It seems that Wal-Mart was finally shamed into dropping its suit against the Shanks.  (Thanks to tinyfirefly for pointing this out in last night’s entry.)  But let’s not make any mistake: this wouldn’t have gone as far as it did had the corporate media reported on this months ago, as it should have.  And Wal-Mart is unlikely to reimburse the Shanks for the money they had to shell our for lawyers’ fees and court costs.

To recap: Debbie Shank, a Wal-Mart employee, was involved in a car accident with a trucker, and came out of it a cripple with the memory capacity of a fish.  Her son, Jeremy, was killed in Iraq last year.  But because his mother cannot hold a memory, she forgets soon after hearing the news.  So each time she is reminded of Jeremy’s death, it’s not a reminder at all; she is literally, from her brain-damaged perspective, hearing about her son’s death for the first time, every time, until the day she dies.  Debbie Shank cannot mourn her son, cannot move on from the loss, because of the injuries to her brain.

Wal-Mart, however, was not content to leave well enough alone.  Because of a clause in its insurance contract with employees, the company claims it is legally entitled to settlement money stemming from the Shank family’s lawsuit against the trucking company, whose driver was partly to blame for the accident that crippled Debbie.  So it took the Shanks to court, won, and subsequent appeals have been denied by the Bush-stacked court system.  According to the MSNBC article:

Shank, 52, lost much of her memory and ability to communicate or walk in a crash between her minivan and a tractor trailer in May 2000. Her family sued the trucking company and won $700,000. Court records show that after attorney’s fees and costs, the remaining $417,477 from the settlement went into a trust to care for Shank.

The fund now has about $270,000, the family said.

Shanks’ health insurance was through Wal-Mart, where she worked nights stocking shelves. After the Shanks won their lawsuit, Wal-Mart sued the Shank family to recover medical costs totaling about $470,000.

Wal-Mart won its case and subsequent appeals by the Shanks that went as far as the Supreme Court, which closed legal avenues this month by declining to hear the case.

During the case, the Shanks also lost one of their three sons when Jeremy, 18, was killed in Iraq last year while serving in the Army.

Finally, with little thanks to a lazy mainstream media that didn’t see this as a worthy news story until recently, Wal-Mart caved in and did what it was supposed to do.  But don’t expect this to be over; the Shanks have been screwed out of money that was supposed to go toward Debbie’s long term care.  Now that money has been whittled away, and the family isn’t going to get it back.

What’s more, Wal-Mart is still screwing over its other employees, both current and former.  In one of the latest insults, the company is refusing to rehire a veteran, as per the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-Employment Rights Act of 1994.  Air Force airman Sean Thornton, who was discharged from the service, was supposed to get his old cashier job back at Wal-Mart, returned from duty to find his former employer has decided it doesn’t have to obey the law.  And why should it?  Federal lawsuit from the Department of Justice or no, the company is fully aware that thanks to Congress and the Bush regime, the courts have been stacked with judges whose sole purpose is to uphold anything and everything corporations deign to get away with.

Here are some sources listing the abuses by Wal-Mart, travesties the government (under conservative misrule, including during the Clinton administration) has allowed to go unpunished.

http://www.coopamerica.org/tak…

http://media.www.dailycampus.c…

http://www.now.org/press/06-02…

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/in…

But hope is not dead.  As the Shank case reveals, the company can be shamed into doing what it is supposed to do, which is to treat its employees fairly.  Public pressure must continue to be mounted, on Wal-Mart and on local, state, and federal legislatures.  After news of the company’s refusal to rehire Airman Thornton was reported, its stocks fell significantly.  So public pressure and media coverage work.  But legislatures (and executives) must be made to act as well.  Anti-trust legislation must be restored, passed, and enforced.  Abuses of employee rights must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and judges who violate the spirit (if not the letter) of the law by upholding abuses removed from the bench.

This can be done, and with your vigilance, it shall be.

Today, let’s think about Marvin Gaye, born on this day, April 2, in 1939.

Jesse Unloads on the ‘Chickenhawks’ who force their ‘Wars of Choice’ yet refused to fight when those before them, their peers, did same! And making sure their own don’t come into the Harms way they have set up!                                                                                      

‘Wars of Choice’ make enemies of others, damaging national security, creating possible perpetual Guerilla Conflict from the ‘Blowback’ of Retaliation, Damages Economies, and a Countries Reputation and World Standing!

“I’m Not Ready to Cede the Constitution to This Bunch of Hoodlums!”

John Cusack promotes his new film “War Inc”, which satirizes the military culture that makes companies like Halliburton and Blackwater rich.

(@2AM   – promoted by On The Bus)

There’s a fascinating article about black-ops programs squirrelled away in the science section of tomorrow’s New York Times.

The article is about a book titled I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me by Trevor Paglen.  The book’s subject is, nominally, the uniform patches worn by members of various black ops.  

Black-ops in bomb design, radar evasion, spy satellites, and much more.  The Times has a slide show of some of the various patches worn on the uniforms of people in these programs here.

“It’s a fresh approach to secret government,” Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. “It shows that these secret programs have their own culture, vocabulary and even sense of humor.”

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”

The stuff about the patches is fascinating.  Paglen’s thesis is that the patches can tell us something about the intent, culture, and goals of the various programs.  Sort of a culture-studies study on Cheney’s “dark side” of government operations.

But even more interesting is a comment Paglen makes at the very end of the article:

Mr. Paglen plans to keep mining the patches and the field of clandestine military activity. “It’s kind of remarkable,” he said. “This stuff is a huge industry, I mean a huge industry. And it’s remarkable that you can develop these projects on an industrial scale, and we don’t know what they are. It’s an astounding feat of social engineering.”

“An astounding feat of social engineering.”  I take it that Paglen means that it is astounding that our government could condition us so to accept that fact that we, as taxpayers, lavishly fund black-ops projects without knowing or thinking that we should know what exactly it is we’re funding.

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

That Paglen chose to call our agreeableness a result of “social engineering” is particulary interesting.  I think about the movies we watch, the Tom Clancy-type books we read, the news we consume, that all tells us black-ops is cool, and is something we should want — and pretends to tell us something about what we’re funding.  When in fact, we don’t have the slightest idea.  We think we’re paying for James Bond.  Maybe we’re paying for Caligula.  We don’t know.  The amazing thing is the extent to which we don’t think we ought to know.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

 (Docudharma is like a big ocean to me. I guess I’ll jump but I hope not to be devoured by any sharks!) cross- posted at Daily Kos.

The situation in Somalia has not been good for some time.

A baby born in Somalia will have a life expectancy of 48.4 years.

 There is little date to measure the full extent of Somalia’s poverty but in 1994 the UN Development Program ranked Somolia 165th out of 173 countries in terms of its Human Development Index.

According to the World Bank, health standards in Somalia before the 1991 were among the worst in the world. It was estimated that there was 1 doctor for every 20,000 people (in the United States it was 1 doctor for every 470 people), and 1 nurse for every 1,900 persons (in the United States it was 1 nurse for every 70 persons). Only 2 percent of births were attended by a health professional, whereas in the United States nearly 100 percent of births were so attended. In 1990 average life expectancy at birth was 46 years, the infant mortality was about 123 per 1,000 live births (in the United States it is 7 per 1,000). The adult literacy rate was 27 percent.

link

There is a little good news out of Somalia. They are polio free.

In a triumph over violence, poverty, and poor infrastructure, Somalia has once again become polio-free. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) announced on 25 March that the West African nation hasn’t reported a case of polio since a year ago. Although it eradicated the disease in 2002, Somalia became reinfected in 2005 by poliovirus originating in Nigeria, resulting in an outbreak of 228 cases.

Innovative approaches tailored to conflict areas were pivotal in conquering polio in Somalia. More than 10,000 volunteers and health workers used several doses of monovalent vaccines to immunize children in insecure areas in a short period. With strong community support, the effort succeeded in reaching more than 1.8 million children under age five across one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

“This truly historic achievement shows that polio can be eradicated everywhere, even in the most challenging and difficult settings,” says Dr. Hussein A. Gezairy, director of the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office.

But little good news can easily get lost.

 Since 2006 Mogadishu warlords and the militia Islamic Courts Union have been fighting each other.  Things became more violent and complicated when Ethopia invaded Somalia in December of 2006. Fighting continues “between transitional government Somali and Ethiopian official troops, on one hand, and Islamic militants, on the other.”

 Human Rights Watch issued a press release on the current situation.

Human Rights Watch welcomes this initiative by the United Nations Security Council to discuss the human rights and humanitarian crisis in Somalia. The situation in Somalia is one of the world’s starkest and most neglected tragedies. In basic human terms the scope of the crisis is enormous. It is also a situation with serious regional implications that must be squarely addressed by the Security Council.

Since early 2007, thousands of civilians have been killed in appalling circumstances: crushed to death in their homes after indiscriminate bombardment; injured by shrapnel from mortars, heavy artillery, and bullets and dying slow, agonizing deaths when they are unable to reach medical care; deliberately executed by members of armed groups on all sides; and caught in ceaseless crossfire in densely-populated neighborhoods. Thousands more have been injured, assaulted, raped, and looted of all their property as they fled the violence in Mogadishu. Each day adds to the toll of civilian deaths and injuries.

Up to 700,000 people have been displaced by violence from their homes in Mogadishu in the past year, with 50,000 people displaced in the first months of 2008 alone. These newly displaced people join some 400,000 people who were previously displaced, plus several hundred thousand Somali refugees, for a total of more than one million internally displaced people in south-central Somalia-at least ten percent of the entire population.

Human Rights Watch has closely monitored, documented and reported on patterns of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Somalia. In 2007, our researchers conducted an in-depth investigation of abuses connected to the hostilities in Mogadishu. We interviewed scores of eyewitnesses in five different locations, including Mogadishu, and published a comprehensive report on our findings. We continue to document crimes committed in Mogadishu and other areas through research in the region and from afar.

Each of the parties to the armed conflict has committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. In some cases, where individuals knowingly or recklessly committed these violations, the violations amount to war crimes.

tragedy

Maadey Suufi, a 27-year-old father from Buur Hakab, fled his home 10 years ago because of drought and insecurity. Since then, he has lived in an overcrowded camp for the displaced in the Suuq Ba’ad area of north Mogadishu, where he raised a family. But, then tragedy struck:

“On Sunday evening [30 December] I went to buy a few things at a nearby shop when shells started landing in our area.

“I quickly returned but our small home was no longer there. My wife who was nine months pregnant and my four children [aged between eight and two years] were dead. There was not a single body, but pieces of them all over the place. I could only tell which was which by the size of the limbs, but some parts were so mutilated that we could not figure out who it belonged to.

“But this is the worst experience of my life. I don’t have a family or a place to call home. I don’t know what I will do, but I cannot go back to that place [the camp].

“What happened to me happened to other Somalis. I pray to God to lift this curse on us.” “

—-

It is a tragic situation, in a continent plagued by drought, poverty, violence, war. It is amazing the courage people have who are in Somalia trying to make a difference. Please keep in your prayers 2 U.N contract workers that have been kidnapped.

Two United Nations contract workers, a Briton and a Kenyan, were kidnapped Tuesday in southern Somalia, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The two worked for India-based Genesys International Corp., which conducts aerial surveys for the U.N. to prepare detailed maps for eventual floodings in the area.

Sometimes perspective is need. I have to be grateful for what I have because there are so many people without. Three meals a day, a comfortable bed, a warm shower, such luxuries so many people will never experience.

As a Democrat human rights is a top issue for me. I have faith and reason to believe that Barack Obama will be a great President on human rights. It will be fitting if America elects Obama the same year we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human rights.

In 1948, General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The preamble reads.

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

ps. UNICEF study on Somali women is informative.

The oppression women face is staggering.

http://www.unicef.org/…

Yes, it is. A very cool religion.

But there is a problem that we Americans need to explore as a Democratic nation founded on the principles of Separation of Church and State and Freedom of Religion..

How does Tibet survive politically in a modern world?

Should the spiritual leader of Buddhism be a political leader?

Currently, The US regards Tibet as part of China and has officially  stated so as early as July 1942 in a memorandum to the British Government.  We needed China’s help against the Japanese and agreed with Chiang Kai-shek that Tibet was part of China. Link

China was the US’s most important Asian ally in the war against Japan. The United States, by necessity, saw its relationship with China as being more important than that with the local government of Tibet.

This changed during the Cold War following Mao’s victory in China and his establishment of a communist state. After the “liberation” of Tibet by the CCP, the Dalai Lama moved from Lhasa to a town near the Indian border in case he needed to escape. He appealed to America and the United Nations for assistance, but none was forthcoming and he sent a letter to Beijing to negotiate. In May 1951, the 2 groups agreed on what is known as “The Seventeen Point Agreement”. This agreement formalized  China’s sovereignty over Tibet.  The Dalai Lama never signed the agreement nor was he aware of its terms according to Tibetan expert Melvyn C. Goldstein.  The Dalai Lama was approximately 16 years old at the time. According to  Goldstein in his article “The United States, Tibet and The Cold War”, (PDF but worth reading) The United States unsuccessfully urged him to declare the document invalid and flee into exile, but the young boy returned to Lhasa to try to live under the 17 Point Agreement. Goldstein says that the Dalai Lama did not flee because he felt America would not support the independence of Tibet nor would the US supply military aid to assist Tibet.

In September 1951, Ameria again reached out to the Dalai Lama promising that if he ignored the 17 Point Agreement, renounced Communism and fled to India the US would officially adopt the position that the DL was the “head of autonomous Tibet” and would support his ” return to Tibet at the earliest practical moment  as the head of an autonomous and non-communist country.”  Message from the State Dept to the Dalai Lama, 7, Sept, 1951.

Again he refused and stayed in Lhasa until 1959. The events that led to his fleeing to India began in 1956 following a series of revolts in Kham, an area in Western China inhabited by Tibetans.  The CIA supplied weapons and training to the Tibetan resistance in Khan in 1957. Goldstein says in footnotes that “a case can be made” that this US involvement led to the destabilization of Tibet, but  says this ” will have to be the topic of another article.”  

An uprising in Lhasa in 1959 finally sent the Dalai Lama into exile.

The CIA continued to support the rebels and set up a training camp in neighboring Nepal to infiltrate into Tibet as well as funds and non-military support for the Dalai Lama.  A training site in Colorado was also funded in 1964.

Rejecting autonomy, the DL asked America in return to support his desire for total independence and was rebuked repeatedly by the Eisenhower Administration. (links on page 4 of PDF)

An then along comes Tricky Dicky and renewed relations with China. The Cold War Strategy changed abruptly. The Unites States halted all support for the Tibetans and ceased to use the term “Autonomous Country”. Tibet faded into the shadows according to Goldstein.

Deng Xiaoping opened China and invited the DL to secret  face-to-face meetings in Beijing in 1982 and 1984. Deng reversed the policies of the Cultural revolution and allowed the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region) to restore Tibetan culture to a degree.

The 1982 talks broke down because H. H. Dalai Lama would not accept autonomy and Deng would not allow independence.  The Tibetans offered a compromise of sorts in 1984. The Dalai Lama demanded in 1984 that China should grant Tibetans in “all parts of China” political autonomy. It was similar to the “One Country, Two Systems” system that we see on the island of Taiwan.  He wanted self-rule for all Tibetans everywhere in China.  The talks collapsed again.

The Chinese began to develop Tibet hoping to win over the local Tibetans.  The Dalai Lama began a world crusade to draw attention to human rights issues,  In September 1987 the Dalai Lama was invited to speak to The Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington.

There, he called upon China to resolve the Tibet Problem  with a 5 point plan.

The first point was that the whole of Tibet be turned into a “zone of peace”. This would also include ethnographic Tibet, including the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu Sichuan and Yunnan.. This would require the removal of all Chinese military bases and troops from these provinces.

The other 4 points were irrelevant , this was the deal breaker.

Here is a map of the area the Dalai Lama wanted to control. The above mentioned provinces are yellow.

And here’s where we get into the ‘Modern Age of Politics in Tibet”.

The ethnographic DMZ will never be recognized by China.  I don’t think any other country in a similar situation would do it either.  

Here are 2 reasons and neither are religious.

Look at the map again and notice the neighboring countries that are near or share borders with the yellow ethnographic Tibet area.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, Vietnam, Laos and India.  All are either historical enemies with invasion routes into China, current trade partners or routes for oil pipelines.

Now look at this map…



The blue lines are rivers.

The map  shows six of the worlds largest rivers draining from the Plateau: the Indus (Gar) drains the southwest, the Bramaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) drains the southern and southeastern area, the Salween (Nu), Mekong (Lancang) and Yangtze (Jinsha) drain the central and eastern areas, and Yellow (Huang) drains the northeastern area. The northern and northwestern areas have no external drainage and are characterized by many large lakes. The plateau is occupied by about four million Tibetans who raise yaks and sheep on tundra above the timberline, but over half of the worlds population lives in the drainage basins of these six rivers.

OK, back to religion and a look back to the future.

Our country was founded on the principle of Separation of Church and State as well as Freedom of Religion. How do Americans accept both in the case of Tibet?

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and political leader of Buddhist worldwide.

He wants religious freedom for his people in Tibet (a good thing), but with it comes a lot of global political power (a bad thing according to our beliefs).

The DL is a great guy but he is getting a little long in the tooth. I find it amazing that he has been a leader during the administrations of FDR, Truman, Ike, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan,Bush, Clinton, Bush II and will more than likely (Buddha willing), be around for the next administration. On the China side he has dealt with Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Deng Xiaoping and others up to the current regime of Hu Jintao. Amazing!

But recent events show us that a certain element of his followers are not following his wishes (nor the teachings of Buddha).  When asked to tell the rioters to stop the killing of Chinese citizens, he said he had no control of the situation.

When I saw him say this on BBC, I freaked. He doesn’t have the power to stop “Buddhists” from looting and killing people? I think he was telling us something in his way. There appears to be a schism between Tibetan activists and H.H. The Dalai Lama.

Such sentiments are being heard increasingly within the Tibetan refugee community, many of whom are questioning the Dalai Lama’s approach in increasingly public ways. In its meeting in August 1998, the TYC (Tibetan Youth Congress) pointed out the total lack of results of the non-violent path.

snip….

In recent years the TYC has adopted an increasingly aggressive stance and has engaged in more confrontational activism, even though this puts it at odds with the exile government.

snip…

A growing number of Tibetan exiles have publicly called for a change of tactics, pointing out that violent resistance movements have often succeeded in gaining independence.

snip…

The Dalai Lama must be aware of the irony of the situation. He enjoys widespread reverence all over the world for his non-violent campaign, he has an international forum for his cause, but he is unable to soften the PRC’s intransigence, and so at a time when his cause is gathering adherents around the world he is steadily losing the support of his own people. In spite of these factors, he still remains committed to dialogue. He points out that it would be suicidal for five million Tibetans to adopt violent methods in confronting China, a nation of 1.2 billion people with an army of five million.

The Free Tibet Movement: A Selective Narrative By John Powers

He has now said he is in favor of autonomy but some in the exile community are still insisting on independence. He has threatened to step down yet they still demand separation from China against his wishes.  The rogue element seems to have a different agenda than their King. We should worry about this.  

The world is already bent over the barrel by fundamentalist religious extremists with political power that fortuitously sit on most of the planet’s oil. Some were our friends in the past. Now they are not. The only positive is that they don’t also have control of 1/2 of the world’s water as well.

China has survived as a civilization for 5,000 years. This was not an accident nor a stroke of good luck.  This is not a matter of religious freedom to them as much as concern for their  National Security and Natural Resources.  The good news is that Hu Jintao has opened the door for talks with the DL. If we are lucky and both are willing to compromise, there could be a “peaceful” solution.

My hopes are that the Dalai Lama will be allowed to return to Tibet and the Tibetans will have the religious freedom they deserve, but to accomplish this the DL and his true followers will probably have to accept autonomy and relinquish the political functions of his position.

What would Buddha do?