Zichronam livrachah.

The US finally says what it should have already – and too many others haven’t – about Darfur:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared Thursday that the United States viewed the killings, rapes and destruction of homes in the Darfur region of western Sudan as genocide, and he called on the United Nations Security Council to recognize that the situation required urgent action. While the declaration has no immediate effect on the role or obligations of the United Nations, said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it could be viewed as tantamount to invoking Article 8 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – the first time that any nation had invoked that provision calling upon the United Nations to take action.

In toughly worded testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Powell said he had concluded that genocide had occurred after studying the findings of experts who had interviewed victims of violence in western Sudan, where attacks have been carried out by government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed.
‘When we reviewed the evidence compiled by our team,’ Mr. Powell said, ‘we concluded – I concluded – that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring.’

The Keystone Research Center surveys the State of Working Pennsylvania, 2004:

In July 2004 Pennsylvania had 81,300, or 1.4%, fewer jobs than when the recession began in March of 2001. Pennsylvania’s manufacturing job loss since January 2001 is 87 percent of the state’s manufacturing job loss over the last decade. As of July 2004 the state is 181,000 short of the number of jobs needed to keep pace with growth of Pennsylvania’s working-age population. The state’s job creation performance after the 2001 recession is the fourth worst since World War II. Wages are down for every group except white women and African American men. The average wage of production workers was lower in July 2004 than in any of the three previous years. At $15.08 it is about a dollar an hour lower than the national average of $16.05. Between March 2001 and July 2004 employment in the state’s high-wage industries has fallen by 5.6% while employment in low-wage industries has grown by 2.9% The number of Pennsylvanians without health insurance has grown. In 2003, the last year for which data are available, 1.38 million Pennsylvanians did not have health insurance, a 40 percent increase since 1999. Poverty in Pennsylvania increased substantially in the last year, especially for children. The share of children in poverty increased from 11.6 to 15.5 pecent from 2000 to 2003, a jump of one third. From 2002 to 2003 the share of children in poverty increased from 13.8 to 15.5 percent. The share of adults in poverty increased from 8.6 to 10.5 percent between 2000 and 2003.

Amy Guttman joins the ranks of self-identified liberal academics-turned-administrators more sympathetic to unions in theory than in practice:

Since assuming the presidency, Gutmann has enthusiastically embraced the recent regional National Labor Relations Board decision that ruled that Penn’s graduate-level teaching and research assistants are students and do not have the right to unionize under the umbrella protection of the NLRB. The decision reflected a similar national NLRB ruling concerning Brown University, which was handed down in July. ‘I definitely agree with the decision, and I’m really delighted that it gives me the opportunity to work with our organized graduate student groups to make graduate education even stronger at Penn,’ Gutmann said. While Penn has the option of voluntarily recognizing a graduate student union — and in fact, some graduate students have pinned their hopes on the possibility — Gutmann’s administration is highly unlikely to make this move.

The president’s acceptance of the perceived anti-labor ruling comes as a surprise to some who regard Gutmann as a ‘liberal’ administrator. Her writings, including works that have reviewed unions positively, have indicated a liberal ideology. In her book Democratic Education, Gutmann critically examines teachers’ unions and concludes that there is a need for them in today’s school system…”It must be pretty embarrassing for [Gutmann]. … She talks about democratic education, and within two weeks of arriving, she is already giving all her support to a blatantly anti-democratic NLRB ruling,” said Joe Drury, GET-UP co-chairman and an English Ph.D. candidate. He added that “it’s a bit mystifying, and it’s a conflict.” The graduate student organization has sent letters to Gutmann, but she has not yet set a concrete date for a meeting.

Mad Magazine considers how Bush would campaign against everyone’s favorite Palestinian Jew:

John Kerry calls George Bush on his hypocrisy on assault weapons:

‘Four years ago,’ Mr. Kerry said in St. Louis, ‘George Bush said he’d stand with and protect America’s police officers by extending the assault-weapons ban, which keeps the most dangerous assault weapons off our streets, the same weapons that America’s police officers want off our streets, not just to fight ordinary crime but to take on terrorists. ‘In fact,’ the Democratic presidential candidate went on, ‘an Al Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan included a chapter urging terrorists to get assault weapons in the United States. Why is George Bush making the job of the terrorists easier and making the job for America’s police officers harder?’

Mr. Kerry answered his question by asserting that the National Rifle Association had ‘put the squeeze on George Bush, and they’re spending tens of millions of dollars to support his campaign.’ ‘So now,’ Mr. Kerry continued, ‘the president is saying with a wink and a smile that he’ll extend the assault weapons ban if Congress sends it to him. And Congress says they’ll send it to him if he asks for it.’

Yale Police reach a tentative settlement with the University:

The University and the union representing its police officers reached a tentative contract settlement Tuesday, capping 14 hours of negotiations at City Hall and 26 months without a new contract. The contract talks — the first since June — were marked by renewed efforts to reach a settlement, with higher-level University administrators coming to the bargaining table and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. acting as a mediator between the two sides. The full negotiating team for the police union and union members must sign off on the contract before it is implemented.

Members of the Yale Police Benevolent Association — the union representing 55 police officers — have been renewing their contract on a monthly basis since it expired in 2002. YPBA chief steward Christopher Morganti expressed mixed feelings about the proposed contract and uncertainty about whether members would accept it. ‘I think parts of it are very good, parts of it are less than what we tried to get,’ he said. ‘I think it’s really going to be up to the members.’

Don’t know which is more disturbing – that these people were hidden or why we could have been hiding them:

The Central Intelligence Agency kept dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq off official rosters to hide them from Red Cross inspections, far more than has been previously reported, two senior Army generals said today. An inquiry by three generals issued last month found eight documented cases of so-called ‘ghost detainees,’ but two of the officers said in congressional testimony and interviews later that depositions with military personnel at the prison suggested the number was far higher. ‘The number is in the dozens , and perhaps up to 100,’ Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who oversaw the inquiry into the role of military intelligence personnel in the prisoner-abuse scandal, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He added that a precise number would never be known because there were no records kept on most of the C.I.A. detainees.

If I didn’t know better, I’d call him a flip-flopper:

President Bush shifted his stance today on how much power a new national intelligence director should have, declaring that he supports giving the new chief full power over intelligence spending.
‘We believe that there ought to be a national intelligence director who has full budgetary authority,’ Mr. Bush said before meeting with Congressional leaders who have supervisory functions over the far-flung intelligence bureaucracy. ‘I look forward to working with the members to get a bill to my desk as quickly as possible.’ ‘After all, we’re still at war,’ Mr. Bush added.

Memo to Thomas Frampton: Someone out there in cyberspace is googling your mother. As in:

“thomas frampton mother”

Just thought you should know.

Robert Reich on Bush’s “Ownership Society” myth:

The Republican rhetoric assumes most Americans can save and invest. The reality is, most Americans are deep in debt. Before they can join the “Ownership Society” they’ve got to pay their credit card bills, their rising variable-rate mortgages, and their auto loans. After that, there’s no money left because jobs are in short supply and wages are stuck in the mud. The Commerce Department reported this week that personal incomes rose a measily one-tenth of one percent in July, the lowest rise in almost two years. And — given rising prices for food, fuel, and health insurance — consumers spent more than they earned. So last month, Americans went even deeper into debt. The result: Less ownership, not more.

It’s true that more than half of American households now own stocks in corporations. But for most, it’s just a few thousand dollars worth. And the total value of their current portfolio is less than they invested. They got lured into the stock market during the late 90s when stock prices were pumped up with accounting steroids. The fact is, an Ownership Society based on the stock market would be a casino. The Bush administration would like you to put your Social Security payments into the stock market, but beware. If your timing is bad, you could find yourself retiring in a bear market. It’s happened before. That’s one of the reasons Social Security — as social insurance — was invented.