Activist jailed for protesting 'School of the Americas'

...Marilyn White, a 55-year-old retired computer programmer who lives in the Houston area will be going to jail soon for her participation in the School of Americas protests. Now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) located in Fort Benning, Georgia, the School was closed in December 2000, and re-opened in January 2001 under its new name.
... Last year, local man Kenneth Crowley was also arrested for his part in the annual mass action protest that attempts to bring attention to the military school funded by the Department of Defense. The School of the Americas was created to professionally educate military, law enforcement and civilian officials from Latin American countries. More.

Aviation college thwarts union

...This week area members of the International Association of Machinists local 37 held a picket outside of the Westwood Aviation College on Telephone Road in East Houston.
... Westwood Aviation College employees voted to have the Machinists union represent them in contract negotiations with the college, but after six months of negotiations little progress is being made on issues like retirement benefits, this according to local Machinist union spokesperson, Todd Rogers. More.

Islamic woman wants to change religion's face

... In the West, Islam is often portrayed as a misogynistic and patriarchal religion. Over the last half century, however, new strains of so-called "progressive" thought have emerged which question why the application of Islam has diverged from the ideal theory of the religion, laid out in the Islamic holy text, the Qur'an. Shalini Tripathi has this interview with Amina Wadud, the first woman to write an interpretive reading of the Qur'an in the first part of a KPFT News series dealing with Islam and women. More.

SARS in Texas

...Yesterday the Texas Department of Health reported that a Fort Bend County resident had become the state’s most recently suspected case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. More.

During wartime, TV bias shines

...Fox and CNN appear to be slugging it out for the jingo audience! Fox News Channel ratings is triggering imitation --not alternative voices. Both CNN and MSNBC are hiring more right-wingers.
...It's a dark day for dissent when major news outlets line up to compete with right wing messages embedded among jingo and jiggle. More.

Texas' 'dirty little secret' could stay that way

...This week marked the end of a program that trained citizens to collect ambient air samples of possible toxic emissions from area plants and refineries. Monday was the last day of the Houston-Galveston Citizen Air Monitoring Program, a year-long study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, several bills before the 78th legislature threaten the impact of this and other citizen-monitoring programs across Texas. Erika McDonald reports:
...On the last day of the Houston-Galveston Citizen Air Monitoring Program, or H-G CAMP, citizen investigators returned EPA canisters and bags filled with ambient air from their neighborhoods. In the coming weeks, EPA will test the samples for industrial toxins.
...Tamara Maschino: "I'm dropping off three sets of citizen-gathered samples from the Clear Lake area where we have a concentration of around 66 petrochemical plants and huge storage facilities. So we have the opportunity for a lot of emissions, and we've been greatly concerned about the level of pollution that is near our homes." More.

Jackson Lee on Kesbehs, rights & Iraq

...Houston area congresswoman, Sheila Jackson Lee, is one of the few policy makers firmly against Operation Iraqi Freedom. The following is an exclusive interview conducted at KPFT studios. Congresswoman Jackson Lee talks about her work with the Kesbeh family and the work she is doing on affirmative action.
...Allers: We are in KPFT studios with Democratic Houston-Area congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. How are you today?
... Jackson Lee: "I'm fine, thank you. And thank you very much for having me and hello to your listeners."
...Allers: Today we are here to talk about a few things. One, in particular, that KPFT listeners are obviously very aware of the Kesbeh case, which you have single-handedly spearheaded a sponsor bill in the House that was not taken up by anyone in the Senate. Could you tell us a little bit as they've been deported to Aman, [sic] Jordan, can you tell us a little bit about what's going on?
...Jackson Lee: "Well first of, you know, I've just flown in from Washington. I spent the entire week after having flown last weekend to go to the airport with the Kesbehs. Relating to them, monitoring their travels, they went through Detroit, and then on to Amsterdam and they are in Aman, [sic] Jordan. And we have spoken, in fact, we just spoke yesterday. And we're not going to give up, and frankly my office is working very intimately and very vigorously on some options. But they are in good spirits, it's very difficult situation for them. There are certainly issues that have to be addressed coming from the United States to Jordan, particularly in this climate of war. We're looking at options, and I'm very gratified to have been able to speak with them and know that they are well at this time." More.

Academics divided over Iraq war

...This week, Montgomery College hosted a discussion on the current United States-led aggression on Iraq. Represented on both sides were six area academics speaking about why they did or did not support the military campaign. Montgomery County KPFT News reporter Eric Thompson reports:
...[Ambient sound of choir]
...While the Montgomery College choir was singing songs of support for the troops fighting in Iraq, Professor Jeff Lee was busy explaining the necessity of Iraqi suffering to achieve the greater good.
..."The principle follows, the same principle we live by in America, it's a moral principle, it says that if we can have a relatively small amount of people suffering pain and that brings about in this case, freedom for millions and millions of people, it secures the freedom for the 280 million people here in America, then what is the problem? ... More.

Columnist silenced after protesting

... Thirty-one-year-old Brent Flynn has been a columnist and a reporter for the Star Community Newspaper cluster - the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of the American Community Newspaper chain - for a little more than a year. His columns frequently appeared in the Lewisville Leader. While the Bush administration was drumming up support for an invasion of Iraq, Brent Flynn was a vocal catalyst for dissent in a Dallas suburb with a population around 80,000. [In mid-March, Flynn attended his first protest ever, an anti-war march in Dallas that attracted over a 1,000 participants.]
...His last column to appear in the Lewisville Leader criticized the ultra-right wing movement that mocks civil disobedience and peaceful protest. In the column, he wrote "They see the mass demonstrations of democracy as a threat to the country, not as a show of its strength." He went on to write: "These useful idiots wouldn't recognize true democracy if it marched past their front door on the way to the voting booth."
...Also in the column, Flynn mentioned that he attended his first anti-war protest recently. Because of this, the executive editor of the community newspaper chain he works for gave the editor at the Lewisville Leader an option to either fire Flynn or cancel his column. The editor decided to cancel the column and retain Flynn as a reporter. [The change does not affect his pay, which Flynn described in an e-mail as being "very little."] The cancellation of Flynn's column marks another blow to journalists who have been outspoken about the Invasion of Iraq. We now go to a live interview with Brent Flynn from KPFT News contributor Brandon Moeller.
...Moeller: Brent Flynn, welcome to KPFT News.
...Flynn: "How you doing?"
... Moeller: Pretty good.
... Moeller: Your editor decided to retain you as a staff reporter, but canceled your column. His boss gave him the option of firing you, which he didn't. What was their main concern about your column?
... Flynn: "I think they were afraid my objectivity would be called into question by the readership of the paper."
...Moeller: Why do you believe your editor didn't fire you?
...Flynn: "Well, I'd like to believe that it's because I'm a darn fine reporter. But it could have also been other considerations; you know, being short-staffed, controversies that could be caused, I don't know."
...Moeller: You have a Web site at www.brentflynn.com , which you have maintained for the past three years, three times as long as you've been reporting for the Lewisville Leader. On the Web site, you have been posting new columns which I assume would have been printed in the Lewisville Leader. In the age of the Internet when any person can become the media, do you think it's possible for you to reach as broad of an audience online instead of in print? More. More.