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NOTICE: The bauaw.org website is temporarily down to technical difficulties and should be restored to normal soon. The newsletter is unaffected. For your information, there are over 380 groups and individuals on this list now.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Picket in Support of ILWU Local 30
Friday, April 16, 11:00 A.M.
British Consulate: 1 Sansome St., S.F.
Rio Tinto, a global mining giant, will begin its annual shareholders meeting in London on April 15. It is implicated in the deaths of ten percent of the population of the northernmost Solomon Island in New Guinea. It was involved in massacres of tribal people and environmental devastation. Our brothers and sisters will picket and rally in London, Los Angeles and Seattle. Join in the international support for the 600 locked-out Rio Tinto miners. Don't handle Rio Tinto scab cargo.
Labor Donated
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Full Picture Truth-in-Recruitment Training Day
Saturday, April 17, 2010, 9:15am - 3:30pm
War Memorial Veteran's Building - 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco (Civic Center BART)
Registration, coffee & bagels. we start 9:30 sharp!
MORNING WORKSHOP 9:15am -12:00pm-Introduction to doing TIR work in schools
Get comfortable with in school strategies!
-making contacts in the school
-getting materials in school libraries and career centers
-arranging classroom presentations for vets & others
AFTERNOON WORKSHOP 1:00pm -3:30pm-Focused training for veterans and classroom presenters
An in-depth session developing classroom presentation skills for veterans and others.
Pablo Paredes, Veterans Speakers Alliance, IVAW and others.
It will include:
-key points that every presentation should include.
-How to handle difficult questions.
-Resources and practice
This is a free event, though donations will be solicited to benefit
Full Picture (a Truth-in-Recruitment Project of the AFSC)
These are two separate trainings. We recommend that you bring a bag lunch if you plan to attend both.
For more info: full.picture@yahoo.com, 415 565 0201 #24 http://www.thefullpicture.info
S.O.S: SAVE OUR SCHOOLS! Invest In Education-Tax Day Action!
Thursday, April 15th, 5:00-6:30pm Rally
Oakland Federal Building 1301 Clay Street, Oakland, CA
Sponsored by: Youth Together, AYPAL, BAY-Peace, California's for Justice, All City Council, Meaningful Student Engagement, Alliance for Education Justice.
Tell the Government you want your TAXES spent on public education. Join youth and community members across the country in a creative action to tell the feds that you want your taxes to support education. Actions are being held in 15 cities across the country.
For more information contact: Charles McDonald 510.452.2728
$500 Grants Available for High School Counter Recruitment Projects
If you are part of a high school student group that would like to do a counter recruitment project, you can apply for a grant of up to $500 to help you get your message out about non-military alternatives for youth, aggressive military recruiting in our schools and resisting war.
Any Bay Area high school students may apply. The deadline is the last day of each month, and the funds will be distributed quickly to qualified applicants, so don't wait to apply!
Some possible projects could include
• a spoken word contest,
• a mural project,
• an assembly or teach-in at your school,
• a concert or conference,
• a job fair
• a demonstration,
• a poster series,
or anything else you can think of!
For info contact: moos-bay@riseup.net
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DEFEND CISCO TORRES OF THE SF8!
MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2010
DEMONSTRATION: 8:00 A.M.
COURT: 9:00 A.M.
SAN FRANCISCO COURT BUILDING
850 BRYANT STREET (Between 6th and 7th Streets)
SAN FRANCISCO
www.freethesf8.org
New Episodes of Kiilu Nyasha's TV show focusing on the SF8: Harold Taylor and Charles Bourdon, attorney for Cisco Torres
These two new episodes are well timed with Cisco Torres' upcoming court date. If you live in the area, please come to his next court date on Monday April 19: 8:00 a.m. demonstration; 9:00 a.m. court. SF Court Building: 850 Bryant Street (btw 6th and 7th streets), San Francisco. For more information, go to www.freethesf8.org.
Harold Taylor:
http://kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/2010/04/harold-taylor-san-francisco-eight.html
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, April 25, 2008
Our guest is Harold Taylor, of Panama City, Florida, one of the elders known as the San Francisco 8 who was freed on bail last September. Harold was one of the organizers of the San Diego chapter of the Black Panther Party. Father of five children, Harold worked for the U.S. Air Force at Tyndal, and as a hi-voltage journeyman lineman for over 15 years. In his own words, "In 1971, two brothers and I were set up by the FBI. We didn't learn about COINTELPRO until years later. In 1973 I was arrested in New Orleans and was beaten and tortured for several days. in 2003 the detectives that were responsible for my torture came to my house to try and question me. I have not been the same since."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Currently, as of April 2010, Cisco Torres is the only member of the SF8 still facing charges. Please come to his next court date on Monday April 19: 8:00 a.m. demonstration; 9:00 a.m. court. SF Court Building: 850 Bryant Street (btw 6th and 7th streets), San Francisco. For more information, go to www.freethesf8.org.
Charles Bourdon, attorney for Cisco Torres:
http://kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/2010/04/charles-bourdon-san-francisco-eight.html
Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, February 8, 2008
Our guest is Charles F. Bourdon, Attorney for Francisco Torres of the San Francisco Eight. Collectively, the SF8 are a group of community activists who have devoted their lives to serving the people and making a difference. Richard Brown (65), for example, has worked for decades in the Fillmore District mentoring youth; including 20 years as a Program Coordinator at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center and is fondly referred to as the Mayor. While conspiracy charges have been dropped against Brown and four other defendants, effectively freeing Richard ONeal, lawyers will argue in court on Feb. 7 to have the same charges dropped against the remaining three defendants.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_M6_z10xqV1J2HtPLXVRvcajV_UwL4qgJPcSKRx1T_ZLpQ4dUh-kkqcWMvGHyeU5ET_9inFF9H4jnxaN_Is2V59PeMeYJe9YgQP-SPG_YAGjmlGtwq0YtmmPlKkmG5sBXkHMB9w/s1600/CiscoCourtFlyer410.jpg
BACKGROUND INFO FROM WWW.FREETHESF8.ORG:
Eight former Black community activists - Black Panthers and others - were arrested January 23, 2007 in California, New York, and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973.
Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two men charged - Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim - have been held as political prisoners for over 30 years in New York State prisons. The men were charged with the murder of Sgt. John Young and conspiracy that encompasses numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.
Harold Taylor and John Bowman (recently deceased) as well as Ruben Scott (thought to be a government witness) were first charged in 1975. But a judge tossed out the charges, finding that Taylor and his two co-defendants made statements after police in New Orleans tortured them for several days employing electric shock, cattle prods, beatings, sensory deprivation, plastic bags and hot, wet blankets for asphyxiation. Such "evidence" is neither credible nor legal.
Now, After 38 years, the government's case against eight former Black Panther Party members and supporters has almost completely unraveled. (See the SF 8 statement of August 6). Only Francisco Torres still faces charges - see the Open Letter calling for his charges to be dropped. The eight were arrested January 23, 2007 in California, New York, and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were brought in 1975, but a California judge tossed out the charges, finding that they were based on statements made by three of the men after police in New Orleans tortured them for several days employing electric shock, cattle prods, beatings, sensory deprivation, plastic bags and hot, wet blankets for asphyxiation.
At the end of July, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim were sentenced to probation and time served, after Herman agreed to plead to voluntary manslaughter and Jalil to conspiracy to voluntary manslaughter. All charges were then dropped on Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Harold Taylor, and Ray Boudreaux, with the prosecution admitting it had "insufficient evidence" against them. Charges had already been dropped against Richard O'Neal last year.
Francisco Torres, of NYC, is the last person still with charges; he maintains his innocence.
Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim have been in prison in New York for almost 40 years on similar charges based on the US Government's COINTELPRO actions to disrupt and destroy radical organizations, especially the Black Panther Party. Showing the weakness of the prosecution's case, Bell and Muntaqim were given no additional prison time, and have been returned to NY where they will continue to fight for parole.
Two and a half years of mass support for the Brothers, including resolutions from the San Francisco Central Labor Council, the Berkeley City Council, and several San Francisco Supervisors, have almost broken the back of a vindictive prosecution organized by Homeland Security, the FBI, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown. The defense committee has vowed to keep up the pressure until charges are dropped against Francisco Torres and Herman and Jalil are back with their families and community.
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SF Workers Memorial Day
Stand Up For Injured Workers
& Commemorate Workers Killed On The Job
Wed April 28, 7:00 PM
ILWU Local 34 2nd St./Embarcadero SF
Speakers:
Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition
Mike Daly, Ironworkers Local 377* delegate to San Francisco Labor Council
Leuren Moret, Geo-scientist who worked at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab
Carol Criss, SEIU-UHW Kaiser Steward Transcriptionist
Roland Sheppard, Retired BA Painters Local 4
Dina Padilla, Injured Worker Advocate
Becky McClain, Injure Pfizer Molecular Biologist by telephone
Sandy Trend, mother of injured Agraquest injured biotech worker David Bell
Workers in the bay area and nationally continue to get injured and killed on the job. In California, OSHA inspectors have been threatened and retaliated against for speaking out about the decline of the agency and the failure of the agency to do a proper job protecting injured workers and the public. Additionally all the OSHA doctors for California's 17 million workers have also been terminated thereby threatening the safety of workers and the public. There are more CA Fish and Game Inspectors than Ca-OSHA inspectors and this needs to change.
Hundreds of NUMMI injured workers who have been on disability are also now being discriminated against by the company and treated as 2nd class workers in the compensation plan. Is this fair? Many of these workers have given decades of their lives to the company yet they are now being punished for being disabled. This is cost shifting since their healthcare will now be paid for by the State and SSI when they go on permanent disability. This is yet another example of cost shifting by the corporations making the tax payer pay for their liabilities.
Workers Memorial Day is held every year to commemorate those workers killed and injured on the job. The deregulation of workers compensation has also allowed employers and the insurance industry to deny seriously injured workers prompt healthcare and also has cut the permanent disability payments by 50% as well as completely eliminating retraining.
There is a national struggle to strengthen OSHA protection called the Protecting America's Workers Act H.R. 2067 needs to be supported and also to require that all injured workers are entitled to their exposure records on the job. Health and safety must trump privacy/secrecy laws.
We also support H.R. 635 which will create a US Commission on State Workers Compensation Laws and will study the affect of deregulation for injured workers in the U.S. At the same time, OSHA plans to remove some chemical warnings on exposure limits for workers.
We need to educate and reactivate the labor movement to protect our lives and health and safety in the workplace. Please join with workers and their families at this memorial meeting and speak out and demand healthcare and justice for all workers and people in the community.
Wed April 28, 7:00 PM
ILWU Local 34 2nd St./Embarcadero SF
Injured workers, health and safety advocates and family members will participate
Speakers:
Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition
Mike Daly, Ironworkers Local 377* delegate to San Francisco Labor Council
Leuren Moret, Geo-scientist who worked at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab
Carol Criss, SEIU-UHW Kaiser Steward Transcriptionist
Roland Sheppard, Retired BA Painters Local 4
Dina Padilla, Injured Worker Advocate
Becky McClain, Injure Pfizer Molecular Biologist by telephone
Sandy Trend, mother of injured Agraquest injured biotech worker David Bell
California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day CCWMD
www.workersmemorialday.org
(415)867-0628
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Protest on International Workers' Day
Full Rights for Undocumented Workers
Legalization/Amnesty for All!
Money for Jobs and Education, Not War and Occupation
Jobs for All!
No Budget Cuts or Fee Hikes
Tax the Rich and Corporations!
March and Rally
Saturday May 1, 12noon
March Assembles: 24th and Mission Sts., SF
Sponsored by the May Day 2010 Coalition, of which the ANSWER Coalition is a member.
Proteste durante el Día Internacional del Trabajador
¡Derechos Incondicionales para Trabajadores Indocumentados
Legalización/Amnistía para todos!
¡Dinero Para Trabajos y Educación, No para Guerra y Ocupación
Trabajos para todos!
¡No Recortes o Aumentos-Cobren a los Ricos y Corporaciones!
Marcha y Mitin
Sab. 1º de Mayo, 12pm
Uniéndose sobre la calle 24 y Misión, SF
Patrocinado por la Coalición Día de Mayo 2010, la cual la Coalición ANSWER es un participante.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org
http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
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CIRCLE THESE DATES!!
Announcing...
A National Conference
To Bring the Troops Home Now!
JULY 23, 24, 25, 2010
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, New York
www.nationalpeaceconference.org
AN INVITATION FROM: After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, Peace of the Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Progressive Democrats of America, U.S. Labor Against the War, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom [list in formation]
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting. Attend and voice your opinion on where the antiwar movement is today and where we go from here.
In these deeply troubled times, Washington's two wars and occupations rage on, resulting in an ever increasing number of dead and wounded; more and more civilians killed in drone bombing attacks; misery, deprivation, dislocation and shattered lives for millions; and a suicide rate for U.S. service members soaring to unprecedented heights. At the same time, trillions are spent on these seemingly endless Pentagon conflicts waged in pursuit of profits and global domination while trillions more are lost by working people in the value of their homes, in the loss of their jobs, pensions and health care, and in cuts for public services and vitally needed social programs.
We are witness to the massive bailout of banks and corporations while union contracts are shredded, work is outsourced, jobs are shipped off-shore, workers are evicted from their homes, and our youth and students face a bleak future of rising tuition costs, an ever-declining quality of education, and diminishing employment opportunities. They are offered instead the opportunity to become cannon fodder as the military serves as the employer of last resort while prison awaits many others.
The poor and working people in the U.S. suffer the horrors of unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, untreated illnesses and unavailable health insurance, crumbling infrastructure, and temporary and part time work at starvation wages. These multiple crises impact communities of color with disproportionate severity. Meanwhile people in a growing number of countries around the world are subjected to death and destruction by the world's most powerful military machine.
There is another dimension to this tragedy. The U.S. is at war to control and plunder the very fossil fuel resources whose continued use threatens the future of the human race.
We demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, we recognize that the Middle East cauldron today also encompasses Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine and Israel, while Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and other countries in Latin America are targeted for intervention, subversion, occupation and control as a consequence of a militarized U.S. foreign policy. Our challenge is not only to end wars and occupations, but to fundamentally change the aggressive policies that inevitably lead our country to militarism and war.
The fight for better times, for a world of peace, justice and freedom, requires that we join together to make it happen, that we fight for the broad unity within the antiwar movement and across all the movements for social justice that has to date escaped us and that we collaborate to engage the American people in massive and united mobilizations against the warmakers and for the justice we deserve.
We have not forgotten the lessons of the civil rights movement, the struggle against the Vietnam War, the feminist and gay rights movements, and the monumental struggles that paved the way to the organization of American trade unions. History has demonstrated time and again that all critical social change is a product of the direct and massive intervention of the people.
We seek an inclusive conference where antiwar individuals and organizations come together to democratically discuss, debate and approve a plan of action aimed at winning the support and allegiance of the majority who have the power to compel a fundamental re-ordering of priorities.
We announce in advance that our goal is to develop strategies that unite us in action - for mass mobilizations and a variety of other tactics that suit the agendas of the constituent groups and individuals who participate in the conference proceedings. Our method is democracy. One person, one vote! Our goal is unity in action while respecting our diversity and differences in political program and orientation.
Join us in Albany, New York, July 23-25, 2010!
Issued by the United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC) Planning Committee
For more information, write UNAC2010@aol.com, or UNAC at P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121 or call 518-227-6947 or visit our website at www.nationalpeaceconference.org
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Mine War on Blackberry Creek (1986) - Web Stream
http://appalshop.org/film/minewar/stream.html
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[RE: The "Other War" - the war on drugs. This is an excellent and important video. ...bw]
Video Lecture: US Prisons/Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander's book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Video Lecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgM5NAq6cGI
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HOLOCAUST: Germany 1940 vs. Israel 2009
A visual comparison between Nazi Germany Oppression and the Zionists Oppression in Israel. [Warning these are horrifying images...bw]
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/04/11/holocaust-2009-germany-1940-vs-israel-2009/
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Greetings All:
This letter was written by Yuri Kochiyama who has asked us to spread this letter far and wide. Please do :).
Kiilu
---
March 1, 2010
Dear Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal:
Mumia's birthday is April 24 and we would like to celebrate the whole month of April with a gigantic Freedom Birthday Remembrance for Mumia Abu Jamal.
Please join Pam and Ramona Africa and all who love and admire Mumia by avalanching him through the month of April with Freedom Birthday wishes. And, to those who can afford to, please send a few dollars through postal money orders. This would be helpful when he is released.
Mail cards to:
Mumia Abu Jamal AM 8335
SCI Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090
Tell your family members, friends, fellow workers, neighbors, classmates, etc. Also, notify progressive radio stations, newspapers and organizations. Please do so immediately as April is almost upon us. Remember what Mumia has endured at the hands of the U.S. government and the Pennsylvania criminal justice system. Mumia has already done 32 years and is still on death row because of prosecutorial misconduct. Yet he is innocent! Act now before it is too late.
Don't let Mumia become another victim of a government's destructive history. Mumia's life is in peril and must be saved. He is needed to teach us how to fight for a better world for all. If ever Mumia was needed, it is now!
Join us in celebrating Mumia's birthday throughout April and let it be a celebration for Mumia's freedom!
Remember we need him more than he needs us. We need him, not only for today, but for all the tomorrows coming. Join us. Write to Mumia now.
From Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal
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[This is an excellent program....bw]
MLK: A Call to Conscience
Premiered Mar. 31, 8/7c
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/reports/episode-two.html
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From LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org/
Voting is over for the first-ever global labour video of the year competition and we have a winner:
What Have The Unions Ever Done For Us?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=184NTV2CE_c
Collateral Murder
[COLD-BLOODED, OUTRIGHT MURDER OF UNARMED CIVILIANS--AND THEY LAUGH ABOUT IT AS THEY SHOOT! THIS IS A BLOOD-CURTLING, VIOLENT AND BRUTAL VIDEO THAT SHOULD BE VIEWED BY EVERYONE! IT EXPOSES, AS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID, "THE BIGGEST PURVEYORS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD," THE U.S. BI-PARTISAN GOVERNMENT AND THE MILITARY THEY COMMAND. --BW]
Overview
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
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Dispatches - Children Of Gaza (2010)
[Out of the mouths of babes comes a real expose of the practices of the U.S. propped-up and funded Zionist regime of Israel against the children of Gaza and all Palestinians, both inside Israel and outside its ever-increasing borders. These are crimes bought and paid for by the U.S. government with our tax dollars to maintain the U.S. puppet nuclear stronghold--Israel--in the Middle East. The world must say no to this murderous regime of Israel. We, here in the U.S., must demand:
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL! NOT ONE MORE DIME! NOT ONE MORE WEAPON! NOT ONE MORE LIE IN DEFENSE OF ISRAELI MURDER AND MAYHEM AGAINST THE PEOPLE--AND THE CHILDREN--OF PALESTINE...BW]
On Monday 15th March Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Children of Gaza". It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children's literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel's illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars, which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed.
http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2010/03/dispatches-children-of-gaza-2010.html
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San Francisco City and County Tramples on Civil Liberties
A Letter to Antiwar Activists
Dear Activists:
On Saturday, March 20, the San Francisco City and County Recreation and Parks Department's Park Rangers patrolled a large public antiwar demonstration, shutting down the distribution of Socialist Viewpoint magazine. The rally in Civic Center Plaza was held in protest of the illegal and immoral U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Park Rangers went table-to-table examining each one. They photographed the Socialist Viewpoint table and the person attending it-me. My sister, Debbie and I, had set up the table. We had a sign on the table that asked for a donation of $1.25 for the magazine. The Park Rangers demanded that I "pack it up" and go, because selling or even asking for donations for newspapers or magazines is no longer permitted without the purchase of a new and expensive "vendors license." Their rationale for this denial of free speech is that the distribution of newspapers, magazines, T-shirts-and even food-would make the political protest a "festival" and not a political protest demonstration!
This City's action is clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution-the right to free speech and freedom of the press-and can't be tolerated.
While they are firing teachers and other San Francisco workers, closing schools, cutting back healthcare access, cutting services to the disabled and elderly, it is outrageous that the Mayor and City Government chose to spend thousands of dollars to police tables at an antiwar rally-a protest demonstration by the people!
We can't let this become the norm. It is so fundamentally anti-democratic. The costs of the permits for the rally, the march, the amplified sound, is already prohibitive. Protest is not a privilege we should have to pay for. It's a basic right in this country and we should reclaim it!
Personally, I experienced a deep feeling of alienation as the crisply-uniformed Park Ranger told me I had to "pack it up"-especially when I knew that they were being paid by the City to do this at this demonstration!
I hope you will join this protest of the violation of the right to distribute and, therefore, the right to read Socialist Viewpoint, by writing or emailing the City officials who are listed below.1
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Editorial Board Member, Socialist Viewpoint
www.socialistviewpoint.org
60 - 29th Street, #429
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
1 Mayor Gavin Newsom
City Hall, Room 200
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244
San Francisco, Ca 94102-4689
Board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department Park Rangers
McLaren Lodge & Annex
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Park.patrol@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
recpark.commission@sfgov.org
Chief of Police George Gascón
850 Bryant Street, #525
San Francisco, CA 94103
(I could not find an email address for him.).
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Video:
Cuba's Medical System: A Public Health Paradox?
Posted by Alexis Turner in Fellows, Global Health, Healthcare Quality
February 1st, 2007
http://oninformatics.com/?p=37
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A bit of San Francisco History:
James Baldwin in San Francisco, 1963
http://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/187041
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We Are NOT Your Soldiers National Tour 2010
wearenotyoursoldiers.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F2phA-BIGM&feature=player_embedded#
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YouTube - M4 Day of Action-On The March For Public Education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78GcKtgFOqU
M4 Day of Action-On The March For Public Education On March 4, 2010, tens of thousands of education workers and students and supporters of public education joined together in rallies and marches throughout California and around the country. This video is about some of the participants in the San Francisco and the East Bay. Production of Labor Video Project P.O. Box 720027, SF, CA 94172 www.laborvideo.org laborvideo.blip.tv (414)282-1908
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Fault Lines - Haiti: The politics of rebuilding
[Very enlightening video. The people of Haiti are thinking clearly. They are just not allowed to govern themselves. They are under US/UN corporate-sponsored military occupation to prevent them from running their own country cooperatively....bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUt12usDVs&feature=player_embedded
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Mine - Story of a Sacred Mountain
[This is a stunningly beautiful film. It is the story of Avatar in real life today...bw]
http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi888603161/
India's Supreme Court recently approved the project, and mining could begin in a matter of months.
The Dongria remain united in their determination to stop Vedanta from turning their sacred mountain into an industrial wasteland.
One of the Court's conditions is that some of the mine's profits are put towards "tribal development."
But no "development" or "compensation" package could cure the problems that mining Niyamgiri will cause: the destruction of a unique environment and culture.
The Dongria have accused Vedanta of "trying to flood us out with money" and have made it clear that:
"Mining only makes profit for the rich. We will become beggars if the company destroys our mountain and our forest so that they can make money. We don't want the mine or any help at all from the company."
Vedanta was founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who owns more than half the shares.
Under Siege
Vedanta is still waiting to clear the final red tape before they are able to begin mining. Meanwhile, the Dongria are being held siege in their hill range.
Non-tribal villagers, who do not farm the land but rely on wage labor to survive, have blocked the routes into the Niyamgiri hills.
Young men, sometimes armed with axes, are refusing to allow any outsiders, including journalists, to enter Niyamgiri and visit Dongria Kondh villages.
The reason is simple: they do not want the world to hear the Dongria's voice.
Act now to help the Dongria Kondh
Your support is vital if the Dongria Kondh are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
--Write to India's Minister of Environment and Forests asking him to safeguard the Dongria Kondh's rights:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/actnow/writealetter/dongria
--Donate to the Dongria Kondh campaign (and other Survival campaigns):
http://www.survivalinternational.org/donations
--Write to your MP or MEP (UK):
http://www.writetothem.com/
or Senators and members of Congress (US):
http://www.congress.org/
--Write to your local Indian high commission or embassy:
http://www.embassiesabroad.com/
--If you want to get more involved, contact Survival:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/info/contact
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Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
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Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
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Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
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Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
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Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
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Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
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The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
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The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
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Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
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ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
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FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
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The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
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The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) W.Va. mine owner accused of putting safety second
By TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer
Tue Apr 6, 7:54 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mine_explosion_massey_energy
2) Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/asia/08bishkek.html?hp
3) No Signs of Life From 4 Missing in Mine
By IAN URBINA and MICHAEL COOPER
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/us/08westvirginia.html?hp
4) U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
By SCOTT SHANE
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?ref=world
5) Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 6, 2010, 11:49 am
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-defends-release-of-video-showing-killing-of-journalists-in-iraq/
6) For 2 Grieving Families, Video Reveals Grim Truth
By TIM ARANGO and ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07baghdad.html?ref=world
7) Mines Fight Strict Laws by Filing More Appeals
By GARDINER HARRIS and ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07company.html?ref=us
8) Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site
By NOAM COHEN and BRIAN STELTER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/07wikileaks.html?ref=us
9) Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.html?ref=education
10) Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video
By BENEDICT CAREY
[The fact that the young men and women coerced into joining the military-most because of economic necessity-have been turned into "lean, mean, killing machines," a favorite chant of Bootcamp, is a "no duh" understatement that doesn't take a bunch of psychiatrists to figure out. Every kid in JROTC should be forced to watch this documented demonstration of U.S. mass murder. In fact, everyone should watch it-then join together to fight like hell against it! ...bw]
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html?ref=world
11) Landslide Buries Scores of Houses Built on Garbage
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/americas/09brazil.html?ref=world
12) After Warning, Mine Escaped Extra Oversight
By MICHAEL COOPER, IAN URBINA and BERNIE BECKER
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?hp
13) No Survivors Found After West Virginia Mine Disaster
By IAN URBINA
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?ref=us
14) California: Union Wins Damages
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10brfs-UNIONWINSDAM_BRF.html?ref=us
15) MADA: IOF shoots demonstrators and journalists
Added by PT Editor Omar Ghraieb
Sunday, 11 April 2010 13:41
http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/gaza-strip/5408-mada-iof-shoots-demonstrators-and-journalists
16) In a Tough Economy, Old Limits on Welfare
By ROBERT PEAR
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/us/11welfare.html?hp
17) Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of 'Avatar'
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/americas/11brazil.html?ref=world
18) Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/economy/11rates.html?ref=us
19) U.S. Troops Fire on Bus in Afghanistan, Killing Civilians
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and TAIMOOR SHAH
April 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?hp
20) Human Rights Groups Warn of New Powers for Israel
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/world/middleeast/12mideast.html?ref=world
21) Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
"'This feeling that we're all in it together may have benefited communities by encouraging reciprocal generosity," Dr. Griffiths said. "On the other hand, universal love isn't always adaptive, either.'"
By JOHN TIERNEY
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html?ref=us
22) Tax Audits of Big Business Are Declining, Study Says
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/business/12audit.html?ref=us
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1) W.Va. mine owner accused of putting safety second
By TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer
Tue Apr 6, 7:54 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mine_explosion_massey_energy
JULIAN, W.Va. - The coal mine rocked by an explosion that killed at least 25 workers in the nation's deadliest mining disaster since 1984 had been cited for 600 violations in less than a year and a half, some of them for not properly ventilating methane - the highly combustible gas suspected in the blast.
The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine has focused attention on the business and safety practices of the owner, Massey Energy, a powerful and politically connected company in Appalachia known for producing big profits, as well as big piles of safety and environmental violations and big damage awards for grieving widows.
"There are mines in this country who have operated safely for 20 years," said J. Davitt McAteer, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton administration. "There are mines who take precautions ahead of time. There are mines who spend the money and manpower to do it."
He added: "Those mines haven't been blown up."
Four other miners were missing and feared dead underground in Monday's blast, believed to have been caused by a buildup of methane, a naturally occurring gas that is odorless and colorless.
Last year alone, MSHA cited Upper Big Branch for 495 violations and proposed $911,802 in fines. Production more than tripled during that period, according to federal records. So far this year, the agency has found 105 violations at the mine.
Upper Big Branch is one of Massey's biggest underground mines, with more than 200 employees, and it is not uncommon for big coal mines to amass hundreds of violations a year - and to contest many of them, as Massey does. But most big mines don't have as many serious infractions as Upper Big Branch, industry experts said.
At least 50 citations charge the company with "unwarrantable failure" to comply with safety standards such as following an approved ventilation plan, controlling combustible materials or designating escape routes.
"I've never seen that many for one mine in a year," said Ellen Smith, editor of Mine Safety & Health News. "If you look at other mines that are the same size or bigger, they do not have the sheer number of `unwarrantable' citations that this mine has."
Massey has had problems elsewhere, too. In 2006, two miners were killed in a fire at Massey's Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine. Massey settled a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, and its subsidiary Aracoma Coal Co. paid $4.2 million in civil and criminal penalties.
Testimony showed Massey CEO Don Blankenship suggested firing two supervisors for raising concerns about conveyer belt problems just before the belt caught fire.
"Massey has a history of emphasizing production," said Pittsburgh lawyer Bruce Stanley, who represented the miners' widows. "I'm concerned that they may not have learned the lessons of Aracoma."
In an interview less than 24 hours after the disaster at Upper Big Branch, Blankenship insisted the mine is no more dangerous than others of comparable size, and he defended the company's track record in a perilous business.
"It's natural that the enemies of coal would view Massey as the primary enemy," he said.
He pointed out Massey's many innovations, such as installing steps in place of ladders and putting protective cages on underground vehicles even though the government doesn't require them.
"I think that I've proven that we run safer coal mines - you know, most of the time - and accidents sometimes happen. We've got to figure out what happened here," he said.
Kevin Stricklin, an MSHA administrator, said that the number of citations at the mine appeared high, and that he was concerned about the more serious violations. "It means the operator was aware of some of these conditions," he said.
Massey is contesting 36 percent of all violations at Upper Big Branch since 2007, The Associated Press found. Overall, U.S. mine operators contest 27 percent. Challenging violations can enable a mine owner to stave off the heavier punishment that the government can impose on companies that have been deemed repeat offenders.
Massey became a political and industrial powerhouse under the guidance of Blankenship, who rose from poverty to become one of corporate America's highest-paid and least apologetic executives, a guy who proudly displays in his office a TV set with a bullet hole from a striking union miner's rifle.
He freely spent millions of dollars from his personal fortune to help install a West Virginia Supreme Court justice, a maneuver that led to an important conflict-of-interest ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, and on a failed bid to elect a Republican majority in the state Legislature.
Under Blankenship, Massey clawed to the top of the Appalachian coal industry, shrewdly buying up coal deposits to amass more than 2 billion tons of reserves. It is a major economic force regionally, with more than 6,000 high-paid miners in some of the poorest counties in America.
Operating nonunion mines across southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, Massey more than doubled its profit to $104.4 million in 2009 from the year before, despite slumping demand for coal amid the recession. The company expects to be shipping 2 million tons of coal a year to India by next year.
Massey has managed to push the United Mine Workers union out of all of its operations except for a single processing plant.
Blankenship's hard-driving approach was illustrated in a 2005 memo in which he told mine workers that if their bosses ask them to build roof supports or perform similar tasks, "ignore them and run coal."
"This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills," he wrote.
Few workers are willing to openly criticize Massey because of its powerful hold on people's livelihoods in Appalachia.
But Terry Holstein, who worked at Upper Big Branch, said it took him 10 years to decide he didn't like the way Massey ran the mine. He left in 2006.
"It was like they wanted production more than they wanted safety, myself, you know what I mean?" he said. "They speak safety first, but production's really first for them."
Associated Press writers Sam Hananel and Lee Powell in Washington, Allen G. Breed in Dry Creek, W.Va., and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.
(This version corrects the total fines and penalties paid by Aracoma to $4.2 million.)
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2) Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/asia/08bishkek.html?hp
MOSCOW - The authorities in Kyrgyzstan declared a national state of emergency on Wednesday after large-scale antigovernment protests broke out around the country and riot police officers fired on crowds in the capital, killing at least 17 people.
The country's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was said to have fled the capital, Bishkek, on the presidential plane, and it increasingly seemed that the opposition was gaining the upper hand.
The police used bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against a crowd of thousands massing in front of the presidential office in Bishkek, according to witness accounts. At least 17 people were killed and others were wounded, officials.
Opposition leaders said the toll was as high as 100 people, but that figure could not be confirmed.
The upheaval threatened an American ally, since Kyrgyzstan is home to an important American air base that operates in support of the NATO mission in nearby Afghanistan. American officials said that as of Wednesday evening the base was functioning normally.
The Obama administration has sought to cultivate ties with Mr. Bakiyev after he vowed to close the American base on the outskirts of Bishkek last year, then reversed his decision after the American side agreed to concessions, including higher rent.
Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what human rights groups contend are the increasingly repressive policies of President Bakiyev.
Mr. Bakiyev made no public comment on Wednesday, and an official at the airport in Bishkek said in a telephone interview that Mr. Bakiyev took off from the airport on the presidential plane in the early evening. The airport official said Mr. Bakiyev was flying to Osh, a major city in the southern part of the country, but that could not be confirmed.
On Wednesday afternoon, fighting continued in the streets of Bishkek and other provincial centers. Video shot by protesters and uploaded to the Internet showed scenes of people clashing with and in some cases pushing back heavily armed riot police.
Reports from Bishkek said crowds of opposition members tried to enter the presidential offices as well as those of the national television channels.
Dmitri Kabak, director of a local human rights group in Bishkek, said in a telephone interview that he was monitoring the protest on the central square when riot police officers started shooting. He said he had the sense that the officers had panicked and were not being supervised.
"When people started marching toward the presidential office, snipers on the roof of the office started to open fire, with live bullets," Mr. Kabak said. "I saw several people who were killed right there on the square."
The United States Embassy in Bishkek issued a statement saying that it was "deeply concerned about reports of civil disturbances."
By late evening in Bishkek, it appeared that the opposition had succeeded in taking over the national television channels. In a speech to the nation, an opposition leader, Omurbek Tekebaev, a former speaker of Parliament, demanded the Mr. Bakiyev and the rest of his government resign.
Mr. Tekebaev was arrested earlier in the day along with some other opposition leaders, but later released.
Kyrgyzstan, with five million people in the mountains of Central Asia, is one of the poorest countries of the former Soviet Union, and has long been troubled by political conflict and corruption.
The opposition has complained about what is asserts are Mr. Bakiyev's autocratic policies, but it appears that the immediate catalyst for the violence was anger over a sharp increase in prices for utilities.
On Wednesday, the Kyrgyz government accused the opposition of provoking violence. "Their goal is to create instability and confrontation in society," the Kyrgyz Parliament said in a statement.
The government said it would deal severely with the protesters, but they did not appear to be deterred. The first unrest occurred on Tuesday in the provincial center of Talas, when opposition members stormed government offices.
Russia, which also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and a close relationship with the government, appealed for calm.
"We believe that it is important that under the circumstances, all current issues should be resolved in a lawful manner," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Mr. Bakiyev easily won another term as president as president last year over Mr. Atambaev in an election that independent monitors said was tainted by massive fraud.
Mr. Bakiyev first took office in 2005 after the Tulip Revolution, the third in what was seen at the time as a series of so-called color revolutions that offered hope of more democratic governments in former Soviet republics.
But since then, he has consolidated power, cracking down on the opposition and independent news outlets.
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3) No Signs of Life From 4 Missing in Mine
By IAN URBINA and MICHAEL COOPER
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/us/08westvirginia.html?hp
MONTCOAL, W.Va. - Rescue workers continued the precarious task early Wednesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where at least 25 miners died two days before, but they had not received any signs of life from the four people still missing.
The mine owner's dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday's explosion might have been preventable.
In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat whose district includes the mine, said he had received similar reports from miners about recent evacuations at the mine, which as recently as last month was fined at least three times for ventilation problems, according to federal records.
The Massey Energy Company, the biggest coal mining business in central Appalachia and the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, has drawn sharp scrutiny and fines from regulators over its safety and environmental record.
In 2008, one of its subsidiaries paid what federal prosecutors called the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry after pleading guilty to safety violations that contributed to the deaths of two miners in a fire in one of its mines. That year, Massey also paid a $20 million fine - the largest of its kind levied by the Environmental Protection Agency - for clean water violations.
It is still unclear what caused Monday's blast, which is under investigation. Rescuers finished drilling a hole into the mine Wednesday morning and got no response when they tried to communicate with potential survivors by banging on the pipe. Once three more holes are drilled to release poison gases, the rescuers can begin searching for the four miners still unaccounted for.
"We're in a full rescue operation now, then we'll go into recovery," Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia said at a news conference Wednesday morning. "Everyone is holding on to the hope that is their father, their son."
Governor Manchin said at the news conference that two miners were hospitalized. According to The Associated Press, Governor Manchin said that one was doing well and the other was in intensive care
The disaster has raised new questions about Massey's attention to safety under the leadership of its pugnacious chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, and about why stricter federal laws, put into effect after a mining disaster in 2006, failed to prevent another tragedy.
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the magnitude of the explosion - the worst mining accident in 25 years, which also left four people missing, including a woman working as a mining operator - showed that "something went very wrong here."
"All explosions are preventable," Mr. Stricklin said. "It's just making sure you have things in place to keep one from occurring."
Mr. Rahall said that even veteran rescue workers, some with decades of experience, had told him they were shocked by what they saw inside the mine. They said they had never witnessed destruction on that scale, Mr. Rahall said, or dealt with the aftermath of an explosion of that magnitude.
"It turned rail lines into pretzels," Mr. Rahall said. "There seems like there was something awfully wrong to make such a huge explosion."
Gov. Manchin and members of Congress said state and federal officials would begin investigating the explosion.
In an interview with the Metronews radio network in West Virginia, Mr. Blankenship said that despite the company's many violations, the Mine Safety and Health Administration would never have allowed the mine to operate if it had been unsafe.
"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," Mr. Blankenship said.
"There are violations at every coal mine in America, and U.B.B. was a mine that had violations," he added, referring to Upper Big Branch.
"I think the fact that M.S.H.A., the state and our fire bosses and the best engineers that you can find were all in and around this mine, and all believed it to be safe in the circumstances it was in, speaks for itself as far as any suspicion that the mine was improperly operated," Mr. Blankenship said.
The Massey Energy Web site also contains a defense of the company's safety record. It says 2009 was the 17th year out of 20 that the company had scored above the industry average in safety.
But miners and other workers in the mine took issue with Mr. Blankenship's reassurances.
"No one will say this who works at that mine, but everyone knows that it has been dangerous for years," said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who worked on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt as a subcontractor at the mine two years ago.
Mr. Tyler said workers had regularly been told to work 12-hour shifts when eight hours is the industry standard. He also said that live wires had been left exposed and that an accumulation of coal dust and methane was routinely ignored.
"I'm willing to go on record because I am a subcontractor who doesn't depend on Massey for my life," Mr. Tyler said.
In March alone, the Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the Upper Big Branch mine for 53 safety violations.
Last year, the number of citations issued against the mine more than doubled, to over 500, from 2008, and the penalties proposed against the mine more than tripled, to $897,325.
J. Davitt McAteer, a former assistant director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the Massey company "is certainly one of the worst in the industry" when it came to safety and called recent violations at the mine for substandard ventilation and other problems "cardinal sins."
"The Massey record is without doubt one of the most difficult in the industry from a safety standpoint," Mr. McAteer, now the vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University, said in an interview. He said other large, diversified coal operators had far better safety records than Massey.
In 2008, the Aracoma Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey, agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to plead guilty to several safety violations related to a 2006 fire that killed two miners at a coal mine in Logan, W.Va.
After the fire broke out, the two miners found themselves unable to escape, partly because the company had removed some ventilation controls inside the mine. The workers died of suffocation. Federal prosecutors at the time called it the largest such settlement in the history of the coal industry.
The company's commitment to safety came under scrutiny in 2005 after Mr. Blankenship sent a memorandum to his deep mine superintendents.
"If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal," said the memo, a copy of which was obtained from Bruce E. Stanley, a lawyer who represented the widows of the victims of the Aracoma mine fire. "This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills."
In a follow-up memo a week later, Mr. Blankenship said some superintendents might have interpreted his first memo as implying that safety was a secondary consideration; in the second memo he called safety the company's "first responsibility."
In Washington on Tuesday during an Easter prayer breakfast, President Obama offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said the federal government was ready to help in whatever way needed.
Thirty-one miners were in the mine around 3 p.m. Monday when the explosion occurred. Some died from the explosion. Others suffocated from the fumes, state safety officials said. Seven of the bodies have been removed, and 14 have not yet been identified.
Four of the miners who were believed to have been farther back in the mine remained unaccounted for late Tuesday. Officials said there was still a possibility, though slim, that they had been able to reach airtight chambers, where there are stockpiles of food, water and oxygen.
Governor Manchin said at an afternoon news conference on Tuesday that four drills were in place to begin drilling holes behind the rescue chambers, an effort that began in earnest later in the day. It may not be until Wednesday night that rescue workers can regain entry to the mine after the first ventilation hole is drilled, he said.
"Everyone is going to cling on to the hope of that miracle," the governor said of the four missing miners. "The odds are against us. These are long odds. They know. These are mining families. They know methane, they know about air."
As the families of the miners waited on Tuesday, frustrations grew. State and mine officials were taking a long time to confirm the names of the dead, many of the miners said. Families also voiced frustration that they had learned about the disaster from news reports rather than from Massey officials.
Some of these tensions boiled over around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd, but people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners' lives.
After another Massey official informed the crowd of the new death toll, one miner threw a chair. A father and son stormed off screaming that they were quitting mining work. And several people yelled at Mr. Blankenship that he was to blame before he was escorted from the scene.
Ian Urbina reported from Montcoal, and Michael Cooper from New York. Reporting was contributed by Bernie Becker and Dan Heyman from Montcoal, and Dan Barry, Charles Duhigg, Liz Robbins and Stephanie Strom from New York.
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4) U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
By SCOTT SHANE
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.
American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.
But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community," he said. "If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that." He did not name Mr. Awlaki as a target.
The step taken against Mr. Awlaki, which occurred earlier this year, is a vivid illustration of his rise to prominence in the constellation of terrorist leaders. But his popularity as a cleric, whose lectures on Islamic scripture have a large following among English-speaking Muslims, means any action against him could rebound against the United States in the larger ideological campaign against Al Qaeda.
The possibility that Mr. Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.
"The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity. "He's gotten involved in plots."
The official added: "The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual - through his own actions - has become one. Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone."
As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country, and officials said that was the standard used in adding names to the list of targets. In addition, Congress approved the use of military force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R. Ford.
Both the C.I.A. and the military maintain lists of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are approved for capture or killing, former officials said. But because Mr. Awlaki is an American, his inclusion on those lists had to be approved by the National Security Council, the officials said.
At a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California and chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, called Mr. Awlaki "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us."
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5) Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 6, 2010, 11:49 am
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-defends-release-of-video-showing-killing-of-journalists-in-iraq/
Updated | 5:49 p.m. As my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller reported, a senior American military official confirmed on Monday that a graphic video released by the Web site WikiLeaks.org, which shows an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver during a July 2007 attack in Baghdad, is authentic.
One of the whistle-blowing group's founders, Julian Assange, explained and defended the decision to release the graphic, disturbing video shot from the helicopter during interviews in Washington on Monday with Al Jazeera and Russia Today.
Both of those appearances, and an edited version of the leaked video, are available on YouTube. (Be warned that even the edited version shows people being killed.)
Wikileaks uploaded the 17-minute edit to YouTube on Monday morning, along with the complete video, which runs more than 39 minutes.
Soon after releasing the video, Mr. Assange discussed it with Alyona Minkovski, a Washington correspondent for Russia Today, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Russian government.
Mr. Assange also spoke with Al Jazeera on Monday about the video:
On Tuesday, an Iraqi journalists' union called on the country's government to investigate incident. The head of the union, Mouyyad al-Lami said, "This is another crime added to the crimes of the U.S. forces against Iraqi journalists and civilians," The Associated Press reported.
After the video was released, Al Jazeera English broadcast an interview with Nabil Noor-Eldeen, whose brother Namir Noor-Eldeen was one of the two Reuters journalists killed in the attack. He asked: "Is this the freedom and democracy that they claim to have brought to Iraq?"
On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an excerpt from David Finkel's book "The Good Soldiers," which includes an account of the attack that day from the reporter, who was embedded with American troops who came across the dead and wounded soon after the helicopters fired.
As my colleagues Noam Cohen and Rogene Fisher reported on Monday, WikiLeaks, which describes itself as "an intelligence agency of the people," is a nonprofit group, created in the spring of 2007. In March, Stephanie Strom reported in The Times that the group's release of an internal Pentagon report had upset the military:
The Pentagon concluded that "WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army" - or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
While it seems clear that the American military mistook the camera equipment the two journalists were carrying for weapons, Slate's Twitter feed points to an analysis of the footage by a blogger named Anthony Martinez, who argues that two of the men in the group they were with may have been armed.
Mr. Martinez, who says that he served in Iraq with the American Army, writes: "I have spent quite a lot of time (a conservative estimate would be around 4,500 hours) viewing aerial footage of Iraq." Near the start of his post he says, "I support WikiLeaks in their endeavors to bring about transparency in government," but he goes on to criticize the edited version of the video produced by the group for not properly noting what look to him like weapons.
Between 3:13 and 3:30 it is quite clear to me, as both a former infantry sergeant and a photographer, that the two men central to the gun-camera's frame are carrying photographic equipment. This much is noted by WikiLeaks, and misidentified by the crew of Crazyhorse 18. At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution, video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable.
He adds that he still finds fault with the actions of the crew that attacked the group - and sees absolutely no justification for the subsequent attack on a van driver who arrived after the initial barrage and tried to help the victims:
I have made the call to engage targets from the sky several times, and know (especially during the surge) that such calls are not taken lightly. Had I been personally involved with this mission, and had access to real-time footage, I would have recommended against granting permission. [...]
The point at which I cannot support the actions of [the crew of] Crazyhorse 18, at all, comes when the van arrives somewhere around 9:45 and is engaged. Unless someone had jumped out with an RPG ready to fire on the aircraft, there was no threat warranting a hail of 30mm from above. Might it have been prudent to follow the vehicle (perhaps with a UAV), or at least put out a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for the vehicle? Absolutely without question. Was this portion of the engagement even remotely understandable, to me? No, it was not.
WikiLeaks also uploaded a video made by an Icelandic journalist the group sent to Iraq to find two children who were wounded in the attack after their father stopped his van to try to rescue some of the victims. The father was also shot and killed in the effort.
On a page of links to additional information and reports on the strike, WikiLeaks points to this blog post from Reuters in 2007 about the two slain journalists.
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6) For 2 Grieving Families, Video Reveals Grim Truth
By TIM ARANGO and ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07baghdad.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - The women of Saeed Chmagh's family wept, but the men did not as they watched a video of him being shot to death by a gunner on an American Apache attack helicopter.
"I saw the truth," Samir Chmagh, 19, son of the dead man, said Tuesday in his family's living room in Baghdad. "They saw clearly that they were journalists and that they were holding cameras. It was painful when we saw this movie."
It was a fog-of-war moment in July 2007 on the streets of Baghdad in which American troops gunned down men they identified as insurgents. The attack left 12 people dead, including Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, and Mr. Chmagh, 40, a driver and assistant for the news agency.
A video from the cockpit of an Apache helicopter was released on Monday by WikiLeaks.org, an online organization that said it had received the video from a whistle-blower in the military. The video has become an Internet sensation, with defenders saying the soldiers believed they were under threat and critics denouncing what they said were callous and bloodthirsty comments by the soldiers as they killed about a dozen people.
A spokesman for United States Central Command, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, said on Tuesday that the Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was "looking into" the shootings, but stopped short of referring to it as an investigation.
The only investigation so far has been one directed in 2007 by Maj. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, who at the time was a brigadier general and the deputy commander of international forces in Baghdad and the surrounding areas. The inquiry concluded that the pilots had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group on the street. No disciplinary action was taken.
A senior American military official said that officials at Central Command saw the video for the first time on Monday, the day it was made public by WikiLeaks in a 38-minute version and a 17-minute edited version.
The official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter, said that the 38-minute version "makes clear that the forces involved clearly believed they were engaging armed insurgents, and were not aware that there were unarmed civilians, let alone journalists, in that group of people."
The official also said that the video, a gun-camera tape, did not show that the helicopters were in support of ground forces, Company B, who had been under attack from small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades since early that day. The investigation reported that Company B, also referred to as Bravo Company, was about 300 feet from the group on the street that included the Reuters employees, and "since Bravo Company had been in near continuous contact since dawn, the pilots were looking primarily for armed insurgents."
But among many Iraqis, many of whom consider Americans to be occupiers who have often used excessive force, any explanation paled against deep anger.
"At last the truth has been revealed, and I'm satisfied God revealed the truth," Noor Eldeen, the photographer's father, said in Mosul. "If such an incident took place in America, even if an animal were killed like this, what would they do?"
Both families said they watched the video on Monday evening on Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network.
"My question is, those highly skilled American pilots with all their high-tech information, could not distinguish between a camera and a missile?" said Nabel Noor-Eldeen, the photographer's brother who is an archaeology professor at Mosul University.
Reuters had unsuccessfully sought to obtain the footage through a Freedom of Information Act request.
It depicts the raw reality of one deadly encounter in Iraq, chilling for many viewers both for the wrenching images of death and the dialogue of the pilots as they killed the men they called a threat.
After the initial gunfire bursts, Mr. Chmagh is seen crawling on the side of the street, wounded.
"Come on buddy, all you gotta do is pick up a weapon," crackled the voice over the radio in an American Apache attack helicopter circling overhead. No weapon was in sight.
A minibus arrived, with two children inside. As Mr. Chmagh was being helped in to the vehicle, the helicopter opened fire again.
"Oh yeah, look at that, right through the windshield," the voice on the radio said. Laughter is heard.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group based in New York that promotes press freedom and monitors violence against journalists around the world, said in a statement that the video "confirms our long-held view that a thorough and transparent investigation into this incident is urgently needed."
Since 2003, when the Iraq war began, 140 journalists have been killed, most who were singled out by other Iraqis because of their sectarian identity, the group said. The group has tracked 16 cases in which journalists were killed from fire by American forces, although in none of these cases is there evidence the journalists were intended to be targets. This list, however, does not include Mr. Chmagh, because he is considered a media support worker.
"It's the most deadly conflict ever recorded by C.P.J.," said Joel Simon, the organization's executive director. "It's probably the most deadly ever, certainly more deadly than Vietnam."
For Mr. Noor-Eldeen's family, the video seemed to bring closure for an event that had left many questions unanswered.
"God has answered my prayer in revealing this tape to the world," said the photographer's father, who taught his son how to take pictures. "I would have sold my house and I all that I own in order to show this tape to the world."
Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Mujahid Yousef contributed reporting from Mosul.
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7) Mines Fight Strict Laws by Filing More Appeals
By GARDINER HARRIS and ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07company.html?ref=us
Armed with tougher federal mining laws passed in 2006, federal investigators had new powers to crack down on mines with persistent violations.
But mining companies have been able to fend off this tougher regulatory approach by challenging more of the citations filed against them.
As recently as March, for example, federal mine inspectors found dangerous coal dust accumulations during two separate inspections at the Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch mine, the site of an explosion on Monday that killed at least 25 miners.
And throughout last year, the mine, in Montcoal, W.Va., was cited for failing to conduct inspections that would have spotted dangerous piles of coal dust and other unsafe conditions.
Massey appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations for serious safety violations that it received last year.
At a hearing in February, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, complained that the growing number of appeals by coal companies threatened to "render the federal efforts to hold mine operators accountable meaningless." Mining safety experts have expressed similar concerns.
One in four citations issued against coal mines are now appealed by operators - three times the appeal rate before the law, according to regulators. The result is a backlog of 18,000 pending appeals and $210 million in contested penalties.
The appeals "are also allowing miners, in some cases the worst operators, to escape liability for which they are in fact liable and continue to put miners in harm's way," Mr. Miller said at the hearing.
Mine operators blamed the government for the increasing appeals. Bruce Watzman, senior vice president of the National Mining Association, called the government's citation process "irrational" but said appeals did nothing to endanger the safety of miners.
Officials at Massey did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment. The company's Web site says that its safety record is better than the industry's average when it comes to accidents that result in lost time.
And Don L. Blankenship, the company's chief executive, cautioned in a radio interview Tuesday against reading too much into the Upper Big Branch mine's history of violations.
"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," Mr. Blankenship said in the interview with the West Virginia MetroNews radio network, adding that there are violations at every coal mine in the country.
Although all mining companies have filed appeals, Massey - and Mr. Blankenship in particular - has developed a reputation for an aggressive style.
Mr. Blankenship has taken on unions, believers in global warming and even, in West Virginia, the trade association representing coal mining companies. He unintentionally set a new national legal precedent last year when the United States Supreme Court ruled that judges must disqualify themselves from cases involving people who spent unusually large sums to elect them.
That case was brought after Mr. Blankenship spent about $3 million in 2004 to defeat an incumbent justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court. The beneficiary of Mr. Blankenship's spending, Brent D. Benjamin, went on to become the court's chief justice, and he twice joined the majority in 3-to-2 decisions throwing out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
More questions about Mr. Blankenship's ties to the court were raised in 2008, when another justice on the court lost his re-election bid after photographs surfaced showing him dining on the French Riviera and in Monaco with Mr. Blankenship at a time when cases involving Massey were pending before the court.
Mr. Blankenship has been an active political donor. In 2006 he contributed more than $100,000 to legislative races in West Virginia, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group based in Montana.
And people associated with Massey Energy, and the company's political action committee, have donated more than $300,000 to federal candidates since 1990, with 91 percent of the money going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington.
Mr. Blankenship has long seemed to revel in the role of a modern-day coal baron. He amassed coal rights when some doubted the future of Appalachian coal and raised profits by holding down production costs, collecting dozens of environmental and safety violations along the way.
A self-described "street fighter," Mr. Blankenship, a large man with a moustache and a slight drawl, has staunchly defended the practice of blasting off mountaintops to reach coal seams. He has accused state regulators of being anti-business and in cahoots with the union.
In 2008, according to public filings, Mr. Blankenship was paid $11.2 million in salary, bonuses and other benefits, up from $5.3 million in 2006. He lives in a relatively modest home in Rawl, W.Va. - where dozens of residents have sued Massey for, they say, poisoning the water supply.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting.
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8) Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site
By NOAM COHEN and BRIAN STELTER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/07wikileaks.html?ref=us
Three months ago, WikiLeaks, a whistleblower Web site that posts classified and sensitive documents, put out an urgent call for help on Twitter.
"Have encrypted videos of U.S. bomb strikes on civilians. We need super computer time," stated the Web site, which calls itself "an intelligence agency of the people."
Somehow - it will not say how - WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt a graphic video, released Monday, of a United States Army assault in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.
The release of the Iraq video is drawing attention to the once-fringe Web site, which aims to bring to light hidden information about governments and multinational corporations - putting secrets in plain sight and protecting the identity of those who help do so. Accordingly, the site has become a thorn in the side of authorities in the United States and abroad. With the Iraq attack video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging closer toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy.
"That's arguably what spy agencies do - high-tech investigative journalism," Julian Assange, one of the site's founders, said in an interview on Tuesday. "It's time that the media upgraded its capabilities along those lines."
Mr. Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, founded the site three years ago along with a group of like-minded activists and computer experts. Since then, WikiLeaks has published documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantánamo Bay, e-mail messages from Sarah Palin's personal account and 9/11 pager messages.
Today there is a core group of five full-time volunteers, according to Daniel Schmitt, a site spokesman, and there are 800 to 1,000 people whom the group can call on for expertise in areas like encryption, programming and writing news releases.
The site is not shy about its intent to shape media coverage, and Mr. Assange said he considered himself both a journalist and an advocate; should he be forced to choose one, he would choose advocate. WikiLeaks did not merely post the 38-minute video, it used the label "Collateral Murder" and said it depicted "indiscriminate" and "unprovoked" killing. (The Pentagon defended the killings and said no disciplinary action was taken at the time of the incident.)
"From my human point of view, I couldn't believe it would be so easy to wreak that kind of havoc on the city, when they can't see what is really going on there," Mr. Schmitt said in an interview from Germany on Monday night.
The Web site also posted a 17-minute edited version, which proved to be much more widely viewed on YouTube than the full version. Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.
By releasing such a graphic video, which a media organization had tried in vain to get through traditional channels, WikiLeaks has inserted itself in the national discussion about the role of journalism in the digital age. Where judges and plaintiffs could once stop or delay publication with a court order, WikiLeaks exists in a digital sphere in which information becomes instantly available.
"The most significant thing about the release of the Baghdad video is that several million more people are on the same page," with knowledge of WikiLeaks, said Lisa Lynch, an assistant professor of journalism at Concordia University in Montreal, who recently published a paper about the site. "It is amazing that outside of the conventional channels of information something like this can happen."
Reuters had tried for two and a half years through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the Iraq video, to no avail. WikiLeaks, as always, refuses to say how it obtained the video, and credits only "our courageous source."
Mr. Assange said "research institutions" offered to help decrypt the Army video, but he declined to detail how they went about it. After decrypting the attack video, WikiLeaks in concert with an Icelandic television channel sent two people to Baghdad last weekend to gather information about the killings, at a cost of $50,000, the site said.
David Schlesinger, Reuters editor in chief, said Tuesday that the video was disturbing to watch "but also important to watch." He said he hoped to meet with the Pentagon "to press the need to learn lessons from this tragedy."
WikiLeaks publishes its material on its own site, which is housed on a few dozen servers around the globe, including places like Sweden, Belgium and the United States that the organization considers friendly to journalists and document leakers, Mr. Schmitt said.
By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond the reach of any institution or government that hopes to silence it.
Because it relies on donations, however, WikiLeaks says it has struggled to keep its servers online. It has found moral, but not financial, support from some news organizations, like The Guardian in Britain, which said in January that "If you want to read the exposés of the future, it's time to chip in."
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks claimed to have another encrypted video, said to show an American airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year, and used the opportunity to ask for donations.
WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it has published more material. (The United States Army called it a threat to its operations in a report last month.) Many have tried to silence the site; in Britain, WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade injunctions on publication by courts that ruled that the material would violate the privacy of the people involved. The courts reversed themselves when they discovered how ineffectual their rulings were.
Another early attempt to shut down the site involved a United States District Court judge in California. In 2008, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the American version of the site shut down after it published confidential documents concerning a subsidiary of a Swiss bank. Two weeks later he reversed himself, in part recognizing that the order had little effect because the same material could be accessed on a number of other "mirror sites."
Judge White said at the time, "We live in an age when people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability necessarily in a court of law."
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9) Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.html?ref=education
Only half the youths who had turned 18 and "aged out" of foster care were employed by their mid-20s. Six in 10 men had been convicted of a crime, and three in four women, many of them with children of their own, were receiving some form of public assistance. Only six in 100 had completed even a community college degree.
The dismal outlook for youths who are thrust into a shaky adulthood from the foster care system - now numbering some 30,000 annually - has been documented with new precision by a long-term study released Wednesday, the largest to follow such children over many years.
Researchers studied the outcomes for 602 youths in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, and compared them with their peers who had not been in foster care. Most youths had entered the foster care system in their early teens and then were required to leave it at 18 or, in the case of Illinois, 21.
"We took them away from their parents on the assumption that we as a society would do a better job of raising them," said Mark Courtney, a sociologist at the University of Washington who led the study with colleagues from the Partners for Our Children program at Washington and the Chapin Hall center at the University of Chicago. "We've invested a lot money and time in their care, and by many measures they're still doing very poorly."
Over the last decade, the federal government and many states have started to assist former foster care youths with education grants, temporary housing subsidies and, in some places, extra years of state custody and support. The new data showed that just over half of them are doing reasonably well and benefit from such aid. But they throw a spotlight, researchers said, on two groups that need more sweeping and lasting help.
About one-fourth of the people in the study, mainly women, are receiving public aid and struggling to raise their own children, usually without a high school degree. Researchers found that one in five in a second group, mainly men, are badly floundering, with multiple criminal convictions, low education and incomes and, often, mental health or substance abuse problems.
Once they leave foster care, these most troubled youths often have no reliable adults to advise them or provide emotional support, said Gary Stangler, director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a private foundation. "When these kids make a mistake, it's life altering, they have nothing to fall back on," Mr. Stangler said.
Finding a mentor who provides "that backbone you need" has made all the difference, said Cameron Anderson, 21, of Tampa, Fla., who entered foster care at 15 after he got into trouble with the law, then lived in group homes.
Mr. Anderson, who is now in community college and works at a printer cartridge company, receives education and other financial aid that has helped him keep an apartment. But he has made some missteps since moving out on his own, he said, like not paying bills in full so he could buy shoes and hanging out with old friends who were bad influences.
Last fall, he was introduced to a mentor, an investor in Tampa, by a Casey program, Connected by 25. The two now speak daily, Mr. Anderson said, discussing "school and life in general, even to the point where he'll say, 'Hey, are you using protection?' "
Had he had such a relationship earlier, Mr. Anderson said, "it would have saved me from a ton of bridges I've had to cross."
While younger children are often adopted when their parents' rights are terminated, fewer prospective parents want to adopt teenagers. Recent research, including the new study, shows that most foster children, even though they have been removed from their homes, maintain ties with a parent or other relative. Some agencies are trying to support such ties or to locate relatives who might adopt the children or provide long-term support.
Illinois, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia now allow youths to remain in foster care to age 21, and some states help with transitional housing.
Congress in 2008 passed a law providing matching money to states that extend foster care to age 21, something that the authors of the study call for. But in the face of large budget deficits, few states have signed on so far.
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10) Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video
By BENEDICT CAREY
[The fact that the young men and women coerced into joining the military-most because of economic necessity-have been turned into "lean, mean, killing machines," a favorite chant of Bootcamp, is a "no duh" understatement that doesn't take a bunch of psychiatrists to figure out. Every kid in JROTC should be forced to watch this documented demonstration of U.S. mass murder. In fact, everyone should watch it-then join together to fight like hell against it! ...bw]
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html?ref=world
The sight of human beings, most of them unarmed, being gunned down from above is jarring enough.
But for many people who watched the video of a 2007 assault by an Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad, released Monday by WikiLeaks.org, the most disturbing detail was the cockpit chatter. The soldiers joked, chuckled and jeered as they shot people in the street, including a Reuters photographer and a driver, believing them to be insurgents.
"Look at those dead bastards," one said. "Nice," another responded.
In recent days, many veterans have made the point that fighters cannot do their jobs without creating psychological distance from the enemy. One reason that the soldiers seemed as if they were playing a video game is that, in a morbid but necessary sense, they were.
"You don't want combat soldiers to be foolish or to jump the gun, but their job is to destroy the enemy, and one way they're able to do that is to see it as a game, so that the people don't seem real," said Bret A. Moore, a former Army psychologist and co-author of the forthcoming book "Wheels Down: Adjusting to Life After Deployment."
Military training is fundamentally an exercise in overcoming a fear of killing another human, said Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of the book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society," who is a former Army Ranger.
Combat training "is the only technique that will reliably influence the primitive, midbrain processing of a frightened human being" to take another life, the colonel writes. "Conditioning in flight simulators enables pilots to respond reflexively to emergency situations even when frightened."
The men in the Apache helicopter in the video flew into an area that was being contested, during a broader conflict in which a number of helicopters had been shot down.
Several other factors are on display during the 38-minute video, said psychologists in and out of the military. (A shortened 17-minute version of the video has been viewed about three million times on YouTube.)
Soldiers and Marines are taught to observe rules of engagement, and throughout the video those in the helicopter call base for permission to shoot. But at a more primal level, fighters in a war zone must think of themselves as predators first - not bait. That frame of mind affects not only how a person thinks, but what he sees and hears, especially in the presence of imminent danger, or the perception of a threat.
The fighters in the helicopter say over the radio that they are sure they see a "weapon," even though the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, is carrying a camera.
"It's tragic that this all begins with the apparent mistaking of a camera" for a weapon, said David A. Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University. "But it's perfectly understandable with what we know now about context and vision. Take the same image and put it in a bathroom, and you swear it's a hair dryer; put it in a workshop, and you swear it's a power drill."
To a soldier or a pilot, it can look like life or death. "I worked with medevac pilots, and vulnerability is a huge issue for them," Dr. Moore said.
The video does show that the second object that the soldiers identified as a weapon was a rocket-propelled grenade, or R.P.G. "An R.P.G. can take them down in a second," Dr. Moore said.
After the helicopter guns down a group of men, the video shows a van stopping to pick up one of the wounded. The soldiers in the helicopter suspect it to be hostile and, after getting clearance from base, fire again. Two children in the van are wounded, and one of the soldiers remarks, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
Here again, psychologists say, when people are intensely focused on observing some specific feature of the landscape, they may not even see what is obvious to another observer. The classic demonstration of this is a video in which people toss around a basketball; viewers told to count the number of passes rarely see a person in a gorilla suit who strolls into the picture, stops and faces the camera, and strolls out.
The soldiers were looking for combatants; experts say it is not clear they would have seen children, even if they should have.
The video's emotional impact on viewers is also partly rooted in the combination of intimacy and distance it gives them, some experts said. The viewer sees a wider tragedy unfolding, in hindsight, from the safety of a desk; the soldiers are reacting in real time, on high alert, exposed.
In recent studies, researchers have shown that such distance tempts people to script how they would act in the same place, and overestimate the force of their own professed moral principles.
"We don't express our better angels as much as we'd like to think, especially when strong emotions are involved," Dr. Dunning said. He added, "What another person does in that situation should stand as forewarning for what we would do ourselves."
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11) Landslide Buries Scores of Houses Built on Garbage
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/americas/09brazil.html?ref=world
NITEROI, Brazil - A deadly landslide caused by drenching rains swept away a neighborhood built atop an old garbage dump Wednesday night, burying dozens of homes and a small church underneath tons of rubble, mud and rotting debris.
The rains have triggered flash floods and mudslides across the state of Rio de Janeiro in recent days, paralyzing Rio's airports and transportation systems and killing as many as 150 people.
Here in the Morro do Bumba slum of Niteroi, a Rio suburb, the rains weakened decades-old compressed layers of refuse and dirt upon which homes had been built, and sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., the neighborhood gave way. The slide destroyed at least 50 homes and one church, which was said to have as many as 30 people inside.
News reports said that as many as 200 people could be buried, but there were no official counts of the total number of missing. As of Thursday afternoon, nine people had been found dead and 51 were injured, according to Brazilian authorities.
Rescuers picked through debris and dirt as they searched for survivors and bodies. As six-earth moving machines dug through the refuse, government officials called the landslide a catastrophe, and residents said they had no idea that their neighborhood had been built on such precarious terrain. "There's little chance of finding people alive," said Pedro Machado, a Rio civil-defense official. "It's different from Haiti where buildings collapsed and people were caught trapped inside air bubbles. Here there were tons of land, stones and garbage falling over the houses."
The odor of decomposing garbage was overwhelming Thursday afternoon under a hot sun.
Sergio Côrtes, state secretary for civil defense said that the landfill turned out to be a "huge environmental problem," and officials expressed concern that rescue workers could be contaminated, and worried about the possibility of another landslide at a nearby neighborhood, also built on top of an old dump.
Reporting was contributed by Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro and Jack Healy from New York
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12) After Warning, Mine Escaped Extra Oversight
By MICHAEL COOPER, IAN URBINA and BERNIE BECKER
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?hp
The operator of the West Virginia mine that exploded on Monday, killing at least 25 people, was warned by federal officials just over two years ago that it could be cited for having a "pattern of violations," which would have allowed far stricter federal oversight. But the mine escaped the stepped-up enforcement even though it continued to amass violations, federal records show.
Rescuers searching for survivors faced another setback Friday, pulling back for a third time after confronting smoke from an apparent underground fire.
The rescuers, who had re-entered the mine early Friday morning, also returned with bad news: They had reached one of the two airtight rescue shelters that officials hoped would give trapped miners refuge, but found that it had not been used. The rescuers were unable to reach the second shelter.
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, told reporters that officials might have to lower a camera down a borehole to determine whether the second airtight chamber had been used.
The mine, operated by the Massey Energy Company, was warned that it had a "potential pattern of violations" in a Dec. 6, 2007, letter from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The letter noted that the mine had received 204 violations that were deemed serious and significant over the previous two years, well above average.
But six months later, the safety agency announced that the Upper Big Branch mine, located in Montcoal, W.Va., and 19 others that were warned that December, had all instituted plans to fix their problems, and had received fewer violations. They all escaped the added oversight, which would have allowed the federal government to close down the mines every time they found a significant violation.
After the violations went down, they more than doubled the following year. Federal inspection records show that the mine had recently been given warnings for accumulation of flammable coal dust and ventilation problems.
Since the start of 2009, the records show, the mine had at least 50 notices of problems that Massey knew existed but failed to correct. At least four of those concerned violations of a rule that requires the mine operator to follow an approved ventilation plan. Massey officials declined comment on the records.
Some mine experts said that the failure to declare a pattern of violations was a missed opportunity. Tony Oppegard, a former mine agency official who is now a lawyer and mine safety advocate in Kentucky, said that he believed the warning letters helped the coal industry avoid oversight.
Officials of the mine safety agency said that they were bound by the current regulations, which require them to issue warning letters, and that if companies successfully reduce their rate of violations by 30 percent, they are not to be found to have a pattern of violations. The officials added that before this week's explosion they were considering tightening the regulations.
Companies can escape the added oversight even if they continue to be worse than the national average. The warning letter to the Upper Big Branch mine, for instance, said that the mine had been issued serious violations at a rate nearly twice the national average over the previous two years. Three months later, the mine cut the rate to just above the national average, enough of a reduction to avoid being labeled a pattern of violations.
In a March 25, 2008, letter that found that a pattern of violations did not exist at the mine, the agency wrote "congratulations on your achievements."
Even without establishing a pattern, though, the officials could still pull workers and machinery out of the mine if they found problems. The government issued 63 such "withdrawal" orders in 2009 and 2010, according to the safety agency.
In Washington, the White House said that President Obama would meet next week with Labor Department officials to discuss the cause of Monday's explosion and efforts by the federal government to beef up mine safety enforcement.
On Thursday, emergency crews continued drilling holes more than 1,000 feet deep through rock and dirt to ventilate the mine of its noxious and explosive gases. Four teams of eight rescuers made it within 500 feet of an airtight shelter where state officials hoped some of the miners were, but they were pulled back after roughly five hours when monitors indicated dangerous levels of methane and carbon dioxide.
As some families held out hope that their loved ones were still alive, others have moved fully into the grieving process.
The funerals for at least five miners are scheduled for either Friday or Saturday. According to obituaries in The Beckley Register-Herald those miners are: Carl Calvin Acord, Robert Clark, Steve Harrah, Deward Scott and Benny R. Willingham. Massey officials said they would pay for those funerals, and for the services of the other miners who died in the explosion.
Michael Cooper reported from New York, and Ian Urbina and Bernie Becker from Montcoal, W.Va.
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13) No Survivors Found After West Virginia Mine Disaster
By IAN URBINA
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?ref=us
MONTCOAL, W.Va. - An agonizing four-day wait came to a tragic end early Saturday morning when rescue workers failed to find any survivors in an underground mine after a huge explosion earlier this week.
The news at the Upper Big Branch mine about 30 miles south of Charleston brought the death toll to 29 in the country's worst mine disaster in four decades.
"We did not receive the miracle we were praying for," said Gov. Joe Manchin III, looking somber, his voice barely audible. "This journey has ended and now the healing will start."
The announcement closed a grim Appalachian ritual and the third major mining disaster in the state in the past four years.
Grim faced and exhausted, rescue workers emerged from the mine around midnight after spending much of the evening wending their way through a labyrinth of cross-passageways more than 1,000 feet underground.
It took about three hours before the rescue team could get to all the men, mining officials said. The names of the dead were not released. Twenty-eight of the dead were Massey employees, and one was a contract worker, a company spokesman said.
After Monday's explosion left 25 dead and 4 missing, state and federal officials tried to tamp down expectations, saying it was highly unlikely that any of the missing miners would be found alive. But a sliver of hope remained until early Saturday morning, when state officials said that the rescue mission was finally shifting to a recovery mission.
Crews will soon begin the bleak task of trying to recover all 22 bodies still inside the mine. Seven other bodies were recovered after the blast Monday and two other miners were injured.
Rescue efforts had been an agonizing 100-hour exercise in frustration as the teams repeatedly inched their way through tangled debris and fallen rock only to have to withdraw because of explosively high levels of methane and carbon monoxide.
Above ground, the miners' families waited for word. Passing much of the week sequestered from the news media, they huddled together in an open-air warehouse on the mine's sprawling property, eating pizza, whispering consolations to each other, and sometimes praying.
While rescue efforts continued, company and state officials had been reluctant to release the names of the dead and missing, a move that angered many families longing for closure.
The death toll caused by Monday's explosion was the highest in an American mine since a 1970 explosion killed 38 at Finley Coal Company, in Hyden, Ky. The blast at Upper Big Branch comes four years after a pair of other West Virginia mine disasters - an explosion that killed 12 miners at the Sago mine and a fire that killed two at the Aracoma Alma coal mine.
"We remained hopeful the four missing miners would have been found alive," Don Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy, the mine's operator, said in a statement. "I personally met with many of the families throughout the week and share their grief at this very painful time."
In 2008, the Aracoma Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey, agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to plead guilty to several safety violations related to that fire.
This week's disaster came as a particular surprise because last year there were only 34 mining deaths, a record low.
Rescue workers described the blast as overwhelming - like nothing they had ever witnessed. Rail lines were twisted like pretzels, they said. Mining machines were blown to pieces. The conditions underground were such a mess after the explosion that is was only late Friday that rescuers realized that they had walked past the bodies of the four missing miners on the first day without seeing, a federal mine safety official said.
This week's blast comes after a year in which the Upper Big Branch mine had repeated problems with methane buildups. Since April 2009, federal regulators have cited the mine eight times for "substantial" violations relating to the mine's methane control plans, according to the records.
In two instances, the regulators found the mine operator was calibrating methane monitors every three months even though it is supposed to be done every 31 days. The delays in attending to the monitors meant they could not properly detect the gas, a risk inspectors said could lead to severe injuries or prove fatal.
On April 30, 2009, federal regulators found that the mine had failed to follow methane-related safety precautions. Regulators stopped work in a section of the mine until the ventilation was corrected.
Kevin Stricklin, of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said he planned an aggressive investigation of the disaster. "I can tell you this: No stone will be left unturned," he said.
President Obama earlier on Friday expressed his condolences to the families of those killed or injured in the mine explosion. In remarks in the Rose Garden, he said "it's clear that more needs to be done" about mine safety, and he asked for a full report on what went wrong.
He said that he had spoken on Wednesday to members of the Davis family, who had lost three relatives in the explosion - Timothy Davis, Sr., and his two nephews, Cory Davis and Josh Napper.
"Mining has a long and proud history in West Virginia," Mr. Obama said. "It is a profession that's not without risks and danger, and the workers and their families know this, but the government and their employer know that they owe it to these employees' families to do everything possible to ensure their safety."
"None of the chambers had been deployed," said Governor Manchin during the somber press conference Saturday morning, referring to the underground rescue chambers where everyone hoped the four missing miners might be. "None of our miners suffered."
Church officials said that donations for the families of the dead miners were being accepted at the Montcoal Mining Disaster Fund, which was being run by the West Virginia Council of Churches. Governor Manchin added that said he had asked the White House for a national moment of silence Monday at 3:30.
Bernie Becker and Dan Heyman contributed reporting from Montcoal, and Michael Cooper and Andrew W. Lehren from New York.
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14) California: Union Wins Damages
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10brfs-UNIONWINSDAM_BRF.html?ref=us
A federal jury in San Francisco awarded more than $1.5 million in damages to the Service Employees International Union on Friday in a lawsuit that accused a breakaway union local and its leaders of illegally undermining the S.E.I.U. The jury ordered the breakaway unit, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, to pay $724,000 and ordered several of its leaders, including Sal Rosselli, its president, to pay $30,000 to $74,000 each. The S.E.I.U., which put its large Oakland health care local into trusteeship 15 months ago, prompting the breakaway, said the verdict showed that the Rosselli group had illegally used union money and salaries to finance the breakaway. Saying it would ask the judge to overturn the verdict, Mr. Rosselli's group noted that 12 defendants had been cleared of all charges and that the jury award fell far short of the $25 million the S.E.I.U. was seeking.
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15) MADA: IOF shoots demonstrators and journalists
Added by PT Editor Omar Ghraieb
Sunday, 11 April 2010 13:41
http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/gaza-strip/5408-mada-iof-shoots-demonstrators-and-journalists
Gaza, April 11, (Pal Telegraph) Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom (MADA), strongly condemns the arrest of the correspondent and cameraman of France-press agency Hazem Bader, yesterday, by the Israeli occupation forces in the village of Safa (Hebron).
MADA also condemns the Israeli occupation army's actions when they opened fire on journalists and demonstrators during a peaceful demonstration in the Atatra area of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday 6/4/2010.
According to Badr, he went to cover a peaceful demonstration against the confiscation of lands in Beit Safa, then the Israeli army came and closed the area declaring it (military zone) and ordered all the demonstrators to immediately evacuate the area, and when they refused the Israeli soldiers arrested them and arrested about fifteen protesters and foreigners who were there showing solidarity.
Badr added, "We have been handcuffed and locked in for three hours, I was released after the intervention of the French Agency's office while other detainees have been transferred to an interrogation center in the settlement of Etzion".
The reporter of BBC channel, Shuhdi Al Kashef, said that he went on last Tuesday to cover the march organized by the Popular Committee against the Israeli occupation authorities' ban of agricultural lands in the Atatra area of Beit Lahiya, when the demonstrators came to the restricted area the Israeli army came and began firing live bullets on journalists and demonstrators.
Kashef added, "It was a very dangerous situation where journalists were stuck between soldiers and demonstrators, and we were at a distance of 50 meters from the Israeli army where they started shooting very close to us, but fortunately no one was hurt".
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16) CIA, Heroin Still Rule Day in Afghanistan
"U.S. Army planes leave Afghanistan carrying coffins empty of bodies, but filled with drugs."
By Victor Thorn
November 24, 2008
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/11/24/cia-heroin-still-rule-day-in-afghanistan.html
Afghanistan now supplies over 90 percent of the world's heroin, generating nearly $200 billion in revenue. Since the U.S. invasion on Oct. 7, 2001, opium output has increased 33-fold (to over 8,250 metric tons a year).
The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for over seven years, has spent $177 billion in that country alone, and has the most powerful and technologically advanced military on Earth. GPS tracking devices can locate any spot imaginable by simply pushing a few buttons.
Still, bumper crops keep flourishing year after year, even though heroin production is a laborious, intricate process. The poppies must be planted, grown and harvested; then after the morphine is extracted it has to be cooked, refined, packaged into bricks and transported from rural locales across national borders. To make heroin from morphine requires another 12-14 hours of laborious chemical reactions. Thousands of people are involved, yet-despite the massive resources at our disposal-heroin keeps flowing at record levels.
Common sense suggests that such prolific trade over an extended period of time is no accident, especially when the history of what has transpired in that region is considered. While the CIA ran its operations during the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle supplied the world with most of its heroin. After that war ended in 1975, an intriguing event took place in 1979 when Zbigniew Brzezinski covertly manipulated the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan. Behind the scenes, the CIA, along with Pakistan's ISI, were secretly funding Afghanistan's mujahideen to fight their Russian foes. Prior to this war, opium production in Afghanistan was minimal. But according to historian Alfred McCoy, an expert on the subject, a shift in focus took place. "Within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer."
Soon, as Professor Michel Chossudovsky notes, "CIA assets again controlled the heroin trade. As the mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant poppies as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories."
Eventually, the Soviet Union was defeated (their version of Vietnam), and ultimately lost the Cold War. The aftermath, however, proved to be an entirely new can of worms. During his research, McCoy discovered that "the CIA supported various Afghan drug lords, for instance Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection."
By 1994, a new force emerged in the region-the Taliban-that took over the drug trade. Chossudovsky again discovered that "the Americans had secretly, and through the Pakistanis [specifically the ISI], supported the Taliban's assumption of power."
These strange bedfellows endured a rocky relationship until July 2000 when Taliban leaders banned the planting of poppies. This alarming development, along with other disagreements over proposed oil pipelines through Eurasia, posed a serious problem for power centers in the West. Without heroin money at their disposal, billions of dollars could not be funneled into various CIA black budget projects. Already sensing trouble in this volatile region, 18 influential neo-cons signed a letter in 1998, which became a blueprint for war--the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Fifteen days after 9-11, CIA Director George Tenet sent his top-secret Special Operations Group (SOG) into Afghanistan. One of the biggest revelations in Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, was that CIA forces directed the Afghanistan invasion, not the Pentagon.
In the Jan. 26, 2003, issue of Time magazine, Douglas Waller describes Donald Rumsfeld's reaction to this development. "When aides told Rumsfeld that his Army Green Beret A-Teams couldn't go into Afghanistan until the CIA contingent had lain the groundwork with local warlords, he erupted, 'I have all these guys under arms, and we've got to wait like little birds in a nest for the CIA to let us go in?'"
ARMITAGE A MAJOR PLAYER
But the real operator in Afghanistan was Richard Armitage, a man whose legend includes being the biggest heroin trafficker in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War; director of the State Department's Foreign Narcotics Control Office (a front for CIA drug dealing); head of the Far East Company (used to funnel drug money out of the Golden Triangle); a close liaison with Oliver North during the Iran-Contra cocaine-for-guns scandal; a primary Pentagon official in the terror and covert ops field under George Bush the Elder; one of the original signatories of the infamous PNAC document; and the man who helped CIA Director William Casey run weapons to the mujahideen during their war against the Soviet Union. Armitage was also stationed in Iran during the mid-1970s right before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah. Armitage may well be the greatest covert operator in U.S. history.
On Sept. 10, 2001, Armitage met with the UK's national security advisor, Sir David Manning. Was Armitage "passing on specific intelligence information about the impending terrorist attacks"? The scenario is plausible because one day later-on 9-11-Dick Cheney directly called for Armitage's presence down in his bunker. Immediately after WTC 2 was struck, Armitage told BBC Radio, "I was told to go to the operations center [where] I spent the rest of the day in the ops center with the vice president."
These two share a long history together. Not only was Armitage employed by Cheney's former company Halliburton (via Brown & Root), he was also a deputy when Cheney was secretary of defense under Bush the Elder. More importantly, Cheney and Armitage had joint business and consulting interests in the Central Asian pipeline which had been contracted by Unocal. The only problem standing between them and the Caspian Sea's vast energy reserves was the Taliban.
Since the 1980s, Armitage amassed a huge roster of allies in Pakistan's ISI. He was also one of the "Vulcans"-along with Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Rabbi Dov Zakheim-who coordinated Bush's geo-strategic foreign policy initiatives. Then, after 9-11, he negotiated with the Pakistanis prior to our invasion of Afghanistan, while also becoming Bush's deputy secretary of state stationed in Afghanistan.
Our "enemy," or course, was the Taliban "terrorists." But George Tenet, Colin Powell, Porter Goss, and Armitage had developed a close relationship with Pakistan's military head of the ISI-General Mahmoud Ahmad- who was cited in a Sept. 2001 FBI report as "supporting and financing the alleged 9-11 terrorists, as well as having links to al Qaeda and the Taliban."
The line between friend and foe gets even murkier. Afghan President Hamid Karzai not only collaborated with the Taliban, but he was also on Unocal's payroll in the mid-1990s. He is also described by Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan newspaper as being "a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s that collaborated with the CIA in funding U.S. aid to the Taliban."
Capturing a new, abundant source for heroin was an integral part of the U.S. "war on terror." Hamid Karzai is a puppet ruler of the CIA; Afghanistan is a full-fledged narco-state; and the poppies that flourish there have yet to be eradicated, as was proven in 2003 when the Bush administration refused to destroy the crops, despite having the chance to do so. Major drug dealers are rarely arrested, smugglers enjoy carte blanche immunity, and Nushin Arbabzadah, writing for The Guardian, theorized that "U.S. Army planes leave Afghanistan carrying coffins empty of bodies, but filled with drugs." Is that why the military protested so vehemently when reporters tried to photograph returning caskets?
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16) In a Tough Economy, Old Limits on Welfare
By ROBERT PEAR
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/us/11welfare.html?hp
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Kimberly E. Kaplan recently received a notice telling her that she and her three children were about to lose their monthly welfare benefit of $584 because they had reached the time limit on cash assistance and she had not made adequate efforts to find work.
Ms. Kaplan, 43, is required to work 20 hours a week, but is seeking a hardship exemption. Her 4-year-old son, Landon, has psychological and behavioral problems, and she said that "it's a full-time job to take care of him."
Rhode Island has the nation's third-highest unemployment rate, but the welfare rolls here continue to decline because of the time limits and stringent work requirements.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of Americans receiving benefits under the main federal-state welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, has increased less than 10 percent, even though unemployment has nearly doubled and the number of people receiving food stamps has grown more than 40 percent, to 39 million.
Congress overhauled the welfare law in 1996 to emphasize work, and in a booming economy the changes were widely considered a great success.
But the latest trends are prompting federal officials to ask whether welfare is fulfilling its mission in tough economic times. Congress and the Obama administration are considering changes as the program comes up for renewal this year.
"TANF seems far less responsive to the growing need than other safety net programs, such as food stamps or unemployment insurance," said Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security.
Carmen R. Nazario, the assistant secretary of health and human services in charge of welfare policy, said, "Some states with some of the worst economic conditions are not seeing significant caseload increases."
Indeed, in a recent report, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said, "We found no clear association between the change in the number of families receiving cash assistance in a state and its unemployment rate."
Ronald T. Haskins, who helped write the 1996 law as an aide to House Republicans, said, "There's definitely a problem."
"Many states have been too slow to take destitute families back on the rolls," Mr. Haskins said. "In 1996, both Republicans and Democrats assumed that welfare rolls would rise during a recession as jobs got harder to find."
Rhode Island changed its welfare program in 2008. Under the new program, known as Rhode Island Works, people can receive cash assistance for no more than 24 months in any 60-month period, with a lifetime maximum of 48 months of benefits. The lifetime limit had been 60 months.
Benefits go mostly to families headed by women. For Coralis I. Concepcion and her three boys in Woonsocket, R.I., cash assistance ended on Jan. 31.
They lost a monthly benefit of $584, and the impact, she said, has been drastic. "If we go out locally, we usually walk instead of using the car," she said. Ms. Concepcion, 23, began receiving cash assistance four years ago, when her first son was born, and she said she had filed more than 200 job applications in the last year.
"It's very difficult to find any job," Ms. Concepcion said. "I am competing against people with bachelor's and master's degrees. I went to high school through the 10th grade."
Cash assistance is also running out for Meagan L. Fontaine, 24, and her 5-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy. She has a temporary subsidized job as an administrative assistant at Project Hope, a social service organization run by Catholic Charities in Pawtucket, R.I.
"It's horrible," Ms. Fontaine said. "I apply for 45 jobs in a week. You don't get calls back, or you get an interview but no job. Employers are so picky. They can pick anyone they want in these hard times."
Workers in the Head Start program see the effects of the new welfare rules in several ways.
Many children eligible for Head Start are from families receiving cash assistance. But Dee L. Henry, who has worked at the Woonsocket Head Start program for 35 years, said, "For the first time, we are seeing significant numbers of families who report no income whatsoever, zero, because they have reached the time limit on cash assistance or have been sanctioned for not meeting work requirements."
Besides teaching the children, Head Start workers visit the families at home at least three times a year. And sometimes they observe ominous signs of domestic violence.
Jody A. Ragosta, a Head Start worker in Woonsocket, said: "I see moms who have been cut off cash assistance and can't find work. In some cases, they return to the father or another man who was abusive, in the hope that he can provide financially for the kids."
As Congress turns its attention to the temporary assistance program, Republicans suspect that Democrats want to dismantle parts of the 1996 law and expand welfare once again. Democrats say they want to preserve the emphasis on work, but reward states for lifting families out of poverty, not just reducing the welfare rolls.
The 1996 law changed the culture of cash assistance. The number of people on welfare fell more than expected, the employment of single mothers increased and child poverty declined.
But those trends have not been sustained. Child poverty has increased. Since 1996, the proportion of poor children receiving assistance has declined by more than half. Fewer than half of eligible families participate in the program.
Rhode Island officials said the state had been less than aggressive in carrying out the 1996 welfare law. They allowed welfare recipients to attend education and training programs for years while other states emphasized work above all other activities.
When Rhode Island began to overhaul its welfare program in 2008, the state unemployment rate was about 7 percent and state officials believed that jobs would be readily available to welfare recipients even if the rate climbed to 9 percent. They never expected the rate to soar to its current level of 12.7 percent.
Given the high jobless rate, Donalda M. Carlson, associate director of the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, said: "I thought the applications for temporary assistance and the rolls would grow. To our surprise, it has not happened."
Ms. Kaplan was granted a three-month extension of cash benefits late last year so she could care for her son. But the Department of Human Services said she did not use the time for the designated purpose, "to transition off cash assistance" and become self-sufficient.
She says that if she goes back to work, her son will lose home-based therapeutic services that help him develop social skills and deal with his anger.
A similar deadline is looming for Amanda R. Choiniere, 22, and her 17-month-old daughter. Ms. Choiniere said she had graduated from high school with a certificate as a nursing assistant and had training as a pharmacy technician but could not find a job.
She is learning to be a bookkeeping and accounting clerk in a vocational education program at Rhode Island College. She has no idea how she and her daughter will get by when their cash assistance runs out in June.
"I'll be stuck," Ms. Choiniere said.
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17) Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of 'Avatar'
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/americas/11brazil.html?ref=world
VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil - They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.
"The snake kills by squeezing very slowly," Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. "This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be," he added.
As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron's wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered. The snake was killed. Then indigenous leaders set off on a dance of appreciation, ending at the boat that took Mr. Cameron away. All the while, Mr. Cameron danced haltingly, shaking a spear, a chief's feathery yellow and white headdress atop his head.
In the 15 years since he wrote the script for "Avatar," his epic tale of greed versus nature, Mr. Cameron said, he had become an avid environmentalist. But he said that until his trip to the Brazilian Amazon last month, his advocacy was mostly limited to the environmentally responsible way he tried to live his life: solar and wind energy power his Santa Barbara home, he said, and he and his wife drive hybrid vehicles and do their own organic gardening.
"Avatar" - and its nearly $2.7 billion in global tickets sales - has changed all that, flooding Mr. Cameron with kudos for helping to "emotionalize" environmental issues and pleas to get more involved.
Now, Mr. Cameron said, he has been spurred to action, to speak out against the looming environmental destruction endangering indigenous groups around the world - a cause that is fueling his inner rage and inspiring his work on an "Avatar" sequel.
"Any direct experience that I have with indigenous peoples and their plights may feed into the nature of the story I choose to tell," he said. "In fact, it almost certainly will." Referring to his Amazon trip, he added, "It just makes me madder."
Mr. Cameron is so fired up, in fact, that he said he was planning to go back to the Amazon this week, this time with Sigourney Weaver and at least another member of the "Avatar" cast in tow.
The focus is the huge Belo Monte dam planned by the Brazilian government. It would be the third largest in the world, and environmentalists say it would flood hundreds of square miles of the Amazon and dry up a 60-mile stretch of the Xingu River, devastating the indigenous communities that live along it. For years the project was on the shelf, but the government now plans to hold an April 20 auction to award contracts for its construction.
Stopping the dam has become a fresh personal crusade for the director, who came here as indigenous leaders from 13 tribes held a special council to discuss their last-ditch options. It was Mr. Cameron's first visit to the Amazon, he said, even though he based the fictional planet in "Avatar" on Amazon rain forests. Still, he found the real-life similarities to the themes in his movie undeniable.
The dam is a "quintessential example of the type of thing we are showing in 'Avatar' - the collision of a technological civilization's vision for progress at the expense of the natural world and the cultures of the indigenous people that live there," he said.
Mr. Cameron said that he was writing a letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urging him to reconsider the dam and that he would press for a meeting with the president. "They need to listen to these people here," he said.
Mr. Cameron, 55, first encountered the cause in February, after being presented with a letter from advocacy organizations and Native American groups saying they wanted Mr. Cameron to highlight "the real Pandoras in the world," referring to the lush world under assault in his movie.
Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, who accompanied him on his trip last month, said Mr. Cameron lit up at the idea of learning more, saying he had grown up in the Canadian woods and had even logged thousands of hours underwater exploring the world's oceans.
As for Mr. Cameron's Amazon adventure, it got off to a rocky start. The boat he traveled to the village in flooded when a hose became disconnected. Mr. Cameron chipped in, grabbing a plastic bucket to help bail for a few hours in the searing midday heat, he and others on the boat said.
Many of the indigenous leaders he was planning to meet with had never heard of him before, much less seen his movie. All they knew was that "a powerful ally" would be attending their gathering, Ms. Soltani said.
So, the night before Mr. Cameron and his wife, Suzy Amis, arrived with three bodyguards, a dozen or so villagers gathered in the house of José Carlos Arara, the chief of the Arara tribe here, to watch a DVD of "Avatar."
"What happens in the film is what is happening here," said Chief Arara, 30.
The morning after Mr. Cameron's party arrived in the village, Chief Arara led them on a walk through the rain forest. Mr. Cameron, almost mirroring the enraptured scientists in his movie, was calm but wide-eyed, peppering the chief with questions about the local fauna and flora and traditional indigenous ways. In seconds, the chief showed how he could fashion ankle braces from leaves to help him scale an açaí tree.
The leaders then invited Mr. Cameron to participate in their meeting. He sat at a small wooden school desk as they made speeches condemning the impending dam and the Brazilian government. Mr. Cameron seemed to tear up when some leaders said they would be willing to die to stop the dam.
Finally, Mr. Cameron was asked to speak. He stood and complimented the leaders on their unity, saying they needed to fight off efforts by the government to divide them and weaken their resistance.
"That is what can stop the snake; that is what can stop the dam," he said.
A rush of applause swept through the crowd. When the real snake fell from the tree, the director seemed unfazed. After clearing it away, indigenous leaders thanked him with gifts. One gave him a spear, another a black and red necklace of seeds. A third, Chief Jaguar from the Kaiapo nation, one of Brazil's most respected, gave him his headdress before the dances in Mr. Cameron's honor began.
"It's not like there is any pressure on me or anything," he said, half-joking, moments before boarding the boat. "These people really are looking for me to do something about their situation. We have to try to stop this dam. Their whole way of life, their society as they know it, depends on it."
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18) Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
April 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/economy/11rates.html?ref=us
Even as prospects for the American economy brighten, consumers are about to face a new financial burden: a sustained period of rising interest rates.
That, economists say, is the inevitable outcome of the nation's ballooning debt and the renewed prospect of inflation as the economy recovers from the depths of the recent recession.
The shift is sure to come as a shock to consumers whose spending habits were shaped by a historic 30-year decline in the cost of borrowing.
"Americans have assumed the roller coaster goes one way," said Bill Gross, whose investment firm, Pimco, has taken part in a broad sell-off of government debt, which has pushed up interest rates. "It's been a great thrill as rates descended, but now we face an extended climb."
The impact of higher rates is likely to be felt first in the housing market, which has only recently begun to rebound from a deep slump. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen half a point since December, hitting 5.31 last week, the highest level since last summer.
Along with the sell-off in bonds, the Federal Reserve has halted its emergency $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage debt, placing even more upward pressure on rates.
"Mortgage rates are unlikely to go lower than they are now, and if they go higher, we're likely to see a reversal of the gains in the housing market," said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. "It's a really big risk."
Each increase of 1 percentage point in rates adds as much as 19 percent to the total cost of a home, according to Mr. Mayer.
The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the rise to continue, with the 30-year mortgage rate going to 5.5 percent by late summer and as high as 6 percent by the end of the year.
Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 - a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.
With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the TowerGroup, a financial research company.
"The banks don't have a lot of pricing options," Mr. Moroney said. "They're targeting people who carry a balance from month to month."
Similarly, many car loans have already become significantly more expensive, with rates at auto finance companies rising to 4.72 percent in February from 3.26 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve.
Washington, too, is expecting to have to pay more to borrow the money it needs for programs. The Office of Management and Budget expects the rate on the benchmark 10-year United States Treasury note to remain close to 3.9 percent for the rest of the year, but then rise to 4.5 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.
The run-up in rates is quickening as investors steer more of their money away from bonds and as Washington unplugs the economic life support programs that kept rates low through the financial crisis. Mortgage rates and car loans are linked to the yield on long-term bonds.
Besides the inflation fears set off by the strengthening economy, Mr. Gross said he was also wary of Treasury bonds because he feared the burgeoning supply of new debt issued to finance the government's huge budget deficits would overwhelm demand, driving interest rates higher.
Nine months ago, United States government debt accounted for half of the assets in Mr. Gross's flagship fund, Pimco Total Return. That has shrunk to 30 percent now - the lowest ever in the fund's 23-year history - as Mr. Gross has sold American bonds in favor of debt from Europe, particularly Germany, as well as from developing countries like Brazil.
Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly crossed the psychologically important threshold of 4 percent, as the Treasury auctioned off $82 billion in new debt. That is nearly twice as much as the government paid in the fall of 2008, when investors sought out ultrasafe assets like Treasury securities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the credit crisis.
Though still very low by historical standards, the rise of bond yields since then is reversing a decline that began in 1981, when 10-year note yields reached nearly 16 percent.
From that peak, steadily dropping interest rates have fed a three-decade lending boom, during which American consumers borrowed more and more but managed to hold down the portion of their income devoted to paying off loans.
Indeed, total household debt is now nine times what it was in 1981 - rising twice as fast as disposable income over the same period - yet the portion of disposable income that goes toward covering that debt has budged only slightly, increasing to 12.6 percent from 10.7 percent.
Household debt has been dropping for the last two years as recession-battered consumers cut back on borrowing, but at $13.5 trillion, it still exceeds disposable income by $2.5 trillion.
The long decline in rates also helped prop up the stock market; lower rates for investments like bonds make stocks more attractive.
That tailwind, which prevented even worse economic pain during the recession, has ceased, according to interviews with economists, analysts and money managers.
"We've had almost a 30-year rally," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's. "That's come to an end."
Just as significant as the bottom-line impact will be the psychological fallout from not being able to buy more while paying less - an unusual state of affairs that made consumer spending the most important measure of economic health.
"We've gotten spoiled by the idea that interest rates will stay in the low single-digits forever," said Jim Caron, an interest rate strategist with Morgan Stanley. "We've also had a generation of consumers and investors get used to low rates."
For young home buyers today considering 30-year mortgages with a rate of just over 5 percent, it might be hard to conceive of a time like October 1981, when mortgage rates peaked at 18.2 percent. That meant monthly payments of $1,523 then compared with $556 now for a $100,000 loan.
No one expects rates to return to anything resembling 1981 levels. Still, for much of Wall Street, the question is not whether rates will go up, but rather by how much.
Some firms, like Morgan Stanley, are predicting that rates could rise by a percentage point and a half by the end of the year. Others, like JPMorgan Chase are forecasting a more modest half-point jump.
But the consensus is clear, according to Terrence M. Belton, global head of fixed-income strategy for J. P. Morgan Securities. "Everyone knows that rates will eventually go higher," he said.
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19) U.S. Troops Fire on Bus in Afghanistan, Killing Civilians
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and TAIMOOR SHAH
April 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar on Monday morning, killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18 and sparking anger in a city where winning over Afghan support is considered pivotal to the war effort.
The American-led military command in Kabul called the killings a "tragic loss of life" and said troops fired not knowing the vehicle was a bus and believing that it posed a threat to a military convoy clearing roadside bombs from a highway.
The killings triggered a vitriolic anti-American demonstration, infuriated officials and appeared likely to harm public opinion on the eve of the most important offensive of the war, in which tens of thousands of American and NATO troops will try to take control of the Kandahar region, the spiritual home of the Taliban, this summer.
Hundreds of demonstrators poured into the area around a station where the damaged bus was taken on the western outskirts of Kandahar. They blocked the road with burning tires for an hour and shouted "Death to America" and "Death to infidels" while also condemning the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, according to people in the area.
The Kandahar governor, Tooryalai Wesa, called for the commander of the military convoy who opened fire to be prosecuted under military law.
"If you want to stop the bus, it should be shot in the tires," Mr. Wesa said. "Why shoot the people inside?"
Mr. Karzai, whose relationship with the United States has been particularly fraught in recent weeks, called the shooting "unjustifiable" and said that "firing on a passenger bus is against the NATO commitment to save civilian lives."
While the military confirmed the shooting, there were disputes over details, including the number of dead, the relative positions of the convoys, and whether the troops who fired on the bus had first shot flares and warned the driver to stay back.
The killings were the latest deadly case of what the military calls "escalation of force," in which troops guarding military convoys or checkpoints gun down Afghans perceived as a threat because they have come too close or are traveling too fast. Deadly force is supposed to be used on encroaching vehicles only after warning shots, flares or other tactics.
Despite a drop in overall civilian deaths from American and NATO forces, checkpoint and convoy shootings have not declined, worrying commanders who believe such killings turn Afghans against the occupation. More than 30 people have been killed and 80 wounded in these cases since last summer, but not one of the dead was found to have been a threat, military officials say.
The shooting in Kandahar occurred just after daybreak, as the bus was taking scores of passengers to Nimroz Province, said Zalmy Ayoubi, a spokesman for Governor Wesa.
Two people who had been on the bus said that an American convoy 60 to 70 yards ahead opened fire as the bus began to pull to the side of the road to allow another military convoy to pass from behind.
"An American convoy was ahead of us and another convoy was following us, and we were going to pull off of the road, and suddenly the Americans opened fire," said one, a passenger, Nida Muhammad, who suffered a shoulder wound.
"We were not close to them, maybe 60 yards away from their convoy," Mr. Mohammed said. A helicopter came for some wounded, he said.
"This bus wasn't like an a suicide bomber, and we did not touch or come close to the convoy," he said. "It seems they are opening fire on civilians intentionally."
The two convoys and the bus were on the main highway in Sanzari, about 15 miles west of Kandahar city. The windows on one side of the bus were shot out.
Governor Wesa and his spokesman both said five civilians had been killed , and 18 wounded. Mr. Wesa blamed American forces and said a dozen of the wounded were in serious condition.
The Interior Ministry in Kabul issued a statement saying four civilians had been killed and 18 wounded and blamed "NATO forces" traveling in front of the bus. If the casualty toll is correct, it would imply that troops may have fired scores of rounds.
A statement issued by the American-led military command in Kabul placed the death toll at four. It said "an unknown, large vehicle" drove "at a high rate of speed" toward a slow-moving NATO convoy that was clearing mines from the highway. The convoy could not move to the side of the road to let the vehicle pass because of a steep embankment. Troops then used a flashlight and three flares to try to warn the driver, who did not respond.
"Perceiving a threat when the vehicle approached once more at an increased rate of speed, the patrol attempted to warn off the vehicle with hand signals prior to firing upon it," the statement said. "Once engaged, the vehicle then stopped."
"Upon inspection," it said, NATO forces "discovered the vehicle to be a passenger bus."
A military spokeswoman confirmed that a military convoy traveling westward, in front of the bus, had opened fire, but said the second convoy was traveling eastward towards the passenger bus. She also said the driver of the passenger bus was killed.
However, a survivor identified himself as the driver said the bus and said he did not violate any signal from the troops.
"I was going to take the bus off the road," said the man, Mohammed Nabi. Then the convoy ahead opened fire from a distance of 60 to 70 yards.
"It is a huge bus full of passengers, and if they think we were a suicide bomber, we are sad that the Americans have killed innocent people," he said. "We don't feel safe while traveling on the main highways anymore because of NATO convoys."
The American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has sought to emphasize to troops how escalation of force incidents undermine Afghan support for the war. But he has also stressed that he sympathizes with troops who have to make critical decisions in an instant and is not criticizing them.
"We really ask a lot of our young service people out on checkpoints because there's danger, they're asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations," General McChrystal told troops during a video conference last month.
"However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it."
Underscoring the instability in Kandahar, hours after the bus shooting a team of suicide bombers attacked the Kandahar office of the Afghan intelligence service known as the National Directorate of Security. There was no immediate indication that attack was related to the bus shooting.
One suicide bomber exploded before he could reach his target, while guards shot and killed the second and shot and detained the third, Governor Wesa said. Four officers of the directorate and five civilians were wounded, he said.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Kabul and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.
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20) Human Rights Groups Warn of New Powers for Israel
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/world/middleeast/12mideast.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - A recently amended military order that allows Israel to remove people from the West Bank if it does not recognize their legal status could lead to the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups warned Sunday.
The amendment - to a 1969 order on dealings with those judged to be infiltrators of the West Bank - was signed by military officials last October and is due to take effect on Tuesday.
In the original document, issued two years after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, "infiltrator" was defined as a person who entered the area illegally from a neighboring Arab country. The amendment redefined the term to refer broadly to anyone who entered the West Bank "unlawfully" or who "does not lawfully hold a permit." The permit required is not specified.
"The wide definitions are the problem," said Elad Cahana, a lawyer for HaMoked: The Center for the Defense of the Individual, one of 10 groups appealing for a delay on the change in the order. The group estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinians could theoretically be at risk.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, denounced the change. "These military orders belong in an apartheid state," he said. "Extensive in scope, they make it infinitely easier for Israel to imprison and expel Palestinians from the West Bank."
But Capt. Barak Raz, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that there had been no change in policy regarding the extradition of illegal residents from the West Bank, and that "anyone who has the right paperwork" allowing residency "has nothing to worry about."
Mr. Cahana said the concern was less of a mass expulsion than of the military deporting those officially registered as residents of Gaza, as well as Palestinians or their spouses who moved to the West Bank from abroad.
When the military currently tries to remove such individuals from the West Bank, it often faces difficulties in arguing the cases before Israel's Supreme Court. The amended order could help the military overcome those difficulties, Mr. Cahana said.
Under the revised order, a deportation cannot be carried out until 72 hours after legal papers have been issued, and until the person served has had a chance to appeal in a military court.
Those convicted under the order could now face up to seven years in jail.
In the past, deportation orders could be carried out the same day they were served, with no appeal, so Captain Raz, of the Israeli military, said the amendment could actually help those without legal residency.
"It makes it easier for people without the right paperwork to appeal," he said.
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21) Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
"'This feeling that we're all in it together may have benefited communities by encouraging reciprocal generosity," Dr. Griffiths said. "On the other hand, universal love isn't always adaptive, either.'"
By JOHN TIERNEY
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html?ref=us
As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.
Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. He left his home in Vancouver, Wash., to take part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins medical school involving psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in certain mushrooms.
Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs' potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.
After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.
"All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating," he recalled. "Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water's gone. And then you're gone."
Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.
Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades. They plan to discuss studies of psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating depression in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs or alcohol.
The results so far are encouraging but also preliminary, and researchers caution against reading too much into these small-scale studies. They do not want to repeat the mistakes of the 1960s, when some scientists-turned-evangelists exaggerated their understanding of the drugs' risks and benefits.
Because reactions to hallucinogens can vary so much depending on the setting, experimenters and review boards have developed guidelines to set up a comfortable environment with expert monitors in the room to deal with adverse reactions. They have established standard protocols so that the drugs' effects can be gauged more accurately, and they have also directly observed the drugs' effects by scanning the brains of people under the influence of hallucinogens.
Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate. These similarities have been identified in neural imaging studies conducted by Swiss researchers and in experiments led by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins.
In one of Dr. Griffiths's first studies, involving 36 people with no serious physical or emotional problems, he and colleagues found that psilocybin could induce what the experimental subjects described as a profound spiritual experience with lasting positive effects for most of them. None had had any previous experience with hallucinogens, and none were even sure what drug was being administered.
To make the experiment double-blind, neither the subjects nor the two experts monitoring them knew whether the subjects were receiving a placebo, psilocybin or another drug like Ritalin, nicotine, caffeine or an amphetamine. Although veterans of the '60s psychedelic culture may have a hard time believing it, Dr. Griffiths said that even the monitors sometimes could not tell from the reactions whether the person had taken psilocybin or Ritalin.
The monitors sometimes had to console people through periods of anxiety, Dr. Griffiths said, but these were generally short-lived, and none of the people reported any serious negative effects. In a survey conducted two months later, the people who received psilocybin reported significantly more improvements in their general feelings and behavior than did the members of the control group.
The findings were repeated in another follow-up survey, taken 14 months after the experiment. At that point most of the psilocybin subjects once again expressed more satisfaction with their lives and rated the experience as one of the five most meaningful events of their lives.
Since that study, which was published in 2008, Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues have gone on to give psilocybin to people dealing with cancer and depression, like Dr. Martin, the retired psychologist from Vancouver. Dr. Martin's experience is fairly typical, Dr. Griffiths said: an improved outlook on life after an experience in which the boundaries between the self and others disappear.
In interviews, Dr. Martin and other subjects described their egos and bodies vanishing as they felt part of some larger state of consciousness in which their personal worries and insecurities vanished. They found themselves reviewing past relationships with lovers and relatives with a new sense of empathy.
"It was a whole personality shift for me," Dr. Martin said. "I wasn't any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people."
The subjects' reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these "unitive" experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage.
"This feeling that we're all in it together may have benefited communities by encouraging reciprocal generosity," Dr. Griffiths said. "On the other hand, universal love isn't always adaptive, either."
Although federal regulators have resumed granting approval for controlled experiments with psychedelics, there has been little public money granted for the research, which is being conducted at Hopkins, the University of Arizona; Harvard; New York University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and other places.
The work has been supported by nonprofit groups like the Heffter Research Institute and MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
"There's this coming together of science and spirituality," said Rick Doblin, the executive director of MAPS. "We're hoping that the mainstream and the psychedelic community can meet in the middle and avoid another culture war. Thanks to changes over the last 40 years in the social acceptance of the hospice movement and yoga and meditation, our culture is much more receptive now, and we're showing that these drugs can provide benefits that current treatments can't."
Researchers are reporting preliminary success in using psilocybin to ease the anxiety of patients with terminal illnesses. Dr. Charles S. Grob, a psychiatrist who is involved in an experiment at U.C.L.A., describes it as "existential medicine" that helps dying people overcome fear, panic and depression.
"Under the influences of hallucinogens," Dr. Grob writes, "individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change."
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22) Tax Audits of Big Business Are Declining, Study Says
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
April 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/business/12audit.html?ref=us
Despite the federal government's repeated pledges to crack down on big businesses that underpay their taxes, the Internal Revenue Service has decreased in recent years the time it spends auditing the returns of the nation's largest corporations, according to a new study.
And in 2009, the government audited just one in four of the largest corporations, lower than any rate in more than 20 years, according to the analysis, released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research group affiliated with Syracuse University.
Researchers said the audit data and other memos, which had both been obtained from the government under the Freedom of Information Act, suggested that a "perverse quota system" within the I.R.S. may be pressuring auditors to focus on small and medium-size businesses and give less scrutiny to the largest corporations - those with $250 million or more in assets.
"The decision to audit the smaller companies does not help the government collect more taxes," the study concluded. "This is because the data indicate that the larger the business, the larger the dollar amounts of tax underreporting and back taxes on average that they may owe."
I.R.S. officials, who have for years disputed the methodology used by TRAC, were quick to rebut the study's findings. Steven T. Miller, the I.R.S. director of enforcement, said the study was skewed because it failed to take into account a surge in hours that I.R.S. agents spent working with businesses before they filed their returns to prevent errors or underpayments.
He asserted that the data actually showed that the agency had become more efficient in recovering unpaid taxes from the largest corporations because the average amount of money the auditors recovered per hour had risen to $9,704 in 2009 from $6,928 in 2005.
"We believe we're looking at the right cases, we're looking at the largest cases, we're adding folks to these programs and have worked to really focus on the largest corporations," Mr. Miller said. "This issue is about more than just the number of feet on the beat."
The nation's tax gap - the amount of taxes underpaid by businesses and individuals - is more than $345 billion, according to the most recent estimates formulated by the I.R.S. The I.R.S. collected $48.9 billion in underpaid taxes last year through audits and other collection actions, including $28.5 billion from large companies and $1.8 billion from small and medium-size businesses.
In much of the last decade, as corporate profits soared and the number of wealthy Americans increased sharply, the I.R.S. periodically decreased the level of scrutiny it directed at individual taxpayers at the top of the income scale.
But the I.R.S. reversed that trend in the last two years, giving increased attention to the wealthiest individuals: in 2009, the agency audited 6.5 percent of those who declared income of $1 million or more; 2.9 percent of taxpayers with income of $200,000 to $1 million; and about 1 percent of those whose income was below $200,000.
But the TRAC study said the I.R.S. had not followed through on federal officials' promises to help reduce the soaring budget deficit by aggressively recovering underpayments by large corporations. Since 2005, the study reports, the number of hours devoted to audits of the largest companies fell 33 percent, while the hours spent auditing small businesses increased 30.4 percent and rose 12.6 percent for midsize businesses.
In the same period, the number of I.R.S. audits of large corporations fell to 3,675 from 4,693, a decrease of 21.7 percent.
Terry Lemons, an I.R.S. spokesman, said it was misleading to use 2005 as a basis for comparison because the I.R.S. had conducted a major drive to close old cases that year, and thus completed an unusually high number of audits carried forward from previous years.
Mr. Miller, the enforcement chief, said the I.R.S. audited 100 percent of those corporations with assets over $20 billion and 50 percent of those with assets of $5 billion to $20 billion in 2009.
In January, Commissioner Douglas Shulman announced that all major businesses would be required to include a detailed statement in their tax return that described any potentially questionable deductions. That new plan, which will be fully put into effect later this year, will allow auditors to concentrate their efforts on areas where they are most likely to recover any underpayment, Mr. Miller said.
"Enforcement is a function of looking at the right cases and the right issues," he said.
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23) Tax Day and America's Wars
What the mayor of one community hard hit by war spending is doing
By Jo Comerford
April 11, 2010
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175231/
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities "squabble over crumbs," as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon's coffers and into America's wars. He's so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he's decided to do something about it. He's planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital "cost of war" counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton's taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city's "war tax" will reach $138.6 million-or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president's "surge" in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter "where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation."
In doing so, he's joining a growing chorus of mayors, including Chicago's Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, who are ever more insistently drawing attention to what Ryan calls the country's "skewed national priorities," especially the local impact of military and war spending. With more than three years left in his current term, Ryan has decided to pull out all the stops to reach his neighbors and constituents, all 47,000 of them, especially the near quarter of the city's inhabitants who currently live below the poverty line and the nine percent who are officially unemployed.
A hard hit rust-belt city
Like so many post-industrial rust-belt communities, Binghamton was hard hit by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, though it faired better than a number of similar cities, in part because Ryan, his administration, and the Binghamton City Council are a smart and scrappy crew. No doubt that's why he earned the New York State Conference of Mayors Public Administration and Management award two years running.
These days, however, even the smartest and scrappiest of mayors still has to face grim reality. In July 2009, as the city began developing the 2010 budget, Ryan projected a $7 million shortfall. Contributing factors included a likely $700,000 decline in sales tax revenue, ever rising healthcare costs, increased pension contributions to replace funds lost in the market during the collapse of 2008-09, and a $500,000 drop in the return on the city's investment portfolio.
With worse times ahead, thanks in part to the projected end of federal stimulus money and a city drained dry of reserves, Ryan has had to face a classically unpalatable choice: raise city sales taxes from seven percent to an unheard of 24 percent or cut city jobs. He chose jobs, as have the vast majority of mayors and governors across the country, eliminating 39 of them. In the process, he sought greater program efficiencies and wrestled with ways to increase city revenues while cutting ever closer to Binghamton's proverbial bone.
It was in the context of this kind of local pain that Ryan was stunned to discover just how much of Binghamton's taxes were going to the military and to our distant wars, and how little was coming back to Binghamton in the form of aid and services. "When I first saw the cost of war numbers and made the connections," Ryan remarks, "I had to wonder if we're ever going to get our priorities straight as a nation. It's like we're facing an attack on government. As a mayor, I can see so clearly what increased federal spending could do for the people of my city."
Ryan's message doesn't resonate with all of his constituents-some have walked out on his public appearances-but he's used to controversy and convinced that Americans had better get their heads straight soon. "People are hurting so bad," he insists, "that, like it or not, we're all going to have to look at things seriously if we want our situation to change."
Heads should swivel, he thinks, when faced with the $138.6 million Binghamton's taxpayers are out of pocket since 2001 for the Iraq and Afghan wars. And that's not even counting the city's share of the supplemental funds Congress will undoubtedly agree to this spring to cover the Afghan "surge" or the city's portion of the basic Pentagon budget for the same period.
For a small city with an annual budget of $81.1 million, $138.6 million would be a hefty sum, even in non-recessionary times. For the same amount of money, Ryan could fund the Binghamton city library for the next 60 years, or pay for a four-year education for 95 percent of the incoming freshman class at the State University of New York at Binghamton, or offer four years of quality health coverage for everyone in Binghamton 19 or younger, or secure renewable electricity for every home in the city for the next 11 years. If he was feeling really flush, he could fully fund one-third of New York State's Head Start slots for one year.
For the same sum, Ryan could also authorize a $2,900 tax refund for every woman, man, and child in Binghamton or pay the salaries of all of Binghamton's hard-hit public school teachers and staff for about two years.
For $138.6 million, Mayor Ryan could hire 2,765 public safety officers for a year, or simply refund the 12 police positions cut in the latest budget contraction and guarantee those salaries for the next 230 years. Ridiculous? These days, no one is laughing in Binghamton or other cities like it.
A community starved by war
As tax day looms on April 15th, Ryan increasingly thinks about where Binghamton's tax dollars will be heading and dreams about a government system that would have the potential to raise and spend tax revenue in the service of social benefits like affordable healthcare.
He's disturbed by how Binghamton's tax dollars will be distributed and what they will-and won't-buy for his city. Consider, for instance, where the 2009 taxes paid by a median income Binghamton household actually went. That year, such a household's income hovered around $30,000 annually, while its members paid approximately $738 in federal income taxes.
According to the tax-day analysis of the National Priorities Project (NPP), an overwhelming 218 of those dollars went to pay for military expenditures and interest on military-related debt (generated, in part, by current war spending). The next highest amount-$137-went to healthcare, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
In 2009, $67, nearly 10 cents on every tax dollar, went to an aggregated category of spending NPP has titled "government," tripling it in a single year, largely thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the bank bailout, whose cost every community in America has had to shoulder. Fifty-eight dollars (8.5 cents on every income-tax dollar) went to increased unemployment insurance payments and job-training initiatives, also a rise from the previous year.
Not surprisingly, the $15 that went to elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational education in 2009 represented a drop from 2008, a loss of a penny on every tax dollar. There's no way, of course, that Mayor Ryan's dream of free, quality education from kindergarten to college is likely to happen on but two percent of every individual federal income tax dollar. Nor will we usher in the green techno-revolution that he and President Obama both support, by spending 2.5 cents on every dollar for the combined categories of the environment, energy, and science, and another 1.3 cents of every dollar on transportation.
"It's a double whammy," Ryan says. "We have a revenue problem and a values and priorities problem in this nation."
Some desperate city leaders have suggested that the Mayor cut workers' pensions to help close the city's budget gap. Matt Ryan doesn't see that as a solution to anything. "I have secretaries making $25,000 or $30,000. I'm not about to cut their net, such as it is. We have to think long haul. We have to look at fundamental changes if we're going to make it as a country. We should all be talking about this-all the time."
A construction crew will soon arrive to install Binghamton's "cost of war" counter, which will overlook the city's busiest intersection and spur conversation around tax day. During the three minutes local motorists wait at the nearby traffic light, they can join Mayor Ryan in waving good-bye to $100. And Binghamton as a whole can grapple with spending $49,650 in war costs every day of 2010.
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