I’d been perusing titles at ‘Books in Berlin’ (an English language bookstore) somewhat absent-mindedly, but noticing quite a few titles dedicated to international intrigue. I suppose that should come as no surprise, there are many CIA and other English fluent ‘spooks’ in town, as well they must have quite a few local acquaintances and it is reasonable to assume they’d be interested in ‘shop-craft’ reading.

I had no particular interest in the fiction side of the game, it is difficult enough to sort through the propaganda and disinformation rife in non-fiction titles, but then a book I happened to glance inside the front cover caught my eye.

“Body of Lies is fiction but reads like fact. CIA officers admire [author David] Ignatius because more than any other writer he understands the nuances of their trade – fascinating” George Tenant, former CIA director.

‘Well then, why not’ was my thought and I purchased the used paperback Body of Lies.

If George Tenant was accurate in his assessment of the book, and there is no reason to expect otherwise, he’d have done the agency a favor to have kept his mouth shut.

But first, the author. It has been a very long time since quality fiction has been appreciated, and David Ignatius adds to the thought. Though not as cheesy as, say, The Da Vinci Code [my other read of contemporary fiction in recent years and a profound disappointment] the quality is far short of classic American literature. It is not so much a phenomena of dearth of quality writers in modern American literature, so much as it seems there is a dearth of readers who can appreciate quality, which sadly is no longer seen in best selling works, the American legacy of Edward Bernays and a dumbed down consumer society. David Ignatius is no Washington Irving and Body of Lies is no ‘Astoria’ .. but is better than Dan Brown’s cheese that passes for literature.

If Body of Lies accurately depicts CIA covert operatives and actions, as Tenant claims, I should recommend the book as a lesson in why CIA is about as useful to my nation as the folk proverb ‘tits on a boar.’ Other than revealing his taste for crass literary shallowness, Tenant also should have kept his mouth shut because he has authenticated/endorsed:

1)  Cowboy culture and mentality. Throughout, there is a hackneyed and simplistic theme of ‘if we kill first, they won’t kill us’ coupled with the idea ‘what the politicians don’t know (breaking laws, committing murders), won’t hurt them (or us)’ leading to:

2)  CIA operations officers who are culturally so self-centered, narcissistic and vain, there is no qualm felt whatsoever at sending repentant jihadists, even innocents into intrigues, as pawns in circumstance that often gets them killed, to further any objective, no matter how minimal or trivial the gain, attended by the thinking 2 wrongs or 10 wrongs or 100 wrongs can add up to make something ‘right’ for the American people [by a virtually lawless CIA]

One gets a sense the author/book deliberately cheats certain social realities to promote a fantasy ideology, and one gets this is how a ‘body of lies’ so to speak, is fed to the agents who worship this author. The simplistic protagonist is a CIA officer with a ‘conscience’ who falls for the books heroine who does charity work in refugee camps, with plot set in the radicalized Islamic world of the ‘war on terror.’

She works on his head with a principled demand he cannot be CIA and have a future with her because someone has to be the ‘good American face’ with a demonstrable commitment to social justice for the Palestinians. But this aspect of the plot altogether fails to convince because the author hammers on a theme of ‘they all want to kill us’ [Americans] without any delving AT ALL into the WHY.

There is zero honest history presented [zero history in fact, as though it were too embarrassing to present to the reader] of the long time habit of the CIA and other western intelligence agencies manipulation/exploitation of the Islamic world on behalf of western economic models (corporate boards) with deceits, corruption and violence.

In this novel, Murder Inc (CIA) happily runs amok murdering with patriotic spin while going after Murder Inc Jr (Al Qaida) with no end in sight and no honest attending story line of how we had arrived in this circumstance.

Our CIA operational officer protagonist dutifully follows orders he knows will get people killed without cause, rhyme or reason, repeatedly, and demonstrates little conscience in this regard, if only it might lead to one more ‘tip’ and in fact it is obvious he [or the author] only is capable of caring when it comes to the woman he thinks he wants to fuck for the rest of his life, a portrait in actuality of a sociopath (at odds with any suggestion the man has real feelings.) Her character is developed almost entirely on chauvinist habit of perception, what a great lay she is, and no aspect of her ‘caring’ in the purported social cause is developed, bringing across the idea the author (and his fans) are in fact incapable of any depth in this regard.

The sympathy for Islam set in the book is mainly based in admiration for duplicity, and underlines the idea Islamic culture is based on a principle of ‘dissembling’, and there is no ‘ordinary’ Muslim character developed in any sense of a sympathetic human understanding (other than admired as a fellow killer in the trade.) In fact the books ‘happily ever after’ ending strongly sends the message there is none, and cannot be, any American with Muslim heritage accepted as a patriot or trusted to work honestly for CIA.

Body of Lies would be excellent reading for the ideologically driven intelligence agent who wished to keep his or her head in the sand and promote killing without conscience while maintaining the self-deceit a worthwhile action and patriotic goal is pursuit of western economic domination (modern corporate board colonialism.)

They call it missing in action, but those soldiers are missing at home, too, at every wedding and every graduation and every holiday.

Sometimes you meet an old man who has children and grandchildren now, and he never had a father. You meet amputees who had twenty good years ahead of them, playing softball or throwing a football around on Thanksgiving or pushing a stroller and lifting a baby ever so carefully out of it…

No war ever ends.

I remember Mr. Bush in the Press Club video, looking under a table for WMDs and all the elite reporters laughing, Karl Rove and Rumsfeld laughing and all the elite reporters laughing with them. Remember them!

There’s always broken souls and crazy men raging in bare rooms, and women who wake up screaming, and children alone in the dark, listening.

Names and dates of birth on tombstones and monuments, and a mother who remembers every birthday, soldiers buried in consecrated ground and others unburied in jungles and wastelands. This was the father who would have given the bride away. This was the brother who would have been the best man.

No war ever ends.

Originally published at  The Hand That Feeds You

I regard myself as a Christian. I believe in the Gospels. I generally keep it to myself and out of my writing because I have the right to do so. In America, no one may tell me what, how, when or where to worship.

I am protected from litmus tests or societal demands to prove my faith by the Constitution. That’s what the separation clause provides for.

What I am not guaranteed is special status to impose my religion when I participate in public markets. I am also supposed to be Constitutionally disallowed access to taxpayer monies while simultaneously demanding the right to implement policies driven by a theological agenda in those markets.

Period.

Contrary to popular GOP propaganda, there is no war on religion in the United States. That is absurd. What we do have currently is a coordinated effort to attack the bedrock principle of separation. Nothing illustrates this more than the recent brouhaha over the Obama Administration’s proposed birth control guidelines.

Politico reported (shortly before Obama’s clever handling of the controversy yesterday):

“The issue has become highly politicized in an election year, and some polls have shown eroding support for President Barack Obama among Catholic voters. Catholic leaders are blasting Obama for the decision, and Mitt Romney Monday night in Colorado lashed out at the administration for seeking to curtail religious freedom.

The rule’s supporters are confident it will withstand such challenges. Defending the controversial requirement, the administration has often pointed out that 28 states have similar requirements. And those state rules have withstood legal challenges from groups that contend they violate the religious liberties of faith-based employers that object to contraception.

Opponents say a crucial difference between the federal and state mandates could make it easier to get struck down: An employer who doesn’t agree with the state rules can opt out of offering coverage. That won’t be possible under the national health care law, at least not for large employers.

“You don’t have an option on whether or not to provide health insurance coverage,” said James Bopp, general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee. “Under Obamacare, you have to. In these states, you could just decline to provide the coverage.”

The right wing and its demagogues had a field day.

Rush Limbaugh said “It’s not the government’s business to make any church or any religion ‘modernize’ …there is no permissible way the government can do this, according to our Constitution.”

Newt Gingrich called it a “tremendous infringement of religious liberty.”

The Constitution provides the right to freedom of religion. It also provides the right to do business under guidelines set by congress and governmental regulatory bodies. Since when are businesses and houses of worship interchangeable? Also, if we are to conflate the two, when are we going to start taxing them equally?

We are in very dangerous territory here. The GOP is attempting to set a national precedent under which narrow religious interpretations have an accepted role in commercial trades. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is insisting on it. Last week, he called the guidelines un-Constitutional. This serves to illustrate just how little he understands or respects the intent of the framers. Having clearly sensed the ginned-up controversy working with their base, he then announced his intent to literally legislate religion.

Under the original proposal, no one was forcing anyone to violate the terms of their faith. This is because no one is forcing anyone to run a business. You don’t like government’s requirements for the general welfare in order to operate commercially? Close. You can’t abide by them? Shutter your establishment. The vacuum created by any such move will be met by the entrepreneurial spirit.

That’s America.

There is something else quite important here; A majority of “contraceptives” prescribed in the United States are not used for “family planning.” They are specifically used to target other women’s health issues as detailed in the chart below.

It is worth noting that a majority of Catholics, the group singled out by so many “social conservatives” as being under siege or in need of defense from this… support the policy.

America just got rickrolled.

There we were last week, innocently partaking in the annual testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl, when we were treated to an ad featuring a group of supposed auto mechanics lamenting that they never voted for the union they’re in. But look closely. One of these “mechanics” is sporting a gold watch, manicured hands, and a brand new shirt. That’s because he’s not a mechanic, or even an actor.

He’s Washington lobbyist Rick Berman.

Berman is a gun-for-hire—nicknamed Dr. Evil—who specializes in creating nonprofit front groups to push corporate interests. His clients have included the likes of Phillip Morris, Coca Cola, and Tyson’s Foods. But you wouldn’t know it hearing the names of the organizations he starts. The Employment Policies Institute? They fight minimum wage increases. The American Beverage Institute? They go after Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And the gem of an organization linked to the Super Bowl ad is the Center for Union Facts.

Like other Berman fronts, the Center for Union Facts lists no staff on its website. But it does offer up a lot of false information about labor unions, using distorted statistics to paint their staffers as a bunch of corrupt thugs out to steal workers’ hard-earned money. No mention is made of the better wages and benefits union members receive relative to their non-union counterparts, nor of the far more pervasive acts of corporate corruption and coercion that go on in American workplaces. Without a union, workers are left to fend for themselves against employers with unchecked power.

So Rick Berman is not quite the salt-of-the-earth mechanic that Super Bowl fans were supposed to find relatable while being fed anti-union propaganda. Indeed, he appears to be a master of the bait and switch: He creates fake nonprofits to lure Americans to corporate propaganda, and occasionally he shows up posing as an ordinary American in those groups’ ads.

Americans who want the real facts on unions—fakery-free—will have to go somewhere other than the Center for Union Facts to find them.

They didn’t even pave paradise*, just threw gravel all over it. Before and After Pictures Below document removal of a waterfall by natural gas industry contractors, to make way for a road accommodating hydraulic fracturing wells in Blake Run area of Wetzel County, West Virginia.

Using a waterfall to illustrate its point, Chesapeake Energy ran its “Champion of Natural Beauty” ad displayed at right around the same time it was overseeing removal of a waterfall from Wetzel County West Virginia to make way for a road carrying natural gas products in and out of the region.

Ad Copy reads:

“The mountains of West Virginia are an American treasure. Their bold natural beauty reflects the spirit, pride, and fortitude that are so firmly engrained in the character of this state and its people. Chesapeake is proud to be here- helping to safely produce the vast reserves of clean burning natural gas in the Marcellus Shale and to build new prosperity and stability for generations to come. Chesapeake Energy. America’s Champion of Natural Gas ™

BEFORE: 2004

AFTER: 2010

WELL MAP Blake Run, Wetzel County WV

Information in this post was garnered from http://wcag-wv.org/W/Water/WaterfallRemovalBlakeRun.htm Wetzel County Action Group, West Virginia

***
Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels Blog.
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* * Paving Paradise refers to Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell: Watch video where this story originally appeared at City of Angels BLog today.

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By Russ Baker on Feb 2, 2012 (WhoWhatWhy.com)

Is Twitter (a) a leading vehicle for freedom movements, or (b) primed to control and shut down open discourse throughout the world?

This question emerged recently when we learned that the global messaging service was planning to abide by the rules of each country in terms of content it carries. Here’s New York Times:

This week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal. The move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users.

Twitter said it would also “give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.””

Now, you may be one of those people who very proudly have not incorporated Twitter into your life, but this development is still of enormous relevance to you and your world. Why? Simply because Twitter, with its declared 175 million registered users (many of whom, it must be said, are inactive) has become one of the most powerful forces in communication today, arguably more relevant to more people than even traditional heavyweights like The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC.

That’s why we at WhoWhatWhy use Twitter as one of our basket of social media tools. It allows individuals and groups to communicate directly with other individuals, in groups, on an instantaneous basis. As such, it was a vital tool for activists in Egypt and elsewhere (including the Occupy Movement in the United States) to quickly mobilize and have an impact.

Thus, Twitter is viewed as a tremendous opportunity by those who seek to regain the upper hand from the small elites that dominate the political and economic systems throughout most if not all of the world. To those elites, however, Twitter spells doom.

Unless they can neutralize it.

***

Enter the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi royal family has been very, very lucky. So far, none of the ferment in the rest of the world has yet manifested itself on their home turf to the extent to which this dictatorial, brutal, Western-backed extended clan has an immediate crisis. A modest but significant uprising in their own country was dutifully ignored by the Western media, including the vaunted “alternative press.” Demonstrated connections to the 9/11 hijackers, arguably the biggest story in the world on the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, were again studiously ignored by the Western media, again including the “alternative press.”

So the Saudi One Percent have it pretty good. Except for Twitter. If Twitter were to become a powerful tool in the hands of ordinary Saudis, one can pretty quickly figure out the consequences. The royal family would have to scramble to their villas in the South of France or their Park Avenue aeries.

***

With this background, it was interesting to note the news item that Saudi prince Walid bin Talal had invested $300 million in Twitter. Twitter, which is privately held, willingly chose to sell him this substantial stake.

Twitter’s market valuation is something like $10 billion (choose what huge number you prefer.) Given that, why would this company, which is all about empowering ordinary people to communicate unfiltered and thereby get control of their lives and their governments, sell a big chunk to a representative of one of the quintessential repressive forces—an element that has a stake in preventing exactly the sort of communication that defines Twitter?

The very, very little media interest in this development is yet another sign of the degradation of journalistic inquiry—which in turn surely has to do with exactly these kinds of problematical investments.

When the New York Times covered the Saudi Twitter investment back in December, itwrote:

While Prince Walid is known as an outspoken investor, few expect the Saudi royal to use his minority stake to influence the company’s politics. His wife seemed to back that sentiment on Monday, rebroadcasting messages from other Twitter users that described the deal as a financial — and not political — transaction.

“This seems to be more about good business,” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner analyst. “Clearly, he believes that Twitter is not a passing fad but a cornerstone of the consumer social network experience.”

Ayayay. This is a royal family dangling by threads, and they have no reason to want to control the very instrument that could see them overthrown? Well, it didn’t take very long for the other shoe to drop, did it?

In its recent article about the new Twitter restrictions, the Times did briefly visit both the Twitter restriction announcement and the Saudi investment, but chose to bury near the end of the article what matters most, and to water it down to “nothing here, folks”:

Critics on Twitter surmised that the company had been pressed to adopt country-specific censorship after a major investment by a Saudi prince, a theory that Mr. Macgillivray quickly dismissed.

You have to go back to near the top of the article to find out that Mr. Macgillivray is not some knowledgeable and independent expert, but “the general counsel at Twitter.” Exactly the guy who would rough the Times up if it published something Twitter did not like. ( I mean, at least re-identify the guy together with the denial!)

An opportunity to ask why Twitter chose a Saudi royal out of all the prospective investors was squandered. Good reporting—remember that?—would start with finding out if Twitter had no choice but to hold its nose and take this tainted money. (It’s true that Twitter is not the company with the informal motto “Don’t be evil,” but it does like to make itself out to be a good citizen.)

The Times’s weak-kneed approach to this potentially earth-rattling development can be explained. The paper made its own peace with another foreign source of funding—the Mexican billionaire (and possibly world’s richest person) Carlos Slim Helu, who made a good part of his fortune by swooping in on cheap pickings during Mexico’s economic crash in the early 80s. Slim now controls about seven percent of the Times. Just as there’s precious little hard-hitting reporting in the Times on Slim, we assume that Prince Walid’s investment in Twitter has not come without a price.

And the fact that Twitter made its announcement on a Friday, traditionally when folks are paying the least attention, is telling. Clearly, Twitter knew it was a problematical stance. But it has been extraordinarily lucky in how the world’s corporate media have played along.

***

Some commentators have dismissed any criticism of Twitter’s move, saying it was simply a sign of the young tech company’s maturation.

Well, sure, Twitter is a business, and needs to do whatever it can to have good business relationships in every country. But since so many countries are dominated by—and laws written to favor—small elites, the very fact of “country by country compliance” by default compromises the essential value of Twitter’s service.

In a world more wary than ever of the uses of money to thwart democracy and threaten freedom, outfits like Twitter need to be subject of the same scrutiny as, say, the Koch Brothers or the Burmese government.

The bottom line—and one that we trumpet regularly at WhoWhatWhy (which is itself a nonprofit)—is that the most essential elements of democracy, including education and information dispersal, should not be left only or even primarily in the hands of institutions out for a profit.

Tennis shoes, frozen yogurt, even air travel, ok. But when our ability to safeguard or increase our freedoms is dependent on people taking money from tyrants who wish to suppress speech, we’ve got a problem. If any elements with a philanthropic bent, nonprofit orientation and the requisite technical skills and resources would like to discuss an alternative to Twitter, we would certainly be interested.

In the meantime, please, Twitter, don’t cancel our account. Thank you.

WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

by Dan Bacher

California’s privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, opposed by fishermen, grassroots conservationists, environmental justice advocates and supporters of democracy and transparency in government, has “friends in high places.”

Leon Panetta, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and President Barack Obama’s current Secretary of Defense, has been a huge supporter of the corrupt MLPA Initiative.

On August 30, 2008, prior to his appointment as CIA Director, Panetta wrote an editorial, “Protect Our Oceans,” in the Silicon Valley Mercury-News that touted the “marine protected areas” created under the MLPA process.

“California has always been on the cutting edge of policy protecting our coastline and ocean,” wrote Panetta. “In 1999, an unprecedented state law, the Marine Life Protection Act, required the creation of marine protected areas down California’s coastline. These areas are vital to restoring a sustainable fishery. Californians are forging ahead to create marine-protected areas through an inclusive, regional public process that involves sport and commercial fishermen, marine scientists, conservationists, divers, kayakers and educators.”

“In California alone, our ocean supports a $42 billion economy, dependent on the health of fish and wildlife, tourism and recreation. It is crucial to our health, our nutrition, our economy and our spirit. President Kennedy once said that the oceans are the ’salt in our veins.’ By protecting our oceans, we will protect life itself,” Panetta concluded.

The words from Panetta, who served as chair of the Pew (Sunoco Oil Company) Oceans Commission, could have come right out of an MLPA Initiative, DFG or corporate environmental NGO news release.

It is no surprise that the controversial “marine protected areas” that Panetta gushed about don’t protect the oceans and “life itself” from the impacts of military testing, pollution, oil spills and drilling, wind and wave energy projects and all other human impacts other than fishing.

After being appointed as Defense Secretary by Obama last summer, Panetta has been pursuing al Qaeda, waging multiple  wars, urging global support for tough economic sanctions against Iran – and gearing up for military exercises off the West Coast that threaten marine mammals and the ocean ecosystem.

As a Congressman in the 1980s and 1990s, Panetta voted against U.S. military intervention in different countries, but he has become a “hawk” in recent years.

“Some of the wars that I voted against, I didn’t think that that was — you know, that they were not — they did not make the case,” Panetta told the New York Times on October 24, 2011. “But after 9/11, there was no question in my mind that we were dealing with a group that attacked America, killed a lot of Americans, and that it was important for us to take action.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/us/leon-panetta-in-his-own-words.html)

Who supports the MLPA besides Former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Panetta? The corrupt process, touted as “open, transparent and inclusive” by Wall Street environmentalists, is backed by “green” organizations and corporations such as the Western States Petroleum Association, Safeway Stores, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) and the shadowy Resources Legacy Foundation.

The so-called “marine protected areas” that went into effect in Southern California on January 1, 2001 were created under the “visionary leadership” of Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum and chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast. Now that fishermen have been kicked off large areas of the South Coast, Reheis-Boyd has been relentlessly lobbying for new oil drilling off the California coast, the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the evisceration of environmental laws. Could there be an agenda at work here?

Apparently, it’s OK for the military to conduct exercises in and around “marine protected areas” and for cities, agribusiness and the oil industry to pollute, but it’s not OK for a person to catch and release fish from a kayak or a mother and father to take their children fishing in these bizarre parodies of “marine protected areas.”

The failure of the MLPA Initiative to comprehensively protect California marine waters occurs at a time when the military is planning to expand its training exercises in West Coast waters. A broad coalition of conservation and tribal organizations on January 26 sued the Obama administration for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthjustice, representing the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the San Juans, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and People For Puget Sound, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s approval of the Navy’s training activities in its Northwest Training Range Complex.

“These training exercises will harm dozens of protected species of marine mammals—southern resident killer whales, blue whales, humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises—through the use of high-intensity mid-frequency sonar,” said Steve Mashuda, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups. “The Fisheries Service fell down on the job and failed to require the Navy to take reasonable and effective actions to protect them.” (http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/30/groups-sue-over-navy-sonar-impacts-on-marine-mammals-94811) 

One of the reasons why this and similar lawsuits are so necessary is because the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative creates so-called “marine protected areas” that fail to protect the ocean from military testing and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering. 

“If Defense Secretary Panetta really is concerned about the health of the ocean and people, he should order a halt to destructive military tests in the ocean, help us keep fisheries open to sustainable ocean food providers, and join the world outcry for peace conversion,” said John Lewallen, North Coast environmental leader, co-founder of the Ocean Protection Coalition and North Coast Seaweed Rebellion and independent candidate for U.S. Congress in California’s Second Congressional District.

Ironically, a survey boat mapping the sea floor for the MLPA Initiative, supposedly a process to protect marine life, struck and killed an endangered blue whale off Fort Bragg in October 2009, outraging fishermen, tribal members and environmentalists.

The California State Lands Commission (SLC) that December found that Fugro Pelagos, the company contracted to conduct the survey, violated the terms of its permit when it struck the whale.  The company didn’t notify the State Lands Commission prior to its survey activity and failed to have marine wildlife observers on board, as required. (http://yubanet.com/california/Dan-Bacher-The-Whalegate-Scandal.php)  

There is no doubt that the MLPA Initiative is corporate/oil industry/military greenwashing at its very worst.

While the Arizona state legislature moves along two bills that will legally place guns and Bibles into public school classrooms, one Mexican American Studies teacher approached Tucson Unified School District administrators today with a simple request on the eve of the state’s centennial celebrations: Release the locked up Mexican American Studies textbooks, so Tucson children can learn their state’s full history and rich heritage.

Tucson teacher Norma Gonzalez, however, is hardly alone.

Delivering a petition to TUSD administrators with over 15,000 signatures, Gonzalez’ initiative comes amid an extraordinary national outcry by virtually every major teacher, educational, publishing, literary and library association for Tucson to come into compliance with basic academic and intellectual freedom rights and end the indefinite detention of hundreds if not thousands of books removed from Tucson schools, as part of the “suspension” of the school district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies.

The bottom line: Should approved textbooks and novels, memoirs and history books, such as the nationally acclaimed Rethinking Columbus, a largely Native American text that is used in mainstream American social studies courses across the country, sit on the floor of a storage locker or should they be displayed and circulated in libraries until the disgraced Tucson school district faces a Special Master under federal desegregation orders?

However, in the throes of a new desegregation order law suit, and in defiance of a January TUSD school board resolution “to increase its coverage of Mexican American history and culture, including a balanced presentation of diverse viewpoints on controversial issues,” TUSD superintendent John Pedicone and TUSD school board member Michael Hicks have drawn local outrage for stepped up punitive measures against Mexican American Studies advocates, including Hicks’ wild comparison of University of Arizona Mexican American Studies faculty to the Penn State child abuse scandal on a local radio station.

Tucson school chief Pedicone has refused to publicly repudiate Hicks’ serious allegations.

More so, Pedicone, who has repeatedly referred to the Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies crisis as a “distraction,” has also refused to answer public demands to display the confiscated books in libraries or even qualify why any of the removed Mexican American Studies textbooks were in violation of state laws. In truth, the violation-ridden Tucson school district under his leadership will apparently celebrate next week’s centennial without any textbooks or special recognition of Mexican American history and heritage or the Mexican American founder of Tucson public schools, Estevan Ochoa. Virtually whitewashed out of history on the outdated TUSD website, which is riddled with historical errors, Ochoa heroically led the passage of the first state bill for public funding of schools through Arizona taxes, as the chair of the Committee on Public Education. He also famously paid for Tucson’s first schools with his own funds. The Arizona Citizen noted in 1876: “The zeal and energy Mr. Ochoa has given to public education, should give him a high place on the roll of honor and endear him more closely than ever to his countrymen. He has done much to assist in preparing the youth for the battle of life.”

In Tucson this week for a statewide lecture tour, internationally celebrated linguist Noam Chomsky referred to Tucson’s removal of Mexican American Studies books and curriculum materials as an “international disgrace.”

“What we see happening in Arizona poses a threat both to critical education,” renowned education scholar Henry Giroux wrote this week, “and to the very nature of democracy itself.” Giroux concluded with a stern warning:

The Arizona censorship of ethnic studies, the destruction of associated knowledges and the silencing of dissent is one of those events that flash before us in ways that might at first suggest nothing more than a silly, irrational or anomalous happening. But that is far from the actual case. Placed within a long view of history, it clearly signals the formation of those antidemocratic forces waiting in the shadows for an opportune moment to enshroud the entirety of the United States in what the philosopher Hannah Arendt once called, “dark times.”

Gonzalez’s petition notes:

With all of the bad publicity, district spokespeople are going out of their way to say that these acts do not equal censorship and that they support free speech. If board members truly support free speech, however, the least they should do is immediately remove these books from the “district storage facility” and make them available in each school’s library.

In fact, thousands of teachers across the country are now using books and texts from Tucson’s Mexican American Studies curricula in a special “No History is Illegal” campaign. In effect, children from rural Georgia and Maine to urban centers in Oregon and California are learning what Tucson school children have been denied.

According to TUSD spokesperson Cara Rene, “Several school libraries have made requests to have copies or additional copies of the books formerly used in MAS classes for their collections. TUSD is responding on an individual basis to inquiries received about Mexican American Studies classes and the curriculum materials.”

A quick review of the TUSD library catalog, however, shows that there are only a handful of copies of several of the seven removed textbooks. Rene did not respond to the fate of scores of other books and texts used in cancelled Mexican American Studies courses, nor has TUSD responded to public calls for the books to be displayed.

Prior to the delivery of her petitions, Gonzalez, who has taught various Mexican American Studies courses in elementary, middle school and high schools in Tucson, answered a few questions on the TUSD censorship, and the impact of the removals on teaching Mexican American history in Tucson schools.

Jeff Biggers: Virtually every major national educational, teacher, publishing, literary and librarian association has denounced the removal of MAS books from your classrooms. What sort of support are you receiving from around the country?

Norma Gonzalez: The signatures from around the country are evidence of the national concern for the district’s irrational decision to remove books from schools that are heavily utilized by teachers and students. They are also evidence of the national support to fight against an attack on our public education system, specifically local control in that a community has the ability to determine what is effective for the academic success of the specific student population. Support has also surfaced in the form of teach-ins and read-ins whereby educators are teaching the banned curriculum and reading our banned books. This type of irrational decision made by TUSD board is recognized nationally for what it is: A discriminatory ban against books, curriculum and teachers in one department.

JB: Were any of your own personal books removed — or were you asked to remove any of your own books from your classroom?

NG: The administrator at one of my sites handed me a list of the banned books and gave me the directive to box them up and hand them over to her to send to the book depository (book graveyard).

JB: Can you point out some of the books or texts that were removed from your own classroom, and how you included them in your various MAS curricula?

NG: 500 Years of Chicano History, 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History, Chicano, House on Mango Street, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Jimenez’s Mexican American Heritage, to name a few.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed was utilized as a resource in implementing our pedagogy and introducing our students to the idea of problem posing education vs banking education. Moreover, to introduce our students to the levels of consciousness and have our students monitor their thought processes and try and think and respond from a critical consciousness angle in a manner that promotes positive social change. Both 500 years, Chicano, and Jimenez’s Mexican American Heritage were utilized as texts for classroom instruction, and as resources for students inquiry projects on historical events.

And House on Mango Street and other similar literary texts provide a cultural relevancy to the curriculum, which research shows how cultural relevancy impacts substantially academic achievement through engagement.

JB: Only days away from Arizona’s centennial, what aspects of Arizona’s history are not being covered due to the removal of the MAS textbooks?

NG: There will be an obvious omission of Chicano History without the use of our texts as the districts texts are deficient in this area. The greatest irony and indeed a travesty of justice is the district’s history books make no mention of how our public schools were founded and financially supported by a great Tucsonensen, Esteban Ochoa (more irony: I am currently at Esteban Ochoa Elementary school full-time the rest of this year). Today, Esteban Ochoa’s district that he founded and financially supported, has banned the history and instruction of his contribution to Arizona, indeed the United States.

On the heels of January’s announced coal plant retirements in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, this week we received another announcement from FirstEnergy that it would retire three more of its coal-fired power plants in West Virginia. The plants are slated to close on September 1, 2012. Last month’s major FirstEnergy news was that the company will retire a whopping 2,689 megawatts (MW) of coal, bringing the total FirstEnergy announced retirements to 3,290 MW.

All this news means cleaner air for thousands of Americans, and it’s a result of years of tireless advocacy by hard-working local residents and volunteers across these states. It also means less air pollution in my backyard, for my family – one of the retiring coal plants is just 20 miles away from my home here in West Virginia.

But there’s some unfinished business in these states. The transition from coal to clean energy needs to happen in a way that protects workers and communities, and FirstEnergy so far has shown no signs that it will do so.

We welcome this good news for our health, and for clean air and water, but we were disappointed to hear that – unlike other energy companies in the same position – FirstEnergy made no clear commitment that its affected workers would get new jobs in the clean energy economy.

We are calling on the company to do right by its workforce and the communities that rely on these plants for a sizable portion of municipal revenue. We are also calling on the company to invest in the enormous clean energy potential of these communities to create good, union jobs through energy efficiency, wind and solar. As the nation transitions away from coal, we must ensure that the workers and families who have dedicated their lives to producing coal-powered electricity are helping lead the way into a clean energy future.

This isn’t a pipe dream. We know that a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy is possible because we’ve seen it happen, in state after state, in recent months.

Last March in Washington, the state senate approved a landmark agreement between the Sierra Club, Governor Chris Gregoire and TransAlta to phase out the state’s massive 1400MW coal plant between 2020 and 2025. The local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers also supported the agreement.

That agreement created a $55 million fund that will be invested in the Centralia community to help move away from relying on the plant.  Not only will tens of millions of dollars be invested in Centralia community development, but a significant portion of the transition fund will additionally be dedicated to innovation and new technologies that will help reduce Washington’s carbon pollution and create jobs.

Then, last April the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of directors approved a landmark agreement with three citizen groups – including the Sierra Club –, four states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to phase out 18 units at coal-fired power plants and install modern pollution controls on three dozen additional units in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee.

That agreement also required provisions for affected workers: TVA must invest $350 million in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee on additional air pollution-reduction projects over the next five years, including funds to help consumers and business cut their energy bills, support local businesses that are creating jobs in local clean energy projects and cut carbon pollution.

We are committed to clean energy, and we are committed to good jobs. And we will continue pushing FirstEnergy to do the same.

We believe that bank lobbies need to be violated quickly.  By "bank lobby" we mean the entry-spaces, the quiet, clean theaters that radiate outward from the bank’s power, with the secret vaults and super computers at the center.  These fore-rooms secure the control of consumers, reducing our ability to influence the institutions, which are killing the physical life of the earth, our communities and our independence.

So, this is our battleground — where the requirements come at us from cash machines, teller windows, surveillance cameras, security officials, displays of printed matter and tables for banking forms.

Performances by citizens of conscience who demand changes in deadly investment practices of big banks — must begin throughout the world.  Indeed, this has begun with the righteous filling of commons like Syntagma Square in Athens, Placa Catalunya in Barcelona, Puerto del Sol in Madrid, Occupy Wall Street in New York, and Russia and Chile and Madison, Wisconsin and on and on in this glorious uprising.  If corrupt governments are swept aside, the banks — which own the governments, will have their desperate end-game.

By pranks and prayers in the bank lobbies we are walking in through the front door.  Re-humanize the banks!  Use jokes, gender confusion, manifestos, and simply loot the thousands of gestures, costumes and words that the strict decorum of the place has prohibited.  Above all — bring the music! 

The FEAR OF BANKING tour began in Zurich at the invitation of Cabaret Voltaire, where initial in-bank protests were performed with Occupy Zurich activists and Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men.  Now we have come to Barcelona at the invitation of The Influencers, and joining us here are the Russian protesters Voina – the world-class activists who stage strategic orgies in Kremlin buildings.  Evan Roth, the hackster with Free Art and Technology is here.  Many exciting artists have come.  We hope to meet them down at the local transnational bank.

See FEAROFBANKING.COM, or the events page at Revbilly.com – for the banking stops in this first tour.  We will return to New York for the environmental justice’s working group’s (Occupy Wall St.) Valentine’s Day party for Bank of America. Then off to the Bay Area for Occupy the Truth.  Please meditate on our bank invasion as Yeti mop-abominations in Zurich and create your own lobby performances.  We would be honored to greet our 50,000 socialites with your indiscretions!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, House Republicans are rushing ahead with a “transportation” bill only Big Oil could love.

Once upon a time the Bridge to Nowhere came to represent the most wasteful spending and earmarks in transportation.  While earmarks targeting federal dollars for specific projects are gone, the House republicans have bested the bridge to nowhere with a so-called transportation bill that is good for Big Oil.

The bill mixes terrible transportation policy with Big Oil’s wish list: opening fragile and protected areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic coast to drilling, as well as pushing through the tar sands pipeline President Obama has already rejected.

Big Oil gets the right to drill and bad transportation policy ensures Americans get less public transit, less biking and walking infrastructure, and fewer safe routes to school for our kids. In short, the bill is a five-year recipe for driving more and using more oil.

The opposition amassing to the House’s “American Energy and Infrastructure Act” (H.R. 7) is growing and comes from all directions.

Last week Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) had this say about just one portion of the bill:

“I’ve been in transportation 10 years in the Florida House and close to 20 here, and it was truly the worst bill I’ve ever seen. The piece that we (Transportation and Infrastructure Committee) passed at 3 o’clock this morning out of the transportation committee is the worst bill I have seen in the 30 years I’ve been elected.”

Opposition crosses party lines, with Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), a longtime ally of House Speaker John Boehner, opposing the measure in its current form and saying, “It’s his bill.” House Republicans in urban areas don’t want to see critical transit funding cut.

The New York Times does a nice job of summing up “A Terrible Transportation Bill.” In short, by the time three House committees had done their work, HR 7:

• Pushes money to highways while gutting investment in transportation options.

• Jeopardizes future funding for public transportation by ending dedicating funding for transit out of the Highway Trust Fund where transit receives a portion of gas tax revenues (transit funding has been part of the Highway Trust Fund since President Reagan was in the White House);

• Uses Big Oil’s wish list as one of the ways to pay for transit and other programs (money the Congressional Budget Office says is not up to the task);

• Eliminates dedicated funding for options like walking, biking, and programs like Safe Routes to Schools that helps kids bike and walk to school safely, and takes an ax to Amtrak funding; and

• Allows states to ram through projects without environmental review or public input.

Sierra Club joined more than 600 groups from across the country to oppose the provision that ended dedicated funding for transit. Last Spring nearly 70,000 Americans sent a simple message to the House and Senate:

“America needs a transportation system that ends our dependence on oil, cuts pollution, and provides clean, efficient, and affordable transportation options while putting the country back to work.”

Join us in taking action to help kill this bill. Call your Representative today. Just dial:  877-573-7693. The message is simple: Oppose HR 7 and get back to work on a transportation bill that will help end our dependence on oil, cut pollution, and provide clean, efficient, and affordable transportation options while putting the country back to work.  If you can’t call, send an email!

“Now, because of the foreclosure crisis Wall Street banks created with their lies and greed, millions of Americans have lost their homes, and one in four homeowners are currently underwater on their mortgage. In the Sacramento region, 1 in every 19 homes is in some stage of foreclosure,” according to Occupy Sacramento. 

Photo of Occupy Sacramento protest against foreclosures in front of the California Attorney General’s Office in Sacramento on December 6, 2011 by Dan Bacher

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Occupy Sacramento Disrupts Wells Fargo ‘Foreclosure’ Event  

by Dan Bacher 

Occupy Sacramento on Wednesday, February 8 disrupted a so-called “Home Preservation Event” by Wells Fargo at the Sacramento Convention Center, calling it a “public relations event for the bank” and another example of “unfair and deceptive practices towards homeowners, rather than a real effort to help the 99 percent.” 

An exclusive video of the protest can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20308730 

Occupy Sacramento said it will protest again Thursday at 10:30 a.m. at the Convention Center – and this time will protest with a homeowner who says Wells Fargo is making it impossible for her to modify her loan. Later Thursday, the Occupy Sacramento foreclosure team will meet with the chiefs of staff for the County Board of Supervisors, according to Cres Vellucci of Occupy Sacramento. 

A news conference Thursday at 2:30 p.m. at 700 H St. (outside the supervisor chambers) will provide details of that meeting, including requests by Occupy for the County to support a statewide moratorium on foreclosures, and locally, enact a blight ordinance to hold banks accountable for their neglect of vacant properties – the law allows banks to be fined $1,000 a day. 

About a dozen Occupy activists “infiltrated” the Wells Fargo event Wednesday, and shouted a “Mic Check” and distributed flyers to homeowners inside before police tossed them outside. There were no arrests – although 110 people have been arrested at Occupy Sacramento since Oct. 6, according to Cres Vellucci of Occupy Sacramento. 

In a written statement, Occupy said: 

“Everyone deserves to have a roof over their head and a place to call home. For all of us, having a decent place to live for ourselves and our families is the most fundamental part of the American dream, a source of security and pride. 

“Now, because of the foreclosure crisis Wall Street banks created with their lies and greed, millions of Americans have lost their homes, and one in four homeowners are currently underwater on their mortgage. In the Sacramento region, 1 in every 19 homes is in some stage of foreclosure. 

“Nationwide, 4 million families have lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007. The Occupy Wall Street movement and brave homeowners around the country are coming together to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ We, the 99%, are standing up to Wall Street banks and demanding they negotiate with homeowners instead of foreclosing on them. We stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement and with community organizations who help the 99% fight for a place to call home.” 

Below is the complete text of the “Mic Check” inside the Convention Center: 

Occupy Sacramento has a message for Wells Fargo Bank 
Keep the people in their homes 
Make the banks reduce their loans 
Wells Fargo, you have a responsibility 
To keep people in their homes 
Wells Fargo, you can afford it 
After tax payers bailed you out 
with $43 billion dollars 
You pocketed another $40 billion in profits 

Wells Fargo, be responsible 
Write down the houses’ principal 
To current market values 
Reduce monthly payments 
To affordable levels 
Stand by your promises 
Make loan modifications permanent 

No more foreclosures 
No more foreclosures 

Keep the people in their homes 
Make the banks reduce their loans 
Banks got bailed out 
We got sold out 

The Wall Street bailout and increasing foreclosures of homes by the banksters occur within the context of the drive by corporations and the foundations they fund to privatize public services, education, water, the oceans and the public trust. 

Michelle Rhee’s campaign to privatize public education, the Brown and Obama administrations’ Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal to export more Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, and the privatization of ocean conservation through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative are just three examples of the many corporate privatization campaigns now being waged by the Wall Street 1 percent against the 99 percent! 

For more information about the , contact: David Mandel or Cathy Grahnert, 916-769-1641 or 916-996-9170, news0058 [at] comcast.net . 

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

This week, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Obama campaign senior advisor David Axelrod signaled that the White House, having  finally decided to include coverage of birth control as part of primary health care benefits under health reform after studying it for well over a year, is now “willing to compromise.”

Translation? The White House is considering “accommodations” to the policy.

Many of my colleagues disagree with my take on the situation. Many have pointed me to, and I have read, the so-called clarification on Tuesday by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney of what Axelrod really meant. I also read the further clarification made on Wednesday. I don’t find either very clarifying. In fact, I find them worrisome.

In Tuesday’s White House press conference, for example, ABC’s Jake Tapper asks Carney:

Is there a middle ground somewhere where perhaps some of these religious organizations that aren’t specifically houses of worship, but are Catholic or Jewish or Baptist hospitals, charities, of a smaller size could be — could receive the same exemption as the houses of worship?  We’re talking about people who think that some methods of birth control are murder, are a sin, and the Obama administration is forcing them to be party to that.  I mean, that’s the crux here.

And Carney responds:

Well, let’s be clear — and first of all, we understand the religious concerns here.  That is why this balance was sought. That’s why the process going forward includes a transition period where this discussion will continue to see if there can be ways found that ensure that women get access to these preventive services and that those services are covered — as they will be for all other women — and that also takes into account these religious concerns.  But let’s be clear, the rule does not require any individual or institution to provide contraception.  It requires coverage for women who work there of different faiths, or of any faith.

He continues:

I’m not going to negotiate all the different possibilities of how this rule could be implemented in a way that might allay some of those concerns.  That’s what the transition period is for.

Then on Wednesday, Carney said:

“The commitment to make sure that all American women no matter where they work have access to the same health care coverage and same preventive care services, including contraception, is absolutely firm.  That’s the President’s commitment, that’s explicit in the policy proposal. The discussion, and it’s an important one, but the discussion is how can we, in implementing this policy, try to allay some of the concerns that have been expressed?  And the President is very sensitive to that.  As is Secretary Sebelius and others.  But that’s the issue.  So, describe that as you will but there is no change in the commitment to ensuring that women have access to these important services.”

Why does this worry me?

Continue reading….

“How do they justify flooding the Winnemem Wintu people out twice?” asked Caleen Sisk,Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “They still haven’t fulfilled the 1941 Act of Congress that said they are to provide like lands and pay for all the allotment and communal lands.” 

Photo of Coming of Age Ceremony, Bałas Chonas, courtesy of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.

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Winnemem Wintu Tribe slams federal plan to raise Shasta Dam                

by Dan Bacher 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on February 6 issued a controversial draft report claiming that a $1.07 billion plan to raise Shasta Dam by 18-1/2 feet is “feasible” and “economically justified,” a contention that the Winnemem Wintu Tribe strongly challenged. 

The dam raise would increase Lake Shasta’s storage about 14 percent, supposedly benefitting municipal and agribusiness water users throughout California, according to the “Shasta Lake Water Resources Investigation” draft feasibility report. 

Raising the dam would also “increase the survival” of chinook salmon, steelhead and other anadromous fish populations in the Sacramento River by increasing the cold water pool in Lake Shasta, the report stated. 

“Based on analyses to date, all comprehensive plans to enlarge Shasta Dam and Reservoir appear to be technically and environmentally feasible for implementation by the Federal Government,” according to the report. “Based on analyses to date, all 18.5 foot dam raise alternatives appear to be economically justified for implementation by the Federal Government. The 6.5 foot dam raise alternative is marginally justified.” 

According to Bureau spokesman Pete Lucero, the Shasta Investigation is one of five surface water storage studies included in the 2000 CALFED Bay-Delta Programmatic Record of Decision and is a continuing feasibility study under the authority of Public Law 96-375. 

“The draft documents address the potential impacts, costs and benefits of the No Action alternative and five action alternatives evaluated to date,” according to Lucero. “Reclamation and cooperating agencies are analyzing alternative dam raises from 6.5 to 18.5 feet and corresponding increases of reservoir storage from 256,000 to 634,000 acre feet.” 

The documents are available on Reclamation’s website, http://www.usbr.gov/mp/slwri/documents.html.  

The Winnemem Wintu Tribe, which conducted a historic war dance at the base of Shasta Dam in September 2004 to protest the plan to raise the dam, blasted the report for a multitude of reasons. 

EIS is a ‘dehumanizing document’

“How do they justify flooding the Winnemem Wintu people out twice?” asked Caleen Sisk,Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “They still haven’t fulfilled the 1941 Act of Congress that said they are to provide like lands and pay for all the allotment and communal lands. They still haven’t fixed the cemetery problems as it’s still illegal for us to bury our people in the cemetery they set up, because it is held by the Bureau Land Management instead of the Bureau of Indian Affair like the Act called for. And the Shasta Dam is still not paid for by the public.” 

She emphasized that the EIS is a “dehumanizing document – it takes our beautiful culture and summarizes it into a couple paragraphs, and just names a couple sites.” 

“It doesn’t describe the importance of the sites to our people or the heartache and psychological destruction it would cause to us if these places were submerged,” Sisk said. “They don’t talk about us as the people most impacted, or the fact we have nowhere else to go to practice our religion. We can only teach our distinctive lifeway to be Winnemem here. It will be extremely hard to teach the tribal youth when you can’t go to the sacred site, see it and feel it and develop a relationship with it to be Winnemem.” 

Sisk also noted the limitations of the study – the BOR only spent $8,000 to hire one archaeologist who only did one visit to their tribe. 

“How could they possibly know anything about the ‘cultural impact,’” she stated. “Anthropologists, filmmakers and journalists spend YEARS understanding the vast complexity in the survival of an old living culture. They came out here once when they were introducing the whole idea, and they met with us on the river once. They told us they only had an $8,000 budget to do this archaeological report for the 371 shore miles on the lake and the 200 river miles to the Delta.” 

Sisk also said it was difficult to understand why the Bureau is consulting 10 tribes when only the Winnemem and Pit River Tribe will be impacted and have cultural sites on Shasta Lake. “We figure they are going to want to be able to say ‘we got 7 out of ten, a majority to agree,’ so that’s too bad for the Winnemem, but we can’t please everyone,” Sisk explained. 

Plan wouldn’t increase survival of salmon 

Sisk took issue with the Bureau’s claim that the dam raise and expansion would “increase the survival” of” salmon and steelhead – and noted that the study didn’t include any exploration of the possibility of building a water way or “fish swim” around the dam to allow winter chinook to spawn in the McCloud River above Shasta Dam, as the Tribe and its allies have proposed. 

“A bigger cold water pool IS NOT what’s best for salmon,” she pointed out. “It seems as that is one of the first goals in the EIS. But, where is the study that shows how just building a water way or fish swim around the dam would benefit and increase the numbers of salmon? A fish swim would be cheaper and produce more salmon spawning grounds in already naturally cold water.” 

“It would save millions of dollars in the cost of the cold water pool currently. NOAA has already found that salmon need to go up above Shasta Dam to the McCloud because of climate change. The dam raise would flood more than 7 miles of cold water spawning grounds on the McCloud River, Squaw Creek, and the Sacramento River,” said Sisk. 

Other severe flaws she noted in the report include: 

•  The document assigns 61% of the “benefits” and costs to fish and wildlife. “This is a major flaw and major injustice to the public,” said Sisk. 

•  The document is based on the 2004 biological opinions, which have been invalidated by the courts. “On first glance, this might have the affect of overstating environmental benefits; it pretty likely would overstate the water supply benefits of the project too,” she stated. 

“If we could describe what a sacred site is, maybe they (the federal government) would understand the connected lines and that all of them have a different purpose, and they all help us in different ways,” concluded Sisk. “It’s not like a church where you have everything in one place. We could describe how sacred sites are the teachers.” 

The Tribe is now working with a Stanford student on a GPS project to document the sacred sites that are already impacted by the lake level now and to document the Winnemem’s attachment to these places, according to Sisk. 

For more information about the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, go to http://www.winnememwintu.us. Dancing Salmon Home (http://www.dancingsalmonhome.com), a 60-minute documentary still in the making, will chronicle the Winnemem’s remarkable trip to New Zealand in the spring of 2010 where they were reunited with the McCloud River winter run chinook salmon after 70 years of separation.

Peripheral canal, dam expansion designed to increase water exports

The report was released as the Brown and Obama administrations are fast tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal or tunnel to export more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and southern California water agencies. The expansion of Shasta Dam will help to create extra storage behind Shasta Dam to facilitate the increase of water exports through the canal.

A coalition of Indian Tribes, Delta residents, family farmers, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen and environmental justice advocates is opposing the peripheral canal because its construction would lead to the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species. 

A complete Draft EIS will be prepared for formal public review and comment, consistent with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), as additional scientific information and understanding of the conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is developed and incorporated into the Shasta Investigation. A comprehensive public outreach effort will be part of the NEPA process. 

For questions, please contact Katrina Chow, Project Manager, Bureau of Reclamation, 2800 Cottage Way, MP-700, Sacramento, CA 95825, or fax 916-978-5094 or e-mail kchow [at] usbr.gov. To request an electronic copy of the draft documents, please contact Louis Moore at 916-978-5106 (TTY 916-978-5608) or e-mailwmoore [at] usbr.gov. Copies of the documents may also be viewed at Reclamation’s Regional Library, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, 916-978-5593. For more information about the Shasta Investigation, please visit http://www.usbr.gov/mp/slwri/index.html. 

Another very small mural (10 x 12"), this time inspired by Willem DeKooning’s painting, "Pink Angels."

Written by Eesha Pandit and Steph Herold for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Melissa is 26 years old. She has a husband serving in the U.S. military overseas and a young daughter with numerous special health care needs. When they learned that she was pregnant, Melissa and her husband considered their limited resources and decided to seek an abortion. The ban on federal funding for abortion meant that this basic medical service was not covered. Melissa managed to raise half of the cost of her procedure by delaying payment of non-essential bills. The New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF) pledged the other half.

Erika is a 19-year-old college student with an infant. When she became pregnant, her boyfriend had recently been laid off, leaving their family uninsured. She called NYAAF for help when her family refused to offer assistance. She’d saved $100 dollars from her student loan check. NYAAF pledged the remaining $250 and Erika received the abortion care she needed.

Since 2001, the NYAAF has helped 764 women from 25 states, including Melissa and Erika ^[1],  gain access to safe abortion care. In fact, the need for abortion funding is so great that over 100 grassroots abortion funds exist across the country, all members of the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). NYAAF, a member of NNAF, is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to low-income women in New York state who can’t afford to pay for an abortion. This year, we’re celebrating a decade of ensuring accessible, funded abortion care in New York State.

Click here to see full invitation to the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the NYAAF.

Many people wonder why New York State, where women can get public health insurance coverage for abortion services, needs an abortion fund. Abortion is prohibitively expensive for many women with the average cost ranging from about $500 at 10 weeks, to over $1,300 at 20 weeks gestation. Even in New York and the 16 other states that provide Medicaid coverage for abortion, thousands of low-income women fall between the cracks. Many women may be too poor to pay for abortion procedures, but they are uninsured or not poor enough to obtain public health insurance coverage like Medicaid.

Continue reading….

Effective August 1, thanks to a provision in the Affordable Care Act, most working women will have their contraceptives fully paid for, without a co-pay. That’s the good news. The bad news (you knew there had to be bad news, right?) is that the unenlightened among us see it as nothing more than an unconscionable threat against virile manhood.  Especially Catholic virile manhood.

The U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, all male at last count, have decided amongst themselves that they will not be pushed into reversing their age-old hoo-haw laws forcing Catholic women to have as many babies as their wholly-owned bodies can produce. (The laugh’s on them:  Most Catholic women use artificial birth control. ( The Guttmacher Institute says it’s as high as 98%.)  When was the last time you heard a Catholic woman talking about the rhythm method, except to marvel at how crazy that whole notion was?

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, sharply criticized the decision by the Obama administration in which it “ordered almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans….Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”

We’re talking about birth control here.  We’re talking about a woman’s right to choose when the time is right to carry and bear a child.  This is not baby-killing, it’s responsibly managing an event as life-changing as it’s ever going to get.  It’s the smart, sane way of controlling the use of our own bodies and, oh, by the way, preventing the birth of unwanted children.

We’re talking about birth control products already approved and already a part of most insurance policies. The only mandate is that insurance providers will now be required to provide those products without additional cost to all women who want to use them.  The mandate isn’t for the use, it’s for the availability and the cost.

This is a manufactured Right wing controversy designed to kill yet another positive outcome of “Obamacare”, and the Catholic Bishops are more than happy to become the spark that creates yet another phony firestorm.

Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President and a Mormon who, until now, apparently had no problem with that particular provision in the Affordable Care Act, has jumped on the bandwagon and is now on the side of the Catholic Bishops, taking this grand opportunity to rail against his opponent, Barack Obama. about an issue he clearly doesn’t even begin to understand:

“I’m just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights, the First Amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice,” Romney said to nearly 3,000 people gathered in the gymnasium of Arapahoe High School, in Arapahoe County, an area known as a so-called “swing county” that Obama won in 2008.

“This same administration said that the churches and the institutions they run, such as schools and let’s say adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to provide for their employees free of charge, contraceptives, morning after pills, in other words abortive pills, and the like at no cost,” Romney said. “Think what that does to people in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience.

“We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience,” he said.

In addition to Romney, two other manly men candidates for Obama’s job, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are outraged that women should be able to get free birth control. (It only adds to their outrage that women should have the audacity to think they can control their own bodies):

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration’s rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,” she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women.

Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support “personhood” initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills.

Mr. Gingrich wants to withdraw government money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions in addition to providing contraceptives, though the federal money cannot be used for abortion.

A lie dressed in Pink

I wonder how they feel about Viagra and other male enhancement “medications”? Say there was a group who believed with their whole entire hearts that workplace insurance coverage of male sex tool enhancement was not only outside any notion of “health care”, it was maybe even “unconscionable”.  Should that group be exempt from providing it?

And if those bishops had wombs would they be open to letting someone else tell them what they could do with them?  (It’s a rhetorical question.  No, they wouldn’t be open to letting someone else tell them anything.)

Addendum: Catholic hospitals and universities already provide contraceptive coverage:  Here it is. What’s their excuse now?

(Cross-p0sted at Ramona’s Voices)

Why will Charles and David Koch produce a video about their position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline and not testify before Congress about it? The Koch brothers have refused to answer questions about how they stand to profit from the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile long boondoggle that would cut through six states and damage American homes and farmland.

The Koch brothers have an attack-dog website of their own, KochFacts.com, which they have used defensively and reflexively to attack me and others who’ve questioned or investigated the Koch brothers’ vast $100 billion business. The Koch brothers refuse to testify in Congress about their interest in the pipeline, but they’ll make a web video asserting their innocence.

We took the Kochs’ video retreat and added a few facts from the historical record.

Maybe the Koch brothers prefer to let their allies in Congress speak for them? House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Rep. Ed Whitfield got $15,000 in donations from Koch Industries. Is he doing the Koch brothers bidding?

Whitfield is the tip of the iceberg. The Koch brothers and their employees were the single largest oil and gas donors to the committee with jurisdiction over the Keystone XL pipeline. They’ve contributed $279,500 to 22 of the 31 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Los Angeles Times. It makes sense then that Whitfield and his cohorts would shy away from biting the hand that feeds them.

But the Koch brothers admit their business interests in Keystone. A Koch company website confesses to being among the “largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters” at the pipeline’s starting point in Northwest Canada.

What’s stopping the Koch brothers from testifying under oath in Congress? Apparently the Koch brothers are OK publishing statements on KochFacts.com that they won’t repeat in Congress. Why won’t they testify before Congress and put the issue to rest?

Activism around the Keystone pipeline has put the Koch brothers on the defensive. We need to continue insisting the Koch brothers testify in Congress. If they’ll make a video about the Keystone XL pipeline, why can’t they testify about their interest in it?

I invite you to join the conversation with me on Twitter and on our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.