New York City can’t afford to wait for health care! Join our vigil MoveOn members have organized candlelight vigils for people suffering under our broken health care system. Host: David G. and your local MoveOn Council Where: Columbus Circle (in New York City) When: Wednesday at 7:00 PM What: We’ll open with moving words from Senator Ted Kennedy, who called this fight “the cause of my life.” Then we’ll read the names and hear the stories of people struggling with the current health care system.

Health Department Asks New Yorkers if They’re “Pouring On the Pounds”

Health Department Asks New Yorkers if They’re “Pouring On the Pounds” Consumers are encouraged to choose beverages with less sugar It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. By contrast, soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages can sneak up on you, adding hundreds of calories to your diet each day without ever filling you up. In a new effort to highlight the health impact of sweetened drinks, the Health Department is confronting New Yorkers with a bold question: Are you pouring on the pounds? The agency’s public-awareness campaign, which includes posters in the subway system and a Health Bulletin, will run for three months. Learn more Are You Pouring on the Pounds? How to cut back on soda, juice and other sugary beverages In this issue: Most of us consume too much sugar I don’t eat a lot of sweets but I still gain weight! Sodas are getting bigger Real fruit beats fruit juice Don’t Drink Yourself Fat! Learn more Health Bulletin #73 is one in a series on issues of pressing interest to all New Yorkers. All Health Bulletins are available in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and many are available in other languages. For copies, call 311 or visit nyc.gov/health. **** This program is greatly needed by the NYPD, have you seen all those OVERWEIGHT, OUT OF SHAPE Officers on the street!****

When Bus Drivers Stopped Giving Change

clipped from cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com By A. G. Sulzberger Edward Hausner/The New York Times On Aug. 31, 1969, New York City buses began requiring exact change. A day earlier, passengers boarded a crosstown bus on 42nd Street, heading east toward the United Nations, as someone up front got change from the driver. Before the MetroCard, before the old two-tone token, when fares were just 20 cents, New York City bus drivers did something that today seems almost remarkable. They gave change. For example, in case the self-explanatory nature of the concept has eroded with time, a person could hand a crisp dollar bill to a driver and the driver would return 80 cents in coins. Until Aug. 31, 1969. In a year of 40th anniversary celebrations — the moon landing, Woodstock, the premiere of “Sesame Street” — it could be easy to overlook the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s move to exact fares on city buses.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/when-bus-drivers-stopped-giving-change/

Two Mass Murderers, Two Very Different Stories and Much Hypocrisy

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on August 31, 2009, Printed on August 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142312/

On this one-way planet of ours, it’s hard sometimes to imagine things any other way, but for a moment let’s try. Imagine, for instance, that in recent years the director of Iranian intelligence oversaw a program of “extraordinary rendition” aimed at those who were believed to be prepared to commit acts of terror against that country’s fundamentalist regime. Practically speaking, what this often meant was kidnapping suspects — some quite innocent of such aims — off the streets of Middle Eastern or South Asian cities and transporting them secretly to Iran, to “black sites” set up abroad, or to allied regimes known for their torture practices.

Imagine that these suspects, once in the hands of his agents — the Geneva Conventions having been declared not applicable to them — were then tortured, abused, and sometimes murdered. Imagine that, for this, the director, in a public ceremony with great hoopla, was awarded the Ayatollah Khomeini Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the land, and on retiring honorably wrote a bestselling memoir about his years in office. Imagine as well that, to help Iranian interrogators, lawyers close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had rewritten the law so that acts which the world had long agreed to be torture were now redefined as not so, and on that basis, they were instructed to do such things as waterboarding suspects, even as the fundamentalist regime regularly announced that, on the basis of its own definitions, it did not condone torture.

If such a scenario had occurred, we know what we would think of such people. We know what our media would say about such people. We know what we would demand as a fate for such people — that they be brought to justice. The present regime in Iran has proven itself quite capable of committing its own set of horrors and tortures. The above description, however, could not be mistaken for the recent history of any agency but the CIA and associated outfits under the purview of the top officials and lawyers of the Bush administration. Indeed, George Tenet, CIA director from 1997-2004, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor possible, by George W. Bush in December 2004, when much of the above was already on the public record (and the president certainly knew far more). Tenet did then write At the Center of the Storm, a bestselling memoir, and so on.

Now, a new administration is in power and it has decided to investigate CIA interrogations — but only those acts by Agency operatives (and its private contractors) that went beyond the bounds of Bush administration extremity, beyond the bounds, that is, of that administration’s pretzled definitions of what was not torture. The rest gets a pass.

On the day that decision made headlines, another report, “U.S. Says Rendition to Continue, but With More Oversight” by David Johnston in the New York Times, barely got noticed, even though it indicated that a now-notorious program of the Bush years would be continued in the Obama era. In other words, the U.S. will go right on turning terror suspects over to third countries for incarceration and interrogation (something criticized by Barack Obama in his presidential campaign), only with undoubtedly meaningless “diplomatic assurances” of no-torture policies. (Johnston did not even mention the kidnapping part of the process.) I’m still waiting for someone to ask the question: Why turn suspects over to seedy regimes if you don’t expect them to act seedily?

Had China announced that it was going to turn rebel Uighurs captured outside the country over to Uzbekistan, or Myanmar made it clear that it was planning to send dissidents kidnapped in Thailand to Syria, we would denounce such policies to the skies. But it’s us, and as Nick Turse, TomDispatch associate editor and author of the remarkable book on American militarism, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, points out, we are the great exception. If we do it, it essentially doesn’t count — and perhaps more remarkably, it never dents our urge to stand on the highest moral ground around and accuse others of heinous acts. Of course, when you still want to think of yourself as the planet’s sole superpower, you naturally feel you have license to do such things, and leave yourself out of the equation. It’s evidently the global equivalent of James Bond’s license to kill, or Monopoly’s get-out-of-jail-free card. Tom

 

Apologies, Anger, and Apathy

My Lai and Lockerbie Reconsidered

by Nick Turse

A week ago, two convicted mass murderers leaped back into public consciousness as news coverage of their stories briefly intersected. One was freed from prison, continuing to proclaim his innocence, and his release was vehemently denounced in the United States as were the well-wishers who welcomed him home. The other expressed his contrition, after almost 35 years living in his country in a state of freedom, and few commented.

When Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan sentenced in 2001 to 27 years in prison for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was released from incarceration by the Scottish government on “compassionate grounds,” a furor erupted. On August 22nd, ABC World News with Charles Gibson featured a segment on outrage over the Libyan’s release. It was aired shortly before a report on an apology offered by William Calley, who, in 1971 as a young lieutenant, was sentenced to life in prison for the massacre of civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.

After al-Megrahi, who served eight years in prison, arrived home to a hero’s welcome in Libya, officials in Washington expressed their dismay. To White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, it was “outrageous and disgusting”; to President Barrack Obama, “highly objectionable.” Calley, who admitted at trial to killing Vietnamese civilians personally, but served only three years of house arrest following an intervention by President Richard Nixon, received a standing ovation from the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus, Georgia, the city where he lived for years following the war. (He now resides in Atlanta.) For him, there was no such uproar, and no one, apparently, thought to ask either Gibbs or the president for comment, despite the eerie confluence of the two men and their fates.

Part of the difference in treatment was certainly the passage of time and Calley’s contrition, however many decades delayed, regarding the infamous massacre of more than 500 civilians. “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” the Vietnam veteran told his audience. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.” For his part, al-Megrahi, now dying of cancer, accepted that relatives of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing “have hatred for me. It’s natural to behave like this… They believe I’m guilty, which in reality I’m not. One day the truth won’t be hiding as it is now. We have an Arab saying: ‘The truth never dies.’”

American Exceptionalism

Calley was charged in the deaths of more than 100 civilians and convicted in the murder of 22 in one village, while al-Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 civilians aboard one airplane. Almost everyone, it seems, found it perverse, outrageous, or “gross and callous” that the Scottish government allowed a convicted mass murderer to return to a homeland where he was greeted with open arms. No one seemingly thought it odd that another mass murderer had lived freely in his home country for so long. The families of the Lockerbie victims were widely interviewed. As the Calley story broke, no American reporter apparently thought it worth the bother to look for the families of the My Lai victims, let alone ask them what they thought of the apology of the long-free officer who had presided over, and personally taken part in the killing of, their loved ones.

Whatever the official response to al-Megrahi, the lack of comment on Calley underscores a longstanding American aversion to facing what the U.S. did to Vietnam and its people during a war that ended more than 30 years ago. Since then, one cover-up of mass murder after another has unraveled and bubbled into view. These have included the mass killing of civilians in the Mekong Delta village of Thanh Phong by future senator Bob Kerrey and the SEAL team he led (exposed by the New York Times Magazine and CBS News in 2001); a long series of atrocities (including murders, torture, and mutilations) involving the deaths of hundreds of noncombatants largely committed in Quang Ngai Province (where My Lai is also located) by an elite U.S. unit, the Tiger Force (exposed by the Toledo Blade in 2003); seven massacres, 78 other attacks on noncombatants, and 141 instances of torture, among other atrocities (exposed by the Los Angeles Times in 2006); a massacre of civilians by U.S. Marines in Quang Nam Province’s Le Bac hamlet (exposed in In These Times magazine in 2008); and the slaughter of thousands of Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta during Operation Speedy Express (exposed in The Nation magazine, also in 2008). Over the last decade, long suppressed horrors from Vietnam have been piling up, indicating not only that My Lai, horrific and iconic as it may have been, was no isolated incident, but that many American veterans have long lived with memories not unlike those of William Calley.

If you recall what actually happened at My Lai, Calley’s more-than-40-years-late apology cannot help but ring hollow. Not only were more than 500 defenseless civilians slaughtered by Calley and some of the 100 troops who stormed the village on March 16, 1968, but women and girls were brutally raped, bodies were horrifically mutilated, homes set aflame, animals tortured and killed, the local water supply fouled, and the village razed to the ground. Some of the civilians were killed in their bomb shelters, others when they tried to leave them. Women holding infants were gunned down. Others, gathered together, threw themselves on top of their children as they were sprayed with automatic rifle fire. Children, even babies, were executed at close range. Many were slaughtered in an irrigation ditch.

For his part in the bloodbath, Calley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison at hard labor. As it happened, he spent only three days in a military stockade before President Richard Nixon intervened and had him returned to his “bachelor apartment,” where he enjoyed regular visits from a girlfriend, built gas-powered model airplanes, and kept a small menagerie of pets. By late 1974, Calley was a free man. He subsequently went on the college lecture circuit (making $2,000 an appearance), married the daughter of a jeweler in Columbus, Georgia, and worked at the jewelry store for many years without hue or cry from fellow Americans among whom he lived. All that time he stayed silent and, despite ample opportunity, offered no apologies.

Still, Calley’s belated remorse evidences a sense of responsibility that his superiors — from his company commander Capt. Ernest Medina to his commander-in-chief President Lyndon Johnson — never had the moral fiber to shoulder. Recently, in considering the life and death of Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who repudiated his wartime justifications for the conflict decades later (“We were wrong, terribly wrong.”), Jonathan Schell asked:

 

“[H]ow many public figures of his importance have ever expressed any regret at all for their mistakes and follies and crimes? As the decades of the twentieth century rolled by, the heaps of corpses towered, ever higher, up to the skies, and now they pile up again in the new century, but how many of those in high office who have made these things happen have ever said, ‘I made a mistake,’ or ‘I was terribly wrong,’ or shed a tear over their actions? I come up with: one, Robert McNamara.”

Because the United States failed to take responsibility for the massive scale of civilian slaughter and suffering inflicted in Southeast Asia in the war years, and because McNamara’s contrition arrived decades late, he never became the public face of slaughter in Vietnam, even though he, like other top U.S. civilian officials and military commanders of that time, bore an exponentially greater responsibility for the bloodshed in that country than the low-ranking Calley.

Butchery in the Mekong Delta

A few weeks after McNamara’s death, Julian Ewell, a top Army general who served in two important command roles in Vietnam, also passed away. For years, the specter of atrocity had swirled around him, but only among a select community of veterans and Vietnam War historians. In 1971, Newsweek magazine’s Kevin Buckley and Alex Shimkin conducted a wide-ranging investigation of Ewell’s crowning achievement, a six-month operation in the Mekong Delta code-named Speedy Express, and found evidence of the widespread slaughter of civilians. “The horror was worse than My Lai,” one American official told Buckley. “But… the civilian casualties came in dribbles and were pieced out over a long time. And most of them were inflicted from the air and at night. Also, they were sanctioned by the command’s insistence on high body counts.”

As word of the impending Newsweek article spread, John Paul Vann, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was by then the third-most-powerful American serving in Vietnam, and his deputy, Colonel David Farnham, met in Washington with Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland. At that meeting, Vann told Westmoreland that Ewell’s troops had wantonly killed civilians in order to boost the body count — the number of enemy dead that served as the primary indicator of success in the field — and so further the general’s reputation and career. According to Farnham, Vann said Speedy Express was, in effect, “many My Lais.”

A Pentagon-level cover-up and Newsweek’s desire not to upset the Nixon administration in the wake of the My Lai revelations kept the full results of the meticulous investigation by Buckley and Shimkin bottled up. The publication of a severely truncated version of their article allowed the Pentagon to ride out the coverage without being forced to convene a large-scale official inquiry of the sort which followed public disclosure of the My Lai massacre. Only last year did some of the reporting that Newsweek suppressed, as well as new evidence of the slaughter and the cover-up, appear in a piece of mine in The Nation and only in the wake of Ewell’s death was it mentioned in the Washington Post that a long-secret official Army report, commissioned in response to Buckley and Shimkin’s investigation, concluded:

 

“[W]hile there appears to be no means of determining the precise number of civilian casualties incurred by US forces during Operation Speedy Express, it would appear that the extent of these casualties was in fact substantial, and that a fairly solid case can be constructed to show that civilian casualties may have amounted to several thousand (between 5,000 and 7,000).”

A year after the eviscerated Buckley-Shimkin piece was published, Ewell retired from the Army. Colonel Farnham believed that the general was prematurely pushed out due to continuing Army fears of a scandal. If true, it was the only act approaching official censure that he apparently ever experienced, far less punishment than that meted out to al-Megrahi, or even Calley. Yet Ewell was responsible for the deaths of markedly more civilians. Needless to say, Ewell’s civilian slaughter never garnered significant TV coverage, nor did any U.S. president ever express outrage over it, or begrudge the general his military benefits, let alone the ability to spend time with his family. In fact, in October, following a memorial service, Julian Ewell will be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Chain of Command

In his recent remarks, William Calley emphasized that he was following orders at My Lai, a point on which he has never wavered. The Army’s investigation into My Lai involved 45 members of Medina’s company, including Calley, suspected of atrocities. In a second investigation, 30 individuals were looked into for covering up what happened in the village by “omissions or commissions.” Twenty-eight of them were officers, two of them generals, and as a group they stood accused of a total of 224 offenses. Calley, however, was the sole person convicted of an offense in connection with My Lai. Even he ultimately evaded any substantive punishment for his crimes.

While an opportunity was squandered during the Vietnam era, Calley’s apology and the response to al-Megrahi’s release offer another chance for some essential soul-searching in the United States. In considering Calley’s decades-late contrition, Americans might ask why a double-standard exists when it comes to official outrage over mass murder. It might also be worth asking why some individuals, like a former Libyan intelligence officer or, in rare instances, a low-ranking U.S. infantry officer, are made to bear so much blame for major crimes whose responsibility obviously reached far above them; and why officers up the chain of command, and war managers — in Washington or Tripoli — escape punishment for the civilian blood on their hands. Unfortunately, this opportunity will almost certainly be squandered as well.

Similarly, it’s unlikely that Americans will seriously contemplate just how so many lived beside Calley for so long, without seeking justice — as would be second nature in the case of a similarly horrific crime committed by an officer serving a hostile power elsewhere. Yet he and fellow American officers from Donald Reh (implicated in the deaths of 19 civilians — mostly women and children — during a February 1968 massacre) to Bob Kerrey have gone about their lives without so much as being tried by court martial, let alone serving prison time as did al-Megrahi.

In the immediate wake of Calley’s contrition, it wasn’t a reporter from the American media but from Agence France Presse (AFP) who thought to check on how Vietnamese survivors or relatives of those massacred at My Lai might react. When an AFP reporter spoke to Pham Thanh Cong, who saw his mother and brothers killed in the My Lai massacre (and now runs a small museum at the village) and asked what he thought of Calley’s apology, he responded, “Maybe he has now repented for his crimes and his mistakes committed more than 40 years ago.” Maybe.

Today, some of Calley’s cohorts, the mostly anonymous others who perpetrated their own horrors in Southeast Asia and never faced even a modicum of justice for their crimes, go about their lives in American cities and suburbs. (Others, who have committed unpunished offenses in the Global War on Terror, are still on active duty.) As a result, the outrage over what happened to the only man convicted of the terrorist act against Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, has a strikingly hollow ring.

A failure to demand an honest accounting of the suffering the United States caused the Vietnamese people and a willingness to ignore ample evidence of widespread slaughter remains a lasting legacy of the Vietnam War. So does a desire to reduce all discussion of U.S. atrocities in Southeast Asia to the massacre at My Lai, with William Calley bearing the burden — not just for his crimes but for all U.S. crimes there. And it will remain so until the American people do what their military and civilian leadership have failed to do for more than 40 years: take responsibility for the misery the U.S. inflicted in Southeast Asia.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

© 2009 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142312/

Man Beats Himself Up After Getting Tossed from Strip Club

clipped from gothamist.com Man Beats Himself Up After Getting Tossed from Strip Club A Kew Gardens man tried to get a bouncer arrested for roughing him up, but cops ended up booking the accuser when they discovered he was caught on camera inflicting the damage onto himself. The Post reports 34-year-old Khuram Murtaza had been thrown out of Rouge Gentlemen’s Club in Maspeth around 1 a.m. Tuesday and called the cops to report he had been beaten up, showing them that his face was bloodied and bruised when they arrived. But bouncers simply showed police surveillance video that revealed Murtaza smashing his own face against a car, cutting his nose.

What a Dumb Ass!

Cedar Walton

clipped from www.nytimes.com Sunday Routine | Cedar Walton The Piano’s Pull, Day and Night By MICHAEL WILSON The pianist Cedar Walton, 75, is a bridge between the old and the new in jazz, a former sideman who recorded on John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” as well as with Etta James and with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, all while rolling out his own muscular catalog. His latest album, “Voices Deep Within,” is to be released by HighNote Records on Sept. 15. A recent interview caught him at home with his wife, Martha, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the morning after two sets and a late night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. MICHAEL WILSON Justin Maxon/The New York Times PLAY FOR PAY The jazz pianist Cedar Walton at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola before his second set on a Sunday night.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/nyregion/30routine.html

Summer Rituals | Going South

clipped from www.nytimes.com Summer Rituals | Going South A World Away, Close to Family By ROBBIE BROWN SILVER CREEK, Miss. — The sight of a menacing dog outside her Brooklyn apartment would send Amya CaJoie Stewart skittering inside for safety. But not the Rottweiler that prowled the gravel road at her aunt’s house in this sun-cooked rural town. In a flash of bravado, the prim 10-year-old lured the dog with a dish of water, lashed it to a post and named it Sam. “That’s what you do in Mississippi,” Amya explained. “You tie the dogs in your yard.” Such is the wisdom of a city kid who summers in the Deep South. Every year, thousands of African-American children like Amya, from New York, Chicago and other urban outposts, spend a week, a month, even a full season below the Mason-Dixon Line, where so many families trace their roots. No official program coordinates them, just parents seeking for relief, relatives ready for company and children looking to escape the city swelter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/nyregion/30ritual.html

Treacherous Ground

clipped from www.nytimes.com Treacherous Ground Illustration by Sparrow V. Swallow By MARK LEWIS Black soldiers contributed enormously to the Union cause during the Civil War but won no famous victories that can be used to dramatize their achievement. That’s why Hollywood employed a glorious defeat — the Battle of Fort Wagner — as the climax of the film “Glory.” In “No Quarter,” the historian Richard Slotkin makes similarly skillful use of the Battle of the Crater, in which black troops almost dealt a death blow to the Confederacy, but ended up being scapegoated for an infamous Union disaster.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/review/Lewis-t.html

Mayor Mike Unhappy With Sausage Fest Of Vets At The Met

clipped from gothamist.com Mayor Mike Unhappy With Sausage Fest Of Vets At The Met Since Mayor Bloomberg was robbed of his chance to engage in Weiner Wars this election year, he’s settling for the next best thing—the Wiener Wars! Yesterday on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg was asked about the recent crackdown of illegal vendors outside the Met. Since it was reported that veteran Dan Rossi was taking advantage of a 19th Century law that allowed vets to vend without paying, more veteran have been making their way to Fifth Ave, many employed by vendors who use them to beat the law and allow them to sit idly nearby.

<a href=”http://gothamist.com/2009/08/29/mayor_mike_not_happy_with_sausage_f.php”>By Billy Parker in News on August 29, 2009 12:12 PM</a>

Amid Hiring Freeze, Principals Leave Jobs Empty

clipped from www.nytimes.com Amid Hiring Freeze, Principals Leave Jobs Empty By JENNIFER MEDINA Published: August 29, 2009 About 1,800 teaching jobs in New York City remain open as principals appear to be resisting orders to fill vacancies with teachers whose previous positions were eliminated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/nyregion/29teachers.html

From KKK, Mideast to church, film explores hate and hope

clipped from www.cnn.com From KKK, Mideast to church, film explores hate and hope By Jessica Ravitz CNN (CNN) — Mike Ramsdell was recently out of film school when the 9/11 attacks threw America’s sense of security upside down. Born to a Lebanese mother and a father who is a social studies teacher, the Michigan native grappled with the horror of what happened to his country that day just as he paid attention to people’s reactions. When he heard President Bush’s declaration of war on terrorism, he thought to himself: “A lot of people are going to die.” “The Anatomy of Hate” explores who Ku Klux Klan members are as human beings, beneath the hoods. The end result was “The Anatomy of Hate: A Dialogue for Hope,” an award-winning documentary from Under the Hood Productions. The film will screen in Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday evening at the Carter Center as part of the Atlanta International Documentary Film Festival, also known as DocuFest.

A Compromise for the Michael Jackson Subway Station

clipped from cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com By Jennifer 8. Lee Alex Headrick Suggestions to honor Michael Jackson at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station, where his 1987 “Bad” video was shot, have gone viral. How could Michael Jackson be memorialized at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station? Not in many ways, apparently. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has shot down nearly every suggestion to honor Michael Jackson at the station where he filmed his 1987 “Bad” video, directed by Martin Scorsese.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/a-compromise-for-the-michael-jackson-subway-station/

Health Department Reminds New Yorkers to Avoid Wild Animals and to Vaccinate their Pets against Rabies

Health Department Reminds New Yorkers to Avoid Wild Animals and to Vaccinate their Pets against Rabies Second rabid raccoon recently identified in Manhattan With the identification of a second raccoon infected with rabies in Manhattan in recent weeks, the Health Department is reminding New Yorkers to stay away from raccoons, skunks, bats, stray dogs and cats and other wild animals that can carry rabies. 12 rabid animals have been identified in New York City this year. Eight were found in the Bronx, two in Manhattan (most recently in Central Park), one in Queens (Long Island City) and one in Staten Island (Tottenville). Raccoons are the most commonly reported rabid animals in New York City. Rabid raccoons are a relatively common occurrence in Staten Island and the Bronx, but rare in Queens and Manhattan. Bats with rabies have also been found in all five boroughs. Learn more

After Bias Ruling, Firefighter Applicants Look Back

clipped from www.nytimes.com After Bias Ruling, Firefighter Applicants Look Back By KAREEM FAHIM Dreaming of careers fighting fires, they applied by the hundreds, only to end up with test scores that put highly coveted jobs in the city’s Fire Department hopelessly out of reach. So they turned their attention to seeking — or settling for —other jobs: U.P.S. worker, credit union teller. Jamel Nicholson, who had a family to support, unclogged drains for a living before becoming a subway conductor. Staveus Daley took a job as a deckhand on the Staten Island Ferry. Others joined the Police Department, but remain troubled by a bitter irony: They were deemed qualified to carry guns, but not to save people in burning buildings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/nyregion/28firefighters.html

NEWLY CONSTRUCTED APARTMENTS FOR RENT IN THE CENTRAL HARLEM SECTION OF MANHATTAN

NEWLY CONSTRUCTED APARTMENTS FOR RENT IN THE CENTRAL HARLEM SECTION OF MANHATTAN

Site 8 Equities, LLC is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for 43 affordable housing rental apartments now under construction at 1473 & 1465 Fifth Avenue in the Central Harlem section of Manhattan. This building is being constructed through the Cornerstone Program of the City of New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New Housing Opportunity Program (New HOP) of the New York City Housing Development Corporation.

For more information

NEWLY CONSTRUCTED CONDOMINIUMS FOR SALE IN THE CENTRAL HARLEM SECTION OF MANHATTAN

The Lore and Gateway Condominiums are pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for twenty-two (22) condominium units currently being constructed at 261 West 112th Street (The Lore) and 2100 Frederick Douglass Blvd (The Gateway) in the Central Harlem section of Manhattan. The complete offering terms are in an offering plan available from the sponsor. These condominium units will be offered for sale through the Cornerstone Round III Program of New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

For more information

Keeping Radio’s Salsa Hot for 50 Years

clipped from www.nytimes.com Keeping Radio’s Salsa Hot for 50 Years Tim Knox for The New York Times Polito Vega in the studios of “La Mega” — WSKQ-FM in New York — where he is both a program host and informal godfather to young Latin musicians. By LARRY ROHTER Spanish speakers in New York know him as El Rey de la Radio — the King of Radio. For longer than most of them can remember, Polito Vega’s booming, ebullient baritone, amusing stories and colorful catchphrases —“andando, andando, andando” — have been a constant and reassuring presence, as much a part of the soundtrack of urban life here as the blare of a taxi’s horn or the roar of the crowd at Yankee Stadium. Mr. Vega broadcast his first program 50 years ago, shortly after arriving from Puerto Rico, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had yet put a man in space.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/arts/music/27vega.html

The Dragonfly Mystery

clipped from www.nytimes.com City Room: The Dragonfly Mystery By By Jennifer 8. Lee Published: August 27, 2009 New Yorkers are delighting in the long, colorful, iridescent dragonflies being spotted in the urban corridors of the city.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/the-dragonfly-mystery/

For Candidates, Donna Summer Is Hot Stuff

clipped from cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com By Sewell Chan She is best known as the Queen of Disco, a 1970s pop legend. But Donna Summer also appears to be quite a draw for local politicians — and not just for her music. Ms. Summer is to headline the final weekly performance of the 31st annual Seaside Summer Concert Series at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Asser Levy/Seaside Park on Coney Island, and word is that most of the Democratic candidates running for mayor, comptroller and public advocate are planning to drop by, to shake hands with prospective voters and get the word out as the days count down to the Democratic primary on Sept. 15. Soeren Stache/ European Pressphoto Agency

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/for-candidates-donna-summer-is-hot-stuff/

African Diaspora Summer Film Series

Tune in to WNBC Channel 4 on Saturday morning, August 29 @ 6:30am or log on to www.nbcnewyork.com/video/ anytime Saturday afternoon and watch POSITIVELY BLACK’s interview of Giancarlo Esposito talking about the theatrical release of “Gospel Hill” and the African Diaspora Film Festival!                                                                               4th Annual African Diaspora  Summer Film Series LAST WEEKEND AUG 28 – AUG 30, 2009 DATE:  Friday, August 28 to Sunday, August 30, 2009 . VENUE: The Riverside Theatre, of the Riverside Church. 91 Claremont Ave. (120th), NYC Tel: (212) 870-6784  www.theriversidtheatre.org Nearest subway: #1 train to 116th Street.  Bus # M104, M4 or M60. The 4th Annual African Diaspora Film Series, presented in collaboration with the Riverside Theater of Riverside Church, ends this weekend. >>> “The End of Poverty?” asks: in a world of plenty, why are many families around the world still living in abject poverty? (In English, and French /Spanish/Maa with English subtitles.) Screening on Saturday, August 29 at 4pm followed by a discussion. >>> “Gospel Hill,” directed by Giancarlo Esposito, is a metaphor of America today as “greed and idealism collide” in a social environment where human tensions are high and people’s humanity is strongly marked by a turbulent past. (In English.). Screenings at Riverside Theatre on Fri, 28 @ 6:30pm; Sat, 29 @ 6:30pm; and Sun 30 @ 2pm. >>> “Youssou N’Dour: Return to Goree”  follows famous Senegalese singer in his quest to celebrate the connection between African music and jazz. Friday, August 28-8:30pm.   >>> “Made in Jamaica” explores how Jamaican music has become a worldwide phenomenon that makes people dance worldwide. Performances by such artists as Yellow Man, Thirld World and many more. Saturday, August 29-8:30pm.   >>> Renowned African-American filmmaker Stanley Nelson directed “Wounded Knee,” a fascinating film about the occupation of Wounded Knee by 200 armed Oglala Lakota in a 71-day standoff in 1973.  Pre-screening Zompantli (Wall of Skull) Aztec/Mayan dance performance. Sunday, August 30-4:00pm Tickets for the African Diaspora Summer Film Series can be purchased online at www.theriversidtheatre.org or by calling 212-870-6784. TICKET PRICES: $10 general admission.Senior/Student: $8.00.  Opening Night 8/21 – Reception and “Gospel Hill” screening: $15. Wounded Knee and Zompantli Aztec/ Mayan dance $12 Seniors/Students $10 TICKETS HERE    THIS WEEKEND    STORIES OF IMMIGRATION FILM SERIES Why do people go into exile? What must they do to integrate the society they choose to live in? Who is a successful immigrant? How is success defined? This film series discusses how immigrants redefine their identity and that of the host country; the multiple reasons for leaving one’s country of birth and the quest for integration. Friday, August 28 @  6:00pm (FREE SCREENING) DIARY IN EXILE Egypt, 1993, 55min, doc., Arabic with English subtitles, Atteyat Al-Abnoudy & Hussain Sherif, dirs. After the military coup in Sudan in 1989, Egypt witnessed great numbers of Sudanese emigrants coming to Cairo. The film investigates the situation of those who came to Cairo, looking for a way to survive and dreaming of going back to their home land “The Sudan.”  Refreshments will be served.   Saturday, August 29 @ 2:00pm   THE NIGHT OF DESTINY Abdelkrim Bahloul, France and Algeria, 1997, 96min, French with English subtitles, thriller. Abdelkader Silimani, a sixty five years old Algerian Muslim living in France, inadvertently witnesses a murder and escapes from the killers by hiding out in a mosque. Detective Leclerc is assigned to the case. He is then introduced to a community he does not know anything about. Saturday, August 29 @ 4:00pm  DOLLARS AND DREAMS US, 2007, 65min, doc, English, Jeremy Rocklin, dir. “Dollars and Dreams” is a documentary film focused on the pursuits and challenges of numerous West African immigrants as they confront the idea of the American Dream and the reality of the New York experience. Saturday, August 29 @ 6:30pm THE NANNY Nikodimos Fikru, 2005, 90min, Amharic with English subtitles, USA, drama “Mogzitwa/The Nanny” tells a story of a young Ethiopian woman, Mimi, who leaves her home country in hopes of finding a better life in America, where she struggles to earn a living as a child care taker for a family member. Sunday, August 30 @ 2:00pm  SEXUAL EXILES Irene Sosa, USA, 1999, 30min, documentary, English Video documentary about the impossibility of returning home for lesbians and gays once they have “come out” while living in exile. show with SHOPPING TO BELONG Irene Sosa, USA, 30min, 2007, documentary, Spanish with English subtitles. “Shopping to Belong” is a documentary about the relationship between consumerism and the sense of belonging and citizenship among Latino immigrants. Q&A with director after the screening of both films.   Sunday, August 30  @ 4:00pm   A FORGOTTEN INJUSTICE (sneak preview screening) Vicente Serrano, USA, 2008, English and Spanish with English subtitles, documentary, “A Forgotten Injustice” is  the first documentary that uncovers the story of almost two million Mexican Americans and U.S. citizens, who were forced out of the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s.   TICKETS:  FREE for Teachers College Students, Faculty and Staff with valid TC ID General admission per show $9; $7 for students and seniors. Friday, August 28 – 6pm FREE Screening DIRECTIONS TO TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY:   Teachers College, Columbia University 525  West 120th Street – Room Macy 263 Train 1 to 116th Street – Walk up four blocks  or Bus M4, M60 or M104 to 120th Street  Photo ID required to enter building  Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to contact OASID at oasid@tc.edu, (212) 678-3689, (212) 678-3853 TTY, (212) 678-3854 video phone, as early as possible to request reasonable accommodations, such as ASL interpreters, alternate format materials, and a campus map of accessible features. Info: (212) 864-1760

Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics

clipped from www.nytimes.com Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics By CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS Published: August 27, 2009 Getting “good hair” often means transforming one’s tightly coiled roots; but it is also more freighted, for many African-American women and some men, than simply a choice about grooming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/fashion/27SKIN.html