime, if not its capitalist cronies, to conduct business as usual." Indeed, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif rushed to Mahallah on April 8 to announce he is granting the workers a thirty-day salary bonus and will address their demands on health care and wages. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, U.S. occupiers have made no effort to spare the conquered population from the rise in hunger sweeping the world. On the contrary, in December the U.S.-backed Iraqi government announced that monthly food rations would be cut in half due to "insufficient funds and spiraling inflation," affecting 10 million Iraqis dependent on these rations for survival. Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated the total cost of the Iraq War at upwards of $3 trillion, but there is apparently no cash to spare to provide occupied Iraqis with an adequate diet. Iraq's chief of staff for the ministry of trade Mohammed Hanoun told al-Jazeera, "In 2007, we asked for 3.2 billion dollars for rationing basic foodstuffs. But since the prices of imported foodstuff doubled in the past year, we requested 7.2 billion dollars for this year. That request was denied. " The trade ministry has halved the list of subsidized foods to include only flour, sugar, rice, oil, and infant milk, while abandoning the formerly subsidized necessities of lentils, chickpeas, soap, tea, and detergent. Even before the current crisis, the percentage of Iraqis receiving food rations had already declined from 96 percent in 2004 to 60 percent in 2007, according to a 2007 Oxfam International report. The report estimated that "43 percent of Iraqis suffer from absolute poverty" and over half the population is unemployed, adding, "Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now. " As journalists Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail commented on the Inter Press Service News Agency in December, "Saddam provided more food than the U.S. " Hunger is also rising in the United States. The unregulated greed unleashed over thirty years of neoliberalism that wreaked havoc on the world's poorest countries is now exposing the class divide in the world's richest country. It can no longer be claimed that all of those residing in the global North gain prosperity at the expense of the global South. To be sure, growing hunger in America has only earned passing reference from U.S. media outlets, which still largely take their cue from Wall Street and the White House. On April 7, for example, Tribune Newspapers preposterously featured an article on the plight of that tiny slice of Americans now curbing their exorbitant spending habits. The article featured a down-on-her-luck mortgage broker forced to forego the Botox treatments for which she once regularly dropped $1,800. "I would rather have Botox than go out to dinner," the woman told reporters—who reported it without irony. Food inflation in the U.S. has reached a level not seen in decades, with food staples like milk rising 17 percent over the last year; rice, pasta, and bread rising over 12 percent; and eggs increasing by 25 percent. As job losses mount in the current recession, an unprecedented 28 million Americans are expected to receive food stamps to survive this year. One in six people in West Virginia, and one in ten in Ohio and New York, are now relying on food stamps to survive. And one in three children in Oklahoma have been on food stamps at some time in the last year. Food stamp "entitlements" are far from generous in the world's most affluent society, and it is safe to say that most people suffering from rising food prices do not qualify for help. According to guidelines posted on the USDA's website, a family of four is eligible to receive food stamps only if their net monthly income is at or below $1,721. This same family of four is then entitled to a maximum monthly food stamp allotment of $542—the same amount as in 1996. The average subsidy amounts to roughly $1 per meal per person. And 800,000 mostly elderly and disabled food stamp recipients currently receive the minimum benefit of a mere $10 per month, according to the New York Times. Mainstream economists have usually described the global food crisis as a food "shortage," but the shortage has been greatly exacerbated by the merciless laws of the free market. In many cases, the problem is not an immediate shortage of food but merely a shortage of the money to pay for it. World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran recently remarked about sub-Saharan Africa, "We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. Often we are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it. " The agricultural/food business is now the second most profitable industry in the world, lagging only behind pharmaceuticals. Indeed, the automaker Mitsubishi, which also controls the second-largest bank in the world, has become one of the world's largest beef processors, demonstrating the degree to which capital has flocked to the agribusiness sector. The World Bank's World Development Report 2008 heaped approval on the role of agribusiness, commenting, "The private agri-business sector has become more vibrant. New, powerful actors have entered agricultural value chains and have an economic interest in a dynamic and prosperous agricultural sector and a voice in political affairs. " But just as agribusiness wiped out small U.S. farmers in the 1980s, it has repeated this pattern around the world ever since. As global justice activist Vandana Shiva wrote in 2006, in India "without market regulation agribusiness corporations will make profits selling costly seeds, buying cheap farm produce, and locking farmers in debt. This has been the process by which the small family farmer has disappeared in U.S.A, Argentina, Europe. " Now the law of supply and demand has dictated that the new market for biofuels should reduce the production of corn for food by 25 percent in the U.S.—triggering a man-made shortage and a rise in corn prices. Speculators have been hoarding crops on the expectation that prices will rise further. Meanwhile, investors around the world have been fleeing the falling dollar to buy up commodities such as rice and wheat, adding to the speculative momentum and forcing staple prices higher for the world's poorest people. The neoliberal agenda long ago lost its shine for the vast majority of the world's population, although its most earnest proponents have been the last to recognize this stubborn reality. The most recent World Economic Outlook, published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last fall, did note rising inequality in the richest countries: "Among the largest advanced countries, inequality appears to have declined only in France.… The recent experience (of increasing inequality) seems to be a clear change in the course from the general decline in inequality in the first half of the 20th century. " Yet the IMF remained optimistic about the future of neoliberalism: "From 2002 to the present, the world economy has enjoyed its strongest period of sustained growth since the late 1960s and early 1970s, while inflation has remained at low levels. Not only has recent global growth been high but expansion has also been broadly shared across countries. The volatility of growth has fallen. " In recent weeks, neoliberal policymakers appear to have finally realized that widespread hunger could ignite a level of protest that threatens the ruling order worldwide. World Bank president Robert Zoellick recently worried on the organization's Web site, "Thirty-three countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. " Perhaps these out-of-touch policy wonks, in keeping with a long-standing bourgeois tradition, should suggest that the world's poor start eating ethanol. And U.S. workers now looking into the neoliberal abyss should consider following their brothers and sisters around the world in fighting back. Sharon Smith is the author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Haymarket, 2006). 4:05 PM  0 Comments (Add Comment) | 0 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese

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