Category: Uncategorized

“Johnny B. Goode” – the autobiographical saga of a country boy (“colored boy” in the original lyrics) who could “play a guitar just like ringing a bell”. It was given the honor of being the only rock and roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record, which are actual gold-plated records attached on the Voyager I & II space probes with the intent to convey greetings, sounds and images from humanity to any extraterrestrial life encountering the spacecraft as they travel beyond our solar system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Berry#Influence

Though the SBA doesn’t give stimulus package loans directly to small businesses, savvy scammers would have you believe otherwise.

By Karen E. Klein

Q: My sons own and operate an architectural/engineering firm and a steel fabrication firm. These are Main Street firms, needing operating capital. What department of the stimulus package do they apply to for a loan?
—J.R., posted online

A: The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (also known as the “stimulus package”) signed into law last month provides $730 million to beef up the loan guarantee programs of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Part of that sum is supposed to reduce the fees that borrowers pay for SBA-backed loans and to increase government guarantees on the loans, making them more attractive for bankers. These measures are designed to help thaw the current credit freeze.

Another program in the works, a joint Fed and Treasury program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, also aims to get credit flowing again to Main Street borrowers.
However, it is important for your sons and other small business owners to realize the government does not give loans directly to small businesses. The government works through commercial lenders, such as banks, by guaranteeing the small business loans of banks that participate in their loan programs.

The confusion on this point has unfortunately opened the door to fraudulent operators who charge fees purporting to help small business owners and individuals get government money, says Alison Southwick, spokesperson for the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Arlington, Va. “Anytime there’s a story dominating the headlines, scammers are going to take advantage of it,” she says. “When people hear the word ‘stimulus,’ they know that’s something they heard about in the news, so it must be legitimate.”

Hundreds of complaints have poured in to the BBB in the weeks since the stimulus package was passed, she says, most of them from people who responded to Internet ads leading to Web sites featuring “testimonials” from individuals claiming they got government money to start businesses or pay off bills. For a fee, many of the Web site pitches say, they’ll send you a CD or a mail-order kit explaining how to have access to government stimulus money.

Lucky Winners?
These Web sites are extremely misleading, Southwick says, including some that incorporate blogs that appear to be written by the lucky winners of all that stimulus cash. However, not only is the government not cutting checks to would-be entrepreneurs, you don’t need to pay for information about SBA loans or government grants (most of which are available only to nonprofit organizations or very specialized research companies).

“They’re charging you for free information, in the first place. And maybe they send you a CD or maybe they don’t. But what happens is that people’s credit cards start getting billed and there’s no way to stop it,” she says. “A woman I talked to today said she started getting billed not only for the stimulus information but also $25 per month for a newsletter she didn’t want, either.”

Victims often wind up paying $60 to $80 a month, and if they don’t realize it, the scam can go on indefinitely. “They keep on billing and hope that a certain percentage of people aren’t going over their credit-card statements closely,” Southwick says. Even those who catch the unwanted charges often find there’s no way to stop the billing unless they cancel their credit cards.

The bottom line: Provisions of the stimulus package and other government programs are aimed at increasing access to government small business loans and getting the banks back in the business of loaning money again. Good information about SBA loan guarantee programs is available here. Other government sites offer free information about grants, student aid, and government benefits.
There is no reason to pay for software or guides to apply for government loans or grants. Companies that offer such information for a fee—when it is already available for free online—are likely to be scams, so stay away from them.

Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues.

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(Submitted by a reader)

Some parts of South Asia are not doing well; some others seem to be spiraling out of control. We are soliciting your opinion about conditions in the part of South Asia, where you live, where you grew up or with which you are otherwise associated.

1. What is currently going on in your part of South Asia?
2. In what shape do you expect your part of South Asia to be in the next 6 to 12 months?
3. What should peace and human rights activists and civil society members do to improve things in your part of South Asia?
4. What are you willing to do to make these changes happen?
To help us make sense of the results of this opinion survey, please tell us something about yourself. This information will used ONLY in analyzing our findings, and not for any other purpose.
a. In what country do you currently live?
b. With what part of South Asia are you associated?

Any other information you would like to share with us.
Please keep your responses brief, and email them to asiapeace@comcast.net

Pritam Rohila, Ph.D.
Executive Director,
Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA)
http://www.asiapeace.org/ & http://www.indiapakistanpeace.org/

The January/February Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to President Barack Obama, for naming Lawrence Summers as head of his National Economic Council, where he will serve as the President’s top economic adviser. There’s no doubt that Summers has relevant experience (as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton), and he is widely characterized as “brilliant.” But in addition to promoting market fundamentalist ideas through the comment Multinational Monitor recognizes with this regular award, he was one of the architects of the financial deregulation that led to the current financial and economic crisis. Hopefully, he aims to do penance.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?” wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration and is the outgoing president of Harvard University. “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. … I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.” Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.

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Tuberculosis is an airborne infectious disease that is preventable and curable. People ill with TB bacteria in their lungs can infect others when they cough. An estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006. In addition, another 200,000 people with HIV died from HIV-associated TB. If TB disease is detected early and fully treated, people with the disease quickly become non-infectious and eventually cured. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), HIV-associated TB, and weak health systems are major challenges.

WHO is working to dramatically reduce the burden of TB, and halve TB deaths and prevalence by 2015, through its Stop TB Strategy and supporting the Global Plan to Stop TB.

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– Bruce Riedel, a foreign policy expert leading President Obama’s Afghanistan review

Dear Shabu

Recent protests in Pakistan reveal the country’s potential explosiveness. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and a government disconnected from the crippling poverty, rampant malnutrition, and lack of healthcare afflicting its people. Though Pakistan remains an ally of the United States, tensions continue to rise as the U.S. considers broadening military strikes within Pakistan’s borders. Part two of our Rethink Afghanistan documentary focuses on how the Afghanistan crisis affects Pakistan and all of us.

How exactly could the war in Afghanistan trigger regional chaos with Pakistan? Leading authorities like Steve Coll, Ahmed Rashid, Cathy Collins, Tariq Ali, Rory Stewart, Stephen Kinzer, and Andrew Bacevich weigh in on this perilous issue. Watch the trailer for part two of this documentary; the full-length version is available here.

The war in Afghanistan and its potentially catastrophic impact on Pakistan are complex and dangerous issues, which further make the case why our country needs a national debate on this now starting with congressional oversight hearings. Sign the petition to help make hearings a critical first step and then send the trailer to all of your friends and family (and be sure to Digg it). Imagine someone like Andrew Bacevich having the ear of Congress as he explains the perils of war. Now imagine a national dialogue filled with rational, thoughtful discussions on the issues surrounding Afghanistan. That is our goal.

Soon, I plan to travel to Afghanistan to interview some of the country’s elected leaders, experts, bloggers, people, and organizations who could help us provide a more complete Afghan perspective, and I would love to have your thoughts and questions to take with me. Please submit them on the Rethink Afghanistan website, and then sign up to follow my updates from this journey.

Yours,

Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Foundation team

P.S. Help us continue this vital work and partake in the filmmaking process by making a contribution of $20 or more. We will list you as a Producer on Rethink Afghanistan. And if you know someone interested in the issues surrounding this war, let them know they can join over 1,000 Producers helping to make this film possible.

http://www.bravenewfoundation.org/

(Submitted by Shahabuddin Haji)

By Venkatesh Athreya

Anthology of essays offering the Left perspective of the great national revolt
THE GREAT REVOLT — A Left Appraisal: Edited by Sitaram Yechury; People’s Democracy Publications, 15, Talkatora Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 300.

The year 2007 saw the official celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the great national revolt against the British colonial rulers in 1857. Given the nature of the policies of the government of the day, it was not surprising that these celebrations did not seek to critically analyse the events of 1857 and draw lessons from such an analysis for the present times. Fortunately, this lacuna has been addressed and a considerable advance in our collective understanding of the events of 1857 facilitated by the volume under review. The book brings together a total of 36 articles carried first in the pages of the English weekly People’s Democracy from January 26, 2007 to October 21, 2007. The editor of the volume, Sitaram Yechury, who has contributed an article and written the Introduction, notes in his brief editor’s comment that though it was planned that the series would begin with the Republic Day issue of 2007 and end with the Independence Day issue, the response from scholars, activists and others who contributed on one or another theme relating to 1857 was so overwhelming that the series had to be continued for another 10 issues.

Relevance
A variety of contributions from persons widely different in their professional pursuits and academic backgrounds enriches the volume, as it offers the reader varieties of content, concerns, style and articulation. But the unifying thread that runs through the volume is that the lessons of 1857 remain relevant today, and have a particular resonance in these times when global finance capital, with the backing of the advanced capitalist countries and, international financial and trade bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, seek to hegemonise the global economy and limit the options open to other countries to pursue paths of independent development. The contributors include an eminent galaxy of academics and political leaders of the Left as well as activists in various fields committed to the values of secularism, national self-reliance and, social and economic justice. The contributions are, by and large, very readable, competent and thought-provoking. Some are simply outstanding.

Themes
Among the themes dealt with in this volume are: the class character of the various constituents of the population in revolt; the class and political nature of the revolt as a whole; the causes underlying the revolt, in particular the role of colonial rapacity and its plunder and despoliation of the agrarian economy; the role of the peasantry; the extent to which the revolt symbolised the overcoming of divisive religious identities; the consequences of the events of 1857 for British colonial policies in the post-1857 period; the remarkably prescient analysis of Marx on the consequences of British rule in India, as reflected in his writings in the New York Daily Tribune, anticipating the revolt and empathising with it totally when it actually occurred; the events outside the main regions of the revolt, especially in the East, North East and the peninsular South of the Indian subcontinent, that also constituted rebellious opposition to colonial rule; and, throughout, the contemporary relevance of the great national revolt of 1857.

Twin challenges
The courage of the mutineers from the ranks of the Army, the commitment of the ordinary peasantry of India to the overthrow of the hated colonial regime, the role played even by some sections of the feudal ruling elements such as zamindars and taluqdars, and the leadership provided by these sections with all its weaknesses and vacillations, and the fierce and vengeful response of the colonial rulers both during the rebellion and when they had finally crushed the rebellion, have all been brought out very well in this volume.

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Pakistani British author Tariq Ali, author of the The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, reacts to the Pakistani government’s reinstatement of dismissed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry following massive public outcry. Ali also talks about what he calls President Obama’s “inexplicable” expansion of the US occupation of Afghanistan and reflects on the sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times reports President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan beyond the tribal areas and deep into Baluchistan, around the area, the city, of Quetta.
To discuss all this and more, we’re joined now in our firehouse studio by the veteran journalist, activist, Pakistani British writer, Tariq Ali, born in Lahore, Pakistan, lives in London, written over a dozen books, frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Nation, the London Review of Books, on the editorial board of the New Left Review. His latest book, called The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power.
Welcome to Democracy Now!

TARIQ ALI: Hi, Amy. Good to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this US war that is not exactly declared, not at all declared, on Pakistan.

TARIQ ALI: You know, what is quite staggering is that in order to sustain the occupation of Afghanistan, a country of 30 million people, the United States is now seriously considering destabilizing Pakistan, which is a country of 175 million people. And they don’t seem to understand that if they destabilize this country and if the Pakistani military begins to crack up and split, what we are seeing in Afghanistan will be absolutely nothing compared to what could happen in Pakistan. It’s a very serious business.

And it’s incredible that the Obama administration is going ahead with this, or appears to be going ahead with this, without any serious consideration of what the consequences are going to be in Pakistan. I mean, they imagine that the main problem in Pakistan is terrorism. That is their obsession. Well, this is not the view of large numbers of people who live in that country. For them, the main problem is malnutrition. For them, the main problem is large-scale unemployment, lack of education, lack of health and, as you’ve seen, the struggle of the people for democracy, restoring the chief justice. What has that got to do with terrorism? It’s a struggle for the separation of powers, wanting an independent judiciary. I mean, that is the Pakistan I know.
The longer the US stays in Afghanistan, the more it creates instability on the Afghan-Pakistan border, because it’s a porous border and it’s impossible to police it. So if they are now going to fire drones, which they’ve started doing—I mean, the same day the chief justice was restored and people were celebrating, a US drone killed nine civilians in a Pakistani village. So it’s a crazy situation, and I don’t think they understand the seriousness of it. And one was hoping that with a new administration in office in Washington with some serious advisers, they would warn them, “Don’t do it.”

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By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

After her stroke, Francine V. Corso, a software engineer who worked on NASA’s lunar lander, was housebound from 1992 to 2001.
Her left arm was twisted up near her neck, making it difficult to pull on a blouse, and her fingers curled so rigidly that her nails buried themselves in her palm. When she finally learned to rise from her wheelchair, her contorted left leg had the so-called horse gait of many brain-injury victims — she stepped toe-downward, and then fought to keep her foot from rolling over.

Now, with injections of botulinum toxin every three months, she says, “I’m completely transformed — I drive, I volunteer, I take art classes.” Her fingers are so relaxed that a manicurist can lacquer her nails red.
Botulinum toxin, the wrinkle smoother best known by the brand name Botox, has many medical uses, some official and some off label. It helps dystonia victims regain control of spasming muscles, actors who struggle with flop sweat slow down the flow, and children with clubfoot avoid surgery.

Its use in stroke victims is still off label — that is, it is not approved for that purpose by the Food and Drug Administration. But it is so widely accepted that Medicare and other insurers will usually reimburse for its use.

Nonetheless, said Dr. David M. Simpson, a professor of neurology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and a leading botulinum researcher, only about 5 percent of the stroke patients who could benefit from its use ever get it.

Primary care doctors who oversee nursing homes often do not know about it, he said. Relatively few doctors are trained to do the injections, which go much deeper than dermatologists do to erase frown lines. And most neurologists are in the habit of prescribing antispasticity drugs like tizanidine and baclofen, which are oral and inexpensive, but which cause drowsiness and weaken every muscle in the body, not just the target ones.

Ms. Corso, 66, never heard about the treatment from her first neurologist, whom she called “Dr. Bad News” because he told her family she would die and then kept telling her she would never walk. “I heard about it from Dr. Max Gomez on NBC,” she added. “That’s when I came into the city and found you people.”

In a Mount Sinai classroom with a broad view over Manhattan, Dr. Simpson stands behind two disembodied arms mounted on rocker joints. One looks pasty but muscular and is covered with needle tracks. Its partner is bright red and nothing but muscle; it is an anatomical model with all the skin and fat removed.

Dr. Simpson, who gets financing from three botulinum toxin producers — Allergan, which makes Botox; Solstice Neurosciences, which makes Myobloc; and Merz Pharmaceuticals, which makes Xeomin — is teaching residents how to find the harder-to-reach muscles, like the flexor pollicus brevis, which bends the thumb, and the pronator quadratus, which rotates the wrist.

The rubber arms have sensors that beep when the tip of his needle enters the right muscle. Human arms do not beep, of course, but Dr. Simpson had used a variant of the technology on Ms. Corso only an hour before.

Just before the first needle sank in, she let visitors know how she felt about electromyography, which she calls “the stim.”
“This,” announced Ms. Corso, who is almost 5 feet tall, “is what separates the men from the boys.”

The syringe was wired to an electric stimulator that pulsed a charge — up to a tenth of an amp — twice a second. When Dr. Simpson believed he had pierced the right muscle, he dialed it up. If the correct finger began twitching in sync, he knew he was there, and pressed the plunger. If not, he moved the needle and tried again.
He did that several times in Ms. Corso’s arm and then in her leg. Within 45 minutes, Ms. Corso said her foot was hitting the floor more evenly.

Botulinum cannot restore the use of muscles when stroke has destroyed the brain region that controls them. But patients look and feel better and often find it easier to dress, hold objects and bathe themselves.

Dr. Mark Hallett, chief of the motor control section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, says he uses both electromyography and ultrasound when injecting patients.
“A number of authorities feel that if they get close, that’s good enough,” Dr. Hallett said. “I don’t agree. I think it’s valuable to make sure you’re in the right place.”

So does Ms. Corso. For a while, she said, she was seeing another neurologist nearer her home in Fort Salonga, on Long Island, who injected botulinum but did not use electromyography.

It did not work as well, she said. Now she has a friend drive her to the border of New York City, then takes a car service to the hospital.
“It’s a long way from Long Island,” she said. “But it’s worth it.”

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Five indigenous human rights activists in Mexico are still being held in prison nearly a year after their arrest, despite insufficient evidence against them.

The members of the Guerrero-based Me’ phaa Indigenous People’s Organization (OPIM) are held in a Guerrero state prison on charges of murder. They were arrested in April 2008.

By continuing to detain the five unfairly, the Mexican government is ignoring the human rights commitments it made to the United Nations Human Rights Council a month ago.

A federal review judge ordered the release of four of them on 20 October 2008, after ruling that the evidence presented did not implicate them. However the four remain in prison after Mexico’s Federal Attorney General’s Office filed an appeal against the ruling, despite not providing further evidence in the case. They now await a decision by a federal reviewing court regarding their possible release.

The fifth detainee, Raúl Hernández, was denied an injunction by the federal judge on the grounds that two witnesses testified to his presence at the time of the murder. However other eyewitness testimonies that Hernández was not present have been disregarded. He has appealed against the decision to deny an injunction in his case.

” Less than a month ago, Mexico made a commitment at the UN Human Rights Council that it will protect the life and physical integrity of human rights defenders in the country,” said Susan Lee, Americas Program Director at Amnesty International.

“Amnesty International has established that the case against these five prisoners of conscience has been brought in reprisal for their work promoting the rights of their community and exposing abuses by a local political boss and local authorities.

“When social activists are punished for the legitimate work they do, the authorities are sending a message that protecting and promoting human rights carries a high price.”

Manuel Cruz, Orlando Manzanarez, Natalio Ortega, Romualdo Santiago and Raúl Hernández were detained on 17 April 2008. They were charged with the murder of Alejandro Feliciano García on 1 January 2008 in the town of El Camalote, Guerrero. The five were stopped and taken into custody while crossing a routine military checkpoint in the area.

Over a number of years, Amnesty International has documented a pattern of harassment and intimidation in Guerrero state against members of Indigenous rights organizations such as the OPIM.

Most recently, both the Secretary and President of the Organization for the Future of Mixtec Indigenous Peoples (Organizacion para el Futuro de los Pueblos Mixtecos, OFPM) were found murdered late at night on 20 February in Tecoanapa municipality, Guerrero State. The bodies of Manuel Ponce Rosas and Raúl Lucas Lucía were unearthed 30 minutes drive away from where they were abducted by armed men seven days earlier. Both of the bodies were identified by their families who reported that they showed clear signs of torture.

Amnesty International has called on the Mexican authorities to immediately and unconditionally release the five prisoners of conscience in Ayutla de los Libres prison, Guerrero State and bring those responsible for the murders of Manuel Ponce Rosas and Raúl Lucas Lucía to justice.

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(Submitted by Michelle Cook)