Day: November 12, 2003


1812 – In their retreat from Moscow, the remnants of Napoleon’s Grand Armee crossed the River Berezina; 10,000 stragglers were left behind.

1859 – A flying trapeze act was performed for the first time in a circus.

1867 – A major eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy began and lasted for several months.

1893 – An agreement was signed between Afghanistan and Britain marking the boundary between Afghan tribal lands and British territories.

1912 – Spanish Prime Minister Jose Canalejas was assassinated by anarchist gunman Manuel Pardinas, who then shot himself.

1912 – A search party found the remains of British explorer Captain Robert Scott and his companions after the ill-fated South Pole expedition.

1915 – Harvard University’s Theodore W. Richards became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry. He was given his award in Stockholm, Sweden.

1918 – Austria was declared an independent republic, one day after the end of World War I.

1919 – The first flight from England to Australia, flown by Ross and Keith Smith, took off from Hounslow, near London. They landed at Darwin on December 13.

1920 – Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis accepted a contract to be the first commissioner of baseball, taking office after the Black Sox scandal of 1919, remaining commissioner for seven years.

1923 – In Germany, Adolf Hitler was arrested for failed attempt to seize power.

1925 – Louis Armstrong began his world famous career when he recorded “My Heart”.

1927 – Joseph Stalin became ruler of the Soviet Union.

1927 – After forty years in blue jerseys, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish got a new uniform of bright green jerseys and stockings. They played against Army in New York City, and have been wearing the lucky green uniforms ever since.

1931 – In Toronto, Canada, Maple Leaf Gardens opened as the new home of the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs.

1940 – Walt Disney released “Fantasia”; called by one critic “As terrific as anything that has ever happened on the screen.”

1941 – On RCA Victor records, Hot Lips Page provided vocals for Artie Shaw’s very long and very slow version of “St. James Infirmary”.

1942 – The naval battle of Guadalcanal began between Japanese and American forces during World War II.

1942 – The British Eighth Army under Gen. Bernard Montgomery captured Tobruk, Libya, taking at least 30,000 prisoners.

1944 – The German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck and Hitler’s last major warship, was sunk by Lancaster bombers at Tromso Fjord in northern Norway.

1946 – The first drive-up bank facility, with ten teller windows with slide-out drawers, opened at the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois.

1948 – A war crimes tribunal sentenced Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death.

1954 – Ellis Island, the United States immigration station in New York harbor, closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants to the United States since 1892.

1955 – Jockeys Eddie Arcaro, Earl Sande, and George Woolf became the first three members of the Jockey Hall of Fame in Pimlico, Maryland.

1955 – The worst recorded attendance to a football game occurred in the Washington State vs San Jose State game at Pullman, Washington. The game was played as scheduled, despite high winds and a temperature of 0 degrees F. The total paid attendance was 1.

1967 – On Broadway, Pearl Bailey took over the lead role in the musical, “Hello Dolly”. “Pearlie Mae”, as Buck was called, was a hit.

1967 – The Detroit Lions set an NFL record by fumbling the football 11 times and losing it 5 of those times.

1968 – The United Nations General Assembly voted against admission of Communist China.

1969 – Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union for anti-social behavior.

1969 – The United States army announced for the first time that it was investigating William Calley for the alleged massacre of civilians at the Vietnamese village of My Lai in March, 1968.

1970 – After a successful run in London, Anthony Quayle starred in “Sleuth’s” Broadway opening.

1970 – In East Pakistan a cyclone and tidal wave hit several districts, causing the deaths of at least 200,000 people.

1974 – South Africa was suspended from the United Nations General Assembly over its racial policies.

1977 – In West Germany Ingrid Schubert, a founding member of the Baader-Meinhof gang, committed suicide in her prison cell.

1979 – After Islamic students seized the United States Embassy in Tehran on November 4, President Jimmy Carter announced an immediate halt to all imports of Iranian oil.

1980 – John Lennon’s “Starting Over” was released featuring Lennon and Yoko kissing on the cover.

1981 – The space shuttle Columbia was launched for the second time; it was the first space vehicle to be used more than once.

1982 – Yuri Andropov was elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist party following the death of Leonid Brezhnev.

1982 – Polish Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa was freed after 11 months detention in a state-owned hunting lodge.

1983 – Lionel Richie started the first of four consecutive weeks at #1 on the music charts as “All Night Long (All Night)” became the United States most popular song.

1984 – Joseph Allen became the first astronaut to rescue a satellite. Allen was on board the “Discovery” space shuttle to make the $35 million rescue.

1986 – For the first time in the history of the NBA both head coaches were absent from the game when coached K.C. Jones and Don Nelson were too sick to be at the Boston-Milwaukee game. The Boston Celtics had their 44th straight home victory as they defeated the Milwaukee Bucks 124-116.

1990 – Emperor Akihito was enthroned in Japan.

1991 – Leroy Witucki, a 10-year police veteran in Indiana, pleaded guilty to stealing a pair of tickets to a George Thorogood rock concert off the body of a motorist killed in a car crash. He gave the tickets to a family member, who sold them to friends. Relatives of the crash victim were surprised when the ticket holders sat next to them at the concert 3 weeks after the fatal accident. Witucki resigned from the police force, and faced up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

1996 – 349 people were killed when a Saudi Arabian jumbo jet and a Kazakh airliner collided in mid-air over India.

1997 – The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on Iraq for constraints being placed on United Nations arms inspectors.


DEBATE – STERILIZATION OF SUBSTANCE ABUSERS

WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 13, 2003, 12:15pm
WHERE: New York City, Columbia University Law School, Jerome Greene
Hall Room 106
WHAT: Debate between Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of NAPW and Jim
Woodhill, Donor and Board member of C.R.A.C.K. (Children Require A
Caring Kommunity)
INFO: If you are taking the subway, just take the 1/9 train all the way up
to 116th street, get off and head east through the campus gates all the
way across and out the other gates, cross Amsterdam Ave, and you
will be at the law school

Please join us Thursday, November 13, 2003 at Columbia University Law School for a debate between Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of NAPW and Jim Woodhill, Donor and Board member of C.R.A.C.K. (Children Require A Caring Kommunity) “Debate: Sterilization of Substance Abusers”

The debate begins at 12:15pm in Jerome Greene Hall Room 106, at Columbia University School of Law. Jerome Greene Hall (the main law school building) is located at the NE corner of Amsterdam Ave. and 116th Street.

C.R.A.C.K. also known as project prevention offers $200 for current and former drug users to get sterilized or to use certain long acting birth control methods. Please attend and let Mr. Woodhill know that CRACK’s misinformation and prejudice will not be tolerated.

Excerpts from Paltrow’s forthcoming article about C.R.A.C.K.

Much of what CRACK says about their clients is simply untrue or unsupported by the numbers they present. Instead of research, legitimate data, and honest inquiry, CRACK presents selective anecdotes, false information and horrific images of bad women who not only do not deserve to have children, but also do not deserve any form of compassion or support. As Assata Zerai and Rae Banks argue, this kind of “dehumanizing discourse” has a significant influence on public policy responses.

By promoting a vision of pregnant women with health problems as “child abusers,” by portraying healthy children as damaged, by disdaining science and evidence based research, and by fostering stereotypes, prejudice, and medical misinformation, CRACK undermines rather than promotes the welfare of children and caring communities, increases the likelihood of government sanctioned punitive responses, and decreases the likelihood that desperately need services will ever be adequately funded.

People who make contributions to the organization are not merely helping to fund outreach to people who could benefit from sterilization and contraceptive services. They are, as the discussion below demonstrates, also supporting a form of political action and propaganda that discourages public support for the very things –contraceptive services, drug treatment, safe communities for children to live in — that CRACK claims to promote. . . .

Indeed, statements by their founder and Director, Barbara Harris not only provide clear examples of negative stereotyping, they also make clear that control, not empowerment, is in fact CRACK’s primary purpose. As one commentary, quoting Ms. Harris observed,

“Addict, recovering addict, dirty, clean . . . whatever. The distinction hardly matters to CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), the group that gave [the client] the money. ‘As long as they stay on birth control,’ says founder Barbara Harris, ‘That’s all we care about.’

Similarly, Ms. Harris has stated: “Finally I realized. . . . that if I wanted these women to take birth control, I’d have to do it on my own.” Similarly and quite explicitly she has written: “We don’t say we’re concerned with the welfare of the mothers. Crack’s mission is to stop them from having more doomed babies.” . . .

The notion of empowerment assumes respect for those who are to be “empowered.” But CRACK’s chief spokesperson, has, in the past, expressed only disdain for the program’s targets. Ms. Harris has repeatedly compared them targets to animals: “I’m not saying these women are dogs, but they’re not acting any more responsible than a dog in heat.” She has also stated: “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children.” And again, in another context: “They’re having litters. They are literally having litters.” On the television news program 60 Minutes II, Ms. Harris was asked about these comments and given an opportunity to distance herself from them. She replied: “Well you know my son that goes to Stanford said ‘Mom, please don’t ever say that again’ But its the truth, they don’t just have one and two babies they have litters.” The Director of CRACK Houston Chapter, Laura Love, analogizes their clients to mules who need “smacks” on the head with a stick to get them to move.

CRACK’s founder also regards her clients as “irresponsible.” For example, Ms. Harris asserts that, “They’re getting pregnant only because they’re irresponsible,” and claims that “Birth control is available to these women and it’s free, but they’re not interested in being responsible.” Expressing both her desire for control and her contempt for the targets of her program she told People Magazine:

“These women are not getting pregnant because they love children,. . . but because they’re totally irresponsible. It’s sad that they’re on drugs, but the bottom line is, I don’t want them to get pregnant.”

“The bottom line” Harris has said on the record, ” is I don’t want them to get pregnant. . .If the state won’t do it, I’ll do it myself.”

From http://www.drugpolicy.org