After being imprisoned for three-and-a-half years and severely tortured by his own government, the “Warrior,” a former special forces officer under Saddam Hussein, vowed never to return to the military. Then, when the American forces entered Iraq, he rejoined his unit and has since been a leader in the Iraqi resistance.

This is one story in Meeting Resistance, a film that intimately documents the insurgency in Iraq. During a stop in Santa Cruz, filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors presented their documentary.

The film poses the crucial question: “What would you do if America was invaded?” It turns the neoconservative idea of “terrorism” on its head and calls for an important perspective of empathy and understanding of what it has been like for the everyday Iraqi who has had to endure five years of a violent occupation.

In interviews with Bingham and Connors, they said that in addition to normal people defending their nation, the American presence has made opportunities for the power-hungry to legitimize an extremist agenda.

This March 19 will mark the fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq. Five years, nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead, likely around 1,000,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, and over $502,000,000,000 later, it is time to reassess why the United States is in Iraq, and what the future will hold. It is apparent that this is becoming another Vietnam, if not worse.

While it is true that aspects of Iraqi resistance are motivated by religious principles — many Muslims believe that they have a duty to fight any foreign occupier — the idea of resisting foreign occupancy is not unique to any religion or nation.

What if America were invaded?

Surely those who’ve slapped a flag or a yellow ribbon on their gas-guzzler might show the same neonationalist attitude that propels their support for the war—a war that many believe is still about freedom, still about supporting our troops, and still about 9/11, the day when the “enemy” attacked our soil.

Indeed, many of the reasons people support this onslaught of massacres and brutality are so very similar to those fueling the Iraqi insurgency. If only we could all take a few steps back and see that soldiers on both sides are fighting for similar reasons and show no signs of giving up any time soon.

That is why it is up to the leaders who started this mess to clean it up. For too long the Bush administration has gotten away with using unjustifiable half-truths and lies to dupe the American public into believing that there is some necessity for the U.S. troops to be in Iraq. A January report by the Center for Public Integrity showed that the Bush administration made 935 false statements between Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion in March of 2003.

First came the post-9/11 claim that Iraq supported al Qaeda.

Lie.

Then came the WMD hoax.

Lie.

Still we hear that Iraq is a hotbed for “terrorists” and we need to prevent them from bringing the war home.

Incredibly misleading.

Now the biggest excuse is that a U.S. withdrawal would give way to civil war.

This is true in part, thanks to U.S. war-planes for wiping out the infrastructure and killing civilians, and for the home invasions and mass killings propelling the storm of violence. This all sparked the resistance called “terrorism,” and with it an opportunity for power-hungry extremists to gain support. This sounds a lot like the United States — a mix of war-mongering extremist leaders and average citizens willing to die for their country.

The idea of a “terrorist” insurgency is a lot like the guerrilla tactics employed by the American Revolution.

What was gunfire from a New England ditch is now planting a desert roadside bomb. We have become the Red Coats that our forefathers once fought against.

And while we hear so much about sectarian conflicts and civil war (which is more a conflict between nationalists and partionists), the Defense Department debunks the press conference fibs.

According to a DOD report, 74 percent of violent attacks target foreign military, 16 percent target Iraqi troops and police, and only 10 percent target civilians.

An August 2007 ABC-BBC poll showed that 78 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S. presence creates more violence than it prevents, and 71 percent want the U.S. to get out of Iraq.

It is no wonder there is such a fervent insurgency in Iraq. And in the face of the world’s most powerful military machine, it’s no wonder why insurgents resort to what Bush so effortlessly calls “terrorism.”

So if it is not to prevent a civil war, than why is the U.S. there? Why have Bush administration officials began to negotiate plans for a long-term relationship with the Iraqi government?

There are bigger plans being laid here. As independent journalist Dahr Jamail told a crowd at UC Santa Cruz last year, and writes about in his book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq,” the U.S. is building at least 15 permanent military bases — including an embassy that is three times larger than the Vatican, equipped with fast-food restaurants, rental car agencies, and all the other unnecessary amenities. It appears that Iraq is indeed the epicenter for larger plans to colonize the Middle East.

What we must realize is that our nation is creating this disaster. In the name of democracy, our nation is creating terrorism.

As protests erupt around the nation to decry the turning of half a decade of this tragic disaster, it is imperative that the American people en masse come to terms with these truths, and demand that this occupation come to an end. Unless this happens, no President or Congress, neither Democrat or Republican, will take the necessary steps to end this mayhem and bring home our brothers and sisters.

If the U.S. remains, the “Warrior” in Meeting Resistance is one of many who is prepared to get the job done:

“I hope the Americans send more forces, and we will send them home in coffins.”

_www.meetingresistance.org_

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Five Years Have Gone, the Issues Remain the Same

From the blood of revolution, Haiti was born, its independence the result of the world’s first successful slave revolt. Ever since this turbulent beginning, Haiti has been no stranger to violent rebellions and political unrest, and this constant resurrection of political strife has lead Haitian youth to express their political dissent through the medium of music.

Wyclef Jean, one of the most successful Haitian artists to date, emerged from this rich culture to find popular success in the Western world. Wyclef has used his popular clout to spread awareness about the plight of Haiti, the most poverty-stricken nation in the western hemisphere.

Jean released his latest album, “Carnival, Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant,” last December. The album’s message is deeply rooted in the plight of the immigrant. In exploring such themes, Jean even took the album’s most successful single, “Sweetest Girl”, and released a music video for the song centering on a refugee camp.

The video displays the unique place Wyclef Jean holds in today’s music. By keying into the mentality of American youth through familiar lyrics ripped from popular culture, he is able to introduce the evocative images of a refugee camp to an audience largely unfamiliar with such desolate images or political questions.

“In making people think, he is bringing Haiti to the forefront,” said T.V. Reed, director of American Studies at Washington State University.

Asked how the “Sweetest Girl” video affects its American audience, Reed said, “Through very powerful images. You want people to ask questions and find out more.”

The beauty of Wyclef’s music is that it crosses cultural lines, bridging the gap between the U.S. and Haiti through a shared medium.

“[U.S. youth] can gain some understanding from people overseas, and youth in Haiti can see what possibilities are out there in the world for them,” said Isebill Gruhn, a professor emerita of politics at UC Santa Cruz, who specializes in post-colonial states.

John Tomasic, managing editor of “Pop and Politics,” a new-media journalism and criticism website, commented on the style of Wyclef’s music in an e-mail to City on a Hill Press.

“It’s liberation music generally, and anticolonial and antiracist in particular,” Tomasic said. “Wyclef has taken it to a new level recently, merging these impressions as style and message by speaking directly, in a hip-hop referential language, to the role of dollar bills in all of it. Wyclef’s music is a stylization of the centuries-old Haitian experience of economic and every other kind of exploitation. It is poetry of refugee-nests.”

Wyclef emerges from a rich culture where religion, politics and music are nearly inseparable. Vodou, a religion that relies on music and dance for worship, is the island nation’s most widely practiced religion and has left a lasting imprint on the music of Haiti.

“The words of the songs are often parables, the kind of music that can be used against corrupt politicians,” said Anna Ferdinand, a journalist who worked in Haiti in the mid-1990s. “When you have music as a religion and you are communicating to a god, it is much less self-conscious.”

As Wyclef Jean burst on to the music scene in the mid-’90s with the Fugees, Haiti underwent what many saw as a political rebirth. Its latest dictator ousted, a democratic government was put in place with the help of the Clinton administration and the United Nations.

“Haiti was being rebuilt, and the culture was free,” Ferdinand said. “It was a good time for me to see the culture out from under the military gun.”

Since the 1990s, however, Haiti has descended once again into political violence and abject poverty, and has relied upon a UN peacekeeping force to maintain security in the nation. But despite ongoing instability, Haiti’s music and culture have endured and continue to provide the hope and inspiration they always have.

“There is a certain sense of bitterness and resignation,” Ferdinand said. “There’s a feeling of powerlessness, but when you have a float like music anything is possible. Music allows things to continue and survive.”

Despite Haiti’s ongoing struggles, many Haitians and Americans look to the country’s youth to move the country toward peace and political progress in the near future.

“The only way to change the country is the next generation,” said Laura Richards, an American founder of a nonprofit in Haiti that focuses on helping the nation’s children.

If Haiti’s youth are to make such changes, there is little doubt that they will look to their music for inspiration.

“Half of the population in Haiti is under 25,” Reed said. “This is a great opportunity for Wyclef to effect change through this audience. Youth are always the ones who bring about real substantial change.”

In Haiti, music acts as a reminder of what is possible and what is yet to be done.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Haitians Gather to Sing Change Out Loud

The next time you shiver and shuffle into the ocean wishing it was a few degrees warmer, you might want to bite your chattering lip.

The latest threat to ocean ecosystems to join the usual suspects of pollution and overfishing is none other than global warming and the absorption of excess carbon dioxide into the water. The dissolving CO2 changes the pH level of the water, making it more acidic, and decreases the ability of many animals like coral to build their protective shells from calcium carbonate.

This is a huge concern for coral reefs, which depend on the extraction of calcium carbonate. Studies of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia have shown that the production of protective shells has dropped 21 percent in the past 16 years.

“As many as 50 percent of the world’s coral reefs could be destroyed by 2050,” said Duane Silverstein, executive director of Seacology, an organization that works to preserve island environments around the world. “It’s a staggering statistic.”

Of the 49 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere every year, anywhere from 40 to 50 percent is absorbed by the ocean. According to a Royal Society report, the amount of surface seawater hydrogen ions, responsible for acidity, has increased by 30 percent since 1800 and could triple by 2100.

“It’s only recently that the great majority of scientists have realized the scale of the problem has suddenly taken off,” said Peter Brewer, ocean chemist at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Humans rely on coral reefs in a variety of ways. Species of marine animals living in a coral habitat provide critical links in the food chain, as well as seafood for people. Reefs provide barriers to fast-moving ocean swells, protecting island communities from severe waves. Scientists are also concerned that if coral reefs decline in size and productivity, the amount of carbon dioxide able to be absorbed in the ocean will decline drastically.

Is there a viable solution for remedying the acidity of the ocean?

Brewer says no.

“Everyone wishes there is, but there is not,” Brewer said. “The very long run is that mother nature [reduces acidity] by chemical weathering of rocks, but that takes thousands of years.”

James Zachos, professor of earth and planetary science at UC Santa Cruz, has been studying ocean chemistry by analyzing sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor.

“The only way to fix the problem is to somehow reduce emissions,” says Zachos. “The main trick is to keep [carbon dioxide] from getting into the atmosphere.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Carbon Emissions Contribute to Overfishing

This particular tragedy has become all too common and too rarely discussed.

A young veteran of the Iraq war returns home safely from what may be his or her first, second or third tour of duty with many invisible scars.

The soldier has or will soon develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Having survived Iraq’s militias and roadside bombs, slowly falling victim to a broken mind. After several desperate months spent at home receiving little or no psychiatric help, the decorated soldier takes their own life on American soil.

Nearly five years into the Iraq war, veterans are suffering from PTSD to a degree that hasn’t been seen in decades and are committing suicide in numbers entirely unprecedented in American history.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), 300,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated at VA hospitals after returning from duty. Of those, 128,000 have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, 68,000 with PTSD specifically. Considering the stigma that keeps many soldiers from seeking help, and the hesitance of military personnel and the VA to diagnose the illness, these staggering mental health numbers are probably very conservative estimates.

The two disturbing, intertwined trends of growing PTSD and veteran suicide have everything to do with the negligence and short-sightedness of an administration and military which continue to deploy thousands of soldiers for repeated tours of duty in Iraq and promptly kick them to the curb as soon as they take off the uniform.

The VA, a cabinet-level government agency in charge of caring for returned soldiers, is failing to fulfill its promise to the War on Terror’s many walking wounded. The VA has a backlog of over 600,000 veteran disability claims and a long waiting list for veterans in need of psychiatric care.

Iraq’s veterans have continually tried to bring their neglect into the focus of the national media and the halls of the Capitol building, and they are slowly gaining ground.

Two veterans’ advocacy groups have sued the Bush administration, claiming that the VA has failed to adequately provide services for the growing number of vets with PTSD.

In hearings that began this past Monday, lawyers representing Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth asked a federal judge to order the overhaul of the VA’s entire health system, its mental health services in particular.

America’s leading authority on PTSD went before the court Tuesday and testified that 30 percent of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to be diagnosed with PTSD and that the VA is not doing enough to treat them.

The veterans won a significant victory in court Tuesday when the VA officially shifted its stance on the five years of free health care for vets mandated by the “Dignity to Wounded Warriors Act”. It is no small feat that these two veteran groups, in the course of two days in a courtroom, made the VA change its tune from calling the mandatory free service “discretionary” to an “entitlement” for all returning veterans.

This individual victory should do more than provide hope for veterans’ advocates intent on immediate goals of increasing the VA budget for psychiatric care, providing immediate screening and treatment of all potentially suicidal veterans, and increasing support services for the families whose children and spouses return from war.

It should inspire everyone — especially those of us young enough to be fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan — to demand better for our veterans and push veterans’ issues to the center of our political discourse. No matter how divided this country is about the future course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must all agree that American soldiers should not be dying young at home.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Iraq’s Casualties of Neglect

“This generation is here to change the world.”

It’s amazing how confidently these words slid off Julie Lockwood’s tongue. Lockwood, along with a group of her peers, arrived last Thursday at UC Santa Cruz to show students “Sunday,” the latest short documentary film from Invisible Children, a nonprofit group working to help orphaned and needy children in Uganda. The event took place at the Merrill Cultural Center.

The documentary focuses on a 15-year-old boy named Sunday, an orphan living in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp to escape the violent conflict that has engulfed much of Uganda for the past 20 years.

The film featured four Americans, including Bobby Bailey, one of Invisible Children’s original filmmakers. The film tracks these Americans’ journey into one of Uganda’s many IDP camps, where the four discarded their modern conveniences to live as displaced persons for 10 days. During this time, they met Sunday, who lost both of his parents to war and is forced to work tilling fields in order to pay for his education.

While the bleak pictures of life in Uganda presented by “Sunday” seem to offer little hope for the war-torn country, members of Invisible Children and many displaced Ugandans have new reason to be optimistic.

A permanent cease-fire was signed on Feb. 23 between the Ugandan government in Juba, Sudan and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel force led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony. While the specifics of demobilization are left to be determined in the next few days, this accord verifies a 2006 agreement to end hostilities.

The war, which began in 1986, has since become Africa’s longest-running conflict, with millions of fatalities both civilian and military. The LRA created humanitarian nightmares, employing brutal techniques such as child abduction to bolster their ranks. The Ugandan government, finding isolated agricultural towns to be unsafe for its citizens, forced millions of people into the internally displaced camps to live in dense packs of mud huts where disease and crime run rampant.

Yet with the signing of the cease-fire on Saturday, many are convinced that this could be the end of the 22-year conflict. Still, with the country destabilized for so long, it will certainly be a while before the region returns to a state of normalcy.

“There is still a lot to be done after the war,” said Josh Gilman, who is touring with the Invisible Children team. This includes relocating millions of people currently living in the IDP camps back to their original homes, restarting the agriculture that Ugandans once depended on, and ensuring safety of the citizens who have lived in fear for two decades.

“We’re right now starting to focus on more humanitarian assistance,” said Lindsay Welcher, spokesperson for Invisible Children. “There is definitely going to be a lot needed in rebuilding those communities.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Invisible Children Opens Eyes at UCSC

On a temperate, late-autumn day a few months ago, my father and I climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to look at the most patriotic of American landscapes. The reflecting pool, the National WWII Memorial, the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol lined up like a row of standing soldiers.

“It’s been almost 40 years since I’ve been here,” my father reminisced. “The last time I was here, you couldn’t even see all of this beautiful grass — there were so many thousands of us, standing shoulder to shoulder, pissed at Nixon, sick of that war.”

He didn’t ask, but beneath his words lay an obvious question.

Why, after nearly five years of a war that was originally justified on what we now know were false premises, that has killed 3,972 American soldiers and up to 1 million Iraqi civilians, violently uprooted 4.8 million Iraqis from their homes and cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion dollars, why is your generation not doing what we did?

Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, these questions have been as difficult to answer as they are necessary to ask. And in a city like Santa Cruz, so proud of its progressive activism and so given to 1960s countercultural nostalgia, these questions are nearly inescapable.

And yet our generation continues the critiques: Where our parents’ generation was engaged and idealistic, we are passive and cynical. Where they were cooperative and violently anti-establishment, we are self-absorbed and materialistic. The list of self-evident generational opposites goes on and on.

Beyond these simple black-and-white assertions are common explanations with a bit more historical perspective. Our parents’ antiwar activism drew inspiration and practical lessons from the civil rights movement. In MLK, JFK and RFK, ’60s activists had charismatic figures to rally around. They watched the grisly scenes of the Vietnam War unfold on their TV screens every night. Perhaps most importantly, they had draft notices and the death letters of friends who weren’t coming back. We’ve lacked all of these things and have remained relatively quiet about our war.

Questions about the apathy of our generation have plagued me for years. Now, on the eve of the American invasion’s fifth anniversary, they ring in my ears, louder than ever. But this is because I’m beginning to reformulate my own answers to such questions.

I’m beginning to see signs that we are slowly waking from our civic slumber.

First of all, we’re voting now in numbers that actually carry some weight in national elections, a fact that became abundantly clear with the Iowa caucus. In this significant first primary campaign stop, young voters (ages 18 through 29) flooded the polls, increasing their turnout from 2004 by 135 percent.

A recent Time magazine feature tracked the spike in youth voting, which has extended from Iowa and the early primary states through Super Tuesday, and has continued to lift Barack Obama to an uninterrupted 11 primary state victories since then. In “The Year of the Youth Vote,” columnist David Von Drehle wrote of Obama, “His campaign has become the first in decades — maybe in history — to be carried so far on the backs of the young.”

The article displayed a poll that compared general youth interest in the 2008 presidential elections to 2000 and 2004. According to the poll, 74 percent of 18- through 29-year-olds said they were paying close attention to the campaign, as opposed to 42 percent in 2004 and a paltry 13 percent in 2000.

In our generation’s own slightly detached, digital-age way, we have also turned the Internet into a powerful grassroots weapon that has the potential to revolutionize American politics.

The emergence of rapidly growing online organizations, such as MoveOn.org, has created a new avenue for mass protest and organizing that was simply not available to youth a decade ago. MoveOn has a network of over 3 million members and can make a strong, mass political statement immediately. The organization is currently demanding that super-delegates allow voters to decide the Democratic candidate and it has rapidly gathered over 400,000 petition signatures to apply significant political pressure.

Outside of cyberspace, our generation has also exhibited its nascent idealism and willingness to sacrifice in its little-known, but significant, volunteer efforts. A poll recently used by Mother Jones magazine indicated that today’s youth are volunteering at a higher rate than any point in the last 40 years.

So, perhaps our generation isn’t so apathetic after all.

There is certainly an encouraging trend of increased political activism and involvement. What remains entirely unclear is how this general shift will affect the way we relate to our war, whose blood-encrusted legacy will define these years of our political maturity.

On April 7, when the American occupation of Iraq officially becomes five years old, we might not stage mass antiwar protests that rival those of the Vietnam era, but we must find a way — our own way — to exercise the passion and idealism we’ve always had for our country.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Their War, Our War: Signs of Life from America’s Youth

*LAHORE, PAKISTAN*: Pakistan’s highly anticipated parliamentary elections, held Monday in the shadow of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and growing instability in the country, delivered defeat to the party of President Musharraf and ushered in what many envision to be a more moderate and democratic era of Pakistani politics.

Tuesday’s results handed the majority of parliamentary seats to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — the party of the deceased Bhutto — and the Pakistan Muslim League, the two moderate political parties allied in their fierce opposition to the military-run government of Musharraf. The success of moderates was particularly notable in the volatile North West Frontier Province, a region known as a safe haven for al-Qaeda, whose citizens overwhelmingly opposed Islamic religious parties on Monday.

The election, hailed as a democratic success by Pakistani citizens and Western observers, has raised a number of new questions for both Pakistani and American governments. It remains unclear who the PPP will appoint as the country’s new prime minister, what role the Pakistani military will play within this new government, how the country’s new leaders will battle extremism within its borders and what sort of new partnership will emerge between Pakistan and the United States.

*HAVANA, CUBA*: After nearly 50 years of uninterrupted, absolute rule in Cuba, Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday as the island nation’s president. Castro’s rule — which outlasted the Cold War, spanned the terms of 10 American presidents and withstood such international conflicts as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis — finally ended as a result of an ongoing serious illness.

Castro’s announcement on Tuesday received little fanfare from a Cuban populace that has long expected him to step down and be replaced by his 76-year-old brother, Raúl Castro. At the moment, the general consensus in Cuba and among Cuban exiles in the United States seems to be that little will change in Cuba’s near future, as the country’s Parliament is expected to appoint Raul Castro, without general elections, as the next president and continue the policies of his aging brother. Skeptics of this view, including President George W. Bush and many Cuban exiles, argue that the fading away of Cuba’s longtime dictator should begin a new period of transition towards democracy in Cuba.

*KOSOVOP*: Last Sunday, the province of Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The tiny, landlocked territory did so on the grounds that Serbia’s inhumane treatment of its ethnic Albanian majority justified secession from the country. The declaration was met with the street celebrations of ethnic Albanians, a fresh wave of violence from nationalist Serbs, and a bitterly divided international community at odds over the question of Kosovo’s new and fragile sovereignty. The U.S. and most of Kosovo’s western allies officially recognized its independence, while Serbia, Russia and other nations refused to acknowledge it. Sunday’s events have raised concerns about the prospect of renewed conflict between the NATO-patrolled region’s ethnic Albanians and its Serbs, while also fueling fears that Kosovo’s example may embolden ethnic separatist movements elsewhere, like those in neighboring Bosnia.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The World in Brief

Blink. In the moments before you next bat your eyes, the United States will spend over $15,000 on the war in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, the White House announced its proposed military spending for 2009, which includes a $70 billion emergency allowance to support the Global War on Terror for only the first quarter of the fiscal year. If approved, it would mean that American citizens would pay more towards the military in 2009 than at any time since World War II.

Thus far, the United States has spent over $493 billion on the war in Iraq, and the taxpayers of Santa Cruz alone have paid over $99 million of that cost through 2007. The full scope of these numbers may be difficult to grasp at first, but consider these statistics when put in a local context. For the same amount that Santa Cruz taxpayers have spent on the war effort: 15,237 Santa Cruz high school students could have received university scholarships, or 8 new elementary schools could have been built in our city, or 1,497 elementary school teachers could have been hired, or 40,751 Santa Cruz residents could have received health care coverage.

If we apply the same arithmetic to the state of California, whose residents will have paid $57.8 billion for the Iraq War through 2007: 23,728,801 Californians could have received free health care, or 8,872,491 students could have received scholarships to a California university, or 4,381 new elementary schools could have been built in the state, or 172,946 affordable housing units could have been built, or 871,622 elementary school teachers could have been hired.

The Boston Globe recently issued a report in which it examined what could be bought with the $611 billion that will represent the total spending for the war in Iraq after Bush’s latest appropriation request is voted in. The paper determined that the money spent on the war in Iraq so far could have provided every American citizen with free health care for over a year.

It’s something to ponder the next time you close your eyes.

_These statistics were provided by the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group._

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Iraq War Index: Bringing the War Budget Home

*Primary Update*: In another twist in the Democratic primary, Sen. Barack Obama appears poised to sweep the rest of this month’s election calendar, recapturing momentum from Sen. Hillary Clinton. Obama’s string of victories last weekend in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine brought him closer to Clinton in the race for delegates and fueled the Clinton campaign’s fear that she will have to wait until early March to win another primary. As Obama recently won this Tuesday in Maryland, VA and D.C. and is the likely favorite in Hawaii and Wisconsin, Clinton’s hopes for the Democratic nomination may ultimately hinge upon the highly anticipated primary contests March 4 in Texas and Ohio.

*Germany*: Speaking last Sunday in Munich, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a provocative case to the European public for increasing NATO involvement in Afghanistan. He argued that Europe faces the distinct possibility of experiencing its own 9/11 in the near future and that the best way to battle terror at the moment is to build a stronger western alliance in Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban movement. The speech was seemingly aimed directly at a largely anti-war European public and came after weeks of Gates’ attempts to persuade NATO to send more troops to aid the mission in Afghanistan.

*Kenya*: Violence continues to plague Kenya’s Rift Valley, where allegations of election fraud in the nation’s December elections have unleashed a wave of ethnic killings that have taken over 1,000 lives. In the past week, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has been brokering peace talks between the recently elected government and opposition leaders and many Kenyans are hopeful that a political solution including a power-sharing deal between the two main parties and tribes will be reached in the upcoming weeks. These hopes have been buoyed by opposition leaders’ apparent willingness to drop their demand for President Kibaki to step down, along with Kibaki’s said openness to a possible power-sharing option.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The World in Brief

Think UC Santa Cruz is the only school that cares about solutions to global warming?

Texas A&M and Western Wyoming Community College beg to differ.

In fact, over 1,700 other schools across all 50 states came together Jan. 31 to participate in a nationwide climate solutions forum, with schools from Harvard University to the University of Puerto Rico submitting ideas to cool the jets of global warming.

The national teach-in was organized by Focus the Nation, a multifaceted climate solution project working to synchronize the efforts of the thousands who participated last Thursday. Their main goal was to brainstorm global warming solutions, calling on the power of the masses to find local solutions to global climate change.

“We are a very large nation, but it’s obvious that the youth are ready,” said Garret Reiss Brennan, director of media and public relations for Focus the Nation. “More than 50 members of Congress are ready, hundreds of state leaders are ready. Now we need the youth to keep converting their education into action.”

Now that the teach-ins are over, Focus the Nation hopes to continue this collaborative effort by encouraging people to vote online for the most practical of the proposed solutions for climate change. It has started a venture, Project Slingshot, which encourages people to submit their ideas for focusing the nation on climate change. The project calls people to apply in one of three categories: outdoor fanatics, artists and innovators. One winner from each category receiving a $10,000 grant to help “slingshot their ideas into reality.”

Many of the environmental issues raised by the Focus the Nation teach-in were also given voice at UCSC’s own Earth Summit last week. Since its inaugural event in 2002, the Campus Earth Summit has become an annual gathering of students, faculty, and community members. Throughout the course of the Earth Summit, participants hammered out a “greenprint” for a sustainable campus, dividing into a wealth of workshops and discussion groups before reconvening to share their ideas.

Jeff McClenahan, a UCSC student and one of the event’s coordinators, was quick to point out that while the event was not directly associated with Focus the Nation, the national teach-in proved useful to the goals of the Earth Summit.

“It’s cool that we can coincide it so we can really hone in on the issues,” McClenahan said. “I think we had a lot of productive ideas.”

The event saw representation from local and national sustainability-inspired groups, including the Sierra Institute, UC Santa Cruz Dining and Guayakí Yerba Mate. Jumping the eco-friendly gun, Guyaki has already taken strides in the race for environmental sustainability, preserving six square feet of rainforest for every bottle of Yerba Mate it sells.

“We’re essentially trying to raise the bar for other companies,” said Guayaki spokesperson Matthew Sluder.

One of the discussion groups at the Earth Summit, the World Café, created notes that will be made into a blueprint for sustainability on UCSC’s campus. Many similar actions took place in other schools across the nation, according to Focus the Nation.

This is a step in the right direction, Brennan said, but the group’s efforts are far from over.

“We are currently working on planning Focus the Nation 2 for early next February,” Brennan said, “when the new president will be in office.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at America’s Schools Try to Beat the Heat

*Presidential Primaries*: The whirlwind, frenzied 22-state presidential primary contest known as “Super Tuesday” has come and gone, leaving Republicans with a clearer picture of their November candidate and Democrats with a long primary battle ahead. The highly prized California vote went to Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who also both won delegate-rich New York. McCain’s victories in Super Tuesday’s most populous states — in addition to a strong Southern showing from Mike Huckabee — put an even greater distance between McCain and Mitt Romney, his chief rival for the GOP nomination.

Despite Clinton’s victories in several key states, her battle with Barack Obama is far from over. Obama received the majority vote in 14 of the 22 states that went to the polls, including his home state of Illinois.

*Pakistan*: With its crucial Feb. 18 parliamentary elections looming, Pakistan and the Musharraf government may be headed towards a volatile tipping point. Widespread disaffection with President Musharraf rose steadily in recent weeks, its most visible sign the hundreds of retired generals and former Pakistani servicemen that have demanded his resignation in a series of highly-publicized protests. Like much of the Pakistani populace, the retired officers’ new anti-Musharraf movement is concerned that the president will interfere with the upcoming elections. Having watched Musharraf’s increasingly controversial and often undemocratic actions in the past year — including the dismissal of Pakistan’s chief supreme court justice, the imposition of martial law in the country and circumstances surrounding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto — Pakistanis and much of the international community may have good reason to be suspicious of the beleaguered president.

*Washington*: On Monday, the Bush administration released its proposed 2009 budget for the Pentagon. If approved, the Pentagon will reach annual levels of military spending larger than any year since World War II. The $515.4 billion budget would pay for the standard operations of the Pentagon and the military and would most likely be supplemented by an additional $170 billion specifically allocated for next year’s war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The World in Brief

Democracy is a funny thing.

From the early days of the Roman Senate to the modern days of Capitol Hill, there has always been a constant battle between the idealism and cynicism that people associate with the political process.

Early 20th-century essayist Agnes Repplier said it best: “Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.”

Still, despite the quandary of our government, now is not the time to retire to the hills in obscurity, cut all ties to the modern world, or, the oft-quoted plan B, “Move to Canada.”

The political process has simultaneously become so vilified and caricaturized that for the modern citizen, it’s easier to mock and resent the system than to become involved and change it. It’s easy, at times, to think of the government as an all-powerful, tyrannical force. And yet, throughout world history, the people have overcome these dictatorships, and the dictators find themselves facing the business end of a guillotine’s blade. When the people want something, they get it, and the upcoming election is the perfect way to demonstrate what you want.

No matter who survives the primary battle royale on Super Tuesday, I assume that I will be voting Democrat in November, not because I agree with every campaign promise, but because I am honestly scared of the entire Republican corner. While the November election has the tendency to polarize the nation between the blue and the red, the primary process has the power to give voters a better choice.

Primaries are your chance for idealism, before the heroic possibilities fade into November pragmatism and another boxing match between the ass and the elephant. Go out, vote your mind and your heart and take a stand for the candidates who have not been embraced by the mainstream media.

The media also has a tendency to boil things down to such a level that most people only know their candidates by stereotypes and sound bites. How did Barack Obama become the “candidate of change,” while Hillary Clinton remains associated with the “failed” policies, the sorry achievements, of the last 232 years of American government? How much does the average voter really know about the Clinton health care plan, or the Obama energy plan, or the Kucinich “Department of Peace”?

Idealism does not need to end, and we do not need to settle for the lesser of two evils.

Write to your candidates, call your Congress members and tell them who you want, what you want, and why. In the end, your vote put them there, and your vote can kick them out. Demand something from Column A and from Column B. If our candidates are too proud to admit that their rivals have something correct, then they are not the candidates for us.

We are on the cusp of a mighty power and a mighty decision. For many of us, it is our first chance to vote in a presidential election, and it is a power that we have fought bitterly for. As our parents begin to collect Social Security and we take over as the leaders of this potentially great nation, it is our job to do our research, know the issues, and vote with our hearts.

There is no such thing as a “candidate of change.” It is the responsibility of the candidates to represent us, and it is our responsibility to make them.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Democracy: ‘Heroic Possibilities and its Sorry Achievements’

The battle for the Philippines rages on as negotiations between the Philippine government and Islamic fundamentalist forces have faltered in past weeks.

Since it received independence from the United States in 1946, the Philippines has been a divided nation. Communist insurgents have been ruling the north, the middle of the country by the central government in Luzon, and the south by the Muslim separatist movement. Both northern and southern factions have been in constant conflict with the authorized Philippine government.

“Both of these insurgencies are decades in the making,” said Kent Eaton, a UCSC professor of politics who specializes in international relations and the Philippines. “With the decentralization of [the government’s] power, a lot of local governments have come under insurgent’s power. There’s a lot of speculation on whether [the new] government will survive.”

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has sought an independent Islamic state since the 1970s. However, it has only recently become radicalized. In 2000 and 2001 the MILF broadened its military tactics with increased kidnapping and murders.

John Ciorciari of the H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University commented on the Philippines government’s approach to dealing with the growing Muslim insurrection.

“They’ve tried to pick the most radical elements and fight them with guerilla warfare,” Ciorciari said. “After 9/11 the Philippine government invited [the United States] back in smaller numbers. They are trying to kill off or capture these small numbers [of extremists]. On the other hand, they have also been trying to identify with more moderate elements that can be negotiated with. The aftermath of 9/11 gave the government a much stronger mandate publicly to do what was needed, and with the complete support of U.S. the threat of force is always on the table.”

Kent Eaton also spoke about the need for economic reform in the country.

“Arroyo [current president of the Philippines] is a member of the huge land holding class, who do not redistribute economic wealth. It’s upsetting that the president is part of this regime. Corazon Aquino is really admirable, but she’s also a member of this elite who is against economic reform.”

Corazon Aquino is Undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry. A former president, Aquino has been instrumental in the economic reformation of the Philippines, but the wealth has not been distributed throughout the country, most of it remaining in the hands of the wealthy. Politically, this has further alienated the desperate factions.

Evantoniette Mayol grew up in the Southern province of Mindanao. Mayol moved to the U.S. in 2001 and is now a full time nursing student.

“You can’t make enough money there,” Mayol said. “It’s hard to trust the government with so much corruption. The government and politicians need to change — the corruption is rampant. There has to be some honesty.”

With no end of the conflict in sight, it remains to be seen if peace is a viable option.

“The MILF had everybody’s attention,” Ciorciari said. “The perverse effect of terrorism is that it provided a spotlight for the terrorist groups.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Peace Negotiations Sour in the Philippines

*Primary*: Heading into Super Tuesday, the Democratic primary is still anyone’s game, with only Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Gravel still in the race.

Obama received some key endorsements from Sens. Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry, and the New York Times endorsed Clinton and John McCain.

On the GOP side, the Arizona senator’s recent surge of success has him on top of Govs. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who have had less success in the more recent primaries.

Still, with the unusually large voting group Feb. 5, which comprises more than half of all delegates, the race is far from won on either side.

*The Economy*:

Subprime mortgage rates continue to plague the U.S. economy, causing a major drop in the stock market and the slowest periods of economic growth since 2002. The Federal Reserve is taking aggressive action to stimulate growth, including massive cuts to interest rates. The president and Congress also passed a $146 billion stimulus package to help supplement the push.

The FBI has announced inquiries into 14 lending companies that may have contributed to the current housing value crisis, possibly leading to fraud and insider trading charges.

*Egypt/Gaza*: Hamas, the militant anti-Israel group in Gaza that was elected to power in 2006, blew a hole in the wall between Gaza and Egypt last week. The tens of thousands of Palestinians who poured in to buy supplies were reportedly accepted and welcomed by the Northern Egyptian residents.

Now, Fatah and Hamas, the two rival Palestinian groups are in Cairo to negotiate an amicable end to what is now viewed as a border crisis between Egypt and Gaza. Egyptian officials are pressing Fatah and Hamas to group together, though the two groups continue to fight and are far from cooperating. Meanwhile, both Fatah and Egyptian forces say they will take control of and seal the border.

*United Nations/Iran*: After two rounds of U.N. sanctions against Iran, in punishment for continuing is nuclear program, there has been an observable effect on the Iranian economy, according to the British ambassador.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims that the Iranian economy is unaffected, and promised to push forward with the Iranian nuclear program, which is only intended to produce electricity, he said.

Though there is disagreement between members of the U.N. Security Council on the legitimacy of the Iranian program, U.N. diplomats say a third round of sanctions is on the way in the following weeks and threaten “further appropriate measures” should the nuclear program continue.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The World in Brief

Delivering an earnest speech from the pulpit on U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Iran to a packed church of Santa Cruz’s most ardent anti-war activists, Republican Scott Ritter found his audience enraptured and largely in agreement with his message—despite his political affiliation.

Ritter’s political trajectory has been an interesting one. Working as the Chief United Nations weapons inspector for Iraq from 1991 to 1998, he has since become a leading voice in the anti-war movement.

Speaking with ease to his captivated audience, Ritter sought to answer his own rhetorical questions regarding Iraq.

Of U.S. military forces in the country, he asked, “Why are they there, and what are they doing?”

According to Ritter, the recent surge of U.S. troops to Iraq, which has been praised by Republican Congressman Tim Walberg after his recent tour of the country, has not solved any of Iraq’s existing problems.

“We don’t have a clue what we are doing in Iraq,” Ritter said.

When asked about the aggressiveness of current U.S. foreign policy, Ritter replied, “As our population increases there is an exponential increase in our consumption of the world’s resources. The demands of our foreign policy feed our addiction to the world’s resources.”

A former media pundit, Jeff Cohen, who is also founder of a national media watchdog group called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), preceded Ritter at the meeting.

While touching upon media blunders from Iraq and abroad, he wove in biting criticism of the mainstream media, asserting that they led the nation into war based on false pretenses.

“The motto of the mainstream media,” Cohen said, “seems to be ‘we will get fooled again.”’

After Cohen’s assault on corporate media, Scott Ritter began his talk in support of the previous speech’s message.

“I am just disgusted with the mainstream media,” Ritter began. He continued by providing steps for the average person to synthesize information for themselves, rather than relying on television networks and news outlets.

“God bless Google,” Ritter said, praising the search engine’s ability to bring information from abroad to the fingertips.

The event was well-received by its Santa Cruz attendees. According to one UC Santa Cruz student (who wished to remain anonymous), “Events like these are beneficial to the community, especially when important issues are on the table like Iran and Iraq. It’s nice to know that some political authorities have agreeable views on foreign policy.”

The event was sponsored in part by Media Watch, a group fighting commercial media, and was represented at the event by its founder and director, Ann Simonton.

“I don’t believe that any media that has a commercial alongside it is unbiased, and that is very unfortunate,” Simonton said. She went on, like Ritter, to encourage people to seek out information on their own.

Jeff Cohen echoed these sentiments and summarized the evening’s central theme best when he stated, simply: “Don’t take the mainstream media lying down.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Town Hall Meeting Focuses on Foreign Policy, Media

The recent Kenyan riots have proven to be yet another distraction in peace talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Juba, Sudan, as the two sides enter their 18th month of negotiations.

With the deadline looming for President Musevini’s Jan. 31 promise for peace, hope for the entire region could hinge on the successful outcome of the Juba peace talks. The LRA also has operations in southern Sudan, and it is likely that if negotiations break down, regions surrounding Uganda will be adversely affected.

John Prendergast of the Enough Project, a humanitarian group aimed at ending genocide in Africa, said that “[Musevini] will give it more time if it looks like there could be some progress.”

According to Katherine Southwick, an advocate with the non-profit advocacy group Refugees International, a functioning peace agreement can be reached, but will not come until after the Jan. 31 deadline.

“[Museveni] may still hold to the deadline, but it won’t prove workable,” Southwick said.

The Juba peace talks have been unstable at best since their inception in July of 2006. Recent blows to the peace process, including the defection of many high-ranking LRA officers and the assassination of Vincent Otti—Joseph Kony’s second-in-command—have made the possibility for peace seem dim.

Otti was the main driving force behind the LRA’s involvement in the Juba peace talks, and it was thought that without him negotiations were bound to crumble. Yet several organizations concerned with peace in the region remain hopeful that the peace talks will come into fruition.

With the defection of ranking LRA officials and continuing internal conflict, it seems that Kony has lost some of the power and influence that has allowed him to lead the LRA in guerilla warfare.

“Kony has painted himself into a corner,” said a spokesperson for Resolve Uganda. “He knows they’re going to have to come back to the table.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Despite Setbacks, Hope for Peace in Northern Uganda

According to a recent UN report, 2007 was one of Afghanistan’s deadliest years since the war broke-out in 2001. The continuing military difficulties faced by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are partly the result of what has been regarded as a change in the nature of the Afghan insurgency.

“We saw a definitive shift in tactics,” said Gregg Sullivan, director of the Bureau of South & Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. State Department. “The Taliban forces resorted to a strategy far more akin to that of terrorists. Roadside bombs, suicide bombing, and kidnapping became their primary tactics.”

According to Sullivan, this tactical shift initiated by Taliban insurgents has been met with a change in NATO military strategy. Sullivan referred to this strategy as one of “steady expansion” in which diplomacy is used to ensure political ties. The strategy also focuses on initiating economic development and transferring security concerns to allied Afghan forces.

This shift reflects a growing U.S. and NATO emphasis on reconstruction and economic development in Afghanistan, but such efforts have faced great challenges thus far.

“The country was so destroyed that almost everything remains to be done,” said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute. “The government is trying to setup industries and infrastructure. Outside of Kabul the situation is very complex. The Afghan government does not have a great deal of capacity.”

According to Akbar Ayazi of Radio Free Afghanistan, there is a direct link between quality of life for Afghan civilians and the strength of the Taliban insurgency.

“Not much has been done in the reconstruction,” Ayazi wrote in an e-mail. “People who are unhappy with the situation, if not joining the insurgency, at least somehow support them.”

Much of the humanitarian community is also concerned with the lack of successful reconstruction in Afghanistan and its negative effects on human rights issues in the country.

“We need to overhaul how we deal with Afghanistan. We need to totally review where all this military aid is going,” said Elsie DeLaere of Amnesty International Afghanistan. “We’ve got to come up with a more democratic government, even if we have to pressure the current regime. The people who have been abused do not forget.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Afghanistan Struggles with Needed Reconstruction

*U.S. Presidential Primaries* The strong victories of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses signaled what many see as a fundamental shift in the direction of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Both candidates triumphed by a margin of at least seven percentage points and owed their success to support from specific voter groups: Huckabee from Iowa’s Evangelicals, and Obama from the state’s under-30 population.

The two candidates took these victories to Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, where a record voter turnout was expected to solidify Obama’s gains and breathe new life into John McCain’s campaign. Though McCain finished first for Republicans, Obama took second place for the Democrats, behind Hilary Clinton.

*Iraq* The year 2007 marked Iraq’s deadliest year since the 2003 invasion. But last month levels of insurgent attacks and civilian deaths declined.

To the disappointment of the international community, the Shia-dominated Maliki government has failed to use this drop in bloodshed as a means to foster political reconciliation across ethnic lines, opening the door for the possible resumption of previous levels of sectarian violence in Iraq.

Pakistan

The recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the charismatic former prime minister of Pakistan, plunged the unstable country into desperate mourning and further political uncertainty.

At the time of her death, Bhutto had been leading a parliamentary campaign in opposition to the Musharraf government. She was seen by many Pakistanis and western observers as the best candidate to lead the country toward authentic democracy, opposed the the presence of al Qaeda within its borders.

President Musharraf has denied charges that the Pakistani government was in any way responsible for Bhutto’s death, and has set a tentative date for elections in February.

*Kenya* Long viewed by its African neighbors and western allies as an “oasis of calm” and a promising democracy in one of the world’s most violently unstable regions, Kenya descended into tribal warfare following its Dec. 27 presidential elections.

Opposition leaders in Kenya and the European Union are in agreement that Kenya’s election commission manipulated the vote’s results in order to keep the Kenyan government in power.

The tension between president Mwai Kibaki of the Kikuyu tribe and opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe has unleashed a long-dormant wave of tribal violence in Kenya, resulting in the deaths of at least 500 people and jeopardizing prospects of peaceful democracy in the country.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at A Snapshot of World Affairs

Who is the Bhutto family?

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the fourth president and 10th prime minister of Pakistan. His wife Nusrat Bhutto took over his role after his execution. Their daughter, Benazir Bhutto, succeeded her mother as leader of the PPP.

*What is Benazir Bhutto known for?* At 35, she was the youngest person and first woman to lead the government of a modern Muslim-majority country. Her accomplishments include nationalist reform and modernization.

*When was Benazir Bhutto prime minister?* She served as leader of the PPP from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996. Her government was dismissed on corruption charges and she went into exile in 1998.

*When did she come back?* Bhutto returned Oct. 18, 2007 to prepare for the 2008 national elections. Before her assassination on Dec. 27, Bhutto had discussed a possible power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down as military general in November. Bhutto promised to fight against terrorism and for democracy.

*How was she killed?* While driving away from a rally in the city of Rawalpindi, Bhutto was shot in the head by a gunman as she leaned out of the car’s sunroof to wave to the crowd. As no autopsy has been performed, the cause of death is still being disputed. Initial reports attributed her death to bullet wounds, but recently the Interior Ministry claimed the 54-year-old fractured her skull while ducking back into the vehicle. Al Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid has claimed responsibility.

*What happens now?* The elections have been delayed until February. Bhutto’s oldest son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 19, was appointed chairman of the PPP on Dec. 30, with his father Asif Zardari as co-chairman. Asif will lead the party until Bilawal completes his studies at Oxford University.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Benazir Bhutto Background

Sarah Vowell’s latest book “Assassination Vacation” delves into the dark world of the first three American presidents to be assassinated. Vowell, best known for her work on “This American Life,” uses her biting sarcasm to peel away the layers of history and reveal the core of inherent fables present in American history.

While Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley all held a different era, they shared the same fate. As the pages turn, they unfold the stories of the lives of presidents and their assassins.

The role of U.S. president has not always existed in its current parameter. Originally it was intended to be but a part of the greater formalities of government. U.S. expansions, however, led to both geographic annexation and political extension. As a result, the role of the president began to expand as well.

“It was very much a historic development,” said Daniel Wirls, professor of politics at UC Santa Cruz specializing in American political history. “It stems from the nature of how we have elected the president. The president becomes the single most representative figure of the people.”

Consequently the president comes to embody the democratic ideals of the American people. Furthermore, the constitutional gaps act as a medium for the president to convey his power and responsibility.

“The presidents gradually, over time, asserted their role in domestic and foreign affairs,” Wirls said. “They became the agents responsible for delivering legislation. From Theodore Roosevelt forward, every president tries to lead the world and the country.”

In her book, Vowell travels across the United States in search of the sites which commemorate the assassinations of the presidents. Geographic maps of the presidents’ lives emerge and divulge a tangled web of humanity. While telling these stories, Vowell is able to elicit feelings of empathy toward both the presidents and their assassins.

When presidents are emblematized, their innate corporeality tends to be lost. Vowell returns us to their humanity in the most striking way, by illuminating their mortality. Vowell poses the question of our role in maintaining our own democratic ideologies though never relinquishing our own beliefs to what we believe is the higher authority.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s title as an emancipator has come under attack in recent years, explained Tim Townsend, historian for Lincoln house. His mystique and public appreciation, however, has only been increased by his death.

“Since the time of the assassination, people started coming to places associated with his life. Lincoln the man is gone; through viewing the places he inhabited, they can reconnect with him. In order to get insight, it helps to get Lincoln off of Mount Rushmore and into a more relatable form,” Townsend said.

Vowell closes Lincoln’s chapter with a speech by Fredrick Douglass, which he gave at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Lincoln Park. The memorial depicts a shirtless slave kneeling at Lincoln’s feet. Needless to say, Douglass was not impressed.

To Vowell, Douglass seeks to commemorate the progress Lincoln was forced to undergo as a result of the civil war. His original intent might not have been to free the slaves, but he did accomplish the feat.

Douglass concluded with “Never … shall I ever forget the outbursts of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the Emancipation Proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness.”

It is strange that to his dying day John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, believed that his action was for the good of the American people.

James A. Garfield

Garfield, the second president to be assassinated, is best known as the “forgotten president.” Garfield was a quiet man who lacked the valor of the more famous presidents. He spent only six months in office before being assassinated.

“I sympathize with his bum luck of a death,” writes Vowell. “But I find his book addiction endearing, even a little titillating considering that he would sneak away from the house and the House to carry on a love affair with Jane Austen.”

Charles J. Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin, lived a rather sad life himself. It is suspected that he suffered from at least one mental illness. While awaiting his execution he wrote a sad little play in which all the people who have prosecuted him are sentenced to hell by God. It would be comical if it were not so sad.

“Garfield was one of the assassinated presidents. As such, he sacrificed his life for his country,” said Allison Sharaba, operations manager at the James A. Garfield Historical Society. “He was a wonderful public speaker, and had a magnanimous character. Had his life not been cut so short he would have lead the country to greatness.”

William McKinley

McKinley was the third president to be assassinated, and as a veteran of the Civil War McKinley was leery of war. Nonetheless, he played an instrumental role in U.S. foreign expansion.

“I’ve been through one war. I have seen the dead piled up, and I have not wanted to see another,” McKinley once said. And yet McKinley led the U.S. into two wars during his presidency: the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War of 1899.

The U.S. entered the Spanish-American War after coming into conflict with Spain over Cuba. The Philippine-American War erupted over U.S. occupation of the Philippines.

His assassin, Leon Czolgosz, found this fact disparaging. “It does not harmonize with the teachings in our public schools about our flag,” Czolgosz said of the Philippine-American War.

“McKinley got overshadowed by Teddy Roosevelt, but he’s considered one of the best American presidents,” said Patrick Finan, the director of the McKinley Library. “He gradually increased presidential power. He was able to get the U.S. to look at itself on the international level. Essentially, he brought us out of our isolation.”

Compassionate to the very end, McKinley saved his assassin’s life. After being shot, McKinley looked up to discover his assassin was being lynched by the surrounding mob. He responded by saying “Go easy on him, boys.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Memoirs of a Presidential Assassin

Fueled by nothing more than Gatorade and willpower, seven students and one professor at Columbia University in New York went on a hunger strike on Nov. 7 to fight for fullfillment of unmet student demands on a number of administrative policies.

The demands of those abstaining from food are similar to some issues held by students at UC Santa Cruz regarding an ethnic studies department and a plan for campus expansion that does not negatively impact the community.

The strike formally ended on Nov. 16 as the strikers ate bread after administrators agreed to all but one demand — a stop to university expansion into neighboring communities, including Harlem. The strike consisted of students within Columbia University and college affiliates, like Barnard College, a small liberal arts college for women.

Strikers risked malnourishment and physical maladies to gain momentum. Second-year Aretha Choi, a Barnard College double major, was admitted to the hospital after five days without food.

“I was more disappointed than anything else due to my own physical limitations,” Choi said. “It was also disappointing to me that the lack of administrative response had let the strike go on until this time.”

Katie Miles, a second-year anthropology student of Barnard College, did not discontinue eating, but helped with outreach and meeting with administrators before, during, and after the strike in order to reach a reasonable solution.

“For me, it was a really intense process to do a hunger strike. No one went into it saying ‘I have to do this, there’s no other way,’” Miles said.

The grievances included an enhanced ethnic studies department with more funding for faculty, updating a core curriculum class to include topics on colonialism and race, and to support responsible university expansion with community support.

Leading up to the strike itself, students allied together against an administration that made students feel “marginalized,” according to Miles.

“What connected all of our demands together was a feeling that, first, students weren’t having a voice, but also a sense of institutionalized racism [at Columbia University] that united all of these issues,” Miles said.

The campus faced a number of criminal acts of hate leading up to the strike, including a noose placed on the door of an African American professor’s office, images of swastikas placed around campus, and homophobic images splashed in bathrooms. The controversial visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought a variety of passionate responses, including scathing remarks from Columbia President John Bollinger.

“Starving has been going on since the two years I have been there,” Choi said. “By that, I’m talking about educational starving.”

For Choi, there is uncertainty whether she will even be able to fulfill the classes required for one of her majors — Asian Studies — because of the lack of class options.

Some students who were not involved by with the hunger strike urged the strikers to consider alternate viewpoints. Students opposed to the hunger strike created a Facebook group “We DO NOT Support the Hunger Strikers” in response to a Facebook group and blog in favor, “We Support the Hunger Strikers,” and voiced their opinions at the rally that occurred at the end of the strike on Nov. 16.

“There was no position for someone who is still educated but in opposition to the demands, and that sort of language is very dangerous,” said Josh Mathew, a third-year Columbia student who helped coordinate the Facebook group against the strike.

Mathew explained that the strikers’ misuse of language throughout the process created tensions for those in opposition to the strike.

“If you don’t necessarily support the hunger strike, are you racist? Are you an Uncle Tom? That was a very big concern among a lot of students,” Mathew said.

An agreement was not reached on the last grievance — a joint solution with community involvement to the university’s expansion plan. The local activist group Coalition to Preserve Community (CPC) is working to end the university’s expansion plans that would potentially bulldoze through 18 acres of West Harlem.

A Nov. 16 press release stated, “Columbia and its politicians want to sweep the work of community members under the rug and invent some last-minute deal that will be put forth as purported ‘mitigation’ of the devastation the Columbia plan that will wreak in the community.”

Officials from Columbia University did not respond for comment.

Addressing the university’s efforts to ensure affordable housing in the community, a press release quoted Columbia President John Bollinger as saying: “From the beginning we have been committed to working with our West Harlem neighbors and their representatives in finding ways to ensure that the University and community can grow together in mutually beneficial ways.”

The expansion plan is currently under review. Community leaders hope a dialogue will develop with Columbia before massive construction begins.

_For more information of the hunger strike and the demands, visit: http://cu-strike.blogspot.com/_

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Columbia Hunger Strike Begins and Ends, Questions Remain

As fewer and fewer corporations take up more and more of the popular media spectrum, it becomes necessary to analyze, question, and investigate the news that we all receive. Jeff Cohen set out to do just that, by founding Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a nonpartisan media watch group. Now, years later, he has become involved in a new project to fight for fair news in television. He sat down with City on a Hill Press to talk about corporate media, the state of journalism, and the fight for a fair story with his new project, Independent World Television, also known as The Real News.

CHP: Can you tell me a little about your background in journalism and what led you to form FAIR?

Jeff Cohen: I’d been a freelance journalist for independent media in the ‘70s and early 1980s. I traveled around Europe in the early ‘80s and it was there the idea for FAIR crystallized when I saw the difference between, for example, television news in Europe and television news in our country. Television in European countries at the time was dominated by public broadcasting networks, often insulated from power and politics. I started FAIR in ‘86; it was at the time the U.S. media were beginning to conglomerate in fewer and fewer, larger hands. At the time we had the Reagan presidency, which was pretty similar to the first five years of the Bush presidency, characterized by very soft coverage of a White House that was engaging in deception and exaggeration almost as a matter of policy. As I was the executive director of FAIR, I ended up with a new wrinkle to my journalistic career in the ‘90s and into 2003 when I started appearing on TV as a pundit, and ultimately received some paychecks from all three cable news channels, CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. That’s what led to my latest book, which was sort of a tell-all, called “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” So I’ve seen media from both the independent media and the corporate; I’ve seen the media from the inside and the outside as a critic.

CHP: Now it looks like you’re involved in Independent World Television.

JC: Yeah, I’ve been involved in a number of independent media projects. That’s one of the more exciting ones, Independent World Television, also known as The Real News. They’re attempting to put together a TV channel in the English language that would be a serious news channel, as opposed to say CNN, Fox, and MSNBC and an alternative to those so-called “news channels.” Independent World Television / The Real News is an effort to get viewer sponsors across the globe who will pay so that journalists can bring them the news on cable, or on satellite, or at least on the web.

CHP: One of the first thing that it says on the Independent World Television / Real News website is “No government funding, no corporate funding, no advertising, no strings.” How important do you think that is?

JC: That’s crucial, because I worked at the cable news channels in this country, and the very presence of the conglomerate owners, I believe, and I’ve experienced it and witnessed it, their very presence means that certain stories are off-limits. When I was at MSNBC I didn’t need a manager to tell me. And managers sometimes did give us very weird orders to shape the news toward the Bush administration, but I didn’t need any explicit order from top management at MSNBC to know that with General Electric as my boss, it wasn’t going to help my career if I said “Hey, why don’t we investigate how the Hudson River got polluted by this big corporation which prevented the river from being cleaned up the last 30 years.” Because the polluter was GE, I knew not to even mention it. Or the perks that CEOs get, that top management gets, at the time that GE is cutting health benefits for its union workers company-wide. That’s a huge story that affects millions of people and would be fascinating to viewers, but if GE is your boss, you know that’s off-limits. If you work at ABC, you know Disney’s interest in sweatshops, so-called “free trade,” tax policy, all of these big conglomerates have huge lobbying operations in Washington. When you have a new thing called Independent World Television that says “no corporate money, no government money, no strings,” it really matters, because there the journalists can just go after the story and know that all of their income is coming from the viewers, and there are no hidden agendas. If you are a viewer of mainstream corporate TV news, you will not know, but you will suspect, if you are a skeptical person, that there are hidden economic agendas blocking certain news stories and blocking certain points of view. On Independent World Television, you won’t have that worry.

CHP: A number of people already view public media as an alternative, such as PBS and NPR. Do you think that the government funding interferes with their journalistic mission?

JC: Oh yeah, the government funding interferes, I’d say on public TV what interferes even more is the corporate funding. When you and I donate our $50 or $100 it goes to staff salaries, it goes to keeping the electricity turned on in the studios. But the corporate funding, when they come in with, say, one-fifth of all the funding in the system, they don’t give money for keeping the light bulbs working. They give the money for program A and not for program B. They are certainly not going to fund a labor show that tells you about corporate exploitation. In American public TV, there’s the corporate veto, that corporate underwriting determines that certain programs will fly and certain programs will never launch.

CHP: We’re all very excited for the official launch of Independent World Television / The Real News next year. Is there anything you’d like to add?

JC: The exciting thing in the realm of media is that corporate mainstream media have been discredited heavily through their cheerleading for the Iraq invasion, which is widely understood across the political spectrum to have been a disaster that mainstream journalism aided and abetted. It’s helping the growth of independent media, some of whom are able to hire young journalists as staff. That’s the exciting development, independent media and its growth is something that can help change the face of this country and this world.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Search for FAIRness

On a hot summer night this past July in Dubai, 15-year-old French-Swiss Alexandre Robert was taken hostage by acquaintances of a friend, sodomized against his consent in the desert by three men, and then dropped off behind a hotel.

The harrowing case of Alexandre Robert has brought an onslaught of international media attention in recent months to the Middle Eastern city of Dubai, capital of the United Arap Emirates (UAE), and requires U.S. citizens to examine their rape prevention standards in response.

The UAE are often considered the most progressive Middle Eastern country due to their status as a worldwide financial juggernaut and vacation hot-spot. Dubai has been under intense media scrutiny since Robert’s mother Veronique came forward publicly with her son’s story by informing media (with whom she has connections) in France and creating a website, http://boycottdubai.com.

Locally, the Rape Prevention Education group on campus helps to fight for survivors of rape who are continuously silenced by skeptics.

Gillian Greensite, directior of Rape Prevention Education, said that it is common for people to dismiss males’ claims that they were raped.

“People can be quite surprised, because they either assume that the male who is raped or the person raping is gay,” Greensite said.

Robert’s sexuality is unknown, although in recent court proceedings the defendants’ lawyers claimed Robert is a sex addict. According to media reports, the UAE does not recognize rape against a male as a criminal offense, instead classifying rape of a male as “forced homosexuality.” Robert may face up to a year in prison solely because he was raped, though court proceedings against two of the attackers are currently underway. The third attacker will be tried in a juvenile court.

Niki Akhavan, a specialist on UAE law and policy, maintains that UAE governments are making an effort to correct human rights violations.

“The UAE has been among the most responsive governments to respond to human rights concerns,” Akhavan said.

Larger questions, like why a person would choose to rape another in the first place, are found all over the world – including in Santa Cruz.

“Sex for such men is conquest, overcoming – not mutual pleasure,” Greensite said. “Sex is about power and domination for these men.”

Regardless of the attackers’ internal struggles, Akhavan says the Dubai government’s policies and laws are faced with the issue of translation. “The issue of whether or not male rape is recognized by law is a little bit sensitive because the translation can give an inaccurate representation of the law’s intent,” she said.

The plot of the story increased when reports showed that one of the attackers was HIV-positive. Robert will not know for another few months if he was infected during the rape.

The Dubai Embassy did not comment on Robert’s case because it is currently under investigation, according to an embassy official.

Akhavan summarized the reason behind the story’s growing momentum, saying, “There is so much wealth and development in Dubai, that people are curious to see what’s underneath all of the glitter.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Rape Scandal Shakes Dubai, Brings Topic to Santa Cruz

A move to unite the people of Russia has become yet another barrier in a time where the nation’s politics are becoming increasingly polarized.

In early November, thousands flooded the streets of Russia to celebrate People’s Unity Day. The holiday was put in place by President Vladimir Putin in December 2004, to unite the divisive factions in Russia. But the holiday has accomplished the exact opposite, as a group of proto-fascists have adopted it as their own.

People’s Unity Day replaced a Nov. 7 holiday that celebrated the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which is a marker of the nation’s long history of class struggle between the peasants and the upper class bourgeoisie. As one of Putin’s enactments in a campaign to restore morale and a sense of unity in the divided country, Putin replaced the holiday because it was considered to represent a time of division.

Eugene Aronoff, news editor of Russian services at The Voice of America, a U.S. government international radio broadcast, explained that The People’s Unity Day was founded on an obscure date back in 1612. The day marked the Russians’ expulsion of the Poles from Moscow and Russia.

“It has degenerated into a demonstration of the most vile and right-wing extremists,” Aronoff said. “The Fascists feel they are the only people who stand for a unified ethnic Russia. A few thousand people. They have the motto of Russia for Russians only.”

During People’s Unity Day, people with non-Russian features were advised not to leave their homes or hotels until the celebrations subside.

“Free democracy? People are not allowed to demonstrate, because they are considered anti-government, versus the proto-fascists who are handled with kid gloves because they don’t present genuine opposition,” Aronoff said.

Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin enacted a day of national reconciliation,” the original unity day, “after blowing up Parliament,” according to Michael Urban, UC Santa Cruz professor of politics with a specialty in Russian politics. Yeltsin failed miserably, and in 2000 he appointed Putin as his successor. Russia had officially become a dictatorship, Urban said.

“It’s not as bad as Pakistan,” Urban said. “By Russian standards it was a rather soft dictatorship.”

Putin was a candidate with no political experience or platform, but had connections with the KGB and the Office of Privatization. The KGB, formally the Committee for State Security was essentially the Soviet Union’s secret police.

“That’s what runs Russia — crooks and muscle,” Urban said.

Putin’s popular support stems from the increase in profit from oil revenues, which went through the roof in recent years. Through the use of propaganda Putin was able to maintain popularity, and his invasion of Chechnya in 1994 established him as a veritable hero.

“It looked like he could accomplish things,” Urban said. “Especially after Yeltsin an incapacitated drunk.”

Russia is staggering under the weight of its deceased glory; the emancipation of the Soviet State has left Russia a fraction of its former glory and size.

“The end of the Cold War was a blow to the national self-esteem; it was a huge empire that attempted to represent an ideology,” Aronoff said. “Russia was a true world power with communist factions all over the world. It was an ideological alternative to the West, the greatest military power accumulated by anyone in the course of human history.”

“To give up so much one begins to question ones place in the world. Putin restored the faith,” Aronoff added.

In establishing People’s Unity Day, the government set out to unify the Russian people, but with growing social problems many question whether unity should be the primary goal of the Russian government.

“Human rights don’t rank high in the government’s agenda; collective social reform does,” said Wayne Merry, the Russian expert for Amnesty International USA.

“Russia has the highest increase of HIV cases in any country,” Aronoff said. “Over 80 percent of the cases are people under 30.”

And as political factions in Russia squabble, the country’s problems continue on.

Said Merry, “Since 1992, the number of people dying has become greater than the number of babies born.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Russia Faces Its Politically Tumultuous Past

After decades of stifling Cuba’s international trade abilities, the United States has been asked by the United Nations to lift the U.S.-sanctioned embargo, which many consider to be a debilitating force that has done more harm than good.

Since the embargo was first issued in 1992, the U.N. has called for its removal, but not much had changed until Oct. 30, when the U.N. finally stepped in and formally asked the United States to lift the embargo.

Earlier in the week President Bush reiterated the need to maintain the embargo, which he sees as a means to contain Cuba’s communism.

With Fidel Castro’s health in question and his move to relinquish power to his brother, Raul Castro, many questions loom as to what the near future will bring.

Recent changes began with the Clinton Administration, which ushered in an age of “trade not aid,” said Larry Birns, director of The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a nonprofit research group working to increase inter-American relationships. In consortium with the U.S., the world treasury, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund called for the miniaturization of the public sector in Latin American countries.

“Distractions in Iraq allowed Latin American countries to emancipated themselves,” Birns said, explaining that in a recent press conference Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the United States has “no clout in events that take place in Cuba,” and that Bush said that “we have to go slow, we have little clout.”

Cuban communistic character made it a hostile figure in the minds of U.S. policy makers. “The U.S. devoted itself to isolating Cuba,” Birns said.

“However, the policy of isolation was unsuccessful,” he said. “If anything, it was able to establish a sounder economy, as its ties to other nations—like Russia and China—grew stronger. If anything, U.S. policy was isolated.”

The United States has received heavy criticism from the international community. Many feel that it should have little to no influence in the economic affairs of other countries, as is evident by the U.N.’s unanimous vote.

“During the Cold War, Cuba was considered by the U.S. a Soviet Trojan horse,” said Antonis Balasopoulos, a professor of comparative literature at UC Santa Cruz. “The U.S. demanded that Castro be removed and in his place a more liberal democratic regime be instituted. Cuba remains the last vestige of the Cold War.”

Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, believe that Castro’s policies are “tyrannical.” Through economic policy, they assert, the United States hopes to influence the future of Cuba’s government.

Yet many believe that Latin American countries that have had troubled relations with the Unitd States. are forced to turn to nefarious commerce, especially the production of illegal drugs. “In blocking legitimate commerce there is an increase in illegitimate commerce,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance.

“In Colombia there is not a lot of infrastructure, it makes economic sense to [produce] cocaine. There’s going to be a market for illegal drugs. The profit makes it worth breaking the law,” Piper said. “They have to compete with a global economy, for more than a billion people who live on less than a dollar a day; many illegal drugs are really cheap to grow.”

Piper calls for the United States to be more responsible in curbing its own demand of drugs.

While Cuba produces very few black-market products like cocaine, many wonder if the nation will resort to this in times to come. Yet the trade embargo on Cuba has had little effect on the current government, although the inevitable political isolation has excluded Cuba from a more global network which would contribute to its ability to grow both socially and politically.

Ellen Farmer, the creator of a Santa Cruz-based Cuban study group, says that currently there is a wealth of opportunities to be found in Cuba.

“The Latin American school of medicine takes students who are seeking to become doctors free of charge,” Farmer said. “Cuba is known for practicing medical diplomacy; in fact, they offered the United States 1,000 doctors after Katrina. The State Department chose to ignore the offer.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Cuba and U.S. Duke it Out in the International Ring

As the world recognizes the encroaching problem of global warming, politicians—like Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)—environmental coalitions, and coal interest groups weigh in on the possible ramifications of revolutionizing the coal industry and the future of energy production.

Obama, who represents one of the United States’ major coal-producing states, is active in the heated arena addressing global warming and the search for new energy sources. At an event titled “Real Leadership for a Clean Energy Future” on Monday, Oct. 8, Obama said, “Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now.”

Yet the search for a solution to global warming does not always head in the direction of clean energy; coal and ethanol are still being bolstered as viable, domestic sources of energy.

Since June 2006, the Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed approximately 150 new coal power plants, as well as 200 to 300 new ethanol plants, many of which would be fueled by smaller, coal power plants.

Corey Henry, Coal Liquids Coalition spokesperson for the national Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, said that liquifying coal to oil, a process known as coal-to-liquid (CTL), benefits America in a relatively simple way.

“By domestically liquefying coal, it lessens America’s reliance on foreign oils and the importation of gas and oil from the Middle East and elsewhere,” Henry said.

Advocates of the creation of coal-to-liquid power plants say the nation’s great coal reserves need to be utilized in order to halt U.S. dependency on foreign nations, which, according to Henry, would create hundreds of thousands of domestic jobs.

This is of particular interest in Pennsylvania and in Illinois, where 100 billion tons of coal, is produced.

Opponents, however, criticize the massive carbon dioxide emissions of coal—which many consider to contribute largely to global warming—as only a domestic remedy for a dependence on foreign oil.

In the middle of this debate is Barack Obama.

Obama has been developing and refining his plan for the development of CTL factories, promising to invest $150 billion over the next decade for “clean, affordable energy.” During the same speech, Obama said, “My plan isn’t just about making dirty energy expensive, it’s about making clean energy affordable.”

“It is no longer OK to say that Obama flat-out supports the liquefaction of coal,” David Willett, national press secretary of the Sierra Club, said. “Obama has looked at the issue more closely and has a much more detailed plan for dealing with global warming.”

According to Ben LaBolt, spokesperson for Obama for America, the candidate is clearing up his stance in where coal fits into the move for energy independence and the fight against climate change.

“Obama’s support for coal-to-liquid fuels is dependent on whether or not we can capture and sequester enough carbon to produce fuels that have 20 percent lower emissions than gasoline,” LaBolt said.

Originally, Obama attached a provision to the energy bill passed in 2005 that gave $85 million to test Illinois coal for transportation. Since then, however, Obama has revised his stance, saying he will only support CTL fuels that can be created using 20 percent less carbon dioxide than petroleum fuels, an act that is currently not technically possible.

Then, Obama co-sponsored the recently-introduced Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007 with Senator Jim Bunning (R-K), which would provide incentives to conduct research on CTL fuels.

“Obama was trying to sponsor legislation until a governmental group beat him up,” Mike Ewall, director and founder of the Energy Justice Network, said. “He’s been backpedaling.”

Despite intervention from the political sphere, environmentalists maintain that the mass production of CTL fuels would require massive amounts of water and exacerbate the global warming trend by releasing double the amount of greenhouse gases produced in oil refineries.

Willett said, “Compared to the process it takes to produce gasoline to oil, you get almost twice the amount of carbon into the air and that has to do with how dirty the process is for turning coal into liquid, because it takes a tremendous amount of energy.”

Henry countered this stance, saying, “All of the developers in the coalition—people who will be responsible for building these plants—are committed to using safer technologies to reduce the profile of CTL fields.”

Advocates promise the implementation of these safer technologies after the plants have already been created, thereby delaying the safe sequestering of the release of harmful gases produced by the liquefaction of coal.

Ewall explained the complicated nature of safer energy policies and why Congress passing a single bill can only function as a standard.

“I don’t know any proposed bills that aren’t going [to harm us], unless we have a pretty massive finance overhaul that takes corporate money out of politics,” Ewall said.

Ewall maintains that the involvement of big corporations, who are not interested in safer methods of power attainment like solar- and wind-produced, renewable energy delays the complete switch from oils and gases to the more environmentally friendly alternatives.

“Studies show that even if carbon emissions are reduced by 20 percent, emissions will be roughly equivalent to an oil refinery,” Ewall said. “They can’t really win.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Obama ‘Refines’ Coal to Liquid Stance, Concerns Continue

On Oct. 4, 1957, communist Russia cast Sputnik I — a metal ball no larger than a beach ball — into the sky as the first foreign object to orbit the Earth.

Fifty years later, Americans still celebrate what eventually brought a flurry of reform and a mass of funding to science and math programs across the country; but the future of space exploration—and how it fits the U.S. agenda—may remain a question.

“Once Sputnik was launched, the whole country changed,” said UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal, who was a professor of astrophysics before becoming UCSC’s top administrator. “It was scarier than hell to think the Russians would be ahead of us scientifically.”

The U.S. government subsequently poured funds into the development of math and science education, consequently creating the generation of scientists that took the United States to the moon, a feat that occurred just 12 years after Sputnik’s launch.

Now, 50 years later, the space-race is still on, but the world has something new in sight: Mars.

While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has begun preliminary research by mapping the chemical and mineral makeup of the surface of the Red Planet, Russia has taken the initiative with an intensive program that aims to get humans on Mars by 2015.

Adriane Steinacker, adjunct professor of astronomy, said, “Knowing what kind of physical conditions are to be expected during a mission is crucial to its development, and subsequently to its efficiency and success.”

This time Russia will not work independently, but will call on the help of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to form an international team for space exploration, an effort Chancellor Blumenthal supports: “I don’t think countries should be undertaking space exploration on their own,” he said. “It should be done cooperatively and internationally.”

But while space exploration may be thriving, the technology required for such ambitious endeavors leaves some skeptical of treading on such dangerous ground.

Darwin BondGraham, who graduated from UCSC in 2003 and is working on a doctorate degree in sociology at UC Santa Barbara, is an active member of the UC Demilitarization Coalition. The group’s aim is to disband the UC’s involvement with the laboratory facilities in New Mexico and California that not only develop nuclear weapons, but also develop the technology needed for space exploration.

“The status, the prestige, and the idea that the university is doing things for the public good.I think that all is being utilized by the weapons labs and by the people who have an interest in maintaining the weapons laboratories,” BondGraham said.

But not everyone sees the connection between space exploration and nuclear weapons; energy research is mostly delegated to the Department of Energy (DOE), and space exploration to NASA.	

Regardless of the weapons labs’ ties to space exploration, UCSC still plays an integral role in space. The university has developed strong math and science departments, and in 1984, Katherine Sullivan, a UCSC alumna, became the first U.S. woman to walk in space, while UCSC alumnus Steve Holly flew on a number of NASA missions.

“UC Santa Cruz has contributed in a number of ways through technology and our engineering school, scientific studies, and planetary studies,” Chancellor Blumenthal said. “We have some of the top people in planetary studies, and exploring the solar system.”

Blumenthal continued, “We share a common faith with people of the world, and for us to comment on the solar system around us is a wonderful cause, almost a good cause, for us to get together and act as one world.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Orbiting the Earth: The 50th Anniversary Celebration of Sputnik I

For Argentina, the Oct. 9 court decision convicting Christian von Wernich of kidnapping and torturing civilians marked the symbolic end to a dirty war.

The trial heralded a victory for human rights organizations that have campaigned vigorously the past two decades to bring justice to those responsible for the state-initiated violence that lasted from 1976 to 1983. Included is — a priest serving under the former Argentinean dictator Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo — who was convicted of collaborating with police to kidnap 42 people and torture 31 others.

But for Nurit Ben Shlomo, the court’s decision also brought her own traumatic history to a close.

Schlomo and her husband were arrested following the bombing of a government official’s house on the grounds that Ben Shlomo was a community activist.

“They had nothing against us, they searched our whole house in hopes of finding something incriminating. They found some socialist books; it wasn’t illegal but they didn’t want to let us go,” Ben Shlomo said. “In the beginning I was scared. They blind-folded and handcuffed us. From there they took us to the torture center and we could hear the screams of those who were being tortured.”

Ben Shlomo and her husband were among the lucky ones. They were eventually taken to prison.

It is estimated that 10,000-30,000 people “disappeared” at the hands of the dictatorship during the Dirty War, which emerged after the death of Argentinean President Juan Peron in 1974.

Peron’s wife Isabel assumed power after his death, but she was easily swayed by her advisers, and in 1976 a military coup took-over the country. In an effort to retain absolute rule, the coup launched a campaign to eliminate all opposition.

This eventually ended in 1983, but the Dirty War left a very bitter legacy.

Ben Shlomo was separated from her husband in prison, and only allowed to meet with him once a week under supervision.

“It was hardest for those with children,” she said. “When they arrested us, my daughter was only two years old and my son two weeks old. Luckily, my mother took care of them, but it wasn’t until four months later that I was able to see my son again.”

After a year of imprisonment, Ben Shlomo was given the choice to leave her country of birth or stay in prison. Along with her husband and children, Ben Shlomo left Argentina.

She has now been living in Israel since 1978, and insists that conditions in Argentina are much better now than they were before she left the country — especially now that Wernich has been tried and convicted.

For a country that has experienced such violent turmoil, hope is a welcome relief. But according to Margarita Lacabe, executive director of human rights organization Derechos, there is still a lot to be done.

“At least 1,000 people need to go to trial,” Lacabe said. But she’s optimistic for the future: “Now that the trials have finally started we’re making progress.”

In 2005 the Argentinean Supreme Court repealed amnesty laws that had protected former government members. In addition government authorities are beginning to use DNA samples to identify those “disappeared.”

“The families of the disappeared want to know what happened, but most importantly they want to be able to bury their children,” Lacabe said. “They want to have a place to be with their children.”

Andrew Hudson, head of the Latin American division of Human Rights First, also sees hope in Wernich’s conviction. “In a society rebuilding after mass atrocity, it is of vital importance that those human rights violations be adequately addressed,” he said. “In this way a society can genuinely deal with its past and achieve real peace and reconciliation.”

Ben Shlomo continued, “People are opening things up again; it doesn’t matter that Wernich is 70 and won’t spend a day in prison.”

To Ben Shlomo and many others, the significance of Wernich’s conviction is not a matter of payback, it’s a matter of communicating justice to future generations.

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Argentina Calls for Justice

By Alia Wilson and Daniel Zarchy

No matter the color of their skin or the size of their wallet, Americans everywhere have their eyes on the immigration debate. In California, as well as other border states, this debate has become particularly heated.

While some argue that immigration reform must come with a guest worker program to provide necessary labor to California industries, others believe that immigration would be a drain on the economy and create a more dangerous atmosphere for native dwellers.

Due to the high number of immigrants in the agricultural labor force, the current immigration legislation under debate in Congress could have astounding effects on the state’s economy.

Environmental Studies graduate student Ignacio Fernandez immigrated to California from Chile 15 years ago, and feels that the agricultural industry would suffer greatly as a result of any immigration reform.

According to Fernandez, tighter immigration control would decimate the blue-collar workforce and have detrimental repercussions throughout the state. “You stop immigration, and this state will go bankrupt in a matter of weeks,” Fernandez said.

Both of the two immigration bills in Congress propose a guest worker program that would allow immigrant laborers to find work in the United States. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) believes that a guest worker program would bring some much-needed labor to the under-staffed Santa Cruz County agriculture industry from immigrants. He emphasized the importance of a legal and documented workforce, to encourage farm owners to hire more workers.

“We do have an agricultural labor shortage in this area. It’s hard work; people don’t want to do it. Wages are anywhere from nine to 12 dollars an hour. Many of these growers will give health insurance,” Rep. Farr said in an interview with City on a Hill Press (CHP). “They want their workers back. I find that there’s a pretty good relationship between growers and laborers here.”

Julian Posadas, executive vice president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), sees the current legislation plan as reminiscent of the Braceros program that allowed workers to be brought in from Mexico during World War II. He claims that employers mistreated the braceros, and when or if they disputed their wages or unsafe working conditions they were simply deported.

“My father was a bracero, and at the time the government was taking money out of their wages for pension,” Posadas said. “He’s 75 now, and he’s asking, ‘Where is my pension?’ The government figured that [the braceros] would never come back to claim it.”

However, Rep. Farr is confident that this time the guest workers will not be exposed to that sort of maltreatment.

“The Bracero program had a lot of problems, and this bill would make sure those problems won’t exist,” he said. “The labor organizations support this guest worker program because of the conditions in the bill that allow guest workers to join unions, to organize, to petition grievances, and guarantee that they do get benefits.”

For many immigrants, gaining legal status is only half the battle, as workers often find it hard to earn a living wage once in the United States. A May 2006 New York Times study showed that Santa Cruz and Watsonville are among the costliest places to live in the country in terms of percentage of income devoted to mortgage payments. Residents here are feeling the effects.

Nick Gutierrez, a UC Santa Cruz janitor and custodian for almost 12 years, immigrated from Mexico with his mother and sister in 1969, four years after his father. He became a citizen in 1989 by naturalization, and currently lives in the Santa Cruz area.

“I have a wife and two kids, two teenagers. My wife also works, and between the two of us we make ends meet. You have to learn how to budget your lifestyle so you can afford to live here,” Gutierrez said.

While many immigrants have trouble finding high-paying jobs, a number of native workers blame immigrant laborers for their willingness to work below market wage and lowering wages across the board. The Federation for American Immigrant Reform (FAIR) feels that immigration in general causes an overall drain on the average American family.

According to FAIR’s website, immigration hurts the labor market and the economy, and has an annual cost of $67-87 billion. “In short, the average native taxpayer is paying for immigration so that large companies can profit by employing immigrants in low-wage positions.” David E. Kaun, an economics professor at UCSC, felt that these types of charges did not tell the whole story.

“The real issue is that we are dealing with [immigration] as though it has had adverse effects on the U.S., and that is questionable,” Kaun said.

UCSC economics chair Lori Kletzer also felt that negative public perception of illegal immigration is disproportionate to its actual economic effects, but also that the subject in general is not well-researched.

“When economists study illegal immigration, they find a small negative impact on low-skilled native workers, and a benefit to everyone else,” Kletzer said. “There are those who claim that illegal immigrants are necessary for jobs that native workers will not do.”

Of the two immigration bills being debated in Congress, the House bill, labeled the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, or HR 4437, includes specific sections detailing new policies to halt and criminalize undocumented immigration.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who introduced the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 as well as HR 4437, has come out strongly against any sort of amnesty or “adjustment of status,” for undocumented immigrants living in America. The Senate version of the bill provides a tiered system to allow the adjustment of status for undocumented residents, based on how long they had been living in America.

HR 4437 passed through the House in December 2005, and the second, more liberal version passed the Senate in May 2006. The two committees are in the process of meeting to work on a compromise bill.

The process through which HR 4437 passed the House is also a source of contention. “[HR 4437 is] the worst-written piece of legislation,” Rep. Farr said. “I was shocked that it passed, but I wasn’t surprised the way they did it. They did it at three o’clock in the morning on a Sunday night a week before Christmas holidays.”

Rep. Farr explained that many members of the House assumed that because the bill was “so harsh,” it would never pass the Senate. Also, because the president said he would never sign it, “[there were] a lot of members of Congress that just gave it a vote because they didn’t think it was ever gonna get enacted into law,” Rep. Farr said.

In the midst of this immigration debate, the Senate okayed the construction of a 600-kilometer fence along specified areas on the U.S.-Mexico border. These intended barriers are to serve as a deterrent to the thousands of immigrants who enter every month.

Nick Gutierrez views this legislation as a barrier for those trying to come into the country legally or obtain a green card after arriving.

“[HR 4437] won’t affect me or my family, but it will affect friends. There are friends who are in the process of trying to get their green card, and this will only prolong their wait. These people come here for one purpose: to work, to make a better life for themselves,” Gutierrez said.

Larry Trujillo, a Latin American and Latino Studies professor, feels that immigrants deserve protection to come to America and work.

“From what we see of immigration coming to our country, they are providing the backbone of the economy. We ought to have processes where they have the ability to do so. The two major pieces of legislation aren’t going to accomplish that,” Trujillo said.

Posadas believes that current immigration reform will have its biggest impact on people’s attitudes toward immigrants, documented and undocumented. He felt that a bill such as HR 4437 would cause much more stereotyping, as every dark-skinned person will be labeled an “illegal Mexican immigrant.”

Kaun agrees, and feels that the new legislation targets mainly Mexicans and other Latin American immigrants. “[With this new legislation], ‘illegal immigrant’ is a code word for Mexican,” Kaun said.

Rep. Farr feels similarly and pointed out that the localized border security represents another controversial component of the bill. “There certainly is a racist side to it, because nobody’s talking about the Canadian border, and [on the Canadian border is] the only time we’ve apprehended somebody with intent to do harm to Americans for terrorist purposes,” Rep. Farr said.

Section 401 of HR 4437 requires, “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to report to Congress on the number of OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) apprehended and deported and the number of those from states that sponsor terror.”

“There’s a racist overtone to this whole issue,” Kaun said. However, he was certain that HR 4437 would not pass in its current form, and that “If you want to speculate about it, you’re writing science fiction.”

Rep. Farr explained that the liberal members of Congress may have to concede some elements that would allow for the further prosecution of undocumented immigrants in order to secure items like adjustment of status and the guest worker program.

“Politics usually combines some good with some bad; politics is the art of compromise,” Rep. Farr said. “You never get a perfect bill.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at Toeing the Line

When death row inmates Ralph S. Baze and Clyde Bowling, Jr. refused to select a method of execution and were subsequently relegated to death by lethal injection, the decision spurred a heated legal battle that the U.S. Supreme Court will now decide. Although this case deals with the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment, many on all sides of the issue ultimately consider it a moral issue.

In 1997, the state of Kentucky convicted Ralph S. Baze of murder and sentenced him to the death penalty for killing Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe of Powell County, whom he shot when they attempted to serve him a warrant during a domestic dispute at his home. Clyde Bowling, Jr. was convicted in 1994 for the murder of Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their two-year-old son.

Both Baze and Bowling, Jr. were subsequently sentenced to death.

In 2004 they joined to file a lawsuit against the state of Kentucky, arguing that the method by which lethal injection is administered was cruel and unusual, thus making it unconstitutional.

Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer, the judge presiding over the case in the Kentucky Supreme Court, ruled against Baze and Bowling, Jr., holding the opinion that the plaintiffs were unable to prove that the methodology of execution is cruel and unusual because, under state law, the execution must shock “the moral sense of all reasonable men as to what is right and proper under the circumstances.” In response to the ruling, Baze and Bowling, Jr. appealed, bringing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the upcoming case named Baze v. Rees, Ralph S. Baze and Clyde Bowling, Jr. must prove that the “procedure for execution creates a substantial risk of wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain, torture or lingering death.” In addition, they must determine if modern-day societal standards consider lethal injection to be an act of decency.

This question is at the heart of the legal battle.

According to Keith Berge, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the process of lethal injection is indeed cruel because of the repeated steps the person being executed must endure during their last living moments.

“It’s disconcerting,” Berge said. The process, Berge explained, uses an intravenous catheter to inject the prisoner with a cocktail of drugs. First comes the sodium thiopental, which is used to sedate the prisoner, then pancuronium bromide is added to paralyze the muscles, and finally, potassium chloride is administered to stop the heart.

According to Berge, potassium chloride can cause a slight feeling of burning in the veins, but the most “common problem is that when the first two drugs are administered too closely together they tend to clog the vein.” In this instance, the process must be repeated, putting the prisoner through a process that many consider cruel and unusual.

This was the case last year in Florida, when an inmate had to undergo the process twice in 35 minutes.

Lethal injection can also be complicated if a prisoner has a history of habitually injecting drugs into their veins.

This controversy surrounding lethal injection has led many to question whether the process not only violates the Constitution, but also human rights. Among them is Hiroshi Fukurai, a professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz and specialist in the sociology of law.

“The Constitution was designed to protect basic human rights,” Fukurai said, highlighting the unavoidable ethical question of lethal injection.

Some, however, believe that convicted murderers deserve punishment no matter the method. William Rusty Hubbarth, lawyer and vice president of Justice for All, an organization in support of the death penalty, agrees with them.

“Murder is the ultimate crime, and deserves the ultimate punishment,” Hubbarth said.

As for the controversy over lethal injection, Hubbarth sarcastically commented that prisoners “certainly should not be victimized themselves.”

“As an American and as a lawyer, I am in full support of the Eighth Amendment,” Hubbarth said, referring to the constitutional amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. “Furthermore, I am confident that the Supreme Court will deem lethal injection constitutional.”

In contrast, Natasha Minsker, the director of death penalty policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the organization believes that the “death penalty itself was cruel and unusual and in violation of due process.”

Although this is a constitutional case, many are pointing to the morals that have become characteristic of American identity. For Hubbarth, this is just the case. As he put it, “Morals are variable; many have morals of convenience.”

---- (C) 2011 City on a Hill Press. All Rights Reserved. View online at The Moral Ambiguity of the Green Mile