Jack Abramoff: Doing The Right Thing?

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Jack Abramoff, the convicted felon, is out of prison and, as the media tells the story, he's working in a pizza joint. Well, kind of. He won't really be rolling out the dough, slopping on the tomato sauce or driving around town in one of those cars with the sign on top that says "Hot Pizza." Remember the Spike Lee character from his brilliant film "Do The Right Thing?" Mookie? The pizza delivery guy who carried boxes of hot pizza up and down the stairs of hot New York City apartments? Not what Jack will be doing.

Instead, Jack Abramoff will be "advising" the business owner, coming up with new ideas. Who wants to bet Abramoff will invite the native american tribes from the region in for "pizza" night, then have Ralph Reed get together a group of Christian Fanatics to picket the joint, then Abramoff will offer his services to negotiate a settlement. For a fee. Yeah -- ideas he's got. The problem is, he's a criminal.


(From the AP): Abramoff's hiring doesn't change kosher pizzeria
By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer Ben Nuckols, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jun 23, 7:14 pm ET

BALTIMORE – A lively mix of regulars and families with small children ate lunch at a kosher pizzeria in northwest Baltimore on Wednesday, and several said they have no problem with the restaurant's new employee: disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Tov Pizza's owner hired Abramoff because he thought his business savvy could jazz up the shop's marketing. Abramoff could not be spotted behind the counter, and owner Ron Rosenbluth said he would not be working in the kitchen.

"He's in the back. He's working," said Rosenbluth, who declined to make Abramoff available for an interview. He said it was his understanding that Abramoff could not speak to the media while he remains under the supervision of the Bureau of Prisons, which lasts until Dec. 4.

Abramoff was released from a minimum-security prison camp in western Maryland on June 8 after serving about 3 1/2 years for fraud, corruption and conspiracy. He spent three days in a halfway house in Baltimore before he was placed in home confinement, in part because he has a job, said Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons.

Rosenbluth ... said he would look to the former lobbyist ... to provide some new ideas for his 26-year-old restaurant. ...

"There are certain things that I know that I'm short on. I'm not very good at keeping up on our website," Rosenbluth said. "It's always good to have a fresh eye on the place."

[Tov Pizza's] customer base comes from the conservative and Orthodox Jewish communities in northwest Baltimore and nearby Pikesville. Most of the men inside wore yarmulkes, and several women wore headscarves, long sleeves and long skirts on a sweltering, 95-degree day.

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Abramoff, who is Jewish, always claimed to be very religious, so I guess the theory is that other Jewish religious people might be more likely to trust him. I've got two words for these people: Bernie Madoff.

Famous Lady From Times Square / VJ Day Photo Dies At 91.

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Edith Shain was her name. She was a nurse. When the announcement came that the war was over -- really over this time, VJ Day, Victory in Japan, August 14, 1945, Edith like many others gathered in Times Square to celebrate that joyous moment. And while she was there to cheer, a young sailor carried away by the moment grabbed her, threw her back, and landed a big kiss on Edith.

Edith died on Sunday in Los Angeles, at the age of 91. She is survived by three sons, 6 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren. So it looks like she kept pretty busy after the war too. She'll certainly always be remembered, or at least her photo will.

Duder

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Duder is a "show," currently available online, about some young guys in Brooklyn. The creators say that they were influenced by Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office, among other shows. You can see the influence. It's very funny. Quite offensive, and very funny. Most of the episodes are available at you tube. Here's a link to their website: http://www.dudershow.com/

Episode 1, Part 1



Episode 1, Part 2

In The Land Of The Free: New Film About The Angola 3

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The Angola 3 refers to three black American men, former members of or associated with the Black Panther Party, who have been imprisoned (collectively) for 100 years in the Angola prison in Lousiana. There is overwhelming evidence that these three men are innocent, but justice in Lousiana is hard to come by.

There is a new film coming out about the Angola 3. Maybe this would be the right time, finally, to put pressure on Kenneth the Page aka Bobby Jindal, Governor of Lousiana, to get him to free these men.



Angola prison, sometimes called "The Farm," is located in the state of Lousiana. It consists of 18,000 acres which formerly were a slave plantation. Most of the slaves who were brought in chains to work at that plantation had been kidnapped from Angola in Africa, and that's how the plantation, and eventually the prison, got its name. Angola has a long history of cruelty and brutality against its prisoners, many of whom will never be released from prison. There are 5000 prisoners at Angola with 1800 staff.

The prisoners still work in the hot fields of corn, sugar cane and cotton, sometimes for as much as 16 hours a day, and are paid pennies for their labor. 80% of the prisoners are black. The warden is a Christian Evangelical and claims that he believes the prisoners can be saved by hard work and prayer.


The prison is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. The movies "Dead Man Walking"and "Monsters Ball" were filmed, in part, at Angola prison. The blues singer and guitarist Leadbelly served a four year sentence there. Angola is legendary for its cruelty, and many singers have written songs about it. There is a great book by James Lee Burke called Last Car To Elysian Fields that has a subplot about a black blues singer from Mississippi who had disappeared 50 years earlier while he was imprisoned at a brutal prison in Lousiana, presumably Angola. It's a haunting description of a prison in which southern white men were allowed to carry on the traditions of the Klan in brutalizing or even murdering black men.


In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Panther Party was formed to demand justice for black people in the U.S. The closet-dwelling and cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, created his own secret program called Cointelpro to frame, imprison, and/or have murdered any people or group that he considered to be a danger to society. Hoover said he thought the Black Panther Party was the most dangerous organization in the country. (No, Edgar -- that would have been the Republicans). Many members of the Black Panther Party were framed, many still are in prison, many were murdered. At around the same time, black communities around the country were flooded with drugs. The CIA was implicated in running drugs from southeast Asia, and some believe that the infusion of drugs into black neighborhoods was part of an overall program to destroy the black community and particularly its young men.


"The Land of the Free" is a new film about 3 men, members of or associated with the Black Panther Party, who were imprisoned in the former slave plantation known as Angola prison, in the state of Lousiana. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the film tells the tragic story of the three men known as the Angola 3. Overwhelming evidence shows they were framed and wrongfully convicted of murdering a white prison guard. Even the widow of the murder victim supports their demand for freedom. International support has grown to demand justice for these men. One of the three, Robert King, was finally released from prison in 2001. The other two men, Herbert Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been held in solitary confinement for over thirty-seven years.


Wallace and Woodfox both were members of the Black Panther party. Angola was known as being the bloodiest prison in the country, and Wallace and Woodfox began organizing the prisoners to try to end the violence among prisoners. Because of these efforts, the prison block in which they are held became known as the Panther block, and Wallace and Woodfox were considered to be radicals. There were no black guards. The prison was violent, and had an organized sex-slave system by which prisoners were bought and sold for sexual purposes. The warden at that time was later himself sentenced to a 50-year prison term for the attempted murder of his wife (he shot her 5 times).


A prison guard named Brent Miller was murdered. He was stabbed to death. Wallace and Woodfox were charged with the crime, although they both deny having done it, and neither of them had any history of violence. The main prisoner witness who testified against them was quickly released from prison after the warden personally lobbied for his release. Other prisoner witnesses later recanted. One of the prisoners that the prosecution called to say that he "saw" Wallace and Woodfox kill the warden was a blind man. Four fingerprints including one bloody fingerprint and a knife were found near the murdered guard. The fingerprints did not match either Wallace or Woodfox, and their prints were not on the knife. Despite that, the warden refused to have the prints run against those of the prisoners which were already on file.


Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, learned about the efforts of Wallace and Woodfox to prove their innocence through an attorney who was representing them, and she became a big supporter of the efforts, and brought international attention to their situation. Roddick died in 2007, but others have stepped forward to continue efforts to gain freedom for Wallace and Woodfox.

Here's a link to a website that allows you to send a message to Attorney General Holder and Governor of Lousiana Bobby Jindal asking them to free the two members of the Angola 3 who still remain in prison: Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. It will just take a minute, and it might help. http://colorofchange.org/angola3/

One way you can help out and contribute a little money is by buying some of the Angola 3 support items available at their website, here: http://www.zazzle.com/angola3action
They've got T-shirts, canvas bags, posters, postcards -- even baby clothes, all supporting the demand to free the Angola 3.

See also:
http://angola3.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/10/erwin-james-angola-three/print

(Gwen Filosa, 3/17/08, Times Picayune)
http://blog.nola.com/news_impact/print.html?entry=/2008/03/lawyers_call_for_release_of_an.html

Angola 3 is a song produced by Dave Stewart in protest of the incarceration of the Angola 3 featuring Saul Williams, Nadirah X, Asdru Sierra, Dana Glover, Tina Schlieske, Derrick Ashong and Dave Stewart. Visit www.angola3.tv and www.angola3.org for more info.

The Prisons Video Trust: Angola 3, USA

Jerry Brown Says Meg Whitman is Like A Nazi. What Do You Think?

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(Eva Braun - notice the hairdo?)

I can't get over Meg Whitman's pageboy hairdo. She's supposed to have spent $70 million of her own money so far, and willing to spend another $70 million, to become governor of California, a bankrupt state. Jerry Brown says Meg Whitman wants to become President of the United States (God help us all) and that's why she's insanely over-spending to buy herself the job.

Jerry Brown also complained that Meg Whitman is exceedingly manipulative and dishonest in her campaigning. He said that she'll probably be out telling people he's a pedophile, that's now dishonest she is. Like Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for Hitler.

So now the big stink today is "Jerry Brown Says Meg Whitman Is Like A Nazi."

(Eva Braun: pageboy hairdo. Probably the last adult female I've ever seen with a pageboy. And check out the blonde color.)

Okay, here's the thing. The pageboy hairdo. I can't get over the fact that a woman who would spend $70 million on a primary couldn't afford to get her hair done. So there must be a reason she is wearing the preferred hairdo of 4th graders across the nation, the pageboy, with that odd gray-blonde coloring of a cheap bottle job.

So you decide. Is this her secret way of communicating to the nazis/racists/fascists/teabaggers: vote for me, I'm one of you? You decide.

Above are photos of the most famous Nazi lady of all, Adolph's gal-pal Eva Braun. Then a picture of Meg Whitman with a blonde paigeboy. Hmmmm.


(Meg Whitman: bottle-blonde with a pageboy. Just like Eva used to wear her hair).

Ask The Sick And Mourning People of Libby Montana What We Should Expect From British Petroleum.

(Libby, Montana, mining operations)

We should ask the residents, the sick, the mourning in the dying town of Libby Montana what we should expect from British Petroleum. The town of Libby was the site of a mine owned by another multinational corporation, W.R. Grace. The mine was full of asbestos material, which Grace knew since the 1950s, but did not bother to tell the workers. Now the people of that small town are sick, many have already died, their graveyards are filling up with people too young to die, and they are the biggest environmental disaster site in the entire nation. Or at least they were. Maybe the Gulf Coast will now claim that title. But what did the residents of this town get as help from the exceedingly rich people who owned the mine? Not much.

As long as we allow for-profit privately-owned corporations to move around our country, our oceans, the world, and loot, pillage, and rape the earth to extract resources, for profit, they will continue to destroy the earth and kill every living thing. Including the humans that work for them. Profit is everything, and nothing else matters to a corporation. And our politicians take bribes from the corporations, then sit back and let them pillage our nation, destroy the environment, and kill our people.



In the early 1900s, the small town of Libby Montana had just a few thousand residents, about the same as today. Some of the residents worked in mining, and some of them worked in timber. One of the mines opened up around that time was for something called zonolite, which is a form of vermiculite. Zonolite would end up being used around the country for home insulation and in fertilizer.

Over the years of mining zonolite, the company that ran the mine realized that the materials being brought out of the mine included a form of asbestos called tremolite. Asbestos is extremely hazardous. But instead of providing the workers and the people in town with warnings, instead of providing special protective work clothes and gear, the company decided they would just keep the mine open, keep the workers digging, and make as much money as possible.

Asbestos in buildings is generally described as friable or non-friable. If it is non-friable, that means it's encased in some protective coating and cannot break free. If it is friable, that means it can float through the air, and the tiniest little particle, a speck, breathed in by a human, can turn into the deadly disease of asbestosis and kill. It is also associated with lung cancer and mesothelioma. In each of those deadly diseases, the lungs become scarred and no longer work properly, they eventually fill up with fluid, and the victim dies of suffocation. Asbestos, or the tremolite which was mined in Libby Montana, was friable, was floating through the air, inhaled by the miners, brought home on their clothes and spread through their homes. It spread through the community, in the air, into the schools and parks, across the roads, into the homes, into the earth.

One of the residents of Libby Montana who worked in the mine and got asbestosis was Les Skramstad. He was very happy to get the job, but he developed a chronic cough after working in the mine for only two years. Then he began having trouble breathing. Finally he went to a doctor. He was tested, and told that he had asbestosis, which was fatal, and there was no cure. Les Skramstad later spoke about the day he got that diagnosis from the doctor:

SKRAMSTAD: So, I went out and got in the car and started for home and I suppose, I guess we got about half way home probably, and I said to Norita [his wife], I said "Jesus you know what?" And she said, "what" I said, "I just got a death sentence."

Les Skramstad lived for 10 years after that initial diagnosis, although his health continued to fail. Instead of just waiting quietly to die, Les Skramstad started speaking out to the people in his community, talking about the fact that this mine which had been a part of their small town for generations, was killing them. A lot of the people did not want to hear about it, because so many of them made their living in that mine. They raised their kids there, they drank the water, they owned homes or land, and they did not want to believe that their entire town was deadly and poisoned. Some people spoke against Les Skramstad, called him a troublemaker and a radical. But he continued to speak to people about this problem until he died. And over time, more and more people in that small town also began being diagnosed with asbestotis, so finally they realized that what Les was telling them was true.

At last report, out of the town of 2700, 1400 had already been diagnosed with lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos, including asbestosis, and 270 had died from the disease.

(Mining operations, Libby, Montana)

The mine was owned by W.R. Grace, a multinational corporation which was also involved in the movie and film "A Civil Action" about another small town, that one in Massachusetts, in which the people got sick and died from toxic wastes dumped into the local river. W.R. Grace fought tooth and nail against the small attorneys representing the homeowners in Massachusetts, and I believe they avoided being held liable.

Once the problems in Libby Montana became public, W.R. Grace put its corporation into bankruptcy to avoid having to pay for the injures to the residents of Libby, or pay for the cleanup of that town. The corporation continues to do business, but its assets are protected by the bankruptcy court. In the meantime, guess who gets to foot the bill to conduct investigations and try to figure out how to clean up the town of Libby? The taxpayers of this country. The corporation loots the resources, takes all the money, and leaves it to the working people to pay for the damage they cause.

Watching the lackadaisical response of British Petroleum to its oil rigs gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, killing everything that is living for hundreds of miles, destroying the coastal land, putting people out of business, dumping dispersants into the water that could be even worse in the long run, exposing thousands of people to chemical cocktails with unknown future health damage, I thought of Libby Montana and W.R. Grace.

The conclusion is obvious: these corporations steal, loot and pillage, pay the local residents pennies for their labor, then they walk away when their looting causes massive environmental destruction, and kills many of the local residents from cancer and related diseases. They take the resources and the money, the working people die, and the taxpayers pay to clean up the corporate damage. As long as we allow privately-owned for-profit corporations to conduct these types of businesses, they will continue to destroy the planet and kill the animals, plants, and humans. And they don't care one bit.

Here's an excerpt from an article that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper about Les Skramstad when he died:

A bittersweet farewell to a champ of asbestos fight (1/27/07 by David McCumber, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Managing Editor)

Cowboys are supposed to be able to sing, sweet and clear and honest like the high-country air they breathe.

When I last heard Les Skramstad sing, at the American Legion club in Libby, Mont., his vocal cords were still tuned true, somewhere west of Willie and north of Merle, but he kept his lips up against the mike, and the amp was cranked to the max. His lungs were scarred with entirely too much high-country air, not clear and honest but laden with asbestos and corporate denials, and he could barely push enough breath to be heard.

Les ... had worked at the mine for only two years, and had been diagnosed with asbestosis -- the gradual, and fatal, thickening of the lungs caused by embedded asbestos fibers.

Les was a simple man, a cowboy, a mechanic, a millwright and a bar singer who raised his kids in the beautiful Cabinet Mountains of western Montana. He never dreamed they'd be in danger there.

Les won the first jury verdict against W.R. Grace, the company that had purchased the mine and ran it for decades -- not telling the miners about the danger they faced.

(Libby Montana: memorial to the residents who have died from asbestosis)

A few days after [the first stories about Libby Montana and the asbestos problems] ran in the P-I, an Environmental Protection Agency emergency response team showed up -- expecting to find the newspaper account was wrong. What they found instead was the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Eventually the federal government would do a health screening in Libby that showed nearly a third of the town -- more than 1,500 people -- showed signs of lung abnormalities that could signal asbestos-related disease.

After the P-I stories ran, Les kept up the pressure. He became personal friends with the then-governor of Montana, Judy Martz, who, in an act of considerable political courage for a conservative Republican, put Libby on the Superfund list. Les was on a first-name basis with U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and even traveled to the U.S. Capitol, wearing his trademark Resistol hat and a wild Western shirt, to lobby Congress on behalf of asbestos victims.

What turned Les from a soft-spoken cowboy into a hard-nosed activist was not his own health. It was the fact that his wife, Norita, and three of his children also have been diagnosed with the fatal disease.
Les told me that he loved his job at the mine. "I loved it so much that even if they had told me that I was endangering my life, I would probably have stayed.

"But if they had told me it was killing my wife and family, too, I would have run like hell."

So long, Les. We admired your courage and determination. We'll miss your voice, so sweet and clear and angry.

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/301452_les27.html

Here's an update from Democracy Now with Amy Goodman: