This week’s This is Hell guest list immediately follows the articles.

Female Ref Banned From Boys’ Game “Just minutes before she was scheduled to referee a boy’s varsity basketball game at St. Mary’s Academy, Michelle Campbell was told she would not be allowed to work the game because she is a woman. St. Mary’s Academy, near Topeka, Kan., is a controversial religious school that follows older Roman Catholic laws, but many argue that religious beliefs does not give the school the right to discriminate. “The policy of the school was that they indeed do not permit female officials to officiate the boys’ athletic contests at their school,” said Gary Musselman, executive director of the Kansas State High School Athletics Association.” ABC News (2/18/08)

U.S. says 82 youths have died in “choking game” “At least 82 U.S. youths have died since 1995 engaging in ‘the choking game’ in which they try to experience a fleeting ‘high’ by cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain, U.S. health officials said on Thursday. An unknown number of youths, mostly boys, are taking part in the practice in which they strangle themselves with their hands or a noose or have someone else strangle them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. ‘They hope to get a cool and dreamy feeling, as they’ve described it,’ said Robin Toblin of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, who led the report.” Reuters (2/14/08)

Florida church poses sexy challenge to members. “A Florida pastor has posed an unusual challenge to members of his church — 30 days of sex for married couples and 30 days of abstaining for singles, local media reported Monday. Head Pastor Paul Wirth of Relevant Church said Sunday the challenge is aimed at bringing couples closer together. He told his congregation that half of all marriages end in divorce.” Xinhua (2/19/08) For another take on this; City Pages (2/14/08) Bang your spouse for Jesus!

Leaked RIAA Training Video: Find Pirates, Find Crack-Dealing Terrorist Murderers Too! Video. “This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it’ll lead them to ‘everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana,’ not to mention terrorists and murderers!” Gizmodo (2/21/08)

Unions Are Growing – Finally “Here’s some welcome news you may not have heard: The percentage of U.S. workers in unions actually increased last year. It was the first increase in more than 30 years, and could very well mark the beginning of a steady reversal of what has been a steady decline. That’s good news for all of us, since widespread unionization is one of the essentials for a truly healthy middle class and thus a truly healthy economy. The news is from a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that unionized workers made up 12.1 percent of the workforce in 2007, up from 12 percent in 2006. It may sound meaningless, but that increase of one-tenth of one percent means that overall union membership grew by 311,000 to 15.7 million — the highest total in many years. The increase, mind you, comes at a time when workers and unions are under great and growing pressure from employers and the virulently anti-labor Bush administration and its Republican allies. They also face a continued slowing of job growth and increase in unemployment, as many jobs move abroad, especially those in the once heavily unionized manufacturing industries.” Portside (2/20/08) Adding an important dynamic – women. Women Add Union Sectors, Fueling Labor Revival “Women are adding sectors such as home health care, child care and nursing to union ranks, helping to revive organized labor after 25 years of membership declines tied to losses in male-dominated manufacturing.” WeNews (2/19/08)

Why Now? “During the course of my career as a defense lawyer in the military, I’ve shrugged off many government conspiracy theories. Each time I heard one, I’d smile and say that one should never attribute to a vast government conspiracy acts that can be as readily attributed to mere government incompetence or accident. So, I did not initially assume any concerted plan or purpose behind recent activities at Guantánamo Bay. But the government’s latest moves in the ongoing battle over the legality of its detention policies are anything but incompetent, and they’ve forced me to reassess my initial conclusion: The decision to try six Guantánamo detainees using military commissions is very clearly part of a concerted effort to use the Guantánamo commissions to subvert the goals of justice and to maintain a veil of secrecy around its questionable interrogation policies.” Slate (2/15/08)

Bush & ExxonMobil v. Chavez “Since the Bush administration took office in January 2001, it’s targeted Hugo Chavez relentlessly. From the aborted two-day April 2002 coup attempt to the 2002-03 oil management lockout to the failed 2004 recall referendum to stoking opposition rallies against the constitutional reform referendum to constant pillorying in the media to funding opposition candidates in elections to the present when headlines like the Reuters February 7 one announced: “Courts freeze $12 billion Venezuela assets in Exxon row.” Call it the latest salvo in Bush v. Chavez with ExxonMobil (EM) its lead aggressor and the long arm of the CIA and Pentagon always in the wings. EM temporarily won a series of court orders in Britain, New York, the Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles to freeze up to $12 billion of state-owned PDVSA assets around the world. Hugo Chavez called it Bush administration ‘economic war’ against his government. Energy Minister and PDVSA president, Rafael Ramirez, said it was ‘judicial terrorism’ and that ‘PDVSA has paralyzed oil sales to Exxon (and) suspend(ed) commercial relations’ in response to actions it ‘consider(s) an outrage….intimidating and hostile.’ … It’s too early to predict what’s ahead, but one thing is sure. As long as George Bush is president, he’ll go after Chavez every way possible with one aim in mind – to destabilize the country and remove the Venezuelan leader from office. Once again, battle lines are drawn as the latest confrontation plays out judicially, economically and geopolitically. The stakes are huge – the most successful democracy in the Americas and the ‘threat’ of its good example v. the world’s most powerful nation and biggest bully.” Znet (2/19/08)

Is Washington Undermining Democracy in Bolivia? “This week’s news that the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia has repeatedly asked Peace Corps volunteers and then a Fulbright Scholar to spy on people there is much more serious that it has so far been treated. In fact, together with other activities funded there by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Endowment for Democracy, there are grounds for a Congressional inquiry. These actions reinforce Bolivian officials’ claims that Washington seeks to destabilize and even topple their democratic government. This has potentially severe consequences in a region where in recent years approval of the United States, and especially its foreign policy, have reached the lowest levels in the non-Muslim world. These interventions are also morally reprehensible, and put the United States on the wrong side of a struggle for civil rights, justice, and equality that has much in common with our own civil rights movement of the 1960’s. It is perhaps not surprising that the Bush Administration, whose party was on the wrong side of that struggle, too, would be intervening against the government of Evo Morales.” AlterNet (2/16/08)

Pakistan turns scary for Bush’s war on terror Juan Cole, this week’s guest on This is Hell, writes “The party that slavishly supported Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf went down to a humiliating defeat in Monday’s election, and took the failing fortunes of the Bush administration to a new nadir. Musharraf’s main political rivals, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League 1-N, together gained a solid majority of seats. Amid a chorus of calls for Musharraf to step down, the two major victors are scheduled to begin talks Thursday on forming a new government. Although George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have built their war on terrorism on a close alliance with Musharraf, that entire hollow pillar of Bush administration policy has been dealt a severe, perhaps fatal, blow.” Salon (2/20/08)

Mexican drug hitmen kill singer near U.S. border “Drug hitmen have killed a popular Mexican singer along with his manager and assistant near the U.S. border, authorities said on Wednesday, the latest murder among musicians who sing “narcocorrido” ballads glorifying drug traffickers. The body of Jesus Rey David Alfaro, known as “The Little Rooster,” was one of six that turned up tortured, murdered and pinned with threatening messages for Mexico’s army last week in the border town of Tijuana near San Diego.” Reuters (2/20/08)

Holes in the Wall “As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched. … Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions such as the University of Texas at Brownsville, which rely on the federal government to pay their bills.” Texas Observer (2/18/08)

Hungary’s anti-Roma militia grows “In recent months, hardly a week has gone by without a rally being held by the Magyar Garda or ‘Hungarian Guard,’ their members decked out in black boots and uniforms bearing nationalist symbols last employed by Hungarian fascists during World War II. Their target: Romani (gypsy) criminals and those who want to integrate Romani children into the country’s schools. Their rallies usually take place in communities with a large Roma population, where they style themselves as protectors of ethnic Hungarians. ... “It is really Nazism and it is serious and becoming more and more so,” says Viktoria Mohacsi, a Roma leader and a Hungarian representative in the European Parliament. ‘Many [Romani] organizations are calling on me to join secret meetings to organize ourselves the way the Hungarian Guard has. If this happens, there will be killing; there could be civil war.’” Christian Science Monitor (2/13/08)

BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday. Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence. Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.” The Guardian (2/15/08)

South Asia: Hub For Global Organ Trade “The arrest of ‘Doctor Kidney’ Amit Kumar for running a sizeable racket in live kidneys has highlighted the role that South Asia plays as the hub of an international trade in human organs. A sophisticated but unregulated healthcare industry, a ‘donor pool’ of desperately poor people ready to sell a kidney and a corrupt monitoring system have combined to create a special brand of ‘medical tourism’ in the region, especially in India and neighbouring Pakistan. While India’s Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA), 1994, is observed mostly in the breach, the impact of Pakistan’s Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance passed in 2007, is yet to be gauged. Till last year, the organ trade was legal and flourished openly in that country.” Inter Press Service (2/20/08)

Notes
This week’s This is Hell with host Chuck Mertz, will be live on Saturday, February 23rd, with a four broadcast beginning at 9 AM (US central time) on WNUR 89.3 FM or listen live online at WNUR’s web site. If you miss the show, it will be available in the This is Hell archives.

Help keep Chuck Mertz and This is Hell on the air.
This week is WNUR’s annual Phoneathon. Any and all donations will be greatly appreciated. There are many fine premiums available now, including books by several of this week’s guests, to those that contribute.

This week’s guests on This is Hell, include:

• Andy Worthington, British historian who wrote the book, “The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison”
• Gary Leupp, Professor of History at Tufts University. His most recent article, The Independence of Kosovo, is posted at Counterpunch. He’s also the author of “Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan,” “Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan,” and “Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900”
• Juan Cole, writes the blog Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion. Juan’s most recent writing includes the Salon.com piece, Pakistan turns scary for Bush’s war on terror and Juan’s the author of “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East” (Palgrave). Juan is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Juan is also the President of the Global Americana Institute.
• Sheila Kaplan wrote the story, Great Lakes Danger Zones?, posted at the Center for Public Integrity. It’s “the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle—and the story behind it.”

This week’s irregular correspondents are:

• Nathaniel Hale, live from Bristol, England, with a new segment of his “Fool Britannia”
• Jeff Dorchen delivers a Moment of Truth
• John Wilson, author of “Barack Obama: The Improbable Quest” and “Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and its Enemies” (both from Paradigm). He writes the blog College Freedom

Check out these excellent roundups; for the recent news from all points east, check out Isaac Oommen’s East is East, Nathan Coe’s brand new Labor News Roundup and for the latest in rebel uprisings, read Alfonzo Torrez’s The Rebel Communiqué.

If you knew… is posted as an article on Fridays. There is an archive of over 400 blogs that were posted over the last two years. Any comments, suggestions, critiques or leads to articles, are welcomed. ‘If You Knew…’ will soon be announcing some changes, in coordination with the This is Hell website. It does look like this is actually going to happen. Along with articles, Headlines from Hell now includes commentary from contributors to This is Hell, including yours truly.

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