HONORING OUR SHEROS
SHOULD WE FEAR BIRD FLU
VILLAGE VOICE, LA WEEKLY SOLD


THE HOT RUMOR: 12 Indictments coming tomorrow.

IN MEMORIUM

Rosa Parks, civil rights icon, American Shero, passed yesterday at age 92.

I was proud to have met her, a diminuative figure, sitting in the corner of the stage in the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. She was there to honor the visiting Nelson Mandela whose tour of America I was making a film about back in l990.

To me she was as heroic as Madiba, as the South African leader is known, and I recognized her at once. Rosa Parks is credited with launching the civil rights movement in its modern phase by sitting down in that bus in Birmingham and refusing to sit in the back. Her decision was not just personal because she was NAACP staff member and had been part of the team that planned what became a bus boycott that would later be emulated in South Africa.

She was a seamstress. He speciality was making, of all things, white sheets, that some other Southerners turned into symbols of hate. She was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, daughter of James and Loeona McCauley. She grew up on a farm with her grandparents, mother, and brother.

The Wikipedia looks at the controversy that still surrounds her act of civil disobedience;

” Standard accounts of Parks’ act of civil disobedience in 1955 refer to her simply as a “tired seamstress.” Parks stated in her autobiography, My Story, that it was not true that she was physically tired but was “tired of giving in.”

“Also, some accounts downplay her prior involvement with the NAACP and the Highlander Folk School, portraying her as an individual with no particular political background or training.

Many accounts fail to clarify: she was sitting in the “colored” section of the bus. With the “white” section full, a white man wanted her to give up her seat. That is, it was not a matter of protest on any level when she sat down; the protest was in her refusal to give up a seat in the “colored” section….

She was a political activist all of her life, not just an icon who rested on her laurels. Again the Wikipedia: “She moved to Detroit in the early 1960s and served on the staff of U. S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) from 1965 until 1988. She continued to reside in Detroit until her death on October 24, 2005.”

FOR MORE ON HER LIFE AND THE STRUGGLE SHE WAS PART OF

www.e-portals.org/Parks/

ww.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/parks01.html - 33k - Oct 22, 2005
Rosa Parks: The Woman Who Changed a Nation

Biographical article based on 1996 interview with Parks.
www.grandtimes.com/rosa.html - 29k - Oct 22, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

BUSH: “VERY SERIOUS”

Now back to the present:

President Bush has now spoken on the evolving scandals. Sort of conjuring up for me his predecessor Richard Nixon’s legendary words” There will no whitewash at the White House. Said Dubya as reported on Truthout:

”US President George W. Bush said on Monday the investigation into the outing of a covert CIA operative was “very serious,” even as Republican allies started casting aspersions on the prosecutor and the possibility of perjury charges.

The New York Times reports: “Notes of a previously undisclosed conversation between the vice president and his chief of staff appear to differ from I. Lewis Libby’s federal grand jury testimony.”

RELATED NEWS
UPI. CIA leak inquiry broadens to include “yellow cake” forgeries

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r

YESTERDAY IN BAGHDAD: PALESTINE HOTEL ROCKED

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Three enormous bombs, including a cement-mixing truck packed with explosives, blew up near an Iraqi police post outside the Palestine Hotel — home to many foreign journalists in Iraq. Iraqi officials said 17 people were killed.

A second bomb exploded inside a car not far from the police position on the northeast side of Firdous Square and more than 100 yards east of the hotel grounds. Both were believed to be suicide attacks. Security officials said a third bomb struck the area around the same time.

“It did not appear that anybody was killed inside the hotel, which has been the target of previous insurgent attacks. Three of the wounded were in the hotel but were not hurt seriously. Three others were at a U.S. military checkpoint at the northwest corner of the hotel compound.

RELATED:

INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE: “Critics on Iraq Policy Come Out of the Woodwork Too Late”
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1593

MIERS MIRED

The LA Times reports “Legal experts find a misuse of terms in her Senate questionnaire ‘terrible’ and ’shocking.’”

Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan … said she was surprised the White House did not check Miers’ questionnaire before sending it to the Senate. “Are they trying to set her up? Any halfway competent junior lawyer could have checked the questionnaire and said it cannot go out like that. I find it shocking.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miers22oct22,0,1244386.story

BIRD FLU: READY OR NOT

RELEASE: “Physicians Question Government Preparedness for Avian Bird Flu; Majority Believe Government, Medical Community Ill-Prepared”

Flemington, NJ, October 24, 2005 A new national survey of 846 physicians revealed that a clear majority believe that the federal government and the medical community are unprepared to deal with an Avian Bird Flu epidemic in the United States. The national survey was conducted by HCD Research and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion (MCIPO) during October 20-21, in response to reports that the flu has been identified in several European countries.

WHAT ME WORRY?

How worried should we be? The analysts of Stratfor say:“Calm down.”

“Now let us qualify that: Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus — which has caused all the ruckus — has been responsible for the documented infection of 121 people, 91 one of whom caught the virus in Vietnam. In all cases where information on the chain of infection has been confirmed, the virus was transmitted either by repeated close contact with fowl or via the ingestion of insufficiently cooked chicken products. In not a single case has human-to-human communicability been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population of places such as Vietnam at large, much less the United States.

“An uncomfortable but undeniable fact is that there are a great many people and institutions in this world tha have a vested interest in feeding the bird flu scare.
Much like the “Y2K” bug that commanded public attention in 1999, bird flu is all you hear about. Comparisons to the 1918 Spanish influenza have produced death toll projections in excess of 360 million, evoking images of chaos in the streets.

“One does not qualify for funding — whether for academic research, medical development or contingency studies — by postulating about best-case scenarios. The strategy is to show up front how bad things could get, and to scare your targeted benefactors into having you study the problem and manufacture solutions.”

TORTURE ARE US

The NY Times today: “The White House is insisting that the C.I.A. be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists.”

The New York Review of Books has published an excerpt of a report from Human Rights Watch: “Leadership Failure: First hand Accounts of Torture of IraqiDetainees by the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.” Read this to understand how torture has become a “sport” for US soldiers in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102305X.shtml

GALLOWAY DENIES GETTING IRAQ OIL

BBC reports:

”Galloway accused of Senate ‘lies’

”The US Senate committee which accused MP George Galloway of receiving oil money from Saddam Hussein has accused him of lying under oath. Mr Galloway gave evidence to a Washington hearing in May, where he ridiculed its claims.

“Now the senators claim they have fresh evidence linking the Respect MP and his wife to Iraq’s oil-for-food program. Mr Galloway said: “I did not lie under oath in front of the senate committee.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4373764.stm

MIND THE GAP

Growing Gulf Between Rich And Rest Of Us by Holly Sklar

”Guess which country the CIA World Factbook describes when it says, “Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20 percent of households.”

“If you guessed the United States, you’re right.

“The United States has rising levels of poverty and inequality not found in other rich democracies. It also has less mobility out of poverty.

Since 2000, America’s billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.”

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-10/24sklar.cfm

AND THERE’S MORE:

Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel write:

”The United States is now the third most unequal industrialized society after Russia and Mexico. This is not a club we want to be part of. Russia is a recovering kleptocracy, with a post-Soviet oligarchy enriched by looting. And Mexico, despite joining the rich-nations club of the Organization for Economic and Community Development, has some of the most glaring poverty in the hemisphere.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10733.htm

POLAND WARNED ON HOMOPHOBIA

Doug Ireland reports US media ignores story

HOMOPHOBIA COULD COST POLAND ITS E.U. VOTING RIGHTS

Both the European Commission that runs the European Union and leaders of several party groups in the European legislature have warned the new Polish government of President Lech Kaczynski, who was elected on Sunday, that anti-homosexual initiatives he campaigned on and restoration of the death penalty could cost Poland its voting rights in the E.U., Tuesday’s European papers report. But there’s not a word of this in the U.S. press, even though the European dailies go to bed five to six hours earlier than their American counterparts.”

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/10/poland_could_lo.html