By Chauhan, Randeep Singh
Simon Fraser University

The enslavement of African Americans in the United States has not ended. Rather, legal slavery has taken on newer, modified and more subtle forms which are equally destructive to the African American community. This issue can only be properly addressed through the wide lens of history, for such a perspective is imperative to understanding the overarching mechanisms and processes that have kept African Americans perpetually enslaved since America's inception.

Tracing the early roots of modern slavery back to the Agricultural Revolution of 13,000 BCE, the Christian-based colonial slave trade (c. 1450-1900) will be examined as a peculiarly ideological institution which developed ideas and practices of race prejudice in the United States. Post-Emancipation, freed slaves were immediately warehoused into prisons and put to labour within the criminal justice system. This early mass imprisonment boom created the Southern Jim Crow segregation system and the Northern ghetto, both of which concentrated urban poverty and crime into segregated African American neighbourhoods and set the stage for the current dispro-portionate and strategic mass imprisonment of African Americans. Racially-biased policies such as the "three strikes" laws, the "war on drugs" and capital punishment all find themselves at the helm of America's current apparatus of racial control.
This thesis argues that only by abandoning models of crime control and "zero tolerance," dismantling the religiously-fundamental public sector, raising public awareness about the realities of neo-slavery and postcolonialism in the United States and accepting the consequences and re-sponsibilities of correcting the crimes of the past, will African American "crimes" in the present be properly understood and dealt with in a more socially-responsible and humane manner.
Read the complete 48 page document (requires Adobe Acrobat).

Monsanto's Bullying of Farmers Starting to Backfire By Peter Shinkle

[Note that they now have a department with 75 staff and a $10M annual budget
just to sue farmers!]
Monsanto reaps some anger with hard line on reusing seed updated: 05/12/2003 02:04 AM Agriculture giant has won millions in suits against farmers
By Peter Shinkle
Of the Post-Dispatch

A farmer secretly gathers seed, glancing nervously over his shoulder and
wondering whether a neighbor might dial the anonymous tip hot line.
A corporation sends out spies and goes out of its way to make examples out
of growers it catches violating patents.
A defiant farm owner makes a stand and is sentenced to prison. Read

Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers

by Dean E. Murphy / New York Times

The humming noise from a back room of the Santa Cruz, California central library was the sound of Barbara Gail Snider, a librarian, at work. Her hands stuffed with wads of paper, Ms. Snider was feeding a small shredding machine mounted on a plastic wastebasket. The move was part of a campaign by the Santa Cruz libraries to demonstrate their opposition to the Patriot Act, the law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that broadened the federal authorities' powers in fighting terrorism. Among provisions that have angered librarians nationwide is one that allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to review certain business records of people under suspicion, which has been interpreted to include the borrowing or purchase of books and the use of the Internet at libraries, bookstores and cafes. Last month, Santa Cruz became one of the first library systems in the country to post warning signs about the Patriot Act at all of its checkout counters. On Friday, April 4 (2003), the libraries went further and began distributing a handout to visitors that outlines objections to the enhanced F.B.I. powers and explains that the libraries were reviewing all records "to make sure that we really need every piece of data" about borrowers and Internet users.

The War Against Ourselves

An Interview with Major Doug Rokke
Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, traveling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors. Read

Can We Create A Culture of Peace?

Some folks believe that it is possible to create a world culture of peace by embracing certain attitudes and ideas. Among them is CPNN USA, a website of the Culture of Peace News Network, a global network of interactive Internet sites in many languages for information exchange on events and media productions that promote one or more of the eight keys of a culture of peace. It is a project of the United Nations International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World. CPNN-USA joins a growing international network (Japan, Australia, Russia) of sites in different languages with articles translated from one to another as a contribution to the United Nations International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).

Following the United Nations definition, a culture of peace is broader than the traditional concept of peace. It involves the following values, attitudes and behaviors:

· respect all life
· reject violence
· share with others
· listen to understand
· preserve the planet
· rediscover solidarity
· work for women's equality
· participate in democracy.

INTERSTATE 69

Market value to be basis of compensation for interstate
Kurt Van der Dussen, Bloomington Herald-Times

BLOOMINGTON - A recent statement in Greene County by a member of a pro-Interstate 69 group about the value that landowners on the highway route could get for their property was not correct. According to Indiana Commissioner of Transportation J. Bryan Nicol, the state compensates people only at appraised market value - not a 125 percent value suggested by the highway advocate, Paul Tedesco. Read