In this Issue:

Minimum Life– Commentary by Rev. Michael S. Piazza
Join H4PJ Today and Receive a Free Copy of The Real antiChrist
Law Groups Want Pentagon Official Fired
H4PJ Online Action Center: Make a Difference Today!
Doomsday Clock Reset for an Alarming World

Commentary: Minimum Life
by Rev. Michael S. Piazza

Although most Americans, and politicians from both parties, publicly agree that it is past time to raise the minimum wage, it is far from certain that this will happen. Republicans in the Senate are threatening to filibuster the legislation if it is not coupled with tax cuts for businesses. So, justice for the working poor is now justification for worsening the deficit and benefiting businesses that haven’t had to give minimum wage employees a raise in almost a decade.

As someone who has owned a small business in a former life, I understand the daily struggles they face. What angers me most, though, is that, while politicians argue that they are protecting small business owners, the largest employer in America is Wal-Mart, who is also the largest low-wage employer. Many of Wal-Mart’s employees qualify for food stamps, which means our tax dollars are supplementing Wal-Mart and allowing them to continue to pay subsistent wages.

Although I avoid shopping at Wal-Mart at all costs, there are times when I have no option, since Wal-Mart has succeeded in shuttering many small towns in America. Last year I was chatting with a cashier in Wal-Mart who told me that she makes minimum wage and can’t work more than 39 hours a week so they don’t have to provide her with health insurance. So, when she or her child become ill and have to go to the public hospital, our taxes supplement Wal-Mart by providing healthcare for most of their employees.

The point is this is not about providing tax breaks for small businesses. The threatened filibuster by Republican senators (like the two from Texas) is only a ploy to give further tax cuts to businesses and to not help the working poor. Congress has voted themselves pay raises eight times since the last time they raised the minimum wage, which is paid to people who have to work two or three jobs in order to support their families. Who do you think deserves the raise more? Remember, we are not talking welfare here; we are talking about some of the hardest working and most deserving of our fellow citizens. Helping the working poor should not be a partisan issue, and it is the height of hypocrisy to make us trade more tax cuts for business and higher deficits in order to do what is right.

Email the President and your senators today and tell them to do the right thing for the right reasons for a change. No, these poor workers probably can’t buy their votes like big businesses, but they deserve it because they are our sisters and brothers.

<--back to top-->

The Real antiChrist: How America Sold Its Soul Join H4PJ and Receive a Free Copy! Bishop John Shelby Spong calls The Real antiChrist, “A searing indictment of popular Christianity by a passionate Christian.” When you sign up to support H4PJ on a monthly basis, we will send you a free copy of Rev. Piazza’s new book. Click here to sign up today! Since September 11, 2001, the Religious Right has used fear to manipulate America. It has used 19 terrorists to make us so afraid that we are willing to abandon our values and do things that are virulently anti-American and un-Christian. The sale of millions of books in the Left Behind series, which portrays the Religious Right’s apocalyptic vision, is just one example of how fear-based religion is foundational to what is going on in this country. That demon has to be named and called out if we are to be free of it.

Law Groups Want Pentagon Official Fired
by JoAnne Allen
Originally published by Reuters

A senior Pentagon official should be fired for suggesting a boycott of American law firms defending detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, four law organizations said in a letter to President Bush on Tuesday.

Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, said last week in a Washington radio interview he found it "shocking" that major U.S. law firms would agree to represent Guantanamo detainees pro bono.

Stimson predicted that those firms would suffer financially once their involvement in Guantanamo cases was known to their corporate clients. He then listed law firms involved in Guantanamo cases.

Stimson's remarks were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees and were contrary to the "bedrock principles" of the right to counsel and the presumption on innocence, read the letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers.

"The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists," the letter read. "The administration must not only disavow these remarks, but Mr. Stimson should be publicly admonished and relieved of his duties for making these allegations and threats."

Stimson was not immediately available for comment. The Pentagon last week disavowed Stimson's comments, which came under fire in the legal community.

The American Civil Liberties Union condemned what it called an administration attack on lawyers representing the detainees. Neal Sonnett, president of the American Judicature Society, said Stimson's remarks were a "blatant attempt to intimidate lawyers and their firms."

Col. Moe Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, told journalists at there in March 2006 that several major law firms that have defense contractors as paying clients are providing pro bono lawyers to defend Guantanamo detainees in habeas petitions.

"It's somewhat ironic that the weaponry that we use in the war on terrorism is helping fund the defense of the alleged terrorists," Davis said at the time.

About 50 U.S. federal public defenders are also representing Guantanamo detainees, pro bono, in habeas corpus petitions.

About 395 prisoners remain at the Guantanamo prison camp, suspected of al Qaeda and Taliban links. More than 770 captives have been held at the facility which opened five years ago, soon after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks. Only 10 detainees have charged with crimes.

<--back to top-->

Doomsday Clock Reset for an Alarming World
Global warming, new nuclear perils shift symbolic hand
by Olivia Ward
Originally published by the Toronto Star

Be afraid. Be more afraid.

For the first time in five years, the elite board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the minute hand on their Doomsday Clock closer to the fatal hour of midnight.

The clock – a symbol of the perils facing the human race – is expected to shift two minutes, from the current seven minutes to midnight to five, a figure the Bulletin would not confirm before its news conference today.

"This is a sober and highly alarming judgment by a group of people who are knowledgeable and experienced," said Nobel laureate John Polanyi, a faculty member in the University of Toronto's chemistry department.

"The most immediate hazard we face is also the most easily addressed, namely the thousands of nuclear-armed weapons aimed at Russia and the United States, and left pointlessly in a state of high alert. The fact that they are is an appalling failure to step back from the brink."

The clock, which hangs in the University of Chicago, was first set 60 years ago to focus on the danger of nuclear weapons. But for the first time it will take into account the perils posed by global warming, which has sparked renewed interest in building nuclear power plants.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists who turned against nuclear weapons after developing the first atomic bomb.

"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a `Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing launch-ready status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks," said a statement released before a news conference today.

The clock was first set in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight, and plunged to an all-time low of two minutes in 1953, when the United States and Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs. Since then India, Pakistan, North Korea and, it is believed, Israel have developed nuclear weapons and Iran is enriching uranium that could potentially be used to fuel an atomic bomb.

The clock was set furthest from midnight – 17 minutes – in 1991, when Washington and Moscow signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But it has crept steadily nearer since then as global military spending increased, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pave the way for its missile defence program, and reports spread of terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.

American non-proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione said today's movement of the Doomsday Clock's hand was a "measurable indicator of how bad things are. If some of the world's smartest scientists are saying we are now closer to doomsday, it should focus attention on both the problems, and the urgency of finding solutions."

And, he said, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has made the dangers faced by the planet worse.

"They came in determined to make a radical change and they made it. It was a complete disaster. Every member of what they call the `axis of evil' is a greater threat now than it was before they came to power. They thought they could use the blunt instrument of military might to overthrow evil regimes. But instead of intimidating countries, they made things worse."

And global warming is also worse, said Cirincione, a senior vice-president at the Washington-based Center for American Progress.

"We lost six years when we could have been taking steps to fix the problem."

Last week, the once-hawkish former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and three other American former officials, declared that reliance on nuclear arms was "becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective," and called for Washington to lead in creating "a world without nuclear weapons."

The group, which included former defence secretary William Perry, said "North Korea's recent nuclear test and Iran's refusal to stop its program to enrich uranium – potentially to weapons grade – highlight the fact that the world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era."

Ernie Regehr, a policy adviser for Waterloo-based Project Ploughshares, agreed that the trends "are all in a dangerous direction, and the notion of a nuclear renaissance, the spread of nuclear power, is making (them) more so."

Even a modest movement to revive nuclear power, he added, was perilous.

At the same time, Regehr said, not only the United States but Britain and France are helping to stoke the fires of nuclear proliferation by refusing to give up their deadly arsenals, or even signalling that they will update them.

"Britain could have pointed the world in the direction it needs to go, because it is a secure country that doesn't need nuclear weapons. ...

``Yet, in defiance of all that, it has indicated an interest in modernizing the arsenal, which is a heavy blow to non-proliferation."

Related Links

Doomsday Clock

<--back to top-->