Answering the bell - Marching at the expense of education

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

March 28, 2006

Forgive us, but we have to begin by mentioning the flags. All those Mexican flags. It seems to us rather curious that a group of people who say they want to be part of America, and all the rights that come with that, would empty out of schools and take to the streets waving Mexican flags.

But that's what happened. In recent days, from San Diego to Los Angeles to Denver to Dallas to Milwaukee to Washington, more than a million people have protested efforts in Congress to reform the nation's immigration system. Many of the protesters waved Mexican flags although – to be fair – at some of the demonstrations there were plenty of American flags as well.

It's obvious the bill passed by the House of Representatives in December touched a nerve, particularly the provisions that would make criminals out of the undocumented and – ridiculously – expand the definition of smuggling to include churches or any other social agency that aided illegal immigrants.

Flags aside, we have no problem with protest. Free expression and political participation are great. From the abolitionists to women's suffrage to the civil rights movement, street protests have earned a place in American history. Besides, we would rather have people engaged than the alternative: folks who are disconnected, apathetic and alienated.

However, when we're talking about young people leaving school, that's where we draw the line. Yesterday about 20,000 high school students walked out of classes in Los Angeles. Another 2,000 walked out in Dallas. Others took to the streets in Detroit and Boston. Closer to home, several hundred students walked out of schools in San Diego County. More students are likely to hit the streets in cities around the country in the weeks to come.

We realize this tactic – the walkout – has a soft spot in the hearts of many Latino activists. We understand walkouts were somewhat effective a generation ago in bringing about changes in the educational system and providing Latino students with more equity and more opportunities. Yet, now that they have those opportunities, it doesn't make sense for a new generation of students to toss them away so cavalierly by leaving the schoolhouse. A day of marching is a day not spent learning and empowering oneself.

We applaud Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for saying as much yesterday when he addressed students at an impromptu rally at Los Angeles City Hall. After expressing support for their cause, Villaraigosa caused a ripple in the crowd when he urged students to go back to school. We don't often agree with Villaraigosa, but he's right this time.

We admire passion in young people, and we understand they feel disrespected in this debate. They probably also believe that undocumented immigrants – including many in their own families – deserve more respect than they're getting at the moment. But here's a tip for them: Here in the United States, if you want respect and power, step one is to get the best education you can and to learn all you can from those willing to teach you.

That's tough to do if you're not in class when the school bell rings.

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me@rescam.org

- From 1994 to 2003, unemployment among prime-age adults, from 25 to 54, averaged 9.9 percent; for those 15 to 25, the average was 24 percent. >snip< The street protesters are given to much make-believe – the illusion that if they march long enough and burn enough cars, they can prevent unwanted change. The concessions that governments make to the future are usually small and slow.

Hey, think the rocket scientists will ever understand that they harder you make it to fire someone, the less likely it is that the person will ever be hired in the first place?

I'm betting they'll never figure it out. Especially because the begged the gov't to save them from the eeeevil employers in the first place. Odd how that worked out.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

What happens when guest workers must leave?
U.S. and Mexico must work to create an incentive to return home

By Richard Kiy; president and chief executive officer of of the San Diego-based International Community Foundation. Co-editor of the book “Ties that Bind Us: Mexican Migrants in San Diego County.”

March 29, 2006

Will immigration reform lead to stronger, more effective enforcement, employer sanctions and a guest worker program that moves undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, on to legal status and the tax rolls and on the road to an improved quality of life? That should be the goal, but without greater binational cooperation between the United States and Mexico on the issue of immigration, we'll end up with more piecemeal policies that will need to be revisited in the course of 10 years.

America's demand for cheap, unskilled labor coupled with weak or nonexistent measures to control who can legitimately work in this country undermines our rule of law. Advocates for stronger enforcement are correct when they say that the system is broken, and fixing it needs to be a priority given America's growing homeland security concerns. Every country has the right to protect and enforce who comes across its borders. Proper attention needs to be given to improved border enforcement. Still, is building a bigger wall the answer as some in Congress suggest?

Is a guest worker program the right solution? Under the Kennedy-McCain bill, now being actively considered by the Senate, undocumented immigrants and new guest workers may register for a temporary visa that would be valid for up to six years. Under the bill, some migrants could find a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship, but not all guest workers would be able to meet the conditions set forth in the bill. So, many would need to go home. The bill also expands visa quotas for up to 400,000 guest workers a year but will this be enough long-term to meet the demand for work coming from Mexico given the country's dismal 2 percent job growth over the past five years?

A shortcoming of the Senate bill is that it fails to recognize that Mexican migrants do not necessarily come to our country to become Americans – they come to America for work because the economic conditions in their own communities leave them few other options. Sadly, today over 53 percent of Mexico's population remains poor, living on less than $2 a day.

Mexico can and must do more to keep more of the over 1 million new jobs seekers entering its work force each year to stay at home. It can do this by breaking the political gridlock in its own congress, which is preventing important political and fiscal reforms. These reforms would otherwise increase foreign investment, tax collection, government transparency and accountability.

In other words, Mexico needs to give its people greater hope. Mexico needs to do more to reduce the income disparity and inequality that threatens its own stability where the gap between the haves and the have nots continues to widen. Right now, the richest tenth earn more than 40 percent of the country's total income, while the poorest tenth earn only 1.1 percent.

If Mexico is to succeed long term, it must believe and invest in its own people, not cut them loose in hopes that some prospective immigration reform package will keep them conveniently in America where they'll continue to send money home. If a true guest worker program is to have any hope of long-term success, the proper incentives will need to be put in place to provide future guest workers from Mexico a viable pathway back to their communities of origin with a plan to stay. If this is to occur, immigration reform cannot be undertaken unilaterally. Mexico needs to be part of a binational solution.

In recent full-page advertisements appearing recently in newspapers across the country, the government of Mexico expressed a willingness to promote a tax-preferred housing program for returning migrants as well as a binational health insurance program. Mexico has also called for the totalization of pension benefits for income earned by migrants here. Such binational solutions are welcome.

Beyond Mexico's proposal for totalization of pension benefits that should only justly apply to legal temporary immigrants, the binational mechanisms should be put in place to encourage migrant workers to invest in hybrid, cross-border 401(k)-like retirement plans. For those who do not adjust their immigration status and are required to return to Mexico, such a plan would permit funds invested in the United States to be credited back to an individual tax free, so long as funds are reinvested in Mexico's own defined contribution pension program, Afores, or used to further one's education or reinvested in a new business start-up or purchase of a new home. Migrants who do stay would be on the road to greater economic security with their own 401(k) nest egg.

Whether Mexico realizes it or not, one of its best hopes for the future lies with its migrant work force now in America. Working together with America, effective binational solutions are possible if they take traditional circular migration patterns into account and, in the long run, lead to economic prosperity and stability on both sides of the border.

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Making promises society can't keep

ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
NEWSWEEK

March 28, 2006

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The dilemma of advanced democracies, including the United States, is that they've made more promises than they can realistically keep. Their political commitments outstrip the economy's capacity to deliver. Sometimes the commitments were made dishonestly. Sometimes they were made sincerely based on foolish assumptions. Sometimes they've been overtaken by new circumstances. No matter. The dilemma is the same. To disavow past promises incites public furor; not to disavow them worsens the country's future problems.

This is even more true about the environment than it is about the economy.

All the advanced countries have based their advances on the foolish assumption that we can continue mining / drilling / felling / growing. These committments too outstrip the planet's capacity to deliver.

On the environment too, disavowing past promises and past aspirations incites foror, not to disavow them worsens the planet's problems.

Strangely tho, the guys who say this about the environment are rarely the same guys who say that about the economy... but it is exactly the same blind headlong rush into bankruptcy in both cases

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

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Death row justice - Lethal injections should not be stopped

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

March 31, 2006

Doctors take an oath to “first do no harm.” On this basis, most physicians would not participate in the execution of a condemned prisoner by lethal injection. The American Medical Association not only prohibits doctors' participation in executions but prescribes disciplinary actions if they do participate in any way other than certifying death.

Declining to administer lethal injections is a doctor's right, and properly so. But it should not prevent executions duly ordered by the judicial system.

Murderers take no oath against harm. In fact, so heinous are the crimes of some murderers that the public broadly supports the death penalty, and judges and juries may lawfully find that such criminals have forfeited their right to live. The murder of 21-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell by Michael Angelo Morales, who has been on California's death row for 23 years, is one such case.

It is also a case that has taken the issue of lethal injection and physician participation in it to federal courts, where opponents of the death penalty by any method hope to end capital punishment.

Six of the last eight prisoners executed in California by lethal injection had not stopped breathing after the first of three drugs, a heavy dose of barbiturate, was administered. Any movement, say death penalty opponents, could be evidence of consciousness and pain – and therefore crosses the line into constitutionally prohibited cruel and unusual punishment. They argue that at the least physicians should administer, and if necessary re-administer, the drugs. With physicians refusing to do so, lethal injections would stop.

As Morales' execution date approached, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel gave the state several options. It chose to have present two anesthesiologists, who agreed on condition of anonymity to monitor his consciousness. At the 11th hour, however, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that if the doctors detected consciousness or pain, they would have to administer more drugs. The doctors refused that degree of involvement. The execution was postponed. Judge Fogel ordered an evidentiary hearing in May.

The burden of proof lies with Morales' attorneys. It is a heavy burden, requiring fact, not theory. Medical professionals agree that properly administered – by a physician or, as in California, by a trained prison employee – the first drug causes unconsciousness, obliterating any pain from drugs two and three, and that any subsequent movement is an involuntary reaction to the drugs.

California's attorney general will correctly argue, as his spokesman put it, that “lethal injection is not a medical procedure; it's the execution of a criminal sentence.”

If the judge disagrees, the case will no doubt go to the Supreme Court. Meantime, California, along with the 36 other states that use lethal injection, will have to find a drug or combination of drugs to ensure the condemned a quick, painless death.

Still, no effort to address these issues will sway death-penalty opponents. They equate execution by the state with murder by individuals. They denounce the attempt to spare the prisoner pain as an effort to comfort the executioner.

Most Americans see a clear difference between the state's executing a murderer after extensive judicial proceedings and a murderer appointing himself judge, jury and executioner. They see the difference between Morales' death by lethal injection and his crushing Winchell's skull with a hammer, raping her, then stabbing her four times. The first demands that the execution be warranted, lawful and as humane as society can make it. The second does not.

Could sanctions stop Iran?

By Carne Ross; a former diplomat who served in Britain's delegation to the United Nations from 1998 to 2002, is director of Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit diplomatic advisory group.

March 31, 2006

Now that the U.N. Security Council has agreed on a statement demanding that Iran restrict its nuclear program, the United States and its allies are doubtless considering tougher measures, including sanctions, to force Iran's compliance. The experience of sanctions imposed on Iraq (and on other countries), which I helped engineer and maintain as a British diplomat at the Security Council, offers some lessons.

First, no sanctions regime is effective unless its objective is widely shared, especially by the neighbors of the targeted state. On Iraq, even though the United States and Britain managed, through strenuous diplomatic effort, to gain Security Council approval of sanctions, there was considerable evasion of the sanctions by Iraq's neighbors and others, for whom their economic welfare was more important that the goal of disarming Iraq. Even if China and Russia do not block any sanctions resolution on Iran, no resolution will be effective unless they and other states choose to enforce the sanctions.

Second, oil sanctions are a double-edged sword. In the latter years of the 12-year sanctions regime on Iraq, Saddam Hussein often threatened to stop Iraq's oil exports to deter the United States and Britain from imposing measures in the Security Council to thwart his sanctions-busting techniques. Then as now, the gap between global oil demand and supply was so small that even the threat of stopping Iraq's exports caused damaging spikes in global oil prices. Any attempt to block or limit Iran's oil exports would surely have similar effects.

Third, even the most aggressive sanctions regimes, such as comprehensive economic sanctions, tend not to achieve their desired effects. While they were in effect, sanctions on Iraq prevented it from rearming – despite the claims of the U.S. and British governments before the 2003 invasion. But the sanctions did not force Iraq to comply fully with the U.N. weapons inspectors. It finally took the threat of invasion for Iraq to cooperate with the inspectors in the months before the war.

Instead, comprehensive sanctions caused considerable human suffering in Iraq and, thanks to the control over food rationing that the oil-for-food program placed in the regime's hands, they arguably helped reinforce Saddam's rule. This mistake must not be repeated.

Fourth, any sanctions regime requires a long-term, patient and detailed effort to succeed. Sanctions on Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia were effective partly because the United States and the European Union devoted considerable resources to targeting Milosevic's illegal financial holdings. Although there was lots of rhetoric, and American ships patrolled the Persian Gulf, sanctions enforcement on Iraq was sporadic, as the United States and its allies allowed Iraq's neighbors, particularly Jordan and Turkey, to import oil illegally. It's hard to believe that support for sanctions against Iran, even if they were imposed, would endure for very long.

Sanctions on Libya, imposed in 1992 after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, were more effective, in part because they were more limited. The U.N. ban on arms sales and air travel to Libya was seen as measured with commensurate pressure on Moammar Gaddafi to comply with the Security Council's demand that two Libyan agents accused of planning the bombing be handed over for trial. Even then, it took many years before Libya complied. Here there is a lesson that sanctions, when supported politically and patiently applied, can eventually work. Perhaps here there is scope for something that could work with Iran: a package of travel bans and financial measures targeting Iranian leaders. Targeted sanctions are, after the Iraq experience, now the fashion.

But there is one big reason why any U.S. effort to obtain sanctions against Iran is unlikely to be effective. All previous U.N. sanctions have been imposed on governments that have done something seriously wrong – such as invading other countries (Iraq) or brazenly hosting terrorist organizations (the Taliban). The claim that Iran might be developing a nuclear bomb hardly meets this standard, particularly because Pakistan and India got away with it (and with U.S. sympathy) and because U.S. intelligence assertions on weapons of mass destruction are, thanks to the Iraq experience, thoroughly disbelieved. Unless Iran is silly enough to do something such as testing a bomb (not very likely), there will probably not be sufficient international support for punitive measures.

All of these reasons suggest that sanctions, as a policy option, are far from straightforward. Without troublemaking from Iran (which perhaps the United States is hoping for), they are unlikely to be agreed to under the current circumstances. And even if they are, they will succeed only if they are very carefully designed, targeted and supported by long-term and diligent diplomacy to shore up support.

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Cities encourage illegal immigration

By Dennis Hollingsworth; state senator for the 36th District, which includes areas of San Diego and Riverside counties, and is the Senate Republican whip.

April 3, 2006

In the 1980s, cities around the country began instituting illegal immigrant “safe havens” and “sanctuary” ordinances or policies that prevent city employees, especially law enforcement, from inquiring about the immigration status of any individual or cooperating with federal immigration officials. While it would be easy to dismiss such declarations as rhetoric to showcase their higher state of enlightenment on the illegal immigration issue, these actions have a real impact on California and contribute to a real cost: about $10 billion.

That's the estimated total annual cost of illegal immigration to the state's taxpayers. The cost for incarcerating more than 18,000 criminal illegal immigrants alone is almost $750 million.

With the estimated population of illegal immigrants in the state more than 2.3 million and growing, California taxpayers can expect to be footing the bill for an even larger tab in coming years. With an ongoing budget deficit of over $6 billion, the cost is a serious impact on our state's ability to accommodate a growing legal population of immigrants and births.

These sanctuary policies that prevent law enforcement from doing their jobs and encourage massive illegal immigration have now spread to nearly 20 California cities, including Los Angeles with its “Special Order 40,” San Francisco and San Diego. These ordinances not only encourage illegal immigration and its costs, they prevent law enforcement from combating gangs and drug rings. Murderous gangs like MS-13 and others are predominantly illegal immigrants, sometimes 70 percent or 80 percent.

Yet these sanctuary policies prevent police from turning over to immigration officials a gang member they know is in the country illegally. And who do these gangs prey upon? Largely the underclass of illegal immigrants and inner-city Hispanics. So much for these policies being immigrant friendly.

These reasons are why I've introduced SB 1767, which would stop state aid funding for a city with an illegal immigration “Sanctuary” ordinance or policy.

The saying goes, “if you want to get someone to change, hit 'em where it hurts.” Government hurts most when hit in the pocketbook. Take away state funding from a city: no more state highway money, no park bond dollars, and grants for gang task forces, drug enforcement or libraries. Cities that thumb their collective noses at the law will do it at their own taxpayers' expense, not the rest of California's.

SB 1767 will be heard in the Senate Public Safety Committee tomorrow. While enacting this bill makes sense to most Californians, don't expect it to be on the governor's desk any time soon.

With the Democratic Party in Sacramento squarely on the side of illegal immigration, promoting it with reduced tuition at state colleges, rewarding it with health care benefits and facilitating it with drivers' licenses, don't expect my bill to see the light of day after its first hearing. Too bad.

With Congress now debating our borders and illegal immigration, the least we can do from state government's perspective, if not stopping it, is to stop encouraging it.

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Under siege - A hemisphere's press freedoms are in peril

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

April 2, 2006

The welcome tide of democracy that swept over Latin America during the past two decades liberated most of a continent's press from its shackled past of censorship and intimidation by autocratic governments. Yet, the Latin press remains beset – by new forms of government harassment, by the deadly violence of drug mafias and corrupt politicians, by a culture of impunity that lets the assassinations of journalists go unpunished, and in Venezuela by a left-wing caudillo, Hugo Chavez, out to stifle dissent and suppress criticism.

All of this matters to countless millions of ordinary people throughout Latin America because the existence, or absence, of a free press helps determine how well or badly they live. It matters, too, to the United States, which has a huge interest, both geopolitical and economic, in seeing Latin America's sometimes fragile new democracies survive and flourish.

A free press in peril is the canary in the mine shaft warning of greater dangers ahead for the cause of successful self-government in the Americas.

For Latin America, as for developing countries everywhere, a free press is far more than merely an abstract ideal or a frill to be added after the problems of poverty and underdevelopment are solved. An independent press able to report freely and criticize when warranted is, simply put, indispensable to democratic governance. It's a free and vigorous press that holds governments accountable to their citizenry, especially in countries where the rule of law is weak and democratic and civic institutions are not yet what they should be.

Consider the impact of a free press on two issues especially vital in Latin America – human rights and economic development.

Governments tempted to abuse fundamental human rights are much more likely to do so if they can hide their misdeeds. To cite but one example, Mexico's government secretly used assassination and torture to suppress leftist movements in the 1970s. A freer, more effective Mexican press might have stopped these abuses by publicizing them.

Economists now recognize that corruption, long the bane of Latin American governments and economies, imposes a crippling drag on economic development. In countries hobbled by corruption, both public and private, a properly functioning press can be the only way to ferret out the crooks and hold them accountable.

The Inter American Press Association has been monitoring press freedoms throughout the Western Hemisphere since the 1940s. The IAPA's reporting, formally compiled and released twice each year, is an acutely accurate barometer tracking freedom of the press country by country across Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The association's most recent report, issued March 20 during the group's mid-year meeting in Quito, Ecuador, finds ample cause for worry.

The editorial series that begins today examines the principal threats to freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of information across the Americas. Having identified the threats, we'll suggest what might be done to strengthen an institution vital to a successful future for all the peoples of the Americas.

Student protesters have a lot to learn

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.
THE UNION-TRIBUNE

April 2, 2006

First, let's deal with this business of the flags.

It's amazing. Congress is embroiled in the most meaningful debate since President Reagan signed an amnesty law in 1986 – and the new dialogue touches on guest workers, border fences, another round of amnesty and more. Yet the one thing many Americans want to talk about are those darned Mexican flags.

As a Mexican-American, on this issue I come down on the American side of the hyphen. I think student demonstrators made a huge mistake by hoisting Mexican flags, and that – as a rule – people who demand rights from one country shouldn't wave the flag of another. It's bad manners – and even worse civics.

I felt the same way, a few years ago, when I saw television footage of Jewish Americans protesting at the U.S. Capitol in support of Israel and waving the Israeli flag.

If you feel comfortable with one instance of flag-waving but queasy about the other, I'm afraid you have issues.

But the flags aren't even the most troubling part. This is: At the youth protests, the individuals carrying those flags should have instead carried their butts back to school.

Inspired by the 500,000 protesters who marched in Los Angeles last weekend (in part because of Spanish-language disc jockeys who coordinated the turnout) and incensed by efforts in Congress to make unauthorized presence in the United States a felony and extend the definition of smugglers to include churches and others who “assist” illegal immigrants, thousands of young Latinos stormed out of classes this week.

Oh brother.

Just a few weeks after the airing of an HBO movie celebrating the 1968 walkouts by Mexican-American activists of yesteryear to demand more educational opportunities, thousands of Latino students squandered those opportunities by walking out of high schools in cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit and elsewhere. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who himself was among those students who walked out a generation ago, this week urged students to return to class.

The walkouts bring to mind what I've often said – that, now that they are the nation's largest minority, Latinos might have a shot at helping shape the future, if they could shake free of the past.

You'll have to forgive today's kids. They mean well, but I don't think they fully grasp the consequences of their actions.

As someone who is often accused of trying to speak for the nation's 40 million Latinos, I'd like to make a motion: Latinos can boycott grapes and lettuce all they want. But, under no circumstances should they boycott things such as schools, libraries, bookstores and newspapers.

Why? Because knowledge is power, baby. We have enough ignorance in this country. Just listen to the nonsense coming from anti-immigrant opportunists in Congress – such as building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border or denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. What we could use, in all quarters, is more enlightenment.

Making matters more urgent, the stakes are higher than the students probably realize. As far as the educational system is concerned, the kids are in bad shape. According to a new study by UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center, Latino students nationwide typically attend segregated, crowded schools with poorly trained teachers. Often, the report said, they're also tracked into remedial or vocational programs. These are not the kind of kids who have the luxury of skipping school – even for one day.

Not that the protests don't make sense. Immigration reform is no abstract topic. It hits the students close to home. Concerned about how events in Washington might disrupt their lives, it's obvious that the protesters want respect for themselves, their parents and their family members who are here illegally.

There's nothing wrong with that. But in this country, there are definite and defined ways for one to earn respect. Hold a job and provide for your family. Obey the law. Serve your (new) country. Study the issues. Register and vote.

For young people, it starts out with baby steps: Go to school. Crack some books. Get good grades. Get into college. Strive for excellence in everything you do.

Do all that and, chances are, you won't be messed with. And you'll get the respect you deserve and have earned.

But there are no shortcuts. Protests and Mexican flags are no substitute for progress and hard work.

Some people are worried that the protests over the immigration debate represent a breaking point. But they don't really. It is more like a teaching moment. And it's our young hell-raisers who have the most to learn.

Black hole - Castro's Cuba permits no press freedom

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

April 3, 2006

Fidel Castro's communist dictatorship has long made Cuba the Western Hemisphere's black hole for freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of information. No wonder, then, that Cuba's 11 million people continue to live lives blighted by political oppression, economic privation and a dispiriting lack of hope or opportunity.

Cuba is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that prohibits freedom of the press in any form. Castro's government imposes a complete state monopoly on all printed and broadcast forms of news. No privately owned press exists in Cuba to offer an alternative to the government-owned and controlled newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations.

Access to the Internet by Cuban citizens is tightly restricted. The Cuban government blocks any Web site deemed by Havana's censors as “damaging to Cuban sovereignty” or “subversive (and) counterrevolutionary.” In practice, this means that no Cuban citizen is permitted access to anything on the Internet that is critical of Castro's government.

But the central focus of the Inter American Press Association's latest report on Cuba is Castro's continuing suppression of the independent journalists' movement. Thirty of the 75 political dissidents arrested in 2003, convicted in sham trials and sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years were independent journalists gathering information for foreign news outlets. At last count, 25 independent Cuban journalists are imprisoned and one is under house arrest for violating Cuba's all-purpose gag statute, the infamous Law 88.

Of the 25 now in prison, 18 suffer from serious health problems, some of which are life threatening. Inadequate medical care and the deplorable, often brutal, conditions of confinement in Cuba's fetid, overcrowded prisons compound the threat to these journalists' survival. Several of the imprisoned journalists are currently on hunger strikes to protest their mistreatment. One, lawyer and journalist Mario Enrique Mayo, serving a 20-year sentence, was released to house arrest last December after he slashed his face, stomach and limbs to protest his imprisonment.

Cuba's jailed journalists, like the other dissidents arrested in 2003, are all nonviolent prisoners of conscience. Under the provisions of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other applicable standards of international law, none of these courageous and principled men and women should be in prison.

International pressure on Castro's government can likely ease the plight of these imprisoned journalists and deter a further crackdown against the remaining 50 or so Cubans attempting to operate as independent journalists. The Organization of American States, the European Union and, if it can stir itself to act, the United Nations' reconstituted Human Rights Council could all appeal for their release.

If Castro won't relent, political sanctions against his government could and should be imposed until he does.

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