Click above, for articles in this issue.

Our next newsletter edition will be July/August.

 >in this issue:                   

• CIVIL RIGHTS CASES:  

          >     

• CURRENT EVENTS: 

          >   A Poem for Memorial Day:  Standing Still in Time by Thomas C. Murray

• AFRICA TODAY: 

>  Imperatives of Transition from Activism to Politics in Nigeria,  by Kayode Fayemi 

 

> Angola: From Politics of Disorder to Politics of Democratization?

by Steve Kibble  

• EYE ON HUMAN RIGHTS:

          > 

• DISPATCHES FROM IRAQ: by Dahr Jamail

> Mr. "Bring 'Em On"

• FOCUS ON NEWARK, NJ:      

       >  A City in Search of a Renaissance by Victor Saraiva

              >  An Open Letter to the Mayor-Elect of the City of Newark, Cory Booker by Victor Saraiva

• ORGANIZED CRIME & CORRUPTION:          

• IN RETROSPECT:

       >  An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis  by James Baldwin

          > As I Remember  by Victor Saraiva

• CHAMPIONS FOR PEACE:

          >   

• RECOMMENDED READING:

          > 

• WORDS OF INSPIRATION:

          > On Mixed Topics

• COMMENTARY by JIM HIGHTOWER: 

> Who is to be "detained?"

> Lee Raymond's Golden Years

• COMMENTARY by JOE TRENTO:  

>NUCLEAR MIDDLE EAST: Money Can't Buy Love, Just Time

• EDITORIAL page: 

          >

• NEWS-LINK TICKER: 

Today's News  

 

Prior News:

International; 

National;

Commentary / Opinion

 What's on your mind ?

>Essays & articles of interest published by other sites:  

American Civil Liberties Union:

 Gov Docs on Torture

http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/search/search.html

Tell Your Member of Congress to Stop Torture

NOT JUST PIZZA: 

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

Authorities Target Political Groups

http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles

ACLU ACTIVIST TOOLKIT

Become an Effective and Efficient Activist

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AP_effective_activism

TAKE ACTION:

Urge Congress to Renew and Restore the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act, passed over 40 years ago in 1965, is most successful piece of civil rights legislation in history. Unfortunately, unless Congress votes to renew several key sections of the law, they will expire by 2007.

https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=257&page=UserAction

Stop torture and ill-treatment in the 'war on terror'

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/stoptorture-index-eng

Latest Reports from AI:

The State of the World's Human Rights,  

2005 Report

http://www.amnesty.org/report2005

LIBRARY

The arms trade is out of control. 

Worldwide, arms are fueling conflict, poverty and human rights abuses.

http://www.controlarms.org

Medical Privacy Petition

http://www.patientprivacyrights.org/petition

FACIAL RECOGNITION AND PRIVACY

http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/1105/

EPIC PRIVACY.ORG

http://www.privacy.org/

DoD Recruiting Database

http://www.epic.org/privacy/student/doddatabase.html

GREENPEACE

Help predict global warming

Podcast: Whales, noise pollution and military sonar

Listen

STOP BIG TOBACCO

http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/globaltobaccotreaty112005

Standards of Political Conduct for Corporations

CORRUPTION AFFECTS YOU

http://www.transparency.org/global_priorities/public_contracting

Water

Corporations like Coca-Cola and Suez are aggressively turning water from a basic human right into an unaffordable luxury.

http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org:80/cms/page1131.cfm

Tobacco

The powerful tobacco industry led by Philip Morris/Altria is still fighting in the US and internationally to undermine the global tobacco treaty. http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org:80/cms/page1111.cfm

Food & Agribusiness

Global food and agribusiness corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Dow increase their profits as people around the world face hunger and malnutrition. ttp://www.stopcorporateabuse.org:80/cms/page1132.cfm

Oil

Big Oil giants like ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco are causing permanent damage to the air we breathe and the water we drink.

http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org:80/cms/page1112.cfm

Organized Crime and Corruption Information:

www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/convention_corruption/signing/Convention-e.pdf

Bibliographic Database Search

Global Corruption Report 2006

http://www.ourfuture.org/issues_and_campaigns/accountablecongress/index.cfm

Boycott Bush International Network

GARY WEBB'S  DARK ALLIANCE SERIES

re-posted by NARCONEWS

GARY WEBB: In His Own Words

Dark Alliance: Day One

America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war Colombia-San Francisco Bay Area drug pipeline helped finance CIA-backed Contras by Gary Webb

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day1main.htm

Testimony links U.S. to drugs-guns trade

Dealers got their 'own little arsenal' by Gary Webb

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day1list.htm

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/webintro.mov

Dark Alliance: Day Two

The Crack Epidemic's Shadowy Origins, By Gary Webb

If  they'd been in a more respectable line of work, Norwin Meneses, Danilo Blandon and ''Freeway Rick'' Ross would have been hailed as geniuses of marketing. This odd trio -- a smuggler, a bureaucrat and a driven ghetto teen-ager -- made fortunes creating the first mass market in America for a product so hellishly desirable that consumers will literally kill to get it: ''crack'' cocaine. Federal lawmen will tell you plenty about Rick Ross, mostly about the evils he visited upon black neighborhoods by spreading the crack plague in Los Angeles and cities as far east as Cincinnati. On Aug. 23, they hope, Freeway Rick will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day2main.htm

Drug agent thought she was onto something big

On a November afternoon in 1981, San Francisco DEA agent Sandra Smith inadvertently uncovered the first direct link between cocaine and the secret army the Central Intelligence Agency was assembling to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.

Smith, one of the first female Drug Enforcement Administration agents in the Bay Area, was investigating rumors that a cocaine ring run by Norwin Meneses was bringing drugs into California and, for some reason, sending weapons down to Central America.

It was, she said, ''the only (case) that I ever worked, in all the time I worked there, that I thought was really big.''

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day2frog.htm

Drug expert: 'Crack' born in San Francisco Bay Area in '74

Though Miami and Los Angeles are commonly regarded as the twin cradles of ''crack'' cocaine, the first government-financed study of cocaine smoking concluded that it was actually born here, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in January 1974. After comedian Richard Pryor nearly immolated himself during a cocaine-smoking binge in 1980, the National Institute on Drug Abuse hired UCLA drug expert Ronald K. Siegel to look into the then-unfamiliar practice. Siegel, the first scientist to document crack's use in the United States, traced the smoking habit back to 1930, when Colombians first started it.

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day2rock.htm

Dark Alliance: Day Three

War on Drugs Has Unequal Impact on Blacks in U.S.

http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/day3main.htm

On PEACE:

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors:

Why Question the Military's JROTC Program?

http://www.objector.org/jrotc/why.html

Before You Enlist...

 http://www.objector.org/before-you-enlist.html

Get the Military Out of Our Schools

Are students getting a balanced education about the military? http://www.objector.org/

GI Rights Training

Train to Help Stop the Military Machine! Or at Least to slow it down. http://www.objector.org/gitraining060325.html

Tools for Activists

http://www.objector.org/moos/strategies.html

Other Peace Related Issues:

Children's Defense Fund

2005 Gun Report: 

Protect Children not Guns

http://childrensdefense.org/education/gunviolence/gunreport2005/default.aspx

Influence Peddling Laws

http://www.lobbyinginfo.org/laws/

Tracking the activities of special interests.

http://www.lobbyinginfo.org/

REVOLVING DOORS

http://www.lobbyinginfo.org/documents/RevolveDoor.pdf

Auto and Truck Safety

http://www.citizen.org/autosafety/

WHITE HOUSE

http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/

CONGRESS WATCH 

www.citizen.org/congress/

Auto Industry http://www.citizen.org/congress/campaign/special_interest/articles.cfm?ID=5730

Public Citizen is not affiliated with THE CITIZEN for Social Responsibility in any manner.

WBAI--99.5 FM, NYC